rants and shitposting

 Content warning: strong language and strong opinions. 

• Declare an array of type T and length n
• text editors edits text
• CMake - it’s like learning another exotic language
• FOSS vs proprietary
• AI generated banner image
• Namespaces, please don’t omit them…
• XyzSky and Xyzreads, history just repeats

Declare an array of type T and length n

• C T name[n]
• Rust let name:[T;n]
• Go var name[n]T
• Zig var name: [n]T
• Hare let name: [n]T
• Java T[] name = new T[n]

text editors edits text

repeat after me: T-E-X-T editor! What’s the fucking point of pulling out a CNC machine and call it “a better knife”?

vi is a text editor, neovim is a text editor, lunar/astro/nvchad/* is not a fucking text editor. Just be honest with yourself. When you want a debugger, a languague server, a treesitter, a VCS integration, a rocket launcher … in your workflow, say it out loud that you want an IDE (just because you control the “I” of the “IDE” doesn’t change what it is.)

There is no elitism in this rant: I use whatever get things done. The point is, arguing about the “the best text editor for programming” is just pointless.

CMake - it’s like learning another exotic language

like, wtf?

target_compile_options(tutorial_compiler_flags INTERFACE
  "$<${gcc_like_cxx}:$<BUILD_INTERFACE:-Wall;-Wextra;-Wshadow;-Wformat=2;-Wunused>>"
  "$<${msvc_cxx}:$<BUILD_INTERFACE:-W3>>"
)

FOSS vs proprietary

1. FOSS: it’s unfunded voluntary works and we can’t care too much to improve “non-critical” stuffs like UI/UX
2. Proprietary: we are subject to capitals so we will spend xyz human-hours to deliberately fuck it up

Please donate to FOSS.

AI generated banner image

Just came across this article on fediverse. https://embeddedor.com/blog/2024/09/28/one-simple-and-rewarding-way-to-contribute-to-the-linux-kernel-fix-coverity-issues/

NOTE: this is not a comment on the cited article itself. I’m only talking about the way it uses a AI generated Tux banner image.

Like, wtf is this banner image… I get it that you want a copyright-free image as a banner… fair, I’m not gonna debate whether you need a banner in the first place¹ but here I have a better solution:

Instead of serving the static image on your server, you simply embed the origin prompt as an HTML extension:

<ai>
    <description> This is an alt text </description>
    <prompt> Cartoon style, linux Tux, terminals, code, programming </prompt>
    <model> Waifi-diffusion </model>
</ai>

For those who are interested, they can use a browser plugin to feed the prompt to a online model and embed the generated image in place.

Namespaces, please don’t omit them…

Generally speaking I like the idea of namespaces, the absense of which can be a real pain C’s ass when you have a larger codebase. That said:

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using namespace xyz;
using namespace abc;
// and 42 other namespace collapsed.

// then instead of xyz::give_me_chocolate();
give_me_chocolate();

When I see this while reading a unfamiliar codebase, my blood pressure raises. For me especially:

• I normally don’t use IDEs (or by extension, LSPs)² so I can’t just see the definition of a function/variable just by clicking them.
• Instead I would grep for filenames and strings.

For the sake of line width, use shorter alias!!!; The notation of using namespace xyz; is an obfuscation.

XyzSky and Xyzreads, history just repeats

And again, and again, you are fed up with some SNS’s bullshit and decide to move to another. Yet you are moving from one tech-giant spyware to another tech-giant spyware.

There is no self autonomy in XyzSky or Xyzreads, it’s just another centralized capitalist shitdump that pretends “federation / self-host / opensource” or whatever. THEY DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT NOTHING BUT YOUR DATA.