HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

tonsky

113 karma · joined April 25, 2014

https://tonsky.me/ https://mastodon.online/@nikitonsky
submissionscomments
tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
Maven's version resolution mechanism determines which version of a dependency to use when multiple versions are specified in a project's dependency tree. Here's how it works:

- Nearest Definition Wins: When multiple versions of the same dependency appear in the dependency tree, the version closest to your project in the tree will be used.

- First Declaration Wins: If two versions of the same dependency are at the same depth in the tree, the first one declared in the POM will be used.

tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
> I’d love to lock my library to numpy 2.3.4, but if the developers of another library pin theirs to 2.3.5 then game over.

Why? Can’t you specify which version to use?

tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
> would fail in languages like Python where dependencies are shared

And yet Java and Maven exist...

tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
I updated the post, see near the bottom
tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
Yeah but version ranges are fiction. Some says: we require libpupa 0.2.0+. Sure you can find a version in that range. But what if it doesn’t work? How can you know that your library will work with all the future libpupa releases in advance?
tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
I worked for 20 years in an ecosystem that didn’t have lockfiles and had reproducible builds before the term was invented, and now you come and tell me that it couldn’t be?
tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
> Lockfiles are essential for somewhat reproducible builds.

No they are not. Fully reproducible builds have existed without lockfiles for decades

tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
One of the versions will be picked up. If that version doesn’t work, you can try another one. The process is exactly the same
tonsky··on We shouldn't have needed lockfiles
It’s totally fine in Maven, no need to rebuild or repackage anything. You just override version of libinsecure in your pom.xml and it uses the version you told it to
tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
Clojure Electric is different. It’s not really a sync, it’s more of a thin client. It relies of having fast connection to server at all times, and re-fetches everything all the time. They innovation is that they found a really, really ergonomic way to do it
tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
If you think of an existing database, like Postgres, sure. It’s not very convenient.

What I am saying is, in a perfect world, database and server will be the one and run code _and_ data at the same time. There’s really no good reason why they are separated, and it causes a lot of inconveniences right now.

tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
Ah, no. Not really. People sometimes think about conflict resolution as a problem that needs to be solved. But it’s not solvable, not really. It’s part of the domain, it’s not going anywhere, it’s irreducible complexity.

You _will_ have conflicts (because your app is distributed and there are concurrent writes). They will happen on semantic level, so only you (app developer) _will_ be able to solve them. Database (or any other magical tool) can’t do it for you.

Another misconception is that conflict resolution needs to be “solved” perfectly before any progress can be made. That is not true as well. You might have unhandled conflicts in your system and still have a working, useful, successful product. Conflicts might be rare, insignificant, or people (your users) will just correct for/work around them.

I am not saying “drop data on the floor”, of course, if you can help it. But try not to overthink it, either.

tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
> There's no such thing as reliable network in the world

I’m not saying there is

tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
- You can have many sync engines

- Sync engines might only solve small and medium scale, that would be a huge win even without large scale

tonsky··on Sync Engines Are the Future
It’s not as simple as you make it sound:

- Reliable communication is hard - Optimistic writes should on client are hard - Tracking subsets of data is hard (you don't want the entirety of Datomic on the client, do you?) - Permissions are hard in this model

Why didn't I implement it? Mostly comes down to free time. It's a hobby project and it's hard to find time for it. I also stopped writing web apps so immediate pressure for this went away.

tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
That’s two perfect examples! Racket seems to try to use native widgets, and looks horrible as a result, at least on macOS

JavaFX uses the same approach as Humble UI: they draw all the widgets themselves and have custom cross-platform look and feel.

We aim to be better quality version of JavaFX

tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
If they use native widgets, they usually look really bad If they just “imitate” look and feel, they usually fall very short of the real thing

Either way, it’s bad experience for the end user

tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
It’s a tradeoff. You either make your app native but only for one platform, or you make it look “universal” and run on all three.
tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
All good points, all true. But what’s also true is that current trend is to come up with arbitrary-looking controls even on apps made by Apple themselves. Nobody knows what native is supposed to look like. I’m not saying it’s good, it’s just what is happening.
tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
Not yet, but in theory, sure
tonsky··on Clojure Desktop UI Framework
We have workshop planned for the middle of September, after that, I hope things will start to stabilize a bit. I already started documenting some stuff in examples app, sort of self-documenting integration tests. Will have normal docs too, of course

https://s.tonsky.me/share/Screenshot%202024-08-27%20at%2017....

tonsky··on Local First, Forever
Still a state sync though
tonsky··on Local First, Forever
You can just sell apps for one-time fee. Used to work fine in the past
tonsky··on Local First, Forever
Yeah but does it solves conflict for you?
tonsky··on Local First, Forever
Hi :)
tonsky··on Aggregating all cinema showtimes in Germany with Clojure
Guys I need names of cities and cinemas
tonsky··on Aggregating all cinema showtimes in Germany with Clojure
I don’t think there is a single movie theater in Detmold. Which one are you missing?
tonsky··on Jepsen: Datomic Pro 1.0.7075
The idea was that it allows you to add something first and then build on top of it, all in the same transaction
tonsky··on Aggregating all cinema showtimes in Germany with Clojure
Yeah, except that it shows like only 20 movies and 4 showtimes. I want to see everything
tonsky··on Aggregating all cinema showtimes in Germany with Clojure
Damn Tübingen! You are the _third_ person who tells me about it! I’ll find a better source soon, hold on
Page 1 of 5Next →