Hacker News: Dewie

New comment by Dewie in "A Loss for Words: Can a Dying Language Be Saved?"

Dewie — Sun, 29 Mar 2015 01:22:15 +0000

> To play the devil's advocate, maybe they deserve to die out.

In other words "let me present my genuine opinion by wrapping it in a more presentable delivery".

New comment by Dewie in "Termui – Go terminal dashboard"

Dewie — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:56:32 +0000

Damn it - it seems I mistakingly replied to the whole thread, when I intended to reply to this post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9276508

New comment by Dewie in "Not everything is an expression"

Dewie — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:50:36 +0000

> On the other hand, in a statically typed language there is necessarily a distinction between code that is executed at runtime and (although we often don't talk about it this way) code that is executed at compile time.

Is the distinction or separation necessarily obvious? Statically typed languages which have a unified term- and type-level seem to get a bit subtle in this regard, since a type can be used as a value. And Idris passes proofs around, and has to use proof erasure in order to not let it infect the runtime: proofs can remain until run-time if you're not careful.

I am asking this as a question since I don't have enough experience with such languages to really know myself.

New comment by Dewie in "Ask HN: Mechanical engineer that wants to work in the programming field"

Dewie — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:36:26 +0000

A friend wanted to become a lawyer in LA (he's not American). He travelled there once, and he changed his mind about that for some reason. That saved him some time from starting to study American law, I guess.

New comment by Dewie in "Termui – Go terminal dashboard"

Dewie — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:34:05 +0000

Ugh, my bad. I don't even know why I thought it was a landing page to begin with. Still, the same argument applies: for a personal website by a non-celebrity (status), it's pointless indirection to have to (for newcomers) explicitly have to ask for how to access other sites, and accessing other sites is the whole point of the website (besides the "novelty"). Oh, that and changing the 'terminals' background colour, I guess.

New comment by Dewie in "Termui – Go terminal dashboard"

Dewie — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 00:19:47 +0000

Well, I never thought that I was an innovating or unique grumpy mofo. ;)

New comment by Dewie in "Termui – Go terminal dashboard"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 16:37:16 +0000

> You are suggesting using screen space for the use case of a new user. Some people optimize for people that are already familiar with the program.

It's a landing page, man. Unless you're a celebrity, you should "optimize for new users".

New comment by Dewie in "Apple CEO Tim Cook to donate his fortune to charity"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:23:56 +0000

This should be good for the Apple stocks.

New comment by Dewie in "Why I killed my standing desk"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 14:58:37 +0000

> Humans assume that standing, walking or running (or even sitting!) is something that you just pick up along the way. It is not.

People are so presumptuous. What are they going to arrogantly assume next? That they can breathe properly without proper training; that they can socialize without a dating coach; that they can chew food properly without getting digestive problems; that they can listen to their own intuition without a consultation by a life coach?

New comment by Dewie in "Why I killed my standing desk"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 14:54:12 +0000

> Because I'm already standing, I have an easier time walking away from my desk - to get a drink, go to the bathroom, confer with a colleague, go for a walk, etc. - and I've also been incorporating squats, calf raises and stretches into my daily movements.

But if you were sitting, you would get a half squat out of having to get up to get coffee etc. ;)

New comment by Dewie in "Ask HN: Mechanical engineer that wants to work in the programming field"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:26:10 +0000

Maybe first travel to the West Coast on a vacation or something to get a feel for what it's actually like. If you haven't already.

New comment by Dewie in "How I taught my dog to text me selfies"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:26:20 +0000

> In the end, simplicity won out.

But the overly ambitious title remained.

New comment by Dewie in "How I taught my dog to text me selfies"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:24:11 +0000

> Lets say I turn this into some kind of guard dog system (bear with me). Imagine someone wanders onto my property. I'd rather get a text/mms than an email which might get lost in my inbox.

You can't have push notifications for certain subjects or email addresses? If you're going to make home security part of this, you might as well set up your email to be accommodating to it as well. If you're gonna use email.

New comment by Dewie in "Code Generation from the AST in Go"

Dewie — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 09:28:12 +0000

> Maybe like me you use Fresh

> and you have a OCD of hitting save every 2-3 seconds as you are thinking

Please stop with this "OCD" bullshit.

New comment by Dewie in "React Native is now open source"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 20:57:03 +0000

> Full disclosure: I work at Google,

Good for you buddy.

New comment by Dewie in "Why English sucks as the language for international and scientific communication"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 20:53:32 +0000

I'm referring to the "nothing is perfect argument". It gets used to muddy the water so that one can imply that it's all a wash. "Nothing is perfect" should be taken as a given on almost all topics, so it's useless except for as a dishonest rhetorical device.

I don't like to compare programming languages and human languages, but for different reasons. (Hint: because they have so little in common.)

New comment by Dewie in "Why English sucks as the language for international and scientific communication"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 20:43:16 +0000

> The thing is, there are no perfect language, just like programming languages.

There has got to be some name for this argument tactic. It's so trite and useless.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9259764

New comment by Dewie in "Why Racket? Why Lisp? (2014)"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 17:58:33 +0000

* rite of passage

New comment by Dewie in "Amazon Goes After Dropbox, Google, Microsoft with Unlimited Cloud Drive Storage"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 16:42:39 +0000

The difference is that a user doesn't feel like just using his computer normally gives him any backup. But if his folder is inside Dropbox, he might be lulled into a sense of comfort since he thinks of Dropbox as a kind of backup[1]. So if he uses Dropbox instead of just using his plain old computer (hard drive), then he might start to get more careless than when he didn't feel that he had a safety net.

[1] Though personally I would disagree.

New comment by Dewie in "Amazon Goes After Dropbox, Google, Microsoft with Unlimited Cloud Drive Storage"

Dewie — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:05:57 +0000

So I guess the conclusion is that no mainstream cloud service is to be relied on.