I’d be happy to test on android, I’ll send a DM

If you make it manage ssh keys on desktop (create new ssh key, give them nicknames, set default key, etc) I would be thrilled. I’ve attempted to make my own, with Tauri specifically, but I just have too many projects.

I have also come up with a way to compile the keepass crate to WebAssembly

This is exciting. My only request here is: whenever it works please release a standalone wasm file somewhere (anywhere). So many projects either require building the wasm themselves, or instead of releasing a .wasm, they release a JS wrapper that auto-loads the wasm/wasm-imports. Its a pain to try to extract the wasm out of those projects.

Those are really good points, and I appreciate the input. I could see why alcohol being on someones desk isn’t a problem, e.g. depending on the person its possible the bottle doesn’t have a “gravity” tempting them.

I’m going to guess that reality is somewhere between my points and your points. Notifications can be configured, but my grandmother isn’t going to figure it out. Having a bottle of alcohol on every person’s desk is probably completely neutral for a lot of people, but could be detrimental to others. Etc

I’m saying one of the big downsides has nothing to do with self discipline.

• Even if we never click an advertisement.
• Even if we never eat from the candy bowl.
• Even if we never use the bad phone apps.

Merely living in a world covered in advertisements, living next to a delicious smelling candy bowl, living 30 seconds away from memes, rage-bait, doom scrolling, sports gambling, and other slop – just living next to those things are bad for our mental health.

Some sources if you’re curious on the research behind it. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4731333/

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301694

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/mgmtuht/31/

I disagree. Yes there can be good intermediate steps, but deleting slop is not even half as healthy as locking a phone away.

1. Interruptions

Not just phone calls or texts, but things like typing an email on the phone and then seeing a text or having the GPS interrupt your train of thought by yelling “Continue straight for 5 miles”. Brains hate interruptions. Those are still going to exist even when the slop is gone.

2. Resisting a temptation is exhausting. “not eating candy is healthy”… yes but having a candy bowl right next to your desk is exhausting. It takes 2sec to open a twitter link in the browser. Uninstalling an app is like moving the candy bowl to a nearby room, yeah its better, but it only takes 30 sec to reinstall.

Turning off the dopamine machine (not eating candy) is one thing. But Eddy was showing something a lot bigger than that; deleting his access to the temptation. He didnt know the code to unlock the phone.

I get this, but

Why not say “I get this, and …” ?

I don’t think the idea of a learn-as-you-go editor goes against the idea of watching skilled devs with their favorite tool

Input speed is not “just” input speed.

Note: I’m not about to argue for or against modal editors, I just want to answer: why is input speed really really really important, when (we agree) its not a big percent of total time.

5min at 80mph over a bumpy dirt path is very very different than 5min of flat smooth straight driving. And not just because of effort.

A senior and junior dev could spend the same amount of time to rename a var across 15 files, move a function to a new file, comment out two blocks, comment one back in, etc. But. When I try to have a conversation while they do that, or when I change my mind and tell the junior to undo all that, its a massive emotional drain on the junior.

But effort isn’t the whole picture either: speed is a big deal because pausing a conversation/mental thought for 5 seconds while you wait to finish some typing, is incredibly disruptive/jarring to the thought-process itself. That’s how edge cases get forgotten, and business logic gets missed.

Slower input is not merely input time loss, it also creates time loss in the debugging/conceptualizing stages, and increases overall energy consumption.

If the input is already fast enough that there’s no “pauses in the conversation” then I’d agree, there’s not much benefit in increasing input speed further. BUT there’s almost always some task, like converting all local vars (but not imported methods) in a project to camel case, that are big enough to choke the conversation, even for a senior dev. So there’s not necessarily a “good enough” point because it’s more like decreasing how often the conversation gets interrupted.

Don’t Speculate

Go to Twitch/YouTube. Watch a senior Vim/Jetbrains/Emacs/VS Code/Helix dev churn out code for a hackathon/advent-of-code, and see what you are (or are not!) missing out on.

If you have “how the hell did they just do that” moments, figure out what that feature is, and STEAL IT. If its too hard to steal, then maybe you are being limited by your editor. Base your “fear of missing out” on what you see rather than random people tossing their opinions around. Only you can answer “how much is that feature worth to me and my workflows?”

• If you’re going to try modal editors, sooner is exponentially better. Probably start with Vim bindings for VS Code.
• If you’re not going to go modal, then make absolutely sure you don’t bottom out. To be frank, Ctrl+D is the tip of the iceberg. Half the benefit of modal editors is, mastery is mandatory; they chase you around with a 10k volt taser until you’ve got 100 instinctual shortcuts. Hardly anyone mentions this but Go beyond/outside your editor: At the OS level, use spacebar as a modifier key, where holding spacebar converts your WASD into arrow keys. Then disable your normal arrow keys. Something like that will get you vim-like benefits, but in every app, and with a learning bump instead of a learning mountain. For VS Code, get cursor jumper extensions like Mario (block jumper), get cursor-alignment extensions, write boatloads of custom code snippets, get a macro record+replay extension, make a jump-to-next quote, jump to next bracket, install sequential number generator extension, a case change (camel case, snake case, etc) extension, sort lines, case-preserving rename. If you can avoid bottoming out, and keep learning, you’ll likely never feel that you are missing out on whatever modal editor people are swearing by.

