programmers-off-topic

[rotund violet]

If someone is excited enough about the field to teach themselves one of them, then that's great. But as an "intro to programming" teaching tool, of course ineffective.

[cinder karma]

Is Java actually that bad

[worn remnant]

(no)

[cinder karma]

I hate it for its influence

[rotund violet]

It's not a bad language. Just a bad language to learn first.

[cinder karma]

But as a standalone language it's fine

[rotund violet]

Devs who start off with Java pick up too many bad habits and too few good habits.

[ivory shadow]

It's just worse C#

[light forum]

Hi, nice to meet you, I learned Pascal only in Computer Science in high school.

[worn remnant]

anyway the best joke language is INTERCAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERCAL

[cinder karma]

I started with vba

[rotund violet]

Intercal implemented COMEFROM so I have to agree there.

[cinder karma]

I'm tainted for life

[worn remnant]

the thing where you have to use PLEASE enough times, but not too many, is comedy gold

[rotund violet]

You started with VBA maybe, but I'll bet like a lot of us who dealt with VBA, it wasn't on an academic or formal basis, it was just a tool to solve specific (and generally narrow) problems.

[cinder karma]

Yup

[rotund violet]

That's different from students being taught Java in the context of "this is how to do programming"

[sand frost]

I was started on Scheme

Not sure what that says about me

[rotund violet]

You might be emotionally scarred by VBA, but that's also different.

[rotund violet]

True to the MathPerson label, then.

[light forum]

Only thing I remember from CS is we made a blackjack game

All ASCII type images

[sand frost]

We made Conway’s game of life

[rotund violet]

You could actually do some impressive graphical things with Turbo Pascal as long as you figured out how to set the different VGA modes and such.

It was very obscure, and I don't even remember the details anymore, but it could be done. You could make side-scroller games, even.

[light forum]

My first big code endeavor was probably RPG maker, which I think was VBA

[sand frost]

I mostly used Java for little hobby projects

Like scheduling for my robotics team

[light forum]

First game modding I did was for the original Sims

[cinder karma]

I did Django next

Scarred for life 😛

[rotund violet]

Geez, you really got the short end of the stick on your programming intros.

What was after Django - FORTRAN? Perl?

[cinder karma]

Assembly

Arm

[worn remnant]

A Sieve of Eratosthenes benchmark, computing all prime numbers less than 65536, was tested on a Sun SPARCstation 1 in 1992. In C, it took less than half a second; the same program in INTERCAL took over seventeen hours.[10]
see? best.

[rotund violet]

That's a step up, I'd say.

[light forum]

Are you a teacher?

[sand frost]

I have been partially corrected — my fiancé started out in pascal (not in the US education system though)

I’m a professor, but not in CS

[leaden marsh]

(congrats btw)

(I know I'm late)

[light forum]

Cool, I teach Social Studies

[rotund violet]

It was definitely a thing in some schools. The ones that had some latitude over the curricula, before Common Core and all that.

And presumably outside the USA.

[cinder karma]

Tbh I didn't even know pascal existed lol

[light forum]

Pascal was all my school had, granted this was in like 97. I mean the internet was barely a thing

[devout vault]

That's where PascalCase comes from!

[cinder karma]

Huh

Never knew

[rotund violet]

Yeah, that. Also, if you've heard of ADA, I'm pretty sure that's a Pascal variant.

[leaden marsh]

I misread that as PascalCore and thought you made a framework to make pascal mods

[cinder karma]

American disability act?

[rotund violet]

ADA used to be the butt of many programming jokes... but again, maybe before your time.

[devout vault]

I did not but I will now /s

[sand frost]

This is also what it means to me

[rotund violet]

Actually I'm being senile again, it's not an acronym, it's just "Ada".

[devout vault]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)

[sand frost]

For Ada Lovelace?

[leaden marsh]

yeah I was gonna say, isn't it just a name

[rotund violet]

Anyway, Ada was (is?) big in miltech.

[light forum]

Currently self learning c# for Stardew

[leaden marsh]

Suspiciously on topic

[rotund violet]

Saying the name of the game in this channel = autoban

[light forum]

I have been modding Minecraft for years, so it has been basically JSON, JavaScript, and learned Python for discord bots.

[cinder karma]

Stardew Valley

There. Ban me

[leaden marsh]

aw

[devout vault]

atra is exempt

Because once atra is gone there's no way we can get them back

[light forum]

So, just me then, Ill see myself out.

