Quoting the creator on Hacker News:

What you’re seeing there is actually validation :), the lat/lng type is not magically inferred but instead explicitly requested by the code - if it were not valid it would generate a user-friendly, localized error message. Also the underlying document hierarchy that holds the data is validated. So on the contrary it is actually hard not to validate content in eno.

I think this actually strikes a nice balance between “smart” and “dumb”. I agree wholeheartedly about the e-mail address regex, though.

I would love to see a YAML that forbids the odd parts of YAML and makes it an easier language to use.

Have you seen StrictYAML? It might be overly cautious in what it cuts out, but it is a very nice reduction of YAML.

EDIT: Foolish me, posting this before reading the article which shouts out StrictYAML at the end.

Erlang’s punctuation style is more like English than most C-likes out there. Let’s take this statement:

I will need a few items on my trip: if it’s sunny, sunscreen, water, and a hat; if it’s rainy, an umbrella, and a raincoat; if it’s windy, a kite, and a shirt.

In a C-style language (here, go) it might look something like

switch weather.Now() {
case weather.Sunny:
    sunscreen()
    water()
    hat()
case weather.Rainy:
    umbrella()
    raincoat()
case weather.Windy:
    kite()
    shirt()
}

In Erlang it could just be:

case weather() of
     sunny -> sunscreen(), water(), hat();
     rainy -> umbrella(), raincoat();
     windy -> kite(), shirt()
end.

You even get to keep the , for enumeration/sequences, ; for alternative clauses, and . for full stops!

Mathematicians use a seamless hybrid of prose and formula:

For every v ∈ V, there exists w ∈ V such that v + w = 0.

Similarly in code, some parts are more like formulae, some are more like prose, and some are more like tables or figures… and it’s interesting to consider separate syntaxes for these different types of definitions.

Have a look at the Inform 7 manual’s section on equations, for an example. Here is a (formal, compiling, working) definition of what should happen when the player types push cannonball (I’ve used bullet lists in Markdown to get indentation without monospace):

• Equation - Newton’s Second Law

  • F=ma

• where F is a force, m is a mass, a is an acceleration.

• Equation - Principle of Conservation of Energy

  • mgh = mv^2/2

• where m is a mass, h is a length, v is a velocity, and g is the acceleration due to gravity.

• Equation - Galilean Equation for a Falling Body

  • v = gt

• where g is the acceleration due to gravity, v is a velocity, and t is an elapsed time.

• Instead of pushing the cannon ball:

  • let the falling body be the cannon ball;
  • let m be the mass of the falling body;
  • let h be 1.2m;
  • let F be given by Newton’s Second Law where a is the acceleration due to gravity;
  • let v be given by the Principle of Conservation of Energy;
  • let t be given by the Galilean Equation for a Falling Body;
  • say “You push [the falling body] off the bench, at a height of [h], and, subject to a downward force of [F], it falls. [t to the nearest 0.01s] later, this mass of [m] hits the floor at [v].”;
  • now the falling body is in the location.

(Yes, the Inform 7 compiler will solve equations for you. Why aren’t normal programming languages capable of this kind of high school math? Are we living in some kind of weird bubble?)

Also, English isn’t everyone’s strongest language. As natural languages go, it’s pretty complex and inconsistent. If you want your code to be understood by people who are more familiar and comfortable with other natural languages, then your own familiarity with English isn’t necessarily such an advantage in writing code.

And C isn’t either.

I haven’t had the time to dig into the codegen, but I posted it to /r/rust; we’ll see what they say :)

EDIT:

Looks to me like the use of signed integers is inhibiting some optimizations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7m99wo/outperforming_rust_with_functional_programming/drsbori/

Author here,

thanks i feel the same :)

Most discussions in my everyday life about code/algorithms/datastructures tend to favor Big-O arguments over actual running cost in real world scenarios. Which can lead to tricky and embarrassing situations.

If you only want to handle real nil you can use &. – no ActiveSupport needed!

How introducing Payment#client_address reduces coupling?

He used the phrase “structural coupling”, which doesn’t immediately mean anything to me, but I can hazard a guess.

