HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

thedonkeycometh

19 karma · joined August 22, 2016

submissionscomments
thedonkeycometh··on Open Source Maintenance Fee
Open source shouldn't have fees, it's one step away from a subscription
thedonkeycometh··on Microsoft Recall should make you consider Linux
The user experience of Linux fundamentally has not changed in 25 years. Apple has had a decent shot, but their desktop seems to be rotting. Linux had a chance with alternative looking desktops, but was dragged back to the same old same old. The permission systems, elevation, driver management are all archaic. Your best bet is Ubuntu plus, but as another poster said, there is no support. There are no friendly call centers, it's a mass of agro and multiple paths of confusion when looking for a solution for a Linux problem online. Linux is not a replacement, and it probably won't ever be. Ubuntu may come up with a snappy Linux distribution that distances itself enough from the chaos of choice, just like apple did, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I've seen this discussion for twenty years, and the conservative Linux base won't allow popularity.
thedonkeycometh··on Why enterprise software is bloated
This is just pure hyperbole. The modular system of javascript is designed explicitly to ensure features can be made when needed. And I'm not sure where you breathlessly pulled 5GB of modules from, to write "Hello World" but I bet its dark and smelly.
thedonkeycometh··on Why enterprise software is bloated
I think this is quite unfair to Enterprise development. There are several business reasons to not use off the shelf scripts or libraries, namely licensing, governance, security, and support, all of which add perpetual costs and further 3rd party governance to any project, specially those in large Enterprises. Very rarely does any business prepare for this at the planning stage, even more so when the software is siloed within a business unit.

In terms of using "bloated platforms" like Javascript and Python, I get a whiff of superiority from OP as there simply is no reason to build for size or speed unless it is part of the deliverable feature set. Nobody in their right mind would be writing serverless functions in C++/Rust or a Windows form to enter timesheet information (UX is about design, not platform, and is always seen as a secondary cost). If you are determined to use C++/Rust before a project has started then you're under the spell/threat of rockstar employees without a care for long term support.

The problematic Enterprise Applications I've worked on all had the same things in common, a bad maintenance plan or an expectation that the software will last decades without change. It was never, "this should have been written in xyz", its almost always that the domain knowledge has gone, and alongside it, the source code.

If you're in a business, expecting to exist in decades time, using a moving target to host your systems, like any OS, you better look at the long game, as well as the short, and factor in versioning, source control and inevitable bit rot. Its not about how old it looks, or how fast it could be.

Ultimately, there is a massive desire for businesses to offload development entirely via no-code platforms like PowerApps and absolutely no desire to make code that requires more expensive technical hires to maintain, or add more process to manage.

Finally, I've been coming across a lot of developers pining for the "old days" where you could change change things willy nilly and release it, without writing tests or having code reviews. These were the bad old days, and they're long gone. They got away with it because software was not as ubiquitous, and the internet wasn't around to spread 0-day vulnerabilities, and had very little oversight.

thedonkeycometh··on I am resigning along with most other Freenode staff
I always say to people that say YouTube brings the worst in people that its, just, well.. people. IRC was just like that in the 90s as soon as enough people were sat in a channel it just became factional.
thedonkeycometh··on The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview (2003)
The web has always been semantic to some extent, just not in the rigid academic sense. It will be scraped, chewed, regurgitated and recycled. That's better than catalogued.
thedonkeycometh··on A ‘viral’ new bird song in Canada is causing sparrows to change their tune
I remember hearing nokia ringtones sung by birds while waiting for at bus stops in the late 90s
thedonkeycometh··on Adobe to remove Flash Player from web site after December 2020
No, it was literally Steve Jobs in 2010 saying he didn't want flash on mobile. Then it collapsed quite quickly after that as the barriers went up. 10 years later and mobile games still need to be made in Unity or Unreal. The new Meatboy won't come from HTML5, even if development was as easy. All the 3d engines you have in HTML5 owe a debt to actionscript and flash and still don't perform as well.

People don't realise how liberating and easy the multimedia of the flash years were. You could literally make a animated film and show it globally in an hour. Nothing comes close, still. Maybe we'll get a Web Assembly flash tool, when we all have 8Ghz PCs.

thedonkeycometh··on Tiny websites are great
From my experience complexity often hides hidden and undocumented requirements, which will only become apparent after the complexity is removed.

However, I've also seen simple pages that are line by line copies of tutorials for whole sites, pared down to a single page.

Frameworks aren't bad, unstructured working practices and environments often breed this sort of toxicity in code.

thedonkeycometh··on Here’s the story of a game I made in 1994, when I was 12
I had a spectrum, and found a comic shop that had old 80s computer magazines that taught assembler. I also found a z80 compiler via obscure pen pals via small ads in the games magazines. Edge of the seat stuff, but the feeling of accomplishment was astonishing when you actually did something. I think the bar is so high for bedroom coders these days and they're always getting weird drag n drop languages pushed at them, which just stifles creativity (imho).
thedonkeycometh··on Why some software developers hate Agile
Dogma destroys agile. If the team is coerced into behaviour that doesn't create momentum its counter productive, both in terms of morale and buy in on the end goal.
thedonkeycometh··on Ad.watch – Breaking open Facebook's machine of political persuasion
Really don't fully understand why facebook is being accused of creating this. And the AD and PR agencies are being let off scott free? Granted, facebook are culpable ethically for not appreciating that the manipulation afforded to advertisers could be utilised towards political persuasion. Why, then, if the tools are so powerful, are we not examining the power of the advertising industry for utilising the latest studies in psychology and anthropology? Making us request specific drugs from our doctors, or beer for our fridge, or thinking that some items may make us happy? None of which may be the best choice for us, or actually work.

Why is it different for political organisations to manipulate the population using those tools than it is for multinationals?

thedonkeycometh··on What If OpenDocument Used SQLite?
Hardly a thought experiment, when its on the official site.

This is purely a marketing exercise. They're hanging the thought experiment tag on to try and avoid undue criticism.

thedonkeycometh··on Ataribox will be an open, Linux-based console priced starting at $249
Maybe they're holding out for a steam compatibility badge.
thedonkeycometh··on What do people mean when they say “transpiler”?
Erm.. in social discourse maybe, but in technical language its generally quite explicit. This is why we have the design pattern language. To communicate effectively, technical concepts.

If someone refers to a MVC implementation as Command-Pattern, correct them. The same goes for language definitions.

thedonkeycometh··on Writing Good Code Is a Lot Like Writing Prose
Can you explain further?
thedonkeycometh··on The sad state of test frameworks
I think thats the main rub, think about the maintainers. Using a bespoke test framework, is often a way of introducing conflict, no matter how good a coder you are. As Jeff Atwood says, imagine the maintainer being a psychopath.. https://blog.codinghorror.com/coding-for-violent-psychopaths...
thedonkeycometh··on Why I'm Not a React Native Developer
tldr; javascript and facebook
thedonkeycometh··on Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop
That fossboss site is renowned for badly researched and terribly worded articles
thedonkeycometh··on The advantages of static typing, simply stated
tldr; knows haskell
thedonkeycometh··on The Programmer’s Guide to a Sane Workweek
I read up to the part where he said he worked at google, then shut my computer down and jumped out of a window.
thedonkeycometh··on Why China won’t own next-generation manufacturing
Same old American rhetoric. "Oh, the chinese are only good at copying. They can never create". Yawn.
thedonkeycometh··on OpenLambda, a system for serverless computing
All the reference links for cloud functions go to Google. Half life 3 confirmed.
thedonkeycometh··on String theorist Edward Witten says consciousness “will remain a mystery”
And he would know... <insert punchline here>