unbendable

Crazy to think what legacy jQuery and others left. Now I am using React and the usual lib stack.

But I remember using jQuery, pug (or jade), browserify, bower... that was what 5 to 6 years ago?

Recently i tried a lot of diagram libraries. I tried to do a binary step chart (on/off) for active/inactive tasks. I ended up with matplotlib rendering my charts. I have seen nothing as advanced and feature rich as pythons'

BUT i will give this one a chance :)

Slide #40

But, we are not Gnome:

  * No usage regressions

  * No feature removal

I read it and I already knew that I had this discussion a bazilion times, just like every comment in HN probably won't be anything new to me.

Some topics are just made to be discussed forever

I am coming from an T440p (Ubuntu 18.04) to an MacBook Pro 16 and i feel all his points.

I want to add how bad some parts of the Mac UX are. GNOME surely has some really really bad UX decisions but overall I think (hold on tight) GNOME is better than Mac in terms of UX. My MacBook is simply not designed for pro users.

I might add that the Mac is far more stable than Ubuntu and looks better but in the end as far as I am concerned the t440p is just the better option for pro users.

I just switched from Linux to Mac for my company notebook.

No offense, but for me it is like the Mac is taking my hand and guiding me threw a mess. However sometimes I know the way better than the Mac but it is not letting me. It actually makes it really hard to „go my way“.

For example the “only trusted developer program“ can be run . I understand why it makes sense for most people but I want an option to decide it mysel who is to be trusted. To be fair I had to google a bit for a terminal command to fix this but either way it leaves a bitter taste. I fear that I may lose this “fix“

Now back to the battery health. Why not allow being transparent? If most of users want the 100% showing then make it default.

I think that’s what boils it down for me. Having no choice with OS X. Now I know some will say that’s how it is for Mac but do you think it is too much to ask for this (really stable) system to support choices?

H5N1, SARS and COVID-19 have been traced back to asian wet markets. Seeing the effects COVID-19 has I really don't care what cultural or emotional reason you could have for those markets. Just BAN everything that could ever allow this. The thought that we knew it could happen AND that it already happened blows my mind.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156235

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21156235

I just had a short glimpse, but it seems that this is rather "transpiling" to C, right? We needed something that is being interpreted to allow easy updates of scripts.

Comment on all subjects (I will just link it to other commenters): A lot of commenters posted some projects with JS interpreter. But we had to chose something that is stable and is being maintained. The last thing is always hard to argue about because you never know how long maintainers stay commited to the project. But the LUA interpreter is widely used for a lot of (commercial) projects. So there is high chance that it stays for some time. We tried out some other projects, sometimes looking into mailing lists and github issues where we would find open bugs where the interpreter leaks under some circumstances or other problems that you just want to avoid.

LUA seemed a perfect fit and i think still is, but there are still things that didn't work as planned. I really love the concept of the interpreter with the stack. But, again, scheduling is a very complex topic and that is where i found the lua documentation lacking. Especially scheduling between LUA <-> C. I found some projects that solve this issue but then we stumbled upon other issues: Some projects were for 5.1 and didn't work for us. Others used features we didn't have on embedded (pthreads). So we decided to do a very basic scheduling but had to understand more what happens under the hood. And that is where the source code is not easily readable. Don't get me wrong i am convinced that the devs are great at their work, but holy moly you can't use more readable name for you variables? Or the use of macros, is it really neccessary to use it for every conversion?

We use lua 5.3 on an embedded Platform for scripting and it has been a roller coaster ride. Not a fun one, unfortunately. You want luasocket? The stable one is not compatible with 5.3. Packages are sometimes outdated (for years no updates) and there is no replacement. The lua point releases have breaking changes. The source code itself is a macro hell which is hard to debug. And the code is not very readable. The documentation lacks for some topics of you use the c api. I tried to implement some scheduling for c and lua threads.

Oh and one thing if you must use Windows... you better quit right away. I had to help my co worker Installing it with luarocks and it is a mess. to be fair it was easy on my Ubuntu machine.

The thing is lua on embedded has no rival. but god did it cost me some nerves.

So i have been working on an embedded project lately where i had to export the framebuffer to an sd Card. I used a raw Format first (netppm) and had to use vim in hex Mode to validate the header. So this is really neat. I was looking for an padding option in the readme but i guess i ll have to install it later

So my team is using eclipse with autogenerated makefiles. STM used to generate projects only for some WIN32 IDEs and their eclipse. There are 2 hobby projects which I set up with this project: https://github.com/ObKo/stm32-cmake. The genius that set up this github project saved me a lot of work and it worked perfectly with my STM32F746. (Maybe there is a similar project for your board ?)

But for my work project i am using compilation databases, which works great with sources that are included in your makefile. It gets a bit tedious recompiling but there is a way to automate this. Ah one thing that i noticed sources that are not included or libraries with your drivers and middlewares that you link against are not recognized and a warning will appear. Eclipse was a bit smarter as it could resolve those dependencies.

What build system are you currently using ?

Yeah that's one of those things I find so attractive about rust. They provide a compiler and a package manager where you can manage dependencies and build setup.

I hope it does not end up like one of those "grass is greener on the other side"-thing :D

So one thing about react or generally spa's is that you generate artifacts (static files, index.html/js etc.) that you can easily put on anything that serves those files.

That is actually not hard to do on an embedded system. Getting the ETH or WiFi Driver to work is another story. That depends on the vendor and "how many/much batteries are included". Some will make it very easy and offer an fully working API that you can use. But sometimes you need to get deeper for custom solutions and that's when you need to read into the documentation and internal API.

