Threads for db | Lobsters

27

flyingfisch 3 years ago | link | on: Nicest 4/1 joke ever!

This is beautiful, could it be archived as something like lobste.rs/bbs or something after April Fools' is over?
1. 18
  
  jcs 3 years ago | link
  
  It lives at https://lobste.rs/bbs for now, and the home page has reverted back to normal
  1. 2
    
    roryokane 3 years ago | link
    
    Is there any way to view the Hacker-News-styled site that was shown for April Fool’s in 2013 (screenshot)?
    
    If not, could we have one? lobste.rs/hn probably wouldn’t be a good URL, because you would need sub-URLs for every other page on the site. How about an hn query parameter, so you can see the HN prank version with ?hn=true ?
    1. 4
      
      jcs 3 years ago | link
      
      It was mostly just a custom stylesheet but there have been changes to the HTML since then so the stylesheet would probably need updating, which is more work than I care to do to preserve that ugly thing.
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    flyingfisch 3 years ago | link
    
    Thanks so much, and is there a way to participate in discussions through that interface?
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      jcs 3 years ago | link
      
      There was not, I ran out of time.
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        skade 3 years ago | link
        
        Is the source on github online somewhere? I can’t find it in the official repos.
        
        3
        
        jcs 3 years ago | link
        
        It is not. I’m not sure whether I want to publish it or not since it was largely a creative effort rather than technical and I will probably just publish a writeup on my site about the technical details.
      2. 1
        
        flyingfisch 3 years ago | link
        
        Ah ok. Any plans to add that functionality? It’s the only reason I am using this beta site.
2. 2
  
  db 3 years ago | link
  
  Agreed! Fantastic job. I would love to come back and mess around with this in the future.
3. 2
  
  Irene 3 years ago | link
  
  Agreed. This is really fun and cool. … no way for a guest to get read-only access, but I guess that’s historically accurate.
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    gecko 3 years ago | link
    
    You actually can get access by logging in as guest with no password, which is also historically accurate. :)

2

db 4 years ago | link | on: What are you working on this week?

I’m looking at making my Go micro-framework a little better: https://github.com/dougblack/sleepy

I’m also thinking about how to add identifier-based semantic coloring to Vim: https://medium.com/p/3a6db2743a1e/

3
db edited 4 years ago | link | on: Hy: Python as a Lisp
One thing that stands out as a little awkward is the syntax for defining a dict.
```
=> {"dog" "bark"
... "cat" "meow"}
...
{'dog': 'bark', 'cat': 'meow'}
```
I would think the pairing should be more explicit:
```
=> {("dog" "bark")
... ("cat" "meow")}
...
{'dog': 'bark', 'cat': 'meow'}
```
This would actually fall in line with the pythonic way of converting a list to a dict:
```
>>> b = [('dog', 'bark'), ('cat', 'meow')]
>>> dict(a)
{'dog': 'bark', 'cat': 'meow'}
```
Regardless, the quickstart is actually a pretty nice little introduction to lisp for python programmers.
1. 1
  puffnfresh 4 years ago | link
  The syntax is very similar to Clojure:
  
  http://clojure.org/reader (see the maps point)
  
  What I found surprising is that they’re actually implemented as association lists (not Python dicts). To get keys you have to do something like this:
  
  (defn dict-keys [d] (slice d 0 None 2))
  
  I couldn’t see that in the stdlib so I’ll probably submit a pull request and find out :)
  1. 2
    puffnfresh 4 years ago | link
    
    Nevermind, they eventually get compiled down to Python dicts:
    
    => (.values {1 2 3 4}) [2L, 4L] => (.keys {1 2 3 4}) [1L, 3L]
    
    I was confused before because I had a raw HyDict via a macro :(

2

db edited 4 years ago | link | on: The potential for a Python 2.8

If I was going to upgrade my python 2.7 project, why wouldn’t I just take the time to move all the way to python 3.4?

Adding intermediate versions seems like it would slow adoption of python 3+, not speed it up.

3

MasonJar 4 years ago | link | on: A Good Vimrc

One of the more approachable things I’ve read on how to configure Vim as a beginner.

One thing that I keep wondering about and can’t find an answer to: What does g do in Vim? It seems to be a part of a bunch of vaguely-related commands. Is there some general theme for what it does, or are there just a bunch of commands that you have to remember are g-something?
1. 4
  
  jcs 4 years ago | link
  
  Open vim and type :help g and you’ll get a detailed description of the commands.
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    MasonJar 4 years ago | link
    
    Yeah, the trouble is that it’s kind of a pain to navigate the help until you get a good understanding of Vim. Luckily, I have a copy of the helpfile as a PDF.
    
    For what I wanted to know, it looks like there isn’t much of a theme behind the g commands, or the other prefix characters. No wonder people get so fired up about Vim vs Emacs - seems you need a lot of time invested in either one to use even a fraction of their features, and it’s all useless on the other one.
    1. 3
      
      db 4 years ago | link
      
      Agreed regarding the time investment needed to get up to speed on Vim, but g is most definitely a special case.
      
      g is a “kitchen sink” of sorts where a bunch of unrelated commands have been stuck because on a QWERTY keyboard it’s a very easy-to-reach key.
      
      That said, the two most common uses of g can be thought of as goto and global.
      
      For goto, things like g10 take you to the 10th line.
      
      For global, this is taken from vim help:
      
      :[range]g[lobal]/{pattern}/[cmd] Execute the Ex command [cmd] (default ":p") on the lines within [range] where {pattern} matches.
      
      So it’s a way to apply a command to multiple lines.