5 ms·

I appreciate the Cursed Knowledge section on their website https://immich.app/cursed-knowledge https://immich.app/cursed-knowledge > Cursed knowledge we have l

I appreciate the Cursed Knowledge section on their website https://immich.app/cursed-knowledge https://immich.app/cursed-knowledge > Cursed knowledge we have learned as a result of building Immich that we wish we never knew

darkwater 1y ago
Reading it I see this 50 extra packages are cursed There is a user in the JavaScript community who goes around adding "backwards compatibility" to projects. They do this by adding 50 extra package dependencies to your project, which are maintained by them. which bring to this user: Jordan Harband https://github.com/sponsors/ljharb https://github.com/sponsors/ljharb Does anyone know what they actually mean with that cursed knowledge point? And what's the "backwards compatibility" that Jordan also boasts in his GH profile?
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Seems like this thread answers your question https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37604373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37604373
- slaterbug 1y ago
  I don't have much to add myself, but there was a bit of discussion around this back in August that you might be interested in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44831811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44831811
  - darkwater 1y ago
    Wow! Didn't know Immich's Cursed page had already a dedicated post on HN. I love reading about opensource drama, especially if it's some technology I don't use directly, it's like watching a soap opera.
  - 12345hn6789 1y ago
    This user makes money of off how many downloads their packages receive. https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecomment-2184124757 https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecom...
    - greggsy 1y ago
      What a dumpster fire. Is he really being paid per download, or is he just being sponsored? It’s not clear if either would imply some form of malicious intent either.
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  To not just link to another thread: The specialty of ljharbs issues sits somewhere between "JavaScript is a very dynamic programming language that grew a lot and quite fast" and "we cannot trust developers to do the right thing". His libraries tend to build up on older runtime implementations and freeze every used functionality during runtime, so they provide "second-run safety" and "backwards compatibility". Developers disagree with some of its effects, such as a grown dependency tree and impacts in performance of multiple magnitudes (as measured in micro-benchmarks). ljharb seems to follow a rather strong ideology, but is a member of the TC39 group and a highly trusted person.
  - 12345hn6789 1y ago
    ljharb is also conveniently paid per download. His actions border on malicious especially when viewing from a supply chain attack angle. https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecomment-2184124757 https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecom...
    - silverwind 1y ago
      Also, I imagine cost of the globally wasted CPU cycles is much higher than what he profits. It's a pure abuse of resources.
    - pxc 1y ago
      It definitely feels a bit strange and potentially alarming, but after reading through that whole thread he ultimately seems like a sincere person doing work that he thinks matters, now getting dogpiled for it.
      - Sammi 1y ago
        I haven't found one person who agrees with him on what he thinks matters. His way is wasteful and slow and just indefensible.
      - lpln3452 1y ago
        If he had kept his strange and alarming behavior to himself, he wouldn't be 'getting dogpiled' for it now. The problem is that he's forcing his ways on others. If we're identifying an aggressor here, it's him. The project maintainers are the victims.
whilenot-dev 1y ago
Agree, I wish every project would have that! I still think the conclusion on "setTimeout is cursed"[0] is faulty: > The setTimeout method in JavaScript is cursed when used with small values because the implementation may or may not actually wait the specified time. The issue to me seems that performance.now()[1] returns the timestamp in milliseconds and will therefor round up/down. So 1ms errors are just within its tolerance. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/pull/20655 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/pull/20655 [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Performance/now https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Performance...
- ffsm8 1y ago
  JS is not a realtime language. setTimeout() does not actually guarantee to run after the elapsed time. It merely gets queued for the next async execution window after that timer elapsed. Hence it can also be off by infinity and never get called - because JS is single threaded (unless you use a worker - which comes with its own challenges) and async windows only open if the main thread is "idle". Usually, this is very close to the time you set via setTimeout, but it's very frequently slightly off, too.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    > JS is not a realtime language. Is there even such a thing? You're at the mercy of the platform you're running on. And Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS are not realtime to begin with. I guess if you're running on a realtime platform but in a VM like JS does, you can then take that property away, downgrading the "language" from being realtime. I wouldn't call that a language property still though, maybe my VM implementation doesn't make that downgrade after all.
  - whilenot-dev 1y ago
    setTimeout guarantees that the time provided is the time that has at least been elapsed, if it elapses at all - I think that is known to every JavaScript engineer out there. Then there are also gotchas like these[0][1]: > As specified in the HTML standard, browsers will enforce a minimum timeout of 4 milliseconds once a nested call to setTimeout has been scheduled 5 times. Still, the issue is rather how to measure the elapsed time reliably, for unit-tests among other things. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/setTimeout#reasons_for_delays_longer_than_specified https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/setT... [1]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-prompts.html#timers https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-promp... (first Note)
kmarc 1y ago
I love it. Immediately added to my daily note-taking practice
senectus1 1y ago
the "personality" of this team is just such a joy...
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Are you being sarcastic or just an ellipsis (…) abuser? If the former, what for?
daemonologist 1y ago
They think Postgres is cursed with a 2^16 limit; SQL Server has a parameter limit of ~2,000. I guess at least it's low enough that you're going to fail early.
- thewisenerd 1y ago
  and then you write `.chunked(list)` so you can write `.map { query(list) }` instead of `.map { query(it) }` :) i wish there was an unused lambda parameter warning..
- kardianos 1y ago
  Sure, but SQL Server DB protocol (TD) has a dedicated Bulk Insert specific for that functionality. TDS isn't perfect, but it is much better then the postgresql wire protocol v3. Sometime I want to build a DB front-end that you send up some type of iceberg/parquet or similar, and return a similar file format over a quic protocol. Like quic, persistent connections could be virtualized, and bulk insert could be sane and normalized: eg insert these rows into a table or temp table, then execute this script referencing it. While I'm at it, I'll normalize PL/SQL so even brain-dead back-ends (sqlite) could use procedural statements and in-database logic.

