GeneralMaximus

I personally make liberal use of parens to make the precedence of operators as clear as possible. Then I run formatting tools like Prettier or rustfmt on my code, which remove any parens that are not strictly required. This way, I end up with an expression that is clear as well as concise. Best of both worlds.

The idea makes sense to me. It's basically Emacs, but using Smalltalk instead of Lisp. Instead of using plain text to create your user interface, you have access to a built-in UI toolkit. That's very neat!

What's more interesting to me is the fact that the Glamorous Toolkit UI looks perfectly crisp on my M1 MacBook screen, whereas the Pharo IDE is a blurry mess because it doesn't support "retina" screens. If GT is built on top of Pharo, then why does Pharo still not support high DPI screens?

If you don’t want to go to the trouble of setting up a Git repository and connecting it to Netlify, you can always use Netlify Drop: https://app.netlify.com/drop

Just drag and drop the directory containing your website to the page, and it takes care of the rest. Very convenient for hosting simple fire and forget web pages online.

The one I have most problems with is "Toronto". Every time I've heard it said out loud by somebody from North America, it has sounded like "Turrawnno", with the T's barely audible.

On the other hand, my (very Punjabi) family members who actually live there pronounce it "Turronto", with hard T's, rolling R's, and a heavy emphasis on the final T. If you've heard the most common form of the Indian English accent, you know what I mean.

So now I just call it "that city in Canada". I just know I'll mangle it if I say it out loud.

> I'm curious what Mac software you use in 2023 that is only available on Mac.

Ulysses, Bear, Things, Reeder, Mela, Alfred, MindNode, just to name a few. These apps are incredibly well designed, and have no equivalents in the Windows or Linux worlds. I know because I also have a PC and I’ve looked very hard for replacements.

Additionally, apps like 1Password, Scrivener, iA Writer, and Arc Browser started their life on the Mac. Some social media networks, like Instagram and VSCO, were iPhone apps before they released on other platforms. Because Apple users are generally not averse to spending money on software, all the really good software reaches the Mac and iPhone a long time before it becomes available on other platforms.

iCloud itself is something that no other platform can compete with. I never have to create a separate account for any app in the Apple ecosystem because they just sync using iCloud without me doing any extra work. When I install them on my phone later, my data is already there. The Windows/Android world have no equivalent of this.

Apps really are better in the Apple world. I blame Microsoft for underinvesting in native Windows UI toolkits.

I really REALLY want to use Pharo to build something significant -- I love the ideas behind Smalltalk -- but I've been disappointed every time I've tried.

My problem is that, in 2023, Pharo still doesn't support high DPI displays, which means it's a blurry mess on every single display currently in my house.

It's blurry on my M1 MacBook Pro, on my PC with Windows 11, and on the Lenovo X1 with Ubuntu I owned briefly during the pandemic. It's blurry on all the external monitors I own. If I could run it on my iPad, I bet it would be blurry on my iPad too.

Bumping up the font size in the IDE settins is a reasonable workaround for this issue, but it's not a good long-term solution. While it makes the text in the IDE readable, other UI elements are still either comically tiny or blurry, depending on your settings. Sometimes there are some UI elements that scale up with the font size, and others that don't, which results in an inconsistent UI that's hard to use.

MacBooks have had "retina" screens since 2012, and 4k displays are increasingly becoming more common. I hope Pharo will eventually support proper UI scaling, because I can't try out your cool futuristic IDE if I can't even see it properly!

Emacs and Vim are both up there. Modern VS Code is basically Sublime Text with extra steps, which is TextMate with extra steps, which has been around for more than 15 years now. While it didn't pioneer it, TextMate popularized the "command palette" that so many text editors and IDEs use today. If you liked TextMate in 2008, you'll be fine with VSCode in 2023.

The tabbed web browser hasn't changed fundamentally since forever. People keep trying out new ways of managing tons of tabs, but all the major browsers today look pretty similar to early releases of Opera.

Aside from the ribbon, Microsoft Office remains mostly unchanged in terms of basic interactions. Even keyboard shortcuts from 20 years ago continue to work the same way today. Remember that the Office ribbon came out in 2007, which makes it 16 years old now! You could say it has stood the test of time very well, too.

Desktop and mobile operating systems have figured out sets of basic interactions that work for them. It's been a while since a new iOS update changed the way I work with my iPhone. Likewise for Windows and macOS. Once you get used to them, they become invisible, humming along without drawing attention to themselves. In contrast, tablet/convertible UIs are constantly in flux, trying to figure out how to make all their diverse input methods (touch, stylus, mouse and keyboard) work together in harmony.

I'd say most software we use today is pretty damn good, and doesn't change all that much. That's why everyone gets mad when e.g Spotify decides to suddenly change how the UI works. People aren't used to their tools changing very much anymore.

I use iPhones because I can get 5-7 years of use out of each one. Can you recommend an Android phone that has the same level of software support? Preferably something that also works properly with my MacBook, because that is what I use for work.

