Ooooh, that makes more sense… Not sure if that doesn’t show up on mobile or if maybe I thought it was links to comments?

Well, that’s a strawman if I’ve ever seen one.

As someone writing an article, I guess it’s difficult to know where to stop the details or not as well. Like, that’s probably a difficult line to draw? Either way, though, I think there’s probably an easy way to tell that I just don’t 100% know how to explain objectively.

This is a very important point and I’m glad that you wrote it out.

Would you say that the Scala ecosystem has a continuity problem because businesses and academia are focused primarily on the now and not necessarily building the road ahead for the community and then maintaining those roads once built?

Thanks for asking. I based my decision mostly on architectural analysis with a healthy dose of personal experience. We’re building a new product with cloud and on-premises components. Originally, I’d intended to build everything from scratch but my team identified some OSS that did 100% of we needed with some extra complexity in managing it. The trade-off was a much faster time to delivery in exchange for playing in someone else’s sandbox and by their rules. That aspect was worth it but I lament not being able to write it all in Scala!

However, our cloud services are written mostly in Scala. We have a few stateless microservices for which Scala was a great fit: high-performance OOTB for what within six months will be ~500 req/s and within two will likely exceed 4,000 req/s for one component with another being far more I/O bound. We’re integrating heavily with ecosystems that have Java libraries and we’ve found decent Scala wrappers that give us idiomaticity without building and maintaining them ourselves. We could have used just about any stack for these couple of services but Scala’s enabled us to express ourselves in types and exploit the advantages of functional programming. I’m chasing the holy grail of “it’s valid because it compiles” but we’ve got enough unit tests to complement our design that I’m pretty sure we’re on the right track.

One notable failure was on service that is primarily a user-interactive web app. We had two false starts with Scalatra, which we’re using for the other services, and Play! before switching to Ruby on Rails (temporarily) out of frustration with documentation, lack of examples, lack of drop-ins like what are commonly available in the Rails ecosystem, from whence I came many moons ago. We chose Rails because of the component owner’s experience with it as well as my experience with it and JRuby, knowing that if we started to implement any shareable logic, we could do so in a way that all of our apps could consume. We learned about Lift too late and http4s and some others didn’t give us the right impression for a web app. I just learned about Udash last week and it may be a candidate for replacement. However, it’ll be several months: even uttering R-E-W-R-I-T-E would be kiboshed from on high at the moment as the component does what we need right now.

Moving forward, we’ll be looking at moving some of these services to http4s, etc. once more of my team is comfortable with more hardcore Scala FP. Writing AWS Lambda functions in Rust is also on my radar, as a part of our on-prem product is written in Rust.

At least from my perspective it seems that:

• Typelevel is more busy in dealing with US politics than writing software,
• Monix is largely a one-man show,
• Scalaz is one of the main departure points for many people that move to Haskell,
• Sbt is so great that everyone is trying to replace it, and
• Ensime …? You just literally read the article by the Ensime creator.

I do think there are relatively few well maintained libraries outside of that core

The Scala community does have a solid core and near-core extension community. I consider libraries like Monix, Cats, and Scalaz to be nearly a part of the standard library because of how often they are used. sbt and ensime are important but they’re not exceptional: every stack needs a build tool and editor integration. These are solid now, and I appreciate the work that goes into them. Frankly, it wasn’t until sbt hit 1.0.0 that I considered it ready for widespread use because of its obtuseness/unergonomic interface prior to then. I’m eager to see what Li Haoyi’s mill will become.

Things I’ve noted in the past that I’ve found in a less-than-desirable state compared to other stacks:

• Internationalization - fragmented ecosystem, sbt plugins outdated
• Authentication & Authorization - no nearly drop-in solution like Devise in the RoR ecosystem
• Project websites being down for weeks because someone forgot to re-up the TLS cert, even in a LetsEncrypt automation world
• Out of date documentation to the point of being dangerous practices with little more than a “someone submit a PR to fix that”. I get that maintainers get busy but when safety is the topic, is it acceptable to wait for a drive-by contributor to get it right and contribute the correction? What if they do that and then no maintainer merges it for years?

The Scala Center has the promise of addressing much of it but I speculate that it’s insufficiently funded to be the ecosystem plumbers and teachers it aspires to be. I’ve been impressed with its work so far, though.

This Week in Rust collects the latest news, upcoming events and a week-by-week account of changes in the Rust language and libraries.

The Rust Blog is where the Rust team makes announcements about major developments.

And nearly everything happening in Rust is discussed on the unofficial subreddit, /r/rust.

Probably following the network working group newsletter; one should be out this week with a summary of where we’re at with everything, and what is left to be done. I’ll make sure it gets posted to lobste.rs.

