Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.

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  • 11 Posts
  • 196 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I found the most effective way to get a nerd into ham is: mention that ham radio is in the criteria to become an astronaut. Suddenly they’re doing the study courses all on their own. Granted, they have to already be a nerd. ;)

    For the non nerds, the prepper angle seems to work with some.

    The thing you have to deliver is the “why”, not the how. If they’ve decided they want to learn it, they will.









  • I agree. And those decades of development come with huge advantages. Libraries. Patterns. Textbooks! Billions of lines of code you can cross reference and learn from!

    It’s fun to bleed a little when you are tinkering. It’s not fun to have to reinvent the wheel because you choose a language that doesn’t have an existing ecosystem. That becomes and chicken-and-egg problem. The tinkerers fulfill this role (building out the ecosystem) and also tend to advocate for their tinkering language of choice. But there needs to be a real critical mass.

    It takes decades to shift an entrenched ecosystem. Check in ten years if the following exist in languages other than C/C++: an enterprise grade database, a python(/etc.) interpreter that isn’t marked experimental, an OS kernel that is used somewhere real, an embedded manufacturer that ships the language as its first class citizen, a AAA game using it under the engine…

    Like, in the last 15 years, I’m only aware of a single AAA game that used a memory safe language – Neverwinter Nights 2 used C# for part of the Electron Engine…

    Rust is the most likely candidate here, although you see things like Erlang being used to make some databases (CouchDB). People see Rust being used on some real infrastructure projects that gain actual traction (polars comes to mind). Polars is an interesting use case though – it’s simply better than the other projects in its particular space and so people are switching to it not because it is written in rust at all… And honestly, that’s probably the only way this happens.



  • No.

    C is going to be around and useful long after COBOL is collecting dust. Too many core things are built with C. The Linux kernel, the CPython interpreter, etc. Making C go away will require major rewrites of projects that have millions upon millions of hours of development.

    Even Fortran has a huge installed base (compared to COBOL) and is still actively used for development. Sometimes the right tool for a job is an old tool, because it is so well refined for a specific task.

    Forth anyone?

    The rewrite-it-in-rust gang arrives in 3, 2 …


  • I think you effectively nailed it. It’s a small act that represents a person’s larger outlook on civilization. Are you participating in it or are you rejecting it.

    It’s similar to a smoker that flicks their cigarettes in random places. Or spitting out gum on the sidewalk. Or many other small things that aren’t that important on a small scale, but if everyone does the same thing, then is sucks. But if (almost) everyone does the small thing to benefit the whole, the whole is better off for it.