hoelle

Hey nerds: dark theme is dumb. Just light up your space. Eye strain comes from the contrast between a bright screen and your dark room background. Fix your lighting. Or if you insist on being a cave goblin then lower your screen brightness. Dark theme is overrated. Fight me.

Light theme might have a readability edge in daytime / well lit offices. But I'd bet most people using Unity are hobbyists doing it at home in their evening hours, when you want to dial down your blue light for the sake of sleep.

Didn't think it would cross the uncanny valley for me when it opened the chat by taunting me for being up too late, reading the time digit by digit. Not something a human would do.

But I did feel bad hanging up on it. Him?

I think you're talking about @ and ~ boxes. As I recall, those were removed the same year the iPad and Instagram debuted.

Take criticism better.

A language choice on a project means the veterans are indefinitely charged with teaching it to newbies. For all Rust's perks, I judge that it would be a time suck for this reason.

Browsing some random rust game code: [https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/blob/8c7f1b34d3fa52c007b2...] pub fn play<'p>( &mut self, player: &'p mut AnimationPlayer, new_animation: AnimationNodeIndex, transition_duration: Duration, ) -> &'p mut ActiveAnimation {

[https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/blob/8c7f1b34d3fa52c007b2...] #[derive(Debug, Clone, Resource)] #[cfg_attr(feature = "bevy_reflect", derive(Reflect), reflect(Default, Resource))] pub struct ButtonInput<T: Copy + Eq + Hash + Send + Sync + 'static> { /// A collection of every button that is currently being pressed. pressed: HashSet<T>, ...

Cool. Too many symbols.

Zig does enhance on C, there is no doubt. I would rather write Zig than C. The design is better, more modern, and the language is safer. But why stop half way? Why fix some problems and ignore the most damaging ones?

I was disappointed when Rust went 1.0. It appeared to be on a good track to dethroning C++ in the domain I work in (video games)... but they locked it a while before figuring out the ergonomics to make it workable for larger teams.

Any language that imbues the entire set of special characters (!#*&<>[]{}(); ...etc) with mystical semantic context is, imo, more interested in making its arcane practitioners feel smart rather than getting good work done.

I don’t think that simplicity is a good vector of reliable software.

No, but simplicity is often a property of readable, team-scalable, popular, and productive programming languages. C, Python, Go, JavaScript...

Solving for reliability is ultimately up to your top engineers. Rust certainly keeps the barbarians from making a mess in your ivory tower. Because you're paralyzing anyone less technical by choosing it.

I think my adventure with Zig stops here.

This article is a great critique. I share some concerns about the BDFL's attitudes about input. I remain optimistic that Zig is a long way from 1.0 and am hoping that when Andrew accomplishes his shorter-term goals, maybe he'll have more brain space for addressing some feedback constructively.

Afterall, it is possible to place an endless thicket of regulations on deliberate human activities, but one can’t simply outlaw wildfires and horrific destruction and loss of life.

Great read, learned a lot.

Also, the web's gotten to where making it a few scrolls down a high signal page without being bombarded by ads makes me start feeling really nice. Maybe point me to a charity at the end as a way to show support & thanks for the work.

Might be interesting, but this tone is nails on a chalkboard to me. Bailed after the third "dear reader"

Great chat!

Talking about 1D vs 2D data structures felt incomplete without some mention of 3D coding. The only examples I know of are from games - Minecraft's Redstone or the automation genre (Satisfactory, Foundry). I imagine there are neat tools in other domains like mechanical or computer engineering, for solving problems with physical, real world materials in 3D space.

The main challenge in the 3D games is lack of x-ray vision. The frustration of blindness encourages setting up cool POV catwalks to see into your layers, which is rewarding. I assume productivity tools (or a hypothetical 3d code editor) would bring these for free.

A cool place to experiment might be .vox, the voxel modeling format. MagicaVoxel is a pretty fun editor, and I've daydreamed about imbuing blocks with behavior ala Redstone.

I don't think it would be super productive, but it might be fun and satisfying.

Honda and Toyota are still cheap, safe, and dependable.

Our CR-V is such a great value I don't actually understand how they turn a profit.

Beauty is often worth a little extra time. I'd rather walk a beautiful trail than a paved sidewalk beside 6 lanes of fast traffic.

It's cool to choose the tools that appeal to your values. It's not cool to advocate for paving the planet in your quest for single-minded efficiency.

Intriguing. My feedback for whoever is writing this, the main site, the github Readme, etc, please put in some work on a clarity/simplification pass.

Last I looked it's barely available in the US. A dozen states, maybe.

What would you rank as a bigger loss? My list is pretty short. Wife, kids.

Losing a job means you lose your friends, your work, your brand, your routine, maybe the commute you chose your house for. Maybe you'll have to move your family. Your kids lose their friends. Your wife loses hers. Maybe you lose them in the somewhat likely divorce. Maybe you're upside down on the house you bought in that town and now you lose all your savings to move. Maybe it was a layoff, maybe you can't even afford child support. Maybe you're deported.