I would start with an Arduino for basic stuff like turning on LEDs. Learn about the PIN Levels or the need of pull down / push up wiring. Try to implement software debounce for input reading. All that basic stuff. Programming is done via their IDE. You get an UART Console (serial) for debugging / logging. I use it to this day for prototyping (last week CAN bus for example to read the OBD interface of my car). There are LOT of resources online for the arduino.

When you re done with it you can look at raspberry pi. There you can use linux (which is very elegant) to do some advanced stuff like networking. You can start with monitoring temperature and printing to the console. There are lot of libraries and documentation for it.

If you are still interested you can go a level deeper. Without an OS or an RTOS (like FreeRTOS). There you are pretty much on your own with a lot of things. I started with an STM32F4. You have an integrated Display on some models. And there is also a lot of tutorials and documentation. The stmcube software helps you setup your pin and board configuration. If you use FreeRTOS: Try playing with tasks (context switching, priorities) or scheduler (cooperative vs preemptive). You can look at the examples provided in the repository (firmware packages) and run them on your board. Play with them, change or modify some parts.

About Rust I didn't try it. But currently i am not sure since the vendor of the board i am currently developing for provides only a API in C. You will either have to write in C or use C++ and write some sort of wrapper (https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-...).

I understand where you are coming from. But I don't think that webdev is easier just because it is. Embedded is not the rocket science some people claim it to be.

I believe there is a lot of room where we can improve and lower the barrier for entry. For example better packaging system, better IDE support (CLion is already very good tbf), modernizing vendor api, improve documentation and testing solutions, compiler that actually throw meaningful errors and of course good learning material...

I know it is a lot to ask and I don't want to sound like a ungrateful child. There are a lot of people working their asses off for free and all that. But i think it is not wrong to point some of the problems we have.

No I never claimed Rust is type safe. I don't know enough about it to make such a claim. I just read some articles and blog post and i really liked some concepts of it.

So I think some people are forgetting that I work and talk only about embedded development C/C++.

Generally what i mean with you can't trust the data is that memory can get corrupted in embedded very easily. There are some mechanisms to prevent it (MPU for example). The other thing that I see often is the usage of opaque pointer by vendors. That is not necessarily a problem with C++ but you will have to use it and deal with it.

But yeah you re right about modern C++ features being more type safe. I would love to use them but the problem is many of those std features are not usable in embedded or are not worth the cost.

I think it is more of embedded and the desktop C/C++. Makefile is kinda forced through vendors and some "libraries" forcing you to use make as they're exclusively generating (STM) or relying on them (ugfx, touchgfx).

I actually switched some time ago from C to C++ only - when possible. And about the features of modern C++ standards: On embedded you can't use STD or excessively use templates. Some features will crash because of the Memory Protection Unit and are not usable when using the MPU.

Official React documentation is actually fine. However I have been using it with a backend which provided an API. I have to admit that I rarely see React Applications directly bound to a database (if you meant that, not quite sure). But I would guess that in such a case you're better off with some typed language like Type Script.

To start off I would use the create react app. It sets up a project and all the required settings for babel, linter and all that magic is behind a curtain. Again the documentation is fine for starting. And remember React is just the view library. If you need (global) state management look at redux or mobx, http client axios and read their documentation.

I started 3 years ago with React. Back then i just used the documentation. Now i follow Dan Abramov and other React Maintainer / developer (like Sophie Bits) on twitter and I learn a lot of internal or advanced stuff about react. I definitely would recommend following them.

As a embedded systems (C / C++) and a ReactJS developer (both senior, I know weird), I have to admit that the web dev ecosystem is much better to get into. And yes I know the fragmentation is really bad in the JS world. But it is nothing to the cluster fuck that I have seen in the C/C++ world.

And honestly it is not because C / C++ is hard to learn. They just didn't age well. C++ is full of anti patterns, the build system (makefile) is absolutely horrendous (yeah i know about cmake, dont tell me - tell the manufacturer/vendor), the compiler is your worst enemy (gcc errors are useless), testing isn't as widespread as I see it in webdev.

Code Quality is not a concern. I found myself often times looking for the documentation in the source code. And truth be told i rarely find someone advocating against it. IDE support before CLion is laughable compared to IDEA. There was just VS that was nearly as good, but not a option for me as a Linux User.

I had a discussion with someone on a Embedded Meetup and this guy trashed JS because it isn't type safe. I tell you something C/C++ is NOT type safe. You can't trust the type you would expect. NEVER. That is actually a big problem in some use cases.

I am now in a state where I would say that I have a lot of experience in embedded. It took a lot of time and frustration. But I really envy the people that put so much effort into teaching and putting so much content to improve and learn more about webdev. I am aware of the fact that some people are programming trash in JS too. The thing is they didn't need to. It is so easy to find good resources advocating good patterns for programming.

I have read on Rust for embedded and the work that some people put into it gives me hope. I really really wish for C/C++ to vanish in its current state. It is not friendly to newcomers and surely that is not because they re too stupid.

And if I can recommend you some books (for embedded C/C++):

9781788830287 Embedded Systems Architecture (Good Introduction)

9788131521267 Data Structures and Algorithms in C++ (That actually helped me a lot with persisting state in memory, some cool tricks)

EDIT: added some newlines

It's "funny" how you (and many others too) didn't read the article and just commented based on the title.