matt_m

8 ms·

1.
by matt_m 8y ago
I got to try the VOID Star Wars attraction shown in the video (although it might have been set up in a smaller space than the Disneyland installation). It was a short, scripted, minimally interactive experience. The hand and prop tracking
2.
by matt_m 8y ago
Go is also statically typed while Erlang/Clojure are dynamically typed. That seems like another pretty significant difference aside from the syntax.
3.
by matt_m 8y ago
Maybe you've already ruled it out, but it might also be worth considering the Kinesis Freestyle line too. I've been using one for many years now after trying it at work and have been pretty happy with it. Since the layout isn&#x
4.
by matt_m 9y ago
For fun, Scheme/Lisp. Once you have macros it really feels like the sky is the limit in terms of what you can express. I've also been liking Go quite a bit recently. I know it's a language HN loves to hate. It's not a
5.
by matt_m 9y ago
I agree it's too early to say. I don't think we can just look at a timeline though... we'll at least need to know what the next big market is, before we can say they lost their ambition/ability or waited too long. Even
6.
by matt_m 9y ago
I'm not sure about (1), although Google's infrastructure not making it an internal priority seems plausible. I also think for Go it's more common to build directly on top of the standard library than in many other languages.
7.
by matt_m 9y ago
It wasn't obvious to me either, but apparently vgo translates that into the appropriate git tag, it's not actually a separate directory.
8.
by matt_m 9y ago
I think the main example in the article is talking about incompatible types, not global variables, so the issues apply more or less the same in any language (Java, Python, C++, etc), since there is generally no guarantee that one version of
9.
by matt_m 9y ago
Well, the article calls for a v0, which seems to be exactly for the use case you describe? There are no import path changes, undergoing "rapid, breaking change" is allowed, and if you ever find a good local optimum you can gradua
10.
by matt_m 9y ago
This could still become a problem (if each dependency statically bundles its own dependencies) if any of the types are exposed in an API. For example say there is a Twitch and Facebook SDK that both expose a SetUserProfile(Image) function,
11.
by matt_m 9y ago
Sure, I think I can explain some of what people might see in it. Obviously its strengths/weaknesses will depend on what language you compare it to, the article mentioned Java so I'll use that. 1) Value types - in Java if you want
12.
by matt_m 9y ago
Yeah that seems like that might be the best option right now, and it doesn't look like it will be too expensive either. What I probably would like more is the reverse, a Metal wrapper for Vulkan, since it seems so much easier to get s
13.
by matt_m 9y ago
Maybe I could have explained this better since it's getting downvoted. Right now the two big modern graphics APIs are Metal (iOS / Mac) and Vulkan (Win / Linux / Android). These aren't the only ones, there are mor
14.
by matt_m 9y ago
Well, as a small developer I'd love to see a higher-level, easier-to-use API (than Vulkan) that can be used as a modern, cross platform replacement for OpenGL. If it could be used both in a browser and standalone even better. If it w
15.
by matt_m 9y ago
This is a common sentiment. How far does this concept go though? If a neighborhood gets too expensive, you can move without much trouble. The whole city and commuting area gets too expensive? Move again, but now find new company/pe
16.
by matt_m 9y ago
Well, I'm not sure a technically impressive hackathon project is a plus past a certain point. Not everyone follows the rules of the hackathon and works only during the time period. I was on a team that was a finalist at one of the sta
17.
by matt_m 9y ago
IMO Cardboard / GearVR is so different from the Vive / Rift+Touch right now that it is more useful to look at them entirely separately even though they are both technically "VR". Cardboard and GearVR are relatively conve
18.
by matt_m 10y ago
That's a good point, for example when many individual app developers were being sued / threatened for the use of in-app purchases, it could be argued that the root of the problem is that something like in-app purchases is not an i
19.
by matt_m 10y ago
LuaJIT (of which DynASM is a component) is a JIT compiler for Lua (a dynamic language), which despite being basically a one-man project was beating contemporary Javascript compilers on performance and even the Dalvik Java compiler on Androi
20.
by matt_m 10y ago
The Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic mouse is semi-vertical (this might depend on how you hold it) and tracks better than the Evoluent mouse I was using before, although the ergonomics are probably not as good. The build quality is also better I
21.
by matt_m 10y ago
Rather than just hoping for critical mass for one candidate, it would be nice to switch to something like ranked-choice voting (it's used at the local level already in some places like San Francisco I think). It's hard to advocat
22.
by matt_m 10y ago
Around a decade ago when I was an Apple intern (pre-iPhone) we got to go to a Q&A session with Steve Jobs. One of the questions was something like "What other products do you think are badly designed / could be improved?&quot
23.
by matt_m 10y ago
I imagine it depends where the computer is used - users that mostly use it on a desk where they plug / unplug it but don't move it around a lot while plugged in probably don't have problems. The cords always seem to fail if
24.
by matt_m 10y ago
There's a lot of negativity around recurring payments but I'm excited about this model both as a developer and a consumer particularly on iPad. There's been a race to the bottom in pricing in mobile app stores, where a one-t
25.
by matt_m 10y ago
The important costs though for the current wave of VR are hundreds of millions of dollars for OLED display manufacturing lines, and an additional many millions of dollars of engineer time from Nvidia / AMD / HTC etc for custom dri
26.
by matt_m 10y ago
Sure, I agree Java isn't going anywhere, I just meant it might grow some at Java's expense since it has some of the same strengths (and while the ecosystem might not be up there with Java it's surely competitive with some of
27.
by matt_m 10y ago
C# works a little differently from C/C++ in that stack vs heap allocation is decided at the type level (using a 'struct' or 'class' keyword when defining the type). So you can't easily have one object have a r
28.
by matt_m 10y ago
Might be worth considering C# here too. The open-source cross platform tooling is new and still immature, but it's getting serious resources lately, with new language features (including more null safety) coming, cross platform IDE fr
29.
by matt_m 10y ago
The biggest thing compared to C and C++ (or even C# and Go) is probably the lack of user-defined value types. So if you want to create an array of Point2D objects, in Java it will be an array of pointers to heap-allocated objects (each wit
30.
by matt_m 11y ago
I have a Vive (Pre) and tested it on some older equipment. Less demanding apps like Tilt Brush will even work on older cards like the 750 Ti, but >50% of the available demos so far won't run at that level. A 950 is much faster and

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