Here’s an update on this: https://lobste.rs/s/anlitu/futures_0_3_0_alpha_1

I think you’re asking about Tokio; the standard library doesn’t provide an executor. The executor is implicit. You still call tokio::run, but that’s it. See here: https://tokio.rs/blog/2018-03-tokio-runtime/

poll is still the core of how Futures works. https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/future/trait.Future.html

To the unserious comment, I don’t think I was being a jerk. I called him a jerk, which I guess you could argue is a jerk move under any circumstances, but if I’m being a jerk then so is Gary.

To the serious comment, I just want to note that “brain damaged” is a meme among old school hackers which isn’t as strong of a word as you think.

To the aside, I don’t use hipster as an insult or to imply wrongness, but I do use it to invalidate his point. Gary is a Ruby developer. Linus is a kernel developer. The worlds are far removed from each other.

(I am not defending Linus’ behaviour here, please don’t put those words in my mouth.)

I strongly take issue with American ideas of “professionalism”, and an even more so with the idea that we get to decide whether this project is “a professional setting” or not. What exactly makes this a “professional setting”? What is a “professional setting”? Why do we hold some interactions to higher standards than others?

I suspect “money changing hands” is the thing that makes this “a professional setting”, and that grinds my gears even further. Why are we supposed to hold ourselves to different standards just because some people are getting paid for doing it?

The Linux kernel is not a professional setting. Besides, I argue that the 1% is useful, even in a professional setting - sometimes strong words are called for. I’ll be That Guy and say that people should grow a thicker skin, especially people who weren’t even the subject of the email and have never been involved in kernel development.

But in which situations would it be boxed?

Will == be boxed? If yes, how would you recover IEEE equality for floating points, and if it wasn’t boxed, then all generic code would subtly change behavior when people start specializing their generics.

I think this is a false comparison of some sort. Americans worrying doesn’t say anything useful about Finns.

In my experience of dealing with Finns, they don’t sugar coat things. When something is needed to be said, the Finns I’ve interacted with are extremely direct and to the point, compared to some other cultures. Would you say that’s fair?

I emphatically disagree that Linus is representative of the social culture around me in Finland.

I didn’t say that he’s representative of Finnish culture. He’s a product of it. He wasn’t raised American. He didn’t grow up immersed in American culture and values. It would be unrealistic to expect him to hold or conform to American values.

Nonviolent, clear communication is not the same thing as avoiding difficult subjects. It’s the opposite!

Definitely! Out of interest, what are your thoughts on this in terms of applicability to his communication style? I’m fairly certain there’s a general asshole element to his style, but I wonder how much (if any) is influenced by this.

You’re comparing Linux, a Finnish-invented, international, volunteer-based non-corporate project to a US-based corporate environment, and judging Linus’ communications against your perception of a US-based corporate environment. You’re doing the same thing as the author, projecting your own values onto something that doesn’t share those values.

Additionally, by putting the words I’ve said, and following that up with a reference to a US-based corporate environment, you’ve judged the words of a non-American who wasn’t speaking to you by your own US-based corporate standards.

I hope that helps you understand my point more clearly. My point isn’t that Linus does or doesn’t act an asshole (he does), but that expecting non-Americans to adhere to American values, standards or norms is unrealistic at best, and cultural colonialism at worst.

Hacking has always been a political act.

This is a really interesting idea! I’m seeing this kind of idea more and more these days and I haven’t been able to work out what it means. I guess you don’t mean something as specific as “Hacking has always been in favour of a particular political ideology” nor something as general as “Hacking has always had an effect on reality”. So could you say something more precise about what you mean by that?

I think the author did a pretty good job of editing the message in such a way that it was more clear, more direct, and equally forceful, while ensuring that all of that force was directed in a way relevant to the topic at hand.

(Linus has strong & interesting ideas about standardization & particular features. I would love to read an essay about them. The response to a tangentially-related PR is not a convenient place to put those positions: they distract from the topic of the PR, and also make it difficult to find those positions for people who are more interested in them than in the topic of the PR.)

The resulting message contains all of the on-topic information, without extraneous crap. It uses strong language and emphasis, but limits it to Linus’s complaints about the actually-submitted code – in other words, the material that should be emphasized. It removes repetition.

There is nothing subtle about the resulting message. Unlike the original message, it’s very hard to misread as an unrelated tangent about standardization practices that doesn’t address the reasons for rejecting the PR at all.

The core policy being implemented here is not “be nice in order to avoid hurting feelings”, but “remove irrelevant rants in order to focus anger effectively”. This is something I can get behind.

Just wanted to point out that America is a huge country and its population is not homogenous.

Down here in the South, they have an interesting mix of trying to look/sound more civil or being blunt in a way that lets someone know they don’t like them or think they’re stupid. Varies by group, town, and context. There’s plenty of trash talking depending on that. Linus’s style would fit in pretty well with some of them.