If we're stooping to personal insults, are you a child with zero real life experience?

Iirc, 1 in 4000 men take their lives in a layoff. In a year like this, shut your fucking mouth about how "fragile" other people are, you absolute twit.

Your husband or wife can also wake up and decide to "get rid of you in a blink".

How attached to them should you get?

I suspect you've never really been passionate about your work or loved the crew you've worked with.

I recommend it. Love hurts, but sometimes it's a good hurt.

The idea you can't make work friends & work on cool stuff unless at your current job in your current role seems limiting.

I never said that. If you work on cool stuff with great people it is healthy to reflect on the pain and loss of that chapter ending. Yes, "there are more fish in the sea." Heartbreak is still heartbreak.

Who cares?

...anyone who isn't an ice-cold sociopath? Your job is often a big part of your identity, particularly in the games biz which is so passion driven.

Leaving behind a project you grew, kickass tech you had a hand in, and friends you made is a major life trauma, even if you're doing it voluntarily to chase something new.

I could ask ChatGPT why you're likely to be a grumpy bad-faith asshole, but as an expert in the field of dealing with children, you probably just need a snack.

Right, and a hammer is not a saw. Different tools do different things.

In this example the llm helped point me to a few relevant tools in the field, including https://materialsproject.org/ml, which is a different AI tool that might help us take this leap.

I don't need AI to "generate" new ideas. Here I'm using it as a search to point me to things I can research.

Why the negativity?

Sure, as an outsider curious about getting involved, a high level summary is exactly what LLMs are good at.

Why the negativity?

Gross. I love it.

Um, yes. It gave me a handful of good leads for related open source projects to check out. Why the negativity?

Yes. Recall my original point is explaining how high earners can still be anxious about layoffs. Even if they have been balancing family, fun, and savings... a layoff would likely mean 6-24 months of job searching. We would survive, but as those months go on, we'd have to make deeper and more painful cuts our lifestyle.

We are very privileged to have the money for a nanny. Having to let go of a wonderful employee and friend is itself worth plenty of anxiety.

And we're lucky enough to be citizens. Plenty of folks in our situation aren't.

A luxury car or bag doesn't move the needle much, both can also be had for 10k/y. And both of those items hold some value in the event they'd need to be resold. They're far less "frivolous" than something like a nice vacation.

Hoard your treasure in a cave like a dragon if you choose, but spitting on others for finding a different balance is definitely unempathetic.

what about the vast majority of people who aren't making that kind of money and do have a family, are they wizards?

I have a large extended family who all make far less than me. Yes, they have plenty of kids, too.

Their secret is living outside of a tech hub, and near family. It takes a village to raise a child. Their village is free, mine isn't.

when I look around where I live I see people are just outright mismanaging their money with frivolous luxury items

No offense, but you're either a robot or a sociopath. "Frivolity" is often what motivates humans to get out of bed and go to work, rather than sink into something like substance abuse.

I, personally, budget about $10k/y for motorcycles and art, which are definitely frivolous personal pleasures that don't directly benefit my family. Except it brings me joy, and who knows how productive or alive I'd be without it.

Perhaps. Or perhaps our socioeconomic systems shouldn't be so insanely misaligned with the literal continuation of our species.

Fertility rates and birth defects forced our hand. Saving longer just raises your chances of holding nothing but blood and ashes at the end.

They got married and have kids.

Imagine a tech couple earning >$400k, combined income after tax about 20k a month. Awesome right?

Now they need a house with square footage for kids to play and sleep, a home office, and close enough to downtown to maximize family time.

That housing runs at least 5k/mo. A nanny is another 5k. Add in food, bills, transportation, a few yearly trips to see grandma, another 5k.

Said couple might be saving 50k/year. Great! And after a few frugal years together that makes a 10-20% home down payment and they can start their family.

But even though they're both well paid, they're really twice as vulnerable. Either one losing their job puts them at a rapid household burn rate.

Something will have to give. The Nanny loses their job, trapping one parent into a caregiving role. Or they can no longer afford flights to see family. Etc.

Everywhere you look, the economic indicators are solid

Everywhere? Have you been down a grocery aisle? The Ukraine war is likely to continue disrupting global food, fertilizer, energy, and raw material supply for years.

Boomer retirement is crunching capital. Finding investment will likely only get harder for the next several years.

China may be on the verge of a demographic, manufacturing, and political collapse.

Stock your pantries.

F# is readable and terse. F#'s REPL is really fun to work in, too. The significant whitespace makes it a bit awkward in shell mode, but why do that when editing a script in VS Code, Emacs, or even screen + nano is far more convenient.

Our culture is biased in ways that helped it survive harder times.

The bloodlust is easy to explain. The tribe better at war survives. Veneration of honorable warriors runs deep in our veins. Sales for Top Gun, Marvel movies, action games continue to soar.

The puritanical outlook developed to create stable monogamous families. That bit of artifice is dissolving now. More polygamy means the top men hoarding reproductive access, which historically leads to instability. Sexual socialism was an interesting run, but with the demise of religion, I'm not sure how we could save it.