[rotund violet]

I would totally ban him anyway just for the lulz, but sadly I lack the executive power,

[leaden marsh]

I would leave the server if atra was banned

Sorry I don't make the rules

[cinder karma]

Nooooo 😦

You're valuable, myuu

[leaden marsh]

as are you!!!!

goodness gracious mama mia

[cinder karma]

Not to the game!!!

[rotund violet]

Anyway, Atra doesn't really want to get banned, where else would he post photos of his needlework?

[cinder karma]

(And that's a good thing)

[cinder karma]

R/knitting

[devout vault]

And the thread in krobus

[leaden marsh]

I meannn I don't strictly need to be here

(as much as the antics are interesting)

[devout vault]

Antics? In my unhinged discord server?

[leaden marsh]

I was going to name a recent MacOS crisis but that's not for here

a fun scramble

[light forum]

We talked about first languages, what was everyone first home computer running

[leaden marsh]

XP

[devout vault]

I think it was XP for me too

[light forum]

Yep, I'm old

[cinder karma]

I probably lived in a house with xp

But I didn't really computer until 7

[pliant snow]

MacOS 8.6 lol

[cinder karma]

Casey, this is why I can joke about raising offspring in an anti technology cult

[rotund violet]

MS-DOS, obviously

[leaden marsh]

In this day and age, I'm on board with that

[cinder karma]

I'm the type of hardware dev that doesn't trust the damn things

[rotund violet]

Oh wait... that prize probably goes to whatever the hell the Apple II ran, I don't even know the name.

[devout vault]

Atra moving to Amish land confirmed

[light forum]

Our first computer when I was a kid was a dos based 5in floppy disc machine with a green on black screen

[leaden marsh]

Atra send me blue popcorn kernels from Amish land

[devout vault]

Blue what?

[leaden marsh]

popcorn

[devout vault]

googles

[cinder karma]

Every day I'm closer to asking my friend who owns a farm if I can. Be a part time farmhand

[devout vault]

Midnight blue doesn't count as blue

[devout vault]

When you said blue popcorn kernels I was thinking like blue blue

[leaden marsh]

You take that back

[devout vault]

Never

[pliant snow]

is there midday blue

[leaden marsh]

I was going to say blue lives matter but that's a completely different movement

All shades of blue are valid

[devout vault]

How can you even call something a color if it isn't colorful

[leaden marsh]

you take that back

don't come for my kid like that

[devout vault]

Midnight blue is just fancy black/gray

I mean, the result for "midnight blue" google search looks blue

But that popcorn is NOT blue

[light forum]

Black isn't a color though, and blue is

[leaden marsh]

anyways

my first language was BASIC

python shortly after

[light forum]

I learned that too, don't remember why now though

Maybe spreadsheet macros on opensheets

[devout vault]

I think technically mine was lua (Roblox), if Game Maker 7's not-text code doesn't count

[pliant snow]

The first one I properly used was Java in college, but I think i mucked about with simple bash scripting a bit earlier

[leaden marsh]

Mine would be Microsoft popfly if we count visual scripting

I think

[devout vault]

Oh wait

I remember something maybe older

Well, maybe not

I was gonna say "some software where you moved around a turtle" but that was during middle school I think? And I got into Game Maker at the end of elementary school

[leaden marsh]

Like the python one or

[devout vault]

No

[light forum]

Like code academy

[leaden marsh]

Game maker was also elementary for me

[devout vault]

If google AI is to be trusted (a big if) it's called Logo

[worn remnant]

moving the turtle with code was definitely called Logo. i remember it well

[devout vault]

Are you saying google AI was actually correct for once???

[worn remnant]

(i'm not an AI, but can you really take my word for it?)

[devout vault]

Everyone is an AI on the internet

Especially Pathos

[pliant snow]

that's what an AI would say..

oh we also had the turtle moving thing in middle school

[rotund violet]

I remember Logo, though I don't think it was the first.

[devout vault]

(I've heard Pathos's voice but that's clearly just one of those fancy AI voices)

[rotund violet]

Funny thing is, Logo isn't all that different from SVG.

