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fedesilva

60 karma · joined August 14, 2010

twitter.com/fedesilva

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/fedesilva; my proof: https://keybase.io/fedesilva/sigs/fGJQ7Su1oBrrOqgigvaAEztUdAnr_pdC1TI-14bECX4 ]

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fedesilva··on Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview
At least for me, webapps are just 1 in a thousand tabs open in 500 browser windows (ok, I exaggerate a bit). For an app with it's own window I can just hit a shortcut and said app gets focus. Disclaimer, not an Elektron fan.
fedesilva··on Show HN: DeskGap – Like Electron, but uses the system webview
About 6k+ people use it in my org - the vast majority are not devs.
fedesilva··on 42-inch yacht still hoping to become the smallest boat to cross the Atlantic
Many people cross the Atlantic every year in relatively (not like this) small boats every year. There are common procedures and knowledge available to people that do that, see here for example: http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/archive/arc-safety-checklist-...

Examples of gross negligence: being dismasted in low or moderate wind conditions because lack of maintenance to the rigging and/or motor failing because of lack of a fuel filtering system, departing when conditions are obviously not favorable (wind against current in the Gulf Stream off the US coast).

There is no such thing as a clear line but it can be established for each case I think.

fedesilva··on Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store
The lazy approach is probably way cheaper. Unless the social media shit storm is too big in which case they can correct after the fact.

Not saying it is ok to do it. Just that business will always pick the cheapest option they can get away with - that is, that does not affect the bottom line.

fedesilva··on Ask HN: How to take personal care when you are in front of screen for 16 hours?
In my case its the contrary; it's the changes in patterns that distract me; the brain can move repetitive sounds to the background.

I don't play the same song but play repetitive music, also I use mid-tempo and up so I don't get sleepy.

fedesilva··on Scala: Where it came from, Where it's going
"Knowing LinkedIn is saying "enough" is a real breather for me. At this point, I can stop. Hopefully it will trigger a chain reaction, and leave Scala for the academics."

You later speak of "hate" while justifying on the decision of one company your dismissal of a whole ecosystem. The chain reaction comment was tasteless and in no way looks like an opinion trying to make the platform better as a community.

If you don't like it, drop it.

Also FWIW in my experience with academics, most of them use Python, go figure.

-- EDIT

I don't usually reply to comments like this one but this time I could not resist. Sorry.

fedesilva··on Ask HN: Scala usage?
I would say that is because neither you nor the original authors had an idea of how things work (thread scheduling, etc).

Good for you if you rewrote it and it did solve your problems. Obviously it was not such a huge task, if it was, learning how to control those things would have been wiser.

In this specific case 'dispatchers' is what you were looking for (http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/scala/dispatchers.html) and it is quite flexible.

fedesilva··on Scala.js no longer experimental
But this applies to any javascript program (or compiled to javascript). If you have specific requirements then scala.js is not the tool. Scala is.
fedesilva··on Avoiding Complexity with Go
I agree with you. There is a difference between simple and simplistic. Easy is not always simple.
fedesilva··on Scala: the Case for Correctness
It's true what you say about libraries and turtles. Still it's rare the event when I get an NPE from my/our code.

Sometimes think I would love to have a layer between us and Java. Some sort of FFI which returned everything on an Option.

Probably too cumbersome, but still ...

fedesilva··on Scala: the Case for Correctness
You can always use Option() as in:

scala> Option(System.getProperty("kaboom"))

res1: Option[String] = None

then map, getOrElse or fold at will.

(edited format)