A function that operate on thing.client_address is more broadly usable than a function that operates on payment.client.address, since you may also have a function that operates on contract.client.headquarters.address or similar. This is a general problem that one encounters when you have outbound foreign keys, and becomes more pronounced when refactoring introduces additional indirections. In Clojure, which has namespaced keys, I’ve found it extremely useful to flatten structures when processing events or other somewhat implicitly defined heterogenous collections of entities.

Consider:

{:artist/name "Artist"
 :track/name "Track"
 :album/name "Album"}

Is that an Artist object? A Track object? Or an Album object? You can use functions that operate on any of the three!

Compare to:

{:track {:name "Track"
         :album {:name "Album"
                 :artist {:name "Artist"}}}}

That’s obviously a Track object. If I have a function for formatting a track/artist name pair, I could have used it directly with the flattened structure. However, here, I have to traverse the Album edge. If I later extend my data-model to support multiple artists per album (adding an :artist key to a Track object), I’d have to change my code.

The “Law of Demeter” is also heavily pushed by Bob Martin and his vision of TDD-based Java development. I want to say I’m a fan, but like so many things it’s all about the right tool or methodology for the right job, and the LoD isn’t always the best for speed or clarity.

And this is why lacking package namespacing is such a bad idea: https://crates.io/crates/http

If you take a look, seanmonstar - one of the authors of http - is a co-owner and the http crate will be published there.

Not using namespacing is entirely intentional. The other option would be to have a fragmentation of multiple packages called http, all with different prefixes. Especially the http crate is meant to be a center-piece of the ecosystem and wouldn’t live any better in a namespace then somewhere else.

We’ve been there: Github had a namespaced gem host for a longer time and it lead to fragmentation within the ecosystem very quickly (“which fork of $x are we currently using”?). There are many large ecosystems without namespacing out there (gems, npm) and it is rarely a problem.

But that discussion has been had - multiple times - and the only thing we could do is rehashing.

(Told you so, I guess.)

Let me be as blunt as you are: Your guess is wrong. And smug.

The most common use case is searching for a particular value using the for loop. If found, a break is then executed and the else block is skipped. If no value is found, the else block is executed. This makes “else” make a little more sense as the keyword.

Think of for/else like an if statement where the condition is evaluated multiple times. It’s basically just a more expressive version of:

if any(c for c in conditions):
    # at least one condition is True
else:
    # no condition is True

In your mind, just replace for with if and it makes a sort of sense.

I can’t seem to find a link, but I vaguely remember Guido remarking that he wishes he’d named it “nobreak”, which makes a lot more sense for me.

Python is unfortunately heavy with syntax. Expressing for/else in a language like Haskell, Ocaml, and I assume Rust, is something more likely (and easily) done in a library.

I only learned that downvotes require a category today as well. And I was pleasantly surprised both because I realized that I haven’t needed to downvote a comment here before, and because I really like that lobste.rs requires a reason for a downvote. I feel like your comment had value beyond just a me-too, so you’re fine :)

Interestingly, gave me an opportunity to upvote that comment. Don’t know why someone’s personal feelings, which is what they are describing there should be less valid because of the color of their skin. I thought that was what we were all striving for.

People reading that comment who missed the thread might not know it was very context-sensitive. Remember that the context (OP) is specific people pushing a specific set of political views on everyone asking that all disagreement be censored. They say they benefit minorities but wont allow them to have a say if they have different beliefs. Coraline et al are uncompromising in that the options are (a) agree with them pushing same things or (b) shut up and leave every public space they take over.

With that backdrop, I read the various Github articles and the OP. She constantly talked about extreme negative reactions she got as if it’s incidental to being a minority. She was a minority, did some work, and piles of hate emerged. She never mentions when doing so that she aggresively evangelizes, insults, and coerces FOSS projects usually with a pile of likeminded people behind her. I kept bringing that behavior up since I think her showing up at people’s doorsteps insulting them and telling them to do her bidding in their projects might be why people dont like her. That pisses all types of people off here in the Mid-South, including minorities. Consistently. I imagine some in other areas, too.

Anyway, in the thread you linked, my main comment on that article was judged by site as follows:

+73 yes -4 incorrect -1 off-topic -8 troll

It means the main post got overwhelming support esp considering how few upvotes I normally get. The others were peripheral supporting it as part of a larger debate. Anyone trying to judge the linked one should probably look at OP and first comment to get context:

https://lobste.rs/s/js3pbv/antisocial_coding_my_year_at_github#c_h8znxo

Im just a political moderate calling out hypocrisy/deceit of an article’s source (i.e. source integrity) and protecting right to dissent as usual. I do it on all topics. Even my favorites on occasion. On political ones, people tend to have strong emotional reactions that clouds judgment or just evokes strong reactions. Im not saying whose right or wrong so much as disagreement they take personally, get disgusted/angry, and will hit any button to make that person or post disappear.