If you don't use Apple Music at all, you can uninstall it from your phone and it will stop being the default choice. I do this on my phone without any problems.

They gave up on FirefoxOS too soon. They also didn't promote it in the markets where it could have made a real impact. I live in India, and a dirt cheap FirefoxOS phone would have done very well here if only they had made it easy to purchase. I had one of their early phones, but I had to get mine from the US.

After being abandoned by Mozilla, FirefoxOS was resurrected as KaiOS. For a while, it was the second most popular mobile operating system in India, mostly because Reliance decided to use it for some of their low-end Jio phones[1]. Where would FirefoxOS be today if Mozilla had stuck with it? If hundreds of millions of people had their first taste of the Internet via FirefoxOS and not Android?

I've been a Firefox user since 2004, but I don't think Mozilla understands how to conduct business. They're an ideological organization first and foremost. It's not a bad thing -- we need somebody to stand up to Big Tech -- but it means that they probably won't be taking a big share of any market except by complete accident.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

Sadly, Firefox has abysmal support for PWAs on both mobile and desktop. I love Mozilla and Firefox -- and I still use it as my primary development browser -- but at this point Firefox is functionally worse than Chrome, Edge, and Safari on most axes.

What’s “mainstream”? Why is English “mainstream” while other languages are not?

Twitter’s second largest market is Japan, with Saudi Arabia ranking fourth, Brazil, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and Mexico all in the top 10[1]. While a lot of people prefer to Tweet in English, I can confirm that Twitter has a healthy amount of content in other languages if you want to go find it.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/countries-most-people-twitter-socia...

The difference is that ads in Windows don’t go away even if you already subscribe to all possible Microsoft services. I own a license for Windows 11 Pro, pay for Microsoft 365, and use Edge as my default browser. But I’m still shown ads inside Windows. What more do I need to do to stop them??

In contrast, Apple’s ads are slight nudges at best. You can even uninstall the Apple Music app on your iOS device if you want. I’ve done this, and Siri correctly uses the Spotify app to play music every time I ask it to. Can you imagine Microsoft doing the same?

I use tons of GUI apps with mostly a keyboard (or sometimes only a keyboard). For example, my Git client of choice is Tower, and I’m able to get all my work done without taking my hands off the keyboard. It took me a bit of time to get used to the shortcuts, but now I’m able to work off my muscle memory.

Well written GUI apps will always have good support for keyboard-only use. This is doubly true for apps that care deeply about accessibility, since some people have disabilities that make it hard for them to use a mouse or trackpad.

On the other hand, TUIs will never support non-Latin scripts properly, or have good support for screen readers, or be easily discoverable without a manual, or have uniform automation support using native automation APIs. In my view, CLIs are strictly inferior to GUIs unless you’re putting together data pipelines.

The Input font family by David Jonathan Ross focuses on monospace programming fonts, but it also contains a nice sans-serif font that kind of has a similar aesthetic. I’m not a typeface person, so I know I’m not explaining it very well. The homepage has tons of samples if you scroll down: https://djr.com/input

It’s one of my favorite fonts for code, but I also used Input Sans as a font for writing in Obsidian and Ulysses for a while. It was very good!

You can still do this with Windows 11!

I had to do this recently because of an old, well-known, but relatively rare bug with Windows installs. I created an 8GB partition at the start of the target hard disk, booted from it, and installed the OS into the rest of the disk. When the OS was up and running, I cleaned out the install partition.

Now I have an empty 8GB partition on my computer, which is a bit irritating. But I try not to think about it too much.

Could these translations be moved to another repository? Maybe they could be published as a separate NPM package that devs could install if they needed to look at the translations?

I feel the same way. All of them have come a long way and are more or less usable for anything you might want to do on a computer. There are strengths and weaknesses of course (e.g pro audio on Windows is pretty bad, gamedev/3D art on macOS is not quite good enough) but they can all do most things reasonably well.

I just wish Linux had more high-quality commercial apps. Open source is great and all, but I'd like to just be able to pay people for building things that I rely on.

That's what the default Mac keyboard layout has been for decades. Just because Microsoft/IBM won the desktop OS wars and forced everyone to use their keyboard layout doesn't mean Mac users have to comply.

I'm used to switching between Mac and PC layouts every day, but I personally prefer the Mac keyboard layout. Command is easier to press with a thumb compared to Ctrl, which requires the pinkie. Option allows you to input special characters with far more ease compared to any PC operating system (e.g Opt + Shift + - for an em-dash compared to some crazy incantation on Windows). Control is still available as an additional modifier if you want it.

A great side-effect of using Cmd as the primary modifier is that shortcuts inside your terminal become simplified. E.g Cmd + C to copy rather than Ctrl + Shift + C, or Cmd + T to open a new tab rather than Ctrl + Shift + T.

In an ideal world, Windows would switch to using the Win key as its primary modifier instead of Ctrl. That would make life so much simpler.