fedesilva··on Official Go support
In my experience most people won't even learn the ins and outs of the "for those who can't" languages. Worst yet, it's not about the language: most people won't grasp more important concepts that maybe "for those who can" languages force them to know upfront. And clearly while not knowing upfront some things is easier in the short term, it is a recipe for disaster as problems get more complex. So maybe it's about problems "for those who can" and "for those who can't".
fedesilva··on Announcing Calibre 2.0
Open source does not mean "Accept All Patches At All Costs", it does not even mean accept any patch at all.
fedesilva··on MySQL: Why “My”?
My experience tends to be that distro packaged software is not always what one ends up using in production. Except for some base packages when you start doing more sophisticated deployments. Distros may backport bug fixes and specifically security fixes but they tend to be several versions behind.
fedesilva··on Why do dynamic languages make it more difficult to maintain large codebases?
Why did you have to write the same function again and again? I guess polymorphism would have helped, would it not? Not knowing too much c++ I can't really comment so I guess I am asking for a clarification.
fedesilva··on Nimrod: A New Approach to Metaprogramming [video]
I hear people saying this all the time. Why? For me they are similar to type-classes+records but without polymorphism. Care to elaborate?
fedesilva··on Nimrod: A New Approach to Metaprogramming [video]
No. It has polymorphism and metaprogramming, things that Go (at least parametric polymorphism) eschews.
fedesilva··on Nimrod: A New Approach to Metaprogramming [video]
If I understand correctly once you stop using the GC, Nimrod is not memory safe. Rust is.
fedesilva··on Web Framework Benchmarks Round 7
There are several servlet containers listed, that is as plain as JEE can get, isn't it?
fedesilva··on Facebook is using D in production starting today
I wrote a simulation software to test a product in my previous job which used akka mostly but also used AHC which is a plain java http client library without problems. Size-wise the code would periodically get more features but by refactoring often it never got beyond 2500~3000 LOCs. Readability was never harmed; Scala - contrary to what some people think - allows for very clear code. People that inherited the code is working on adding features. Obfuscated code can be written in PHP if you want (or are unable to do otherwise). Another piece of scala software was an internal web service written using unfiltered on jetty. It's so stable sometimes I just forget it's there.
fedesilva··on TextTeaser – An automatic summarization algorithm
Curiously, I find easier to read the scala code than the commented pseudo code. I've been experiencing this a lot lately. It' seems I am loosing my ability to reason about code that loops explicitly.

One minor nitpick that can be of help when dealing with tuples: A partial function ( {case xxx => yyy} ) is a Function1 so you can use it with map and filter. This way you can deconstruct tuples into names and avoid using _1, _2, etc. { case (name, value) => blah }

https://github.com/MojoJolo/textteaser/blob/master/src/main/... could be made more readable by giving names to the tuple elements.

Thanks for publishing this code. It yields impressive results.

fedesilva··on Scaling Django to 8 Billion Page Views
[Disregard, I read your post again after a coffee and in a normal screen. Sorry]

I don't understand "yet passing an object by value is only one character off from passing it by reference".

Is that Go?

fedesilva··on Scaling Django to 8 Billion Page Views
"* Lack of parametric polymorphism means there's no useful higher-level functions like map, fold, etc."

This is one of my problems with Go, too. This will add line after line of repeated code in the long run. Time will tell.

fedesilva··on Scaling Django to 8 Billion Page Views
"And if you screw up or forget to change it, your local modifications to the object are silently ignored. "

Since I started writing Scala I got used to immutable data and the reverse happens to me when coding in imperative style in other langs; that I pass something and it gets "locally modified" feels awkward. Preposterous even.

Regarding Go and the "also the anti-Java" part: I really don't think so.

They have made some decisions that seem to me a reaction to c++ and that at least is similar to Java. Some of them seem simplistic not simple: for example "There is no inheritance!" (one one one) but I really don't know how implicit structural subtyping will work out in the long run.

What I really envy from Go is the "compile and link to one executable" from an ops point of view.

Time will tell.

[Edited to add envy part, and rewrite a phrase]

fedesilva··on Big Programming, Small Programming – Glow, the language
When faced with a JS problem in a SPA - around 6 years ago - I had a representative from a client say me "wait, I will install the latest JAVA and see if that fixes it". He even chose the jdk to be safe.
fedesilva··on Ask HN: Dealing with a huge MySQL database - help
I would put Percona higher in that list if you have the money.
fedesilva··on Ruby Tips Part 1
Maybe it's old age but I find that annoying too. Looks pretty but is unreadable.
fedesilva··on Scala 2.10 now available
I always assume undefined is wrong.
fedesilva··on Scala 2.10 now available
Interesting, I never had this happening to me, and I have not tested your example, but I'm bookmarking this to try some time later. Can you confirm this is a problem with sbt 0.13?

Thanks for taking the time to make and example.

fedesilva··on Scala 2.10 now available
Correct.
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