Hacker News: bvrmn

New comment by bvrmn in "Everything in C is undefined behavior"

bvrmn — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:16:49 +0000

I really like Zig's approach to UB. Especially alignment is a part of type. And all this wordy builtins for conversions. Starring to it makes you think what you doing wrong with data model it requires now 3 lines of casting expression.

New comment by bvrmn in "Modern C++ Programming: Busato"

bvrmn — Sat, 02 May 2026 22:49:50 +0000

Another book tactically missing memory and ownership design for modern c++ apps. I think there is no more important topic for teaching. There are some slides in advanced sections but it's quite ironic one needs to know about it from the start!! Who owns memory? How to pass it? Move? Borrow? How to communicate it for readers? It's like a tribal knowledge.

Every time I touch enterprise C++ codebase it's a freakshow heavily struggling with memory management.

As reference the material could be good, as study it's very questionable.

New comment by bvrmn in "The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy"

bvrmn — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:03:30 +0000

Just in case, I'm completely fine with the policy as-is. Even more, I'm ok with making no-sense project policies. I have no business to judge how to govern other's projects.

New comment by bvrmn in "The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy"

bvrmn — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:00:40 +0000

I've assessed half a dozen before writing my own with following results:

    - 2 are python resource hog
    - 2 from AUR don't compile with modern GCC.
    - 1 uses gtk battery icon, but uses dark version on dark taskbar, unreadable.
    - 1 shows just black square.

Like I spent more time on assessment than I got a first working my tray. Amazing times.

New comment by bvrmn in "The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy"

bvrmn — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:17:47 +0000

The funny thing LLM's are amazingly good with writing in Zig. They could inspect stdlib source code to fix compatibility issues with newer compilers and quite prolific with idioms.

For example I got a working application with minimal prompt like "I need an X11 tray icon app showing battery charge level". BTW result: https://github.com/baverman/battray/

Now I'm trying to implement a full taskbar to replace bmpanel2. Results are very positive. I've got feature parity app in 1h with solid zig code.

New comment by bvrmn in "CadQuery is an open-source Python library for building 3D CAD models"

bvrmn — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:46:22 +0000

Oh boy. The major difference is coordinate transformations, global/local/face. OpenScad basically leaves you alone with math you should figure out on your own. Also it's math heavy for all other stuff, for example tangents, smooth connections, intersection coordinates, etc.

New comment by bvrmn in "5NF and Database Design"

bvrmn — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:43:24 +0000

For me NF>3 seems like an implicit encoding of underlying data logic. They impose additional restrictions (usually contrived and artificial, break really fast in real life) on data not directly expressed as data tuples. Because of that they are hard to explain, natural reaction: "why you just don't store data?".

New comment by bvrmn in "Build123d: A Python CAD programming library"

bvrmn — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:16:40 +0000

Shameless plug: https://github.com/baverman/build123d_draft

Experimental extension to make code-cadding as terse as possible.

New comment by bvrmn in "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?"

bvrmn — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:45:41 +0000

> Who is forced to use it? Just use X11, as you said (many times) you do already.

Recent versions of gnome session are compiled only with wayland support in archlinux. To change DE or distribution or use custom package is quite a stretch to call it's not forced.

New comment by bvrmn in "JSLinux Now Supports x86_64"

bvrmn — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:17:11 +0000

I bet Fabrice could write JSAndroid which would provide no lag emulation experience.

New comment by bvrmn in "Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability"

bvrmn — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:05:21 +0000

Repairability score page[1] looks like a Lenovo advert.

[1]: https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...

New comment by bvrmn in "Why does C have the best file API"

bvrmn — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:26:36 +0000

Actually in Python you could recast (zerocopy) bytearray as other primitive C type or even any other structure using ctypes module.

New comment by bvrmn in "C++26: Std:Is_within_lifetime"

bvrmn — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:18:24 +0000

Naming is atrocious indeed.

New comment by bvrmn in "Lines of Code Are Back (and It's Worse Than Before)"

bvrmn — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 07:35:26 +0000

It's kinda hard to deliver value in fewer lines.

New comment by bvrmn in "KISS Launcher – fast launcher for Android"

bvrmn — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:46:04 +0000

Thank you for posting it. It's the launcher I didn't know I need! My usage pattern is literally: use first desktop for often used apps and search for everything else. Samsung launcher search is quite shitty and slow and takes considerable amount of gestures to reach.

Installed and toyed with KISS for 30min and yes. It's perfect for me!

New comment by bvrmn in "Fossil versus Git"

bvrmn — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:26:45 +0000

> 2.6 One vs. Many Check-outs per Repository

For practical cases `git worktree` allows to have multiple checkouts. Document marks this section as "partly disputed" with an external link. IMHO git worktrees has the same ergonomics as in fossil. This section kinda discredits the rest of the article.

New comment by bvrmn in "Japan joining growing global trend of declining democracy"

bvrmn — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 08:49:46 +0000

> there's no central King whose greed for wealth can be satisfied once.

King and court and lords are the same amount of greedy bastards. The issue with kings is on another plain, what to do with power transfer to a new king. Democracy try to solve exactly this problem. What to do with individuals bending laws to be new kings is another issue to solve.

New comment by bvrmn in "Fabrice Bellard Releases MicroQuickJS"

bvrmn — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 08:55:37 +0000

I could live with 1-indexing but a closed range array unpack (slices) is quite big toll and breaks nice intuitive invariant.

New comment by bvrmn in "The efficiency of truth: introducing the jot"

bvrmn — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 13:20:10 +0000

1 case: 14w * 1h -> 0.014kWh * 40p of total cost. There is nothing complex.

2 case: It's an issue with mAh markings. Battery rated in Wh has same simple math.

There are no consumer issues jot solves. More over additional ~10^3 magnitude is consumer hostile.

New comment by bvrmn in "An attempt to articulate Forth's practical strengths and eternal usefulness"

bvrmn — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:31:57 +0000

It's hard to see practical strengths, especially with provided code examples. Most of tax code is stack tossing hiding core logic.

Code as structure could be more conveniently expressed as language data structures as structure nowdays.