[light forum]

I want to try a make something using GB Studio

[pliant snow]

that would be neat

the first C program I ever wrote was an awful version of Pong for game boy

[devout vault]

I tried to get my twin brother into gb studio at one point

[light forum]

Looks fairly straightforward visual scripting

Plus the fact you can throw the game you make into a handheld like an anbernic is pretty cool

[pliant snow]

I think i looked into it at some point, although I think they added a lot more game options, it used to be just kinda Zelda-ish games

[light forum]

Yeah, it has gotten better. I believe it can do color stuff now too

[devout vault]

This conversation reminded me of the time I was asking about something on the SFML forums and it turns out I just didn't understand how references worked

(Back in 2010)

[pliant snow]

Super

uh

Famicom

Mario

Luigi

nailed it

[leaden marsh]

San Francisco Market Life

[pliant snow]

...im not sure whether to believe you

[devout vault]

https://www.sfml-dev.org/

[pliant snow]

I think a goal of mine is going to try and make a game every month or every 2 weeks in 2025

[devout vault]

https://www.onegameamonth.com/

Oh that isn't run anymore

I should've read the page before I linked it

[leaden marsh]

To what standard

[pliant snow]

to the standard of whatever i can get done in 2-4 weeks

[leaden marsh]

Like are we talking Any% game dev, maybe it has sound, maybe the character is a square

[pliant snow]

i think i can get more than that hopefully, but yeah mostly little tech demos

[leaden marsh]

Ooh okay okay

Engines, frameworks, from scratch?

[devout vault]

I should get back into making small games too

[leaden marsh]

Honestly same

[pliant snow]

it wont be from scratch, there are a few engines I know how to use, Pico-8, some Godot, Love2D, then some others I'd like to try such as GB studio

[devout vault]

My problem is usually coming up with an idea I like

Most of the game ideas I really like are larger

I guess I should try stripping them down to the bare minimum and building that

[leaden marsh]

I feel you

It's hard personally to imagine something on the scale of like, an arcade cabinet

[pliant snow]

yeah im awful at coming up with ideas

[cinder karma]

An actual arcade cabinet would be fun tbh

Like

With leds

Give me a reason to lasercut

I think I'm thinking of pinball actually

[devout vault]

I used to be able to do it, hence my ~5ish Ludum Dare games

(Though a couple were pretty bad)

[cinder karma]

Hey Casey, would you ever be interested in making a pinball

[devout vault]

This was able back before I used any game engines - just me, C++, and SFML

[cinder karma]

Fancy!

[devout vault]

(I mean, I guess you could argue I still don't since I only rarely use Godot)

[pliant snow]

is SFML just SDL but fancier

[devout vault]

Basically, it's object oriented

[devout vault]

I don't actually know how pinball physics work

[cinder karma]

neither do I

[devout vault]

SFML is written in C++ instead of C, so it can do fancy C++ things

And it's hardware accelerated since it uses opengl (which I think newer SDL might? But SDL at the time you had to use opengl directly for hardware acceleration I think)

[sand frost]

Isn’t it just bouncing?

[rotund violet]

Pinball physics are definitely not normal gravity.

[sand frost]

Maybe with a tiny bit of gravity

[devout vault]

Well sure, but don't you have to like. Know what direction the ball is going based on the angle it hits and stuff

[rotund violet]

That part should just be normal vector reflection?

[sand frost]

Pure reflection is pretty simple

Just need angle in and angle of wall

[rotund violet]

Pinball gravity is whack, but reflection is normal, or as normal as it gets for rounded surfaces.

[cinder karma]

i mean, yes, like, yes. I can indeed deal with kinematics

I also don't know what "pinball" "scoring" is

[rotund violet]

You probably don't even need to deal with kinematics, I'll bet pinball would run just fine with standard collision dynamics and a bit of screwing around with gravity.

[cinder karma]

oh, um

I meant like

actual pinball

like.

I wanna use the lasercutter

[devout vault]

Ah, I assumed you meant software given you asked me if I wanted to 😛

[rotund violet]

(same)

[cinder karma]

you made a controller!

[rotund violet]

And a controller is... like a pinball cabinet? Hm...

[devout vault]

I mean, I did the code for it, but not the hardware. I told you the only way to control the buttons was to manually connect the wires, right? 😛

[cinder karma]

perfect! I'll start with a cad model shortly

[devout vault]

Are you planning on shipping me an entire arcade cabinet for me to work on or something 😛

[cinder karma]

I'll figure it out

[rotund violet]

You know that these machines are vertically integrated, right? Like, putting together a non-functioning cabinet and then saying "ok, software now" is not going to work.

