Hacker News Reader

Aleman360on Is Apple Using Swift?

The OS and built-in apps have tighter performance requirements than third party apps. I'm guessing Swift needs to catch up to Objective-C in heap and CPU usage before it's considered.

Aleman360on The big sleep

I don't have kids, but I find it curious when parents have that mentality. If you're kids feel the same about their kids, and so on, then we're not much different than apples, existing only to spread our seed.

Aleman360on Alphabet Shakes Up Its Robotics Division

> Why are they against militarizing robots?

I get that their duty is to their shareholders, but you have to draw a line at some point. I wouldn't want to work on tools of violence.

Aleman360on In defence of the hamburger menu

Ever worked on globalized software before?

Try entering "undo" on Google Translate and see what it looks like in Dutch.

Aleman360on Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold

That's how a lot of actual medical devices work.

I worked on an anesthesia machine where the control systems were implemented with micro controllers and RTOS. The UI was Windows Embedded running on a separate x86 board and the whole thing would still safely operate even if the UI subsystem crashed. There were completely mechanical backup controls too.

Aleman360on Remote Desktop Protocol Improvements in Windows 10

Passing strongly typed objects between processes seems better than text and streams, if only for auto complete.

Aleman360on Remote Desktop Protocol Improvements in Windows 10

Powershell. Yea it looks different than bash but it's great.

But RDP solves different problems. I do UI development and use RDP to connect to my work box from home. It's also used on Windows Server for Citrix-type scenarios.

Aleman360on UIKit for the Mac

I'm talking from a dev perspective, not a business perspective.

Aleman360on UIKit for the Mac

Why would you want different UI framework for each screen size/input device type?

Seems silly to have one set of API's for small touch devices and a completely different one for large mouse-driven devices. Shuts the door to large touch devices and small mouse-driven devices.

iPad Pro is already awkward. At that size, a mouse would be nice, along with lots of other desktop UX paradigms.

> What has Microsoft shown with their multi-paradigm direction?

Seems to be working. Windows Shell, modern Office, Edge, and Xbox dashboard are all using the same UI framework.

Aleman360on UIKit for the Mac

Seems risky to go for this when it's very likely something Apple is working on.

Aleman360on When did we stop caring about memory management?

> I couldn't care less about the brave Win8/10 world.

Still supports C++ ;)

Aleman360on Writing high-performance servers in modern C++

await is coming, maybe even in C++ 17. Visual Studio already implements it. Way more efficient than the C# implementation too (coroutines)

Promises are already there.

Aleman360on Writing high-performance servers in modern C++

Modern C++ is indeed pretty productive. It's the tooling and compile times that hold it back.

Aleman360on How Optimizely Almost Got Me Fired (2014)

A modern OS is nothing but a bunch of apps and the kernel. Most of the apps run in sandboxes.

Aleman360on How Optimizely Almost Got Me Fired (2014)

> A much better approach is to install significant instrumentation and actually talk to users about what's wrong with your sign up form.

But but but telemetry is evil!

Aleman360on Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

Agreed that there should be a way to opt out, and I think there is on the install screen. Whether or not it's a complete kill switch probably depends on a particular definition of "telemetry," and in today's cloud connected world it's probably hard to draw a line.

> many UX studies have shown that this applies to only a tiny percentage of users

Ironic because that's exactly the kind of thing telemetry is excellent for proving. It's quite useful for informing and providing quantitative feedback on UX.

Aleman360on Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

Because telemetry is a key tool used to improve quality.

What software dev doesn't think logs and crash dumps are useful?

Aleman360on Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

Valve knows how many times you launch a game, how much time you spend in a game, who your friends are, your spending habits...

Aleman360on Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

In this thread: mostly web devs whose sites and apps definitely don't use analytics.

Aleman360on T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately

The problem is that a max data rate usually doesn't some with an SLA. ISP's obviously don't have enough bandwidth for all customers to fully utilize 10 gbps 24/7, for example.

Paying based on usage solves that tragedy of the commons problem and works for utilities.

Aleman360on Economic Inequality

> They built something that people wanted.

What about people that produce heroine? Run casinos? Magic weight loss pills? Free-to-play games?

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

AAA games, embedded, operating systems (err, Windows shell at least), web servers, core libraries, etc.

Still big in medical devices too, embedded or not.

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

Haven't seen any benchmarks but I'm guessing the baseline working set of a .Net Native UWP app is still megabytes bigger than a C++ UWP app.

*edit: ~16 MB for .Net Native, ~10 MB for C++ using latest VS2015 targeting x86.

Not going to matter for most apps, but for system UI that has to run on multi-user servers it does ;)

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

Embracing Modern C++ (RAII, STL, range-based for loops) helps you avoid a big chunk of memory safety problems.

Contracts and some of the stuff in the new Core guidelines take it further.

Everyone's needs are different obviously. The stuff I work on has tons of users and start up perf and minimal memory usage are primary requirements. Most of our bugs are nullptr access violations or straight up programming errors that C# doesn't shield you from either.

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

I work on UI for universal Windows apps where the choice is C#, C++, or JavaScript.

Modern C++ is pretty nice if your team is ready to embrace it and leave old styles behind. I still use C# for utilities and prototypes but for production stuff, users' time is more valuable than mine.

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

True, C# tooling is an order of magnitude better. Still hate IDisposable and events using strong references.

Aleman360on C++ Status at the end of 2015

Can't wait for modules. Header files are the worst.

Also really excited for co-routines. I never liked using promises.

Wow, had no idea ranges and contracts are on the table too. With all this stuff, C# is really losing its appeal.

Aleman360on Migrating ifs to guards in Swift

https://github.com/Microsoft/CodeContracts

Takes this to another degree for .Net. Enables deeper static analysis to catch more programming errors before runtime.

Aleman360on Show HN: Netflix Party – Synchronize Netflix Video Playback

Undoubtedly because no one used it.

Aleman360on The App-ocalypse: can Web standards make mobile apps obsolete?

OS shells and browsers need to unify first. Something like what Chrome OS does seems like the way forward. Users shouldn't have to care if their pixels are being painted by HTML or native frameworks.