I think I warned of that in either linked thread or Community Standards discussion. Both then and now, people started calling out others that should disappear with often opposite views of what should be allowed. There was no consensus except against comments that are blatantly harmful where there is a consensus by most peeple that it’s abusive. The same thing I see play out in person every day. So, I oppose comment deletions or bans in political situations without consensus so long as people keep it civil and about specific claims with supporting evidence. And if one side can speak, the other parties better be able to as well.

And a minimum of politics on Lobsters period! Keep it focused on tech and such. Somone had to post something by a decietful activist on politics pushing a mix of truth and propaganda. And that hit my mental button of calling them out staying as civil and factual as I could despite knowing with every word I might be censored for it. Might. The upvotes from my first comment were reason I kept taking the risk of more argument given there was a surge of dissent that needed to be represented. Not just me. I always help the underdogs. :)

Note: That was long as we were just talking about but I wanted context and intent clear given it’s about whether to filter or ban me. I also hold no grudges against anyone who did. It’s their deeply-held, personal beliefs about what’s right and wrong. People will do what you believe is necessary there.

Note 2: Lunch break is over. Darn. I was hoping for tech over politics. Ill do what’s necessary, though, since I value and respect this community. Gotta defend dissent as it’s critical.

alynpost’s suggestion meets my needs and I withdraw my support for a new category.

[Comment removed by author]

If you needed another reason to never buy a ‘smart’ device, I guess this is a big one.

This is really bad advice. ‘Dumb’ phones communicate exclusively over PSTN or SMS, which are easily traceable/subpoena-able/intercepted by any middleman. In addition the phone company has your metadata, which Verizon (at the very least) has been more than happy to send wholesale to the NSA.

The only thing this dump revealed about encryption apps is if you hack the mobile phone that’s running Signal or Whatsapp, you can read all of the messages that are on it, and the CIA has several techniques for compromising phones that have previously been reported on. Signal and Whatsapp still offer excellent end-to-end encryption, especially compared with a dumb phone.

I mean yes. If the CIA wants to target you specifically I’d bet on them over your security practices. But it’s no excuse for the rest of us to just abandon secure communication and encryption

(\/) (°,,°) (\/) WOOPwoopwowopwoopwoopwoop!

I particularly like the annotations on this one.

Hacking tools are all over the web. 0days get patched quickly after suck leaks. I believe the biggest consequence of those leaks is attribution. If your organisation has been attacked, you can now possibly link the tool used to the CIA. Things can get quite nasty, especially since they used tools like: “With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the "fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.“.

I downloaded the 7z file and noticed a lot of out of place pages and files including some reaction-style gifs. very weird.

What cell phones do people in the CIA use?

That’s the problem. You really need some discipline, rebasing, and rules to make it work in a team or large project. Another thing that can help is a template or tool that sets the boilerplate up for you.

it’s hard to say that urbit devs couldn’t be trying to fuck with people, just a bit.

If I remember correctly, Yarvin regrets this decision. He wanted to get outside of a given dev’s comfort zone to make them pay attention, but this one was a little too much.

It wasn’t for mysterious reasons. Way back when, the first versions of Nock and Hoon had chosen this specifically because it was different and they wanted to buck norms.

I don’t really think git’s conflict resolution will work that much better on the todo.txt format in particular, though it’s certainly a step up in safety.

Tangential to your point, butI believe dropbox actually uses a standard vcs under the hood. Last time I checked it was Mercurial, though that’s just scuttlebutt I’ve read around the web.

Agreed. It seems silly that Google would try to paint AMP as anything other than ‘we are exercising our ability to control what users see’. Its exactly that, another ‘walled garden’ or ‘golden handcuffs’. It goes against exactly what the web is made for.

Invite only best

What about users like me who definitely aren’t the best in whatever field they work/care about? This is the classic tension of forums, I understand, so I have no ideas for how to solve it, but I feel it necessary to speak up when it could have affected me.