willtim

6 ms·

1.
by willtim 5y ago
Any statically typed language allows one to use dynamic types when it is necessary. I don't see the problem. If you need a map of string keys to variants, this can be done. At least one can still put some static constraints on the type
2.
by willtim 5y ago
The attraction of "functional programming" to academics and many others, is that the paradigm is underpinned by established and well studied mathematical logics. For example, the lambda calculus or more recently linear logic. You
3.
by willtim 5y ago
> one of the places where computer science has gone backward, preferring more clunky systems and less elegant paradigms I respectfully disagree. Smalltalk has had its time. OOP has had plenty of investment and exploration, but it's
4.
by willtim 5y ago
I could not find any add-on (that still works) to give me back my tray icons. Not even Apple would take this feature away.
5.
by willtim 5y ago
It's worse than that. The desktop efforts are heavily fragmented and arguably the leader, RedHat's "Gnome", while quite polished, is actually quite user hostile (e.g. works very differently to anything else, perhaps to d
6.
by willtim 5y ago
Good point, but IIRC Dijkstra didn't like Fortran either. ALGOL (1958) used ":=" for assignment, as did Pascal some years later.
7.
by willtim 5y ago
When BASIC e.g. redefined what "variables" are and what the equals operator means, it did cause a generation of programmers to drift away from the long established mathematical definitions. This persists to this day in languages
8.
by willtim 5y ago
> the phrase "avoid success at all cost" in a certain context which may have had some role in making Haskell seem Ivory Towerish. This phrase is often misunderstood, it's "avoid, success at all costs", not "
9.
by willtim 5y ago
> Specifically, I have a problem with any operating system that will update itself in arbitrary ways without our consent and at a time we have not chosen. I was sitting in a keynote talk at a conference once and mid-presentation Windows
10.
by willtim 5y ago
The global menu bar is great for laptops and small screens. I'm less convinced it makes sense for big cinema displays or dual displays.
11.
by willtim 5y ago
Or maybe it's because people want to build software that is more secure and reliable (something which C does not have a great track record for)? Google are not the main instigator of this initiative, they are adding their support for i
12.
by willtim 5y ago
I have lots of hybrid SACDs and I cannot extract the high-res content for playback on computer/phone without my clunky Sony Blu-ray player. This is of course by design, but I do wonder if it also helped to kill the format before it eve
13.
by willtim 5y ago
KDE looks really good too, but I mostly prefer the minimalism/simplicity/aesthetic of Gnome.
14.
by willtim 5y ago
I agree that the reason does not matter and is irrelevant to the end-user. I was just speculating as to why they have not "just fixed it". However, I disagree that Windows is more polished. Windows is made up of a mixture of UI fr
15.
by willtim 5y ago
Is that relevant to Gnome? It's used the same file manager "Nautilus" for years. Apple and Microsoft are also quite capable of killing software projects.
16.
by willtim 5y ago
Ah yes I used "Files" and not the file picker. I guess the file picker is part of GTK and therefore cannot use the rest of the gnome infrastructure?
17.
by willtim 5y ago
Yep, shows thumbnails for pictures, videos, pdfs etc. More formats than Windows in fact. Windows has been standing still, the rest of the world hasn't. EDIT: I used "Files", not the file picker.
18.
by willtim 5y ago
Windows definitely needs improving. I tried the Gnome 40 desktop recently and it's much more polished, consistent and refined.
19.
by willtim 5y ago
Hopefully more durable products means less landfill and digging up the planet looking for more raw materials. This ultimately benefits everybody.
20.
by willtim 5y ago
The flipside to this, is that there is perhaps no longer an incentive to sell hardware with a limited lifespan.
21.
by willtim 5y ago
In case you are unaware, tax is needed to pay for schools, universities, research, health care, social care, police, civil infrastructure, environmental agencies, regulators, defence, bank bailouts, pandemic bailouts, etc. The Big tech firm
22.
by willtim 5y ago
Agree with everything you say, but I would also add that the interactions with compression and other lossy signal processing that is frequently performed is not well studied. For example, when using Bluetooth headphones, it is likely that t
23.
by willtim 5y ago
Yes I still do and I FLAC them. I've been collecting CD's for 35 years, so it's difficult to stop. I am sometimes envious of the high-res downloads, but whenever I hear digital clipping in the 16-bit CD version, the clipping
24.
by willtim 5y ago
I would never buy anything expensive from Amazon, the customer service is not adequate when things go wrong. I even stopped buying CD's from them as they would almost always arrived with cracked/broken cases. Specialist sellers, e
25.
by willtim 5y ago
If it improves the security of the device and means that Google will keep updating it, then that will be good. However, personally I have given up buying Google-branded devices. They only gave me security updates for my Pixel C for three ye
26.
by willtim 5y ago
Magit on windows needs something like libgit2, spawning processes is too slow on windows. Emacs runs fine.
27.
by willtim 5y ago
> "git at the speed of thought" describes magit quite well. Not under Windows, unfortunately.
28.
by willtim 5y ago
Better than all existing options? I'm skeptical that a kernel written in C++ is likely to be better than e.g. a formally verified microkernel such as seL4. If they ever rewrite it in Rust, then it might be more interesting.
29.
by willtim 5y ago
Yes, they also need to tackle power efficiency, otherwise laptop users will be forced to use either Edge or Safari. At the moment, as I understand it, it pretty much runs all open tabs at full throttle.
30.
by willtim 5y ago
I don't think btrfs is a shining example of Linux stability/reliability. NixOS gives me rollbacks using XFS for root.

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