The dangers of exposing APIs like web USB are compounded with performant and inscrutable blobs run in the browser. Thus, WASM exacerbates these issues.

Thanks for the link. I was wanting to learn more about it. The intro is really good, too. Many desirable properties. I bet it was hard to design trying to balance all of that. Usually, that also means a formal specification might uncover some interesting issues.

Exactly.

Bookmarking that idea in case I ever get a chance to talk to their managemeng about this stuff. :)

Indeed, it’s not the fault of the economic system (if you think Capitalistic societies are wasteful, take a look at the waste and inefficiency of industry under the USSR). If externalities are correctly accounted for, or to be safe, even over-accounted for by means of taxation or otherwise, the market will work itself out. If the environmental cost means the new iPhone costs $2000 in real costs, Apple will work to reduce environmental cost in order to make an affordable phone again and everyone wins. And if they don’t, another company will figure it out instead and Apple will lose.

Currently, there is basically no accounting for these externalities, and in some cases (although afaik not related to smart phones), there are subsidies and price-ceiling regulations and subsidies that actually decreases the cost of some externalities artificially and are worse for the environment than no government intervention at all.

The easy example of this is California State water subsidies for farmers. Artificially cheap water for farmers means they grow water-guzzling crops that are not otherwise efficient to grow in arid parts of the state, and cause environmental damage and water shortage to normal consumers. Can you imagine your local government asking you to take shorter showers and not wash your car, when farmers are paying 94% less than you to grow crops that could much more efficiently be grown in other parts of the country? That’s what happens in California.

Step 1 and 2 are to get rid of the current subsidies and regulations that aggravate externalities and impose new regulation/taxes that help account for externalities.

I have talked to a factory owner in china. He said China is more capitalist than the USA. He said China prioritizes capital over social concerns.

You’re blaming the consumer? I’d really recommend watching Century of the Self. Advertising has a massive impact and the mass of humans are being fed this desire for all the things we consume.

I mean, this really delves into the deeper question of self-awareness, agency and free will, but I really don’t think most human beings are even remotely aware.

Engineers, people on Lobster, et. al do really want standard devices. Fuck ARM. Give me a god damn mobile platform. Microsoft for the love of god, just publish your unlock key for your dead phone line so we can have at least one line of devices with UEFI+ARM. Device tree can go die in a fire.

The Linux-style revolution of the 2000s (among developers) isn’t happening on mobile because every device is just too damn different. The average consumer could care less. Most people like to buy new things, and we’re been indoctrinated to that point. Retailers and manufactures have focus groups geared right at delivering the dopamine rush.

I personally hate buying things. When my mobile stopped charging yesterday and the back broke again, I thought about changing it out. I’ve replaced the back twice already and the camera has spots on the sensor under the lenses.

I was able to get it charging when I got home on a high amp USB port, so instead I just ordered yet another back and a new camera (I thought it’d be a bitch to get out, but a few YouTube videos show I was looking at the ribbon wrong and it’s actually pretty easy to replace).

I feel bad when I buy things, but it took a lot of work to get to that point. I’ve sold or given away most of my things multiple times to go backpacking, I run ad block .. I mean if everyone did what I’d did, my life wouldn’t be sustainable. :-P

We are in a really solidly locked paradigm and I don’t think it can simply shift. If you believe the authors of The Dictators Handbook, we literally have to run our of resources before the general public and really push for dramatically different changes.

We really need more commitment to open standards mobile devices. The Ubuntu Edge could have been a game changer, or even the Fairphone. The Edge never got funded and the Fairphone can’t even keep parts sourced for their older models.

We need a combination of people’s attitudes + engineers working on OSS alternatives, and I don’t see either happening any time soon.

Edit: I forgot to mention, Postmarket OS is making huge strides into making older cellphones useful and I hope we see more of that too.

Capitalism, by it’s very nature, drives companies to not be satisfied with what already sells. Companies are constantly looking to create new markets and products, and that includes creating demand.

IOW, consumers aren’t fixed actors who buy what they need; they are acted upon to create an ever increasing number of needs.

There are too many examples of this dynamic to bother listing.

It’s also very difficult for the consumer to tell exactly how destructive a particular product is. The only price we pay is the sticker price. Unless you really want to put a lot of time into research it is hard to tell which product is better for the environment.

It’s ridiculous to expect everyone to be an expert on every supply chain in the world, starting right from the mines and energy production all the way to the store shelf. That’s effectively what you are requiring.

I’m saying this as a very conscious consumer. I care about my carbon footprint, I don’t buy palm oil, I limit plastic consumption, I limit my consumption overall, but it’s all a drop in the ocean and changes nothing. There are still hundreds of compounds in the everyday items I buy whose provenance I know nothing about and which could be even more destructive. Not to mention that manufacturers really don’t want you to know, it’s simply not in their interest.