I think it could be a great solution. I’ve never considered it before. That said there’s one sticking point for me:

Apportion payment to developers based on software use by paid users and the size of their contribution to that software.

That^ . That needs a lot more detail. If they provide solid details – details that most can agree on – then I will actually be on board with the solution.

Yeah I wish there was a way to contribute to the hosting with torrent-like seeding. My phone can seed a torrent, but its not going to host an instance.

1 like = seed for 1 month seems like an interesting model

Why not both?

Its a tough problem. You have to find something that you want to exist; like an app or a website or a game. For example, try making a GUI for managing SSH keys. You know, like the ones github makes you create in order to clone and push to a repo. Make a visual representation of those keys (stored in the .ssh folder), and tools to add/delete them.

Along the way you’ll find tons of missing things, tools that should exist but don’t. Those are the “real” projects that will really expand your capabilities as a developer.

For example, I was coding in python and wanted to make a function that caches the output because the code was inherently slow.

• but to cache an output we need to know the inputs are the same
• hashes are good for this but lists can’t be hashed with the built-in python hash function
• we can make our own hash, but hashing a list that contains itself is hard
• there is a solution for lists, but then hashing a set that contains itself is a serious problem (MUCH harder than hashing a list)
• turns out hashing a set is the same problem as the graph-coloring problem (graph isomorphism)
• suddenly I have a really deep understanding of recursive data structures all because I wanted to a function that caches its output.

Ignore the name (neural networks might as well be a footnote). A more appropriate title would be “generic problems and algorithms”.

(Artificial Intelligence: A modern approach by Russell and Norvig)

https://github.com/Youquan1/Artificial-intelligence-books/blob/master/Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach - Stuart J. Russell %2C Peter Norvig.pdf

I agree, and here’s a few different avenues of examples:

1. If trying to get past interviews, Leet code and hacker rank can be great. They’re not so great for real world problems, but not bad.

2. Advent of code is a good middle ground between theory and practice in my opinion.

3. To really learn real world problem solving, I’d recommend implement a specification, without looking at existing implementations. For example, make a basic regex engine (formal Regular Expressions not PCRE expressions), or try to implement the C Preprocessor, or the JS event loop.

“Algorithms to live by” https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Live-Computer-Science-Decisions/dp/1627790365

Less technical than you probably want, but it is useful for mapping real world problems to known algorithms.

Celebrities are going to be shocked when they hear about email

Distros should ship with this this under /readme.jpg

(I know I’m two months late)

To back up what you’re saying, I work with ML, and the guy next to me does ML for traffic signal controllers. He basically established the benchmark for traffic signal simulators for reinforcement learning.

Nothing works. All of the cutting edge reinforment algorithms, all the existing publications, some of which train for months, all perform worse than “fixed policy” controllers. The issue isn’t the brains of the system, its the fact that stoplights are fricken blind to what is happing.

If you paid a true professional to sit down 1-on-1 with you everyday for 6 months, and you are good at learning I think yes, for most but not all software positions. But unless you’re forking over $200k I don’t think any professional dev is going to do that for you.

This could actually be a pretty big deal

1. The Eclipse foundation has been making alternatives to VS Code’s “killer apps” (Docker, Python, Go, C++, SSH, Live share, etc). AKA the closed source ones exclusive to VS Code offical that make all forks of VS Code a huge downgrade. The Eclipse foundation is also running the extension store that powers VS Codium.
2. “why not just use VS Codium?” (With the killer extensions made by Eclipse)
   • VS Codium is great, but because of manpower limits, they always have to be “downstream” of VS Code. They can’t rewrite any of the core systems.
   • As someone who contributes to VS Code, and loves VS Codium, many issues I have with VS Code have been open on github for +7 years, with hundreds of comments and thumbs-ups. We can’t even sort the file explorer view by last-edited and folders-first (but we can do folders-first alphabetical). Thats been open since 2017.
   • Theia looks like it could finally be the hard fork I’ve been waiting for. A hackable editor, trying to be open source, where all my extensions work, and the community can actually make a PR, get it merged, and extensions are not excessively sandboxed.
   • Will it be that? Only time will tell, but the Eclipse foundation has a pretty good record. They’re definitely prepared for long term support.

He got convinced, its now Auxolotl!

https://github.com/auxolotl/

Theres going to be an official reevaluation once the governance has finished bootstrapping.