Netflix in India serves a niche audience. The Indian creators Netflix has brought on board so far mostly produce what's best described as prestige TV. While I've enjoyed some of these shows, they barely have a market outside of the major cities.

Netflix in India is the best example of an American company attempting to grow in India and failing because they don't have any understanding of the culture. Google, Apple, and even IKEA have figured this out. I'm sure Netflix will, too. But it'll take them a bit of time.

It's not just about the IME. I'm on macOS, where it's possible to type Devanagari/Gurumukhi into both iTerm and Terminal.app without any issues.

However, neither of the emulators can render the typed text correctly. I tried typing "नमस्ते" into both just now, and they both broke in different ways.

Here's iTerm failing to render a half स: https://imgur.com/a/vg1i4aB

Here's Terminal.app messing up how the quotation mark gets rendered: https://imgur.com/a/B5zd85V

Can foot handle this case? What about GNOME Terminal, Konsole, and Windows Terminal? If I can't reliably read Hindi text on the commonly used terminal emulators on all three major operating systems, then from my perspective a TUI app is worse in every way compared to a native GUI app or even an Electron app.

Then you make your software unusable for everyone who needs to use languages other than English. For example, I can't reliably type Devanagari (the script used by Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and a bunch of other South Asian languages) into any terminal on any operating system.

You also make your software unusable for people who use assistive software. TUIs are not accessible by default, GUIs can be with only a tiny bit of effort.

TUIs are perfectly fine for internal tooling, but any piece of software intended for general distribution should ship with a proper GUI. Even a basic Electron UI beats TUI in terms of accessibility and internationalization support.

I had sleep issues for years until I discovered that I'm allergic to dust and pollen. Washing my sheets every few days, vacuuming them with a small hand-held vacuum cleaner before sleeping, and using an air filter in my room dramatically improved my sleep.

Other things that have interfered with my sleep in some form or another are vitamin deficiencies, exercising way too much at once, caffeine late in the evening, alcohol, and anxiety.

Despite all the research, I haven't found screen time to have any impact at all on my sleep. I sometimes play the Switch in bed right before I crash, and it doesn't seem to affect anything.

Edit: oh, another thing. A bit of music or a podcast really helps me fall asleep faster. They help me turn off all the work-related thoughts in my head and focus on something entirely different.

Linux phones are entirely impractical for most people. I live in India, and there are several apps I need to use to access government services that only work on iOS and Android. Some services aren't even available over the Web.

We're at a point where any successful mobile OS will at least need to support running Android apps, preferably directly from the Play Store. I suspect this is one of the reasons Microsoft is adding Android support to Windows 11.

I like the idea of an entirely FOSS phone, but sadly that ship sailed years ago.

Oh wow, this sounds quite painful. I almost bought the X1E, but now I'm glad I didn't.

I'm on a X1 Carbon Gen 9 at the moment. I've had no issues with anything at all, besides having to change some settings on the WiFi chip to prevent the connection from dropping. In fact, Linux has been more reliable with external monitors than my old Intel MacBook.

(FWIW, I have a Dell 4k monitor that has documented compatibility issues with some MacBook Pro models, so that's probably on Dell.)

While I've recently stopped using Macs as my primary computers, I can definitely see the appeal of Apple computers for a large segment of the population.

E.g I still have my old MacBook around for running Ableton, because support for pro audio on both Windows and Linux is not great. Linux is almost there with PipeWire support landing in most major distros, but Windows still requires a lot of fiddling with drivers and random EXEs downloaded off the web to get a reasonable setup going. And I'm not even an audio professional, just a hobbyist with very mainstream hardware.

I suspect a lot of media/design/film professionals are in the same boat. Not to mention software developers who want a smoother experience than Windows/Linux can give them. This has always been Apple's market and they don't care about anyone else.

I recently switched to Fedora and discovered that it's straightforward to create native GUI apps for Linux these days: just use GTK+ with your choice of official binding (C, JavaScript, or Rust) and you're done. Things are well documented and generally easy to set up, at least in my limited experience.

Flatpaks make distribution a non-issue too.

This is not true in India, at least. There is so much SMS spam here that everyone defaults to WhatsApp for any kind of actual communication with a human. SMS is reserved for bank OTPs, 2FA, and and and endless deluge of marketing messages.

Have you looked at RateYourMusic.com? I don't participate in the community very much, but I regularly lurk there and find tons of great recommendations, reviews, and discussions about all kinds of obscure music.

Some of the subreddits are also good. Shout out to /r/hiphopheads, /r/indieheads, /r/popheads, and /r/letstalkmusic.

I really like this idea!

There are tons of CLI tools for which I've burned pretty much every flag that I'll ever need into my muscle memory. But there are far more tools that I use only ocassionally -- like mysqldump -- where I have to dig through a manpage or tutorial just to get basic tasks done.

Something like this built into my terminal would make my life so much easier. It's almost like a quick reference card or cheatsheet, except it's totally interactive.