You’re creating an impossible task and setting people up to fail. It is not the answer.

The blame rests on the producers, not on the consumers.

Consumers are only able to select off of the menu of available products, so to speak. Most of the choices everyday consumers face are dictated by their employers and whatever is currently available to make it through their day.

No person can reasonably trace the entire supply chain for every item they purchase, and could likely be impossible even with generous time windows. Nor would I want every single consumer to spend their non-working time to tracing these chains.

Additionally, shifting this blame to the consumer creates conditions where producers can charge a premium on ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ products. Only consumers with the means to consume ‘ethically’ are able to do so, and thus shame people with less money for being the problem.

The blame falls squarely on the entities producing these products and the states tasked with regulating production. There will be no market-based solution to get us out of the climate catastrophe, and we certainly can’t vote for a green future with our dollars.

Exactly. The consumers could be doing more on issues like this. They’re complicit or actively contribute to the problems.

For example, I use old devices for as long as I can on purpose to reduce waste. I try to also buy things that last as long as possible. That’s a bit harder in some markets than others. For appliances, I just buy things that are 20 years old. They do the job and usually last 10 more years since planned obsolescence had fewer tricks at the time. ;) My smartphone is finally getting unreliable on essential functions, though. Bout to replace it. I’ll donate, reuse, or recycle it when I get new one.

On PC side, I’m using a backup whose age I can’t recall with a Celeron after my Ubuntu Dell w/ Core Duo 2 died. It was eight years old. Attempting to revive it soon in case it’s just HD or something simple. It’s acting weird, though, so might just become a box for VM experiments, fuzzing, opening highly-untrustworthy URLs or files, etc. :)

Which alternatives would make people happier to consume less – drive older cars, wear rattier clothing, and demand fewer exotic vacations?

Why do people want new cars, the latest fashions, and exotic vacations in the first place? If it’s all about status and bragging rights, then it’s going to take a massive cultural shift that goes against at least two generation’s worth of cultural programming by advertisers on the behalf of the auto, fashion and travel industries.

I don’t think consumerism kicked into high gear until after the end of World War II when modern advertising and television became ubiquitous, so perhaps the answer is to paraphrase Shakespeare:

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the advertisers.

OK, maybe killing them (or encouraging them to off themselves in the tradition of Bill Hicks) is overkill. Regardless, we should consider the possibility that advertising is nothing but private sector psyops on behalf of corporations, and should not be protected as “free speech”.

IMO, Hedonistic adaptation is a problem and getting worse. I try to actively fight against it.

It would be a start if we designed cities with walking and public transportation in mind, not cars.

My neighborhood is old and walkable. I do shopping on foot (I have a bicycle but don’t bother with it). For school/work, take a single bus and a few minutes walking. Getting a car would be a hassle, I don’t have a place to park it, and I’d have to pay large annual fees for rare use.

Newer neighborhoods appear to be planned with the idea that you’ll need a car for every single task. “Residential part” with no shops at all, but lots of room for parking. A large grocery store with a parking lot. Even train stations with a large parking lot, but no safe path for pedestrians/cyclists from the nearby neighborhoods.

There has been no evidence to my knowledge that anyone is slowing old phones down. This continues to be an unfounded rumor

The new features on phones are so fucking stupid as well.

I think the consumer who pays for it is stupid.

Ideology matters, and America has been aggressively promoting toxic capitalist ideology for many decades around the world. Humans aren’t perfect, but we can recognize our problems and create systems around us to help mitigate them. Capitalism is equivalent of giving a flamethrower to a pyromaniac.

I think it’s funny because the reader’s experience parallels the author’s experience of wanting to get someplace.

Sorry folks :(. But std::optional works as one expects - you can write functions to accept std::optional and you just check early on if it evaluates to true and just return empty as needed, so you can chain functions neatly.

Now, if only we could have pattern matching …

Agreed. I read all the way down and nothing significant about std::optional.

I thought it was going to be some sort of piece about how using std::optional could lead to yak shaving or something :(

I have no idea. I just glanced at it a few times in the past. I remember reading PDF’s detailing their experiments on things like syntax. The concept was that any claim was tested empirically. If experiments showed it was better, then the feature or change went into the language. The place to start on it is here.

My edited comment was poorly worded. My comment added nothing new after I reread. The syntax supports what I suggested, and case statements work with the partial LHS conditional. Basically, I support it. :)

Your “simply” is my “incomprehensibly”.

Computer languages need to strike a balance between human-language intuition and machine-parser explicitness. Simply slamming the slider all the way to the right isn’t a solution, so much as an admission of defeat, IMO.

Either indentation-based, or requiring some delimiter.

I’m largely in the indentation-based camp these days, so I haven’t spent much time thinking about how to make the delimitation to look nice. I’d probably just go with mandatory curly braces around the branches.