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namingthingsiseasy

@ namingthingsiseasy @programming.dev

Posts
16
Comments
516
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Over 5,000 games released on Steam this year didn't make enough money to recover the $100 fee to put a game on Valve's store, research estimates

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  • I would love to try making a game. Even games that I love to play still have a few minor things here and there that I wish were different. If I made the game myself, I could just change it myself and make it as close to perfect as I'm humanly able. Engines like Godot and similar make it so easy to do these days.

    But the competition is extremely fierce. There are so many games on Steam that the chances of "making it" and being the next Hades or similar are just not that good. I'm clearly not the only one with a dream like this. That and the fact that making a game is a ton of work. Graphics, audio, gameplay, balancing, marketing, social media🤮, etc.

    If I'm in the position someday where I don't need to turn a profit from it, then I may do it anyway, but I really feel bad for all the people who are trying to pursue their dream and yet may never make it there. We're in a golden age for the players, but for the creators, it's very difficult, to say the least.

  • Beyond the AI Hype: Guido van Rossum on Python’s Philosophy, Simplicity, and the Future of Programming.

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  • Another thing, he confirms something I was worried about, in his comments on parallelism / Python without the Global Interpreter Lock (aka GIL): Some developments in the language serve rather the big companies, than the community and open source projects. For example, lock-less multi-threading in Python serves mostly the largest companies, while having little value for small projects.

    Absolutely agree. The significance of the GIL is heavily overstated in my opinion. There's a narrow set of use-cases where it matters, ie. if you must use threads and something like multiprocessing or a message queue (ie. Celery) doesn't do what you need. These are pretty rare circumstances, from my experience at least.

  • Which software design principles do you rely on most?

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  • One principle I try to apply (when possible) comes from when I learned Haskell. Try to keep the low-level logical computations of your program pure, stateless functions. If their inputs are the same, they should always yield the same result. Then pass the results up to the higher level and perform your stateful transformations there.

    An example would be: do I/O at the high level (file, network, database I/O), and only do very simple data transformations at these levels (avoid it altogether if possible). Then do the majority of the computational logic in lower level, modular components that have no external side effects. Also, pass all the data around using read-only records (example: Python dataclasses with frozen=True) so you know that nothing is being mutated between these modules.

    This boundary generally makes it easier to test computational logic separately from stateful logic. It doesn't work all the time, but it's very helpful in making it easier to understand programs when you can structure programs this way.

  • Microsoft locking local users, Android preventing sideloading…

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  • Google wants to monopolize installing programs on your phone.

    There. That should make them cower in fear.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Interesting, I had never heard of ccache before, though yes, all good build systems (CMake, Ninja, etc.) should cache intermediate object files.

    But the projects I was working on were so large that even binary and unit test executables were so large that even they would take ~20 seconds to link. You can't use caching to alleviate that buildtime cost unfortunately.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • I think it’s just because it is always recommended as an “easy” language that’s good for beginners.

    The only other thing it has going for it is that it has a REPL (and even that was shit until very recently), which I think is why it became popular for research.

    If that's the case, then why didn't Javascript take its place instead? It's arguably even better at Python in both of those areas....

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Agreed. I have seen a lot of Python code that was really painful to massage back into a more structured object hierarchy. Java certainly does a bit better in that respect, and as a language, it does a much better job of encouraging better practices, but I think it's also largely due to the kinds of people that use those languages as well.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Sure, but as with all things, it can depend on a lot of factors. All code needs some degree of testing, though one could certainly argue that Python needs more than Java and Java needs more than Rust/Haskell/etc. So you could argue that the productivity gain of using Python is offset by the productivity loss of extra testing. It's still hard to say which one wins out in the end.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • It can scale though. It parallelizes really well if you use queuing systems to distribute the load. You just have to make sure that the hot loops are in C/C++, and it is very easy to interface with compiled binaries via the C API.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Python's type system is dramatically better than Javascript's though. Try doing things like '' + True and Javascript will do incredibly stupid things. Python will just give you a type error. Also, look at things like == vs === in Javascript as well. That's the biggest reason why Typescript replaced it overnight. Python has found a better balance between productivity and error safety.