darkwater 1y ago

Reading it I see this 50 extra packages are cursed There is a user in the JavaScript community who goes around adding "backwards compatibility" to projects. They do this by adding 50 extra package dependencies to your project, which are maintained by them. which bring to this user: Jordan Harband https://github.com/sponsors/ljharb https://github.com/sponsors/ljharb Does anyone know what they actually mean with that cursed knowledge point? And what's the "backwards compatibility" that Jordan also boasts in his GH profile?

pcthrowaway 1y ago
Seems like this thread answers your question https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37604373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37604373
slaterbug 1y ago
I don't have much to add myself, but there was a bit of discussion around this back in August that you might be interested in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44831811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44831811
- darkwater 1y ago
  Wow! Didn't know Immich's Cursed page had already a dedicated post on HN. I love reading about opensource drama, especially if it's some technology I don't use directly, it's like watching a soap opera.
- 12345hn6789 1y ago
  This user makes money of off how many downloads their packages receive. https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecomment-2184124757 https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecom...
  - greggsy 1y ago
    What a dumpster fire. Is he really being paid per download, or is he just being sponsored? It’s not clear if either would imply some form of malicious intent either.
whilenot-dev 1y ago
To not just link to another thread: The specialty of ljharbs issues sits somewhere between "JavaScript is a very dynamic programming language that grew a lot and quite fast" and "we cannot trust developers to do the right thing". His libraries tend to build up on older runtime implementations and freeze every used functionality during runtime, so they provide "second-run safety" and "backwards compatibility". Developers disagree with some of its effects, such as a grown dependency tree and impacts in performance of multiple magnitudes (as measured in micro-benchmarks). ljharb seems to follow a rather strong ideology, but is a member of the TC39 group and a highly trusted person.
- 12345hn6789 1y ago
  ljharb is also conveniently paid per download. His actions border on malicious especially when viewing from a supply chain attack angle. https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecomment-2184124757 https://github.com/A11yance/axobject-query/pull/354#issuecom...
  - silverwind 1y ago
    Also, I imagine cost of the globally wasted CPU cycles is much higher than what he profits. It's a pure abuse of resources.
  - pxc 1y ago
    It definitely feels a bit strange and potentially alarming, but after reading through that whole thread he ultimately seems like a sincere person doing work that he thinks matters, now getting dogpiled for it.
    - Sammi 1y ago
      I haven't found one person who agrees with him on what he thinks matters. His way is wasteful and slow and just indefensible.
    - lpln3452 1y ago
      If he had kept his strange and alarming behavior to himself, he wouldn't be 'getting dogpiled' for it now. The problem is that he's forcing his ways on others. If we're identifying an aggressor here, it's him. The project maintainers are the victims.

whilenot-dev 1y ago

Agree, I wish every project would have that! I still think the conclusion on "setTimeout is cursed"[0] is faulty: > The setTimeout method in JavaScript is cursed when used with small values because the implementation may or may not actually wait the specified time. The issue to me seems that performance.now()[1] returns the timestamp in milliseconds and will therefor round up/down. So 1ms errors are just within its tolerance. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/pull/20655 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/pull/20655 [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Performance/now https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Performance...

ffsm8 1y ago
JS is not a realtime language. setTimeout() does not actually guarantee to run after the elapsed time. It merely gets queued for the next async execution window after that timer elapsed. Hence it can also be off by infinity and never get called - because JS is single threaded (unless you use a worker - which comes with its own challenges) and async windows only open if the main thread is "idle". Usually, this is very close to the time you set via setTimeout, but it's very frequently slightly off, too.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  > JS is not a realtime language. Is there even such a thing? You're at the mercy of the platform you're running on. And Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS are not realtime to begin with. I guess if you're running on a realtime platform but in a VM like JS does, you can then take that property away, downgrading the "language" from being realtime. I wouldn't call that a language property still though, maybe my VM implementation doesn't make that downgrade after all.
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  setTimeout guarantees that the time provided is the time that has at least been elapsed, if it elapses at all - I think that is known to every JavaScript engineer out there. Then there are also gotchas like these[0][1]: > As specified in the HTML standard, browsers will enforce a minimum timeout of 4 milliseconds once a nested call to setTimeout has been scheduled 5 times. Still, the issue is rather how to measure the elapsed time reliably, for unit-tests among other things. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/setTimeout#reasons_for_delays_longer_than_specified https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/setT... [1]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-prompts.html#timers https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-promp... (first Note)

kmarc 1y ago

I love it. Immediately added to my daily note-taking practice

senectus1 1y ago

the "personality" of this team is just such a joy...

perching_aix 1y ago
Are you being sarcastic or just an ellipsis (…) abuser? If the former, what for?

daemonologist 1y ago

They think Postgres is cursed with a 2^16 limit; SQL Server has a parameter limit of ~2,000. I guess at least it's low enough that you're going to fail early.

thewisenerd 1y ago
and then you write `.chunked(list)` so you can write `.map { query(list) }` instead of `.map { query(it) }` :) i wish there was an unused lambda parameter warning..
kardianos 1y ago
Sure, but SQL Server DB protocol (TD) has a dedicated Bulk Insert specific for that functionality. TDS isn't perfect, but it is much better then the postgresql wire protocol v3. Sometime I want to build a DB front-end that you send up some type of iceberg/parquet or similar, and return a similar file format over a quic protocol. Like quic, persistent connections could be virtualized, and bulk insert could be sane and normalized: eg insert these rows into a table or temp table, then execute this script referencing it. While I'm at it, I'll normalize PL/SQL so even brain-dead back-ends (sqlite) could use procedural statements and in-database logic.