jadero

joined 2 years ago
[–] jadero@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

Me too.

I found that my 2600 t-shirt keeps them at bay. First, they ask what 2600 is, then they make sure that nobody allows me near their computers.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

I didn't suggest otherwise. I was merely pointing at a couple of examples where some pretty smart, pretty experienced people used Go to successfully implement entire collections of algorithms in some very performance-sensitive systems. It's just by coincidence that I chose those examples because that is where my study is right now. Ask me in a year and I might point to your project as an example when the next person is asking for similar advice.

If Go isn't going to be fast enough to perform your task, then you're probably going to be sorely disappointed when you finally get the performance you're after and then have to stick it at the end of a wire with all kinds of stuff between you and your end users:

Operating systems, databases, hardware, virtual machines, containers, webservers, firewalls, routers, HTML/CSS/whatever, DNS, certificate authorities, more routers and firewalls, ISPs, modems, more routers and firewalls, WiFi connected machines of all kinds, and random browsers implementing any of several different rendering engines.

Quite frankly I can't imagine a language that won't offer enough performance to meet your needs in that environment.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

The CSS also came, with the idea that HTML should focus on text information while CSS should do so on the visual design.

My biggest beef with CSS is that it's on the wrong end of the wire. What ever happened to the idea that the client is in charge of rendering?

Or maybe it's that the clients have abdicated their responsibility: the browser included with OS/2 Warp had a settings page that let me set the display characteristics of every tag in the spec. Thus, every site looked approximately the same: my font, my sizes, my indents, my spacing, whether images displayed (or even downloaded, I think) and whether text split at an image or wrapped around it. And it's not like I had to customize everything for each site: if you used a tag my browser recognized, my browser took over.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I was referring more to the people around me who are outside tech. Based on interactions with friends and family, I'd guess that a little over 50% know what a bookmark is, around 25% actually use bookmarks, fewer than 5% know what RSS is in very general terms and I know only one other person who actually has any RSS subscriptions.

I know people who work in IT who have never heard of RSS!

Just thinking about how far we have to go and how badly trained people are sometimes makes me want to cry. And I'm just a hobbyist; what must I be missing out on?

[–] jadero@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Bluesky Social, or at least their PDS (personal data server) uses Go and their Docker package includes Caddy, a webserver written in Go.

I don't know what you're doing, but I have difficulty accepting that Go cannot meet your performance requirements.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  1. I'm a programmer, so I must know how to get X done in Y software.

  2. I don't use or so I'm some kind of Luddite and can't possibly know anything useful about computers.

One thing that fascinates me about #1 is that the absolute raw dependency people have on Google doesn't seem to ever lead to searching for a tutorial.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That IT subject matter like cybersecurity and admin work is exactly the same as coding,

I think this is the root cause of the absolute mess that is produced when the wrong people are in charge. I call it the "nerd equivalency" problem, the idea that you can just hire what are effectively random people with "IT" or "computer" in their background and get good results.

From car software to government websites to IoT, there are too many people with often very good ideas, but with only money and authority, not the awareness that it takes a collection of specialists working in collaboration to actually do things right. They are further hampered by their own background in that "doing it right" is measurable only by some combination of quarterly financial results and the money flowing into their own pockets.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I host a personal instance of GoToSocial, because it's written in go, a language I want to learn. It supports RSS for those without a Mastodon account. (Not that anyone knows what RSS is. Most of the people I know are surprised when I show them how to bookmark something! 😀)

I also use RSS-Mastodon services to stuff my feed with things I'm interested in. This is not just for websites, but other socials that support RSS. So far, I've had the best luck with Mastofeed. (There is a different Mastofeed project that lets you embed a Mastodon feed into your website. I haven't yet tried that, but it's on my list.)

[–] jadero@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think "federated" is in danger of becoming synonymous with ActivityPub. I haven't investigated the inner workings of ActivityPub, but I can't imagine any way for my personal ActivityPub server to interact with other ActivityPub servers except through some kind of automation.

There are other federated systems out there: email, RSS/Webmention, Bluesky, Usenet, etc.

I don't think anyone is less federated just because they choose to bridge to a federation rather than run the federated software directly.

[–] jadero@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does anything ever truly die?

https://ruffle.rs/

[–] jadero@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I've always thought the best way to kill a hobby was to turn it into a job.

100%

I tried turning my hobby of programming into my job. On the surface, I was reasonably successful, but the most enjoyable aspects of my hobby had to be set aside in favour of actual productivity.

Worse, the fact that I actually got pleasure from my work left me open to exploitation. When I finally woke up to that, I ditched programming in favour of "just a job" that paid the bills and was about a million times happier as a result. It's only recently, 15 years after leaving the field, that I find myself once again drawn back to programming.

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