    In my opinion, the biggest shortcoming of Python's dynamic typing system is that you need to have very thorough test coverage to be sure that your code doesn't have semantic errors (a lot more than, say, Java). It has gotten better with the introduction of type hints, those I don't have much experience with them, so I can't say how much.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Having worked on large C++ projects, the solution to this issue is using a good IDE with an LSP. But it is quite a regrettable situation because setting up an LSP can be a difficult, and they also tend to break quite easily. Understanding how to make an LSP work is an important productivity skill in those kinds of positions.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Distribution usually isn’t considered a strong point for Python, though.

    It depends. If it's a simple script with no external dependencies, then it's very easy to distribute. But if your application has external dependencies and you are trying to install it on your host (and you aren't using docker or similar technologies), then yes, it's harder than just shipping an executable or .jar file. The fact that Python's standard library is so comprehensive helps a lot in this regard, but it only works up to a certain point.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • Yeah, you can use it both for full applications (web or desktop) as well as simple scripts. The flow of getting from something simple to a full blown application is pretty smooth and natural - better than just starting out in Java or C++ and taking at least an hour before you get anything that runs.

  • Why Is Python So Popular in 2025?

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  • My opinion: Python may not be the best at everything it does, but it's in the top 3-5 languages in the following areas:

    • Very easy to install, write and understand
    • Great libraries for a lot of applications
    • Large community, lots of people with experience in it

    It will always be a practical choice for those reasons. There are probably a lot more as well that I can't think of at the moment.

  • 'Dumbphones' Are Not Private

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  • As others have mentioned, this is a matter of threat model. To be realistic, a sufficiently determined government will always be able to access your communications, but companies like Facebook and Google can only access them if you give it to them willingly. On the other hand, if other people you communicate with do this by themselves, then you've gone through all that effort for nothing. It's also worth pointing out that it cannot be proven that a regular phone does not have corporate spyware installed, so this may be another way your information could leak to companies.

    That said, it is pretty insulting that tech companies have decided that they're simply entitled to everyone's private communication data. That for me is probably the biggest motivator in trying to avoid their services as much as possible.

  • AI Coding Is Massively Overhyped, Report Finds

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  • Pathlib is very nice indeed, but I can understand why a lot of languages don't do similar things. There are major challenges implementing something like that. Cross-platform functionality is a big one, for example. File permissions between Unix systems and Windows do not map perfectly from one system to another which can be a maintenance burden.

    But I do agree. As a user, it feels great to have. And yes, also in general, the things Python does with its standard library are definitely the way things should be done, from a user's point of view at least.

  • How to get started as a freelancer?

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  • With regards to work arrangements, I'm open to considering all options at this point (both in terms of time and location). My original line of thought is to start with some contracting work on the side, and then slowly growing into a more full-time commitment if/when I find contracts that I like.

    UK-based advice would be perfectly fine for me! I've worked in both the EU and North America, and I have one friend who lives in the USA while working for companies in the EU, so crossing that time difference doesn't seem to create too much of an issue. The hard part for me at the moment is just finding a source of contracts. I have been reaching out to a lot of acquaintances in my network but so far haven't really manage to find anyone that's willing to provide a contract just yet, so that's mostly what I'm interested in knowing at the moment.

  • Amazon is making it impossible to remove the DRM from Kindle Books

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  • Of course. It's all about control. They see users as property, an object to be sold and traded.

    Do not ever allow yourselves to be disrespected like this.

  • Artix Linux drop support for GNOME

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  • It's a large and very complicated piece of software with a single implementation. It's practically impossible to fork, so users are forced to adopt whatever changes the maintainers decide to implement. This could include things like forced dependencies (incompatible with mulb libc for example), or other poor design choices (like binary logging, which is very controversial). And it forces its adoption in places that do not want it (as in cases like the one we're discussing here, where it's becoming harder and harder for Gnome to be used without it).

    I'm not going to argue about whether systemd is good software or not. But the biggest problem with it is that it's basically a way for Red Hat to exert control over the entire Linux ecosystem.

    Think of it like Chrome/Chromium. Everybody naïvely thought we were never be where we are today when it was announced, but look at where we are today. While it's technically open source and an excellent browser, above all, it's a tool for Google to exert its control over the WWW, such as disabling adblockers, implementing DRM, deciding which CSS/Javascript APIs should (or should not) be adopted, etc. systemd could very well be Red Hat's vehicle for imposing similar requirements on desktop Linux.