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    JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: πfs - the data-free filesystem!

    Literally laughed and giggled out loud. Absolutely hilarious.

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      guan avatar guan 4 years ago | link

      It would have made a little more sense if the block size were, say, 8 or 16 bytes. But yeah, I laughed too.

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        JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link

        A large block size would make sense but the 1 byte block size made me laugh the most.

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      JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: awklisp - A Lisp interpreter written in Awk.

      I’ve know about this one for years. It’s quite an interesting implementation since it’s small and pretty simple. A really neat little toy.

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        JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: A case against syntax highlighting

        For me syntax highlighting is a serious need. I’m dyslexic and have some issues with visual processing that causes things to get very jumbled. The highlighting helps me focus on pieces and follow the flow. I can do just fine with plain black and white as I have to on our HP/UX servers, I just go slower and tend to miss things. This also causes me problems reading text, like these comments, but I can usually compensate when the paragraphs do not get too long.

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          JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: Using Goto in Linux Kernel Code

          Personally the discussions on goto are getting rather old. People seem to latch on to tidbits of “wisdom” without understanding it. Without understanding the “wisdom” becomes a burden and causes countless pointless discussions like this. This is just like the Dynamic vs Static arguments that have morphed beyond the original meanings and are now strongly debated “wisdom” that doesn’t make any sense. (Referencing this and similar articles: Bellman Confirms A Suspicion - Where does “dynamic programming” come from?.)

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            kellogh avatar kellogh 4 years ago | link

            Perhaps I’m a bit younger (I started working professionally in 2008); I’ve never heard anyone ever question the “goto considered harmful” paper. I found Linus' comments in this article fascinating. For the first time in my life I’m now considering the possibility that goto could improve clarity (I still probably won’t use it, but it’s opened up my mind).

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              allen avatar allen 4 years ago | link

              I think where and what you’re working on is pertinent, e.g. if you’re writing a fast finite state machine, goto is indispensable. However, I’ll readily confess that practical uses for goto have become fewer and fewer.

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                JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link

                I meant to reply to this a while ago, sorry…

                That’s part of my complaint. It’s been forever since that paper was written and people STILL hold it up as indisputable fact. It’s an opinion, and a damaging one at that. It would be far better if goto was warned against rather than completely admonished. Like this and many other articles/discussions point out you can’t blame the language (except perhaps for Brain Fuck) for a programmer making a mess. Perl is a perfect example. I’ve seen so many people complain how unreadable it is. Perl is a perfectly readable language, if it is written clearly. You can produce read-only code in any language just as you can make spaghetti code without goto.

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                  mordae avatar mordae 4 years ago | link

                  I’ve had a colleague that kept insisting that goto is bad and then produced something along these lines:

                  do {
        tmp = process(input);
        if (!tmp)
                break;

        result = further_process(tmp, 42);
        if (result == -1)
                break;
} while (0);

                  Don’t touch my gotos. :-)

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                    kellogh avatar kellogh 4 years ago | link

                    It sounds like your colleague was against labels, not gotos.

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                JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: Pinchy: A Lobste.rs android app

                This looks interesting and I will definitely give it a try, but why is my comment in the screenshot?

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                  mikemccracken avatar mikemccracken 4 years ago | link | on: What would it take to get your comments on Lobsters articles?

                  Hi, new user here. I have definitely noticed the lack of discussion. Here are some quick thoughts:

                  Encouraging the posters to comment sounds good.

                  Maybe ask for volunteers to always post a comment with some background or perspective anything on a certain topic? Maybe someone wants to be the lobste.rs Haskell person or something, so whenever a Haskell article shows up, they can tell us if it’s new or fringe or is something under debate?

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                    JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link

                    That is quite an interesting idea. I have a friend that works with Haskell professionally. I wonder if I could get her interested in the idea.

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                      Irene avatar Irene 4 years ago | link

                      Speaking as that friend, I’m not against it - but everything Jessica said goes for me as well. It’s a very high bar to get me to speak up in an online technical community, because men are horrible. I’ll give it a try informally though. :)

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                        jcs avatar jcs 4 years ago | link

                        because men are horrible

                        Comments like that are not welcome here.

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                          Irene avatar Irene 4 years ago | link

                          Message received.

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                          mikemccracken avatar mikemccracken 4 years ago | link

                          I’ll give it a try informally though.

                          Please do! Like I said, I’m new here - but I’m hopeful that the public moderation and user tree keep this site more focused and welcoming.

                          And I do think that having someone take a little informal ownership of a topic should help encourage discussion. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll try to contribute too, where I can. (Which won’t be Haskell)

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                            Irene avatar Irene 4 years ago | link

                            Thanks! I appreciate the encouragement. :)

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                      JessicaKMcIntosh avatar JessicaKMcIntosh 4 years ago | link | on: What would it take to get your comments on Lobsters articles?

                      As a woman I am extremely reluctant to comment on anything anywhere online, even in the safe Lesbian related subreddits I subscribe to. They way women tend to be treated online, especially in the tech communities, is not pleasant. For me to comment I need a compelling reason. Thus far I have not read anything that I felt an overwhelming need to provide input on.

                      I know some people with argue with me over this, every time I see this sentiment expressed some jackass perks up and says they over blowing it out of proportion or it’s just boys being boys or any number of excuses and justifications. The fact is women are treated badly in the tech communities and I am reluctant to subject myself to it.