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jadero

@ jadero @programming.dev

Posts
4
Comments
216
Joined
3 yr. ago

Fully retired now and one of the things I'd like to do is get back into hobby programming through the exploration of new and new-to-me programming languages. Who knows, I might even write something useful someday!

  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple Websites

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  • Oops! I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention.

  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple Websites

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  • Oops! I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention.

  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple Websites

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  • Edit: the bits barely had a chance to dry on my comment when I came across https://rss-parrot.net/

    This is a way of integrating RSS feeds into your personal timeline on Mastodon. I don't know how this affects the work I describe at the bottom of this comment, but I bet it has a role to play.

    I find it hard to believe that people would like to browse to x different websites to see if an artist has new works, only to find out that they don’t.

    RSS FTW!

    Every site I've ever created or been involved with in even the tiniest capacity has supported RSS. Sometimes it was enabled just to shut me up.

    I'm not sure how to better promote the use of RSS and get people to use feed readers, but I think it is the answer to at least that particular issue.

    My personal opinion is that a "platform" should really be just a collection of searchable and categorized feeds with it's own feed. That way there is both discoverability and the ability for individuals to construct their own personal feed on their own personal device (no server required!) while staying abreast of new feeds on the master feed aggregation "platform."

    There are innumerable ways for people to get their own content into something that supports RSS and that feed could be easily submitted to the master feed aggregation "platform" to deal with the discoverability issue. For example, Mastodon and most compatible systems support RSS and registration is child's play on any server that allows public registration.

    In fact, the "platform" could set up a crawler to automatically discover RSS feeds. If the author has done the metadata right, the results would even be automatically categorized.

    Done right, the "platform" might actually run on a pretty small server, because it would be linking to sites, and only pulling summaries from them.

    Even comments could be supported with a little creativity. As I said, there are innumerable ways for people to get their own content out there. If there were a standard metadata tag "comment:

    <link to article or another comment>

    ", some fancy footwork could produce a threaded discussion associated with a particular article, even if the original author has no internal commenting system. (And my favoured internal comment system would permit nothing but pure HTTPS links to the commenters own content, extracting a short summary for display.)

    Side note: I acquired a domain explicitly for the purpose of setting up such a feed aggregation "platform." Now that I'm retired, I'm slowly working on creating it. Everything is highly experimental at this point and, to be honest, shows no visible progress to that end, but that is my ultimate goal.

  • The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Simple Websites

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  • There was a thread elsewhere asking whether a toggle should show current state or the state desired. There was enough disagreement that it quickly became apparent that, whatever else the toggle does, there should be something external to the toggle showing the possible states, indicating which way to move the toggle regardless of toggle appearance.

  • Lights bulbs

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  • Hey, me too! Although I took a transition job in between as public works foreman for a small village. (Single person doing everything from water treatment to sewer cleanouts, snow clearing to cutting grass.)

  • Why Software Engineers like Woodworking

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  • Sewing for sure, especially machine sewing. I feel like I've got as much time invested in fighting and maintaining our sewing machines as in our Windows machines. 😛

    And then there's that whole transition between pattern (spec) and outcome that is oddly reminiscent of far too many of my software projects!

  • Should a toggle button show its current state or the state to which it will change?

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  • Knowing how a switch works in a circuit and how it's typically represented in schematics, I would guess that moving the switch toward the body of the gun should be off.

    But if actually placing a bet, I'd put my money on it being the other way.

  • It's time to break free from Corporate Agile

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  • You've just described my 50 years in the workforce, jumping from job to job, only just barely anything resembling an actual career.

  • Why Software Engineers like Woodworking

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  • I haven't yet started blacksmithing, but it's the next logical progression. Other than a (very!) occasional boat and the odd bit of furniture or cabinetry, I seem to spend most of my time making tools, jigs, and fixtures.

  • Where to host a personal site

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  • If you might be looking at more general mucking about, Oracle's "always free" tier is pretty good. Yes, you might have to set aside decades of hate for Oracle like I did, but it's not like I'm ever giving them any money.

  • What if an SQL Statement Returned a Database?

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  • #5? (Me): pronounced S.Q.L. except for Microsoft's product which is pronounced "sequel server".

  • What are some common misconceptions about programming that you'd like to debunk?

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  • I call that the "nerd equivalency problem". I think it's the source of much (most? all?) of the problems with software that comes out of organizations that are not programming shops by nature.

    "We're not moving fast enough (or, "I have this great idea!"), hire another nerd!"

    The problem also exists within individual programmers ("sure, I can do that UX/UI thingy, just let me finish building this ray-tracing thingy"), but that's just an ordinary cognitive weakness that affects us all (thinking that being expert in one field makes one expert in all). It's the job of proper leadership to resist that, not act as though it's true.

  • Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal

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  • Every time I see a set of instructions like this, I can't help thinking that someone forgot that we're using computers.

  • Article suggests that 1 million ML specialists will be needed in 2027. What do you think of that?

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  • That's very closely related to something I've come to think about tech: nerd equivalency. If there is a computer involved, then a nerd is required and they are all interchangeable.

    Basically, someone says "we're not moving fast enough, hire another nerd!" and nobody in the chain of command or in the hiring process has a clue which particular skills are required, assuming that everyone can do everything.

    That's why so many corporate projects have what amounts to random people doing randomly assigned work producing insecure, unreliable products with obscure and even hostile UIs.

  • Article suggests that 1 million ML specialists will be needed in 2027. What do you think of that?

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  • AI is cool technology (imo), but currently it's just the latest bait for CEOs, managers, etc. Somehow these kinda people are just so vulnerable for hype words without ever thinking more than as second about how to use it or whether it's even useful.

    I think that's a general problem with most technology that is fundamentally about computing.

    People outside any field have only the barest grasp of that field, but the problems are so much worse as soon as computers are involved. They are so ubiquitous and so useful to so many people with little or no training or understanding that everyone just succumbs to a form of magical thinking.

  • VS Code | January 2024 Release | 1.86

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  • Unless, of course, that programmer has any number of mobility issues that limit their use of the keyboard, in which case something like cursorless might be the only option.

    I urge you to take a look at it. Some even claim that it's more productive than the keyboard. I don't know how the VSCode voice feature works, but if it makes integration of cursorless easier or better, then I'm all for it.

  • [Julia Evans] Combining Branches

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  • I'm only just embarking on my git journey as a hobbyist. When programming was my career, I was a solo programmer and subversion was almost overkill.

    When I look at the diagram of "merge" I see what I would have thought to be perfection itself, not something pain inducing.

    As I said, I'm just getting started. Is there no tooling to make this graph painless and useful or is it left to mental visualisations?

  • What I want to become Vs What I do

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  • I'd be very interested in learning more about how Canada manages "software engineer." Because whatever is being done certainly doesn't seem to include mandating where regulated professionals must be employed or punishing failures.

    Saskatchewan's electronic health records system (eHealth) has had a couple of egregious failures that it shouldn't have taken a "software engineer" to prevent.

    Several 911 services became unavailable during an outage that happened to also disrupt point of sale payment systems nationwide.

    Both of the relevant companies are telecommunications companies (Telus and Rogers, respectively), where one would expect "software engineering" to be conducted by "software engineers" regardless of regulation.

    A quick search for breaches in critical personal information will show that Canada is performing about as well as the US. Which is to say, abysmally.

  • Do you still code as a hobby, or is it only a job now?

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  • No problem, thanks for reading!