[devout vault]

Don't be such a pessimist - I'm sure atra has some fancy magic to make things that simple

[leaden marsh]

inb4 Atra recreates the Hanaho arcade cabinets

[rotund violet]

Yes, PinballBase and PinballCore will solve everything, surely.

[devout vault]

I've always wanted to harmony patch reality to get past those silly physical constraints

[cinder karma]

I can't hear you, I'm on digikey shopping for fpgas

[rotund violet]

PinballCore will be written in Verilog. You know Verilog, right Casey?

[devout vault]

Vaguely

[uncut seal]

EXCUSE ME?!

What the hell is wrong with these professors?!

[rain apex]

No hallucination

[ivory shadow]

Has the professor been secretly replaced with AI? Quick tell them to ignore previous instructions and sing I'm a Little Teapot

[uncut seal]

I might just give up on this class, the first 5 classes were on data analysis in biology, so I didn't understand much...

[safe dragon]

what a wild class

[cinder karma]

The heck

[safe dragon]

that's insane

[cinder karma]

What is happening to the children

Aren't you in like Japan

[worn remnant]

your professor is a void person who has fully bought the hype of generative AI replacing work, so they are teaching you how to be an effective prompt jockey

[uncut seal]

yep, information science department

the worse is that it's not even the same class as the LaTeX class I was talking about last time

[safe dragon]

I asked copilot chat for advice recently in an act of desperation but then it gave me some super generic advice I had no use for that was simultaneously also incorrect

[worn remnant]

oh, this is stardew so i should clarify: "void person (derogatory)"

[safe dragon]

[cinder karma]

I actually do have it write generic data parse code for me all the time

Although I might be getting an intern soon so

[safe dragon]

copilot helps me quite significantly with setting up mappers and data models

it just doesn't do anything technically complicated

[ivory shadow]

Soon your intern will have it write generic code instead of you having to do it yourself

[uncut seal]

in this case, you're asking it something that you know how to do but is borring and takes time, my case is replacing learning (in some sense)

[floral parcel]

One of my super smart professors has developed an obsession with AI and uses it for just about everything.
He's developed tools which use AI to advise students for him (like what classes they need to take)
Some of the assignments I do is graded by AI lol

[ivory shadow]

If I was paying for a class and I had that happen I would be complaining to literally everyone I could.

[fleet wren]

it seems I picked the right time to graduate

wrong chat lol, try #making-mods-general

now my message looks weird

[red crest]

my current semester has also been very disappointingly focused on AI and discarding everything else but thankfully ive not actually been asked to use it yet
so yeah id say you chose the right time

[rotund violet]

Tit for tat: if it's OK for the professor to grade it with AI, then it's OK for you to write it with AI.

[floral parcel]

You'd figure as much, but it's one of those "rules for thee but not for me" kind of thing. Ironically enough, my college has a strict policy on plagiarism and AI.

[cyan shadow]

the funny thing is, I also had an assignment this semester in which I had to generate an essay with AI.

The difference? we had to then rewrite the thing ourselves to highlight the difference in the quality of output of ChatGPT and a group of masters students. the whole point was to show how genAI isn't the best for academic/legal writing and it was honestly quite interesting, plus we still had to conduct academic research as usual

the class that was for is on regulating AI, though

[rotund violet]

Do they now? I wonder if the professor is really as exempt from the rules as he believes he is.

[cyan shadow]

Depends on how the rules are structured - Examination Rules of Ethics would not apply to a prof if they're designed to cover the academic conduct of the students only, and not the grading process.

[rotund violet]

Oh of course, of course, I'd never even think about suggesting any sort of work-to-rule scenario, merely musing about the hypothetical possibility.

[cyan shadow]

I'm wondering the same! Just also... slightly traumatised by all the fear-mongering my current university does over plagiarism

The fear of accidental plagiarism is very much at the front of my mind at all times when doing an assignment.

[rotund violet]

One might almost be led to believe, incorrectly of course, that the rules are designed to be enforced selectively and arbitrarily.

[floral parcel]

My University doesn't have written out rules for AI use by professors, he looked into it before he started using it.

[rotund violet]

Of course they don't have written out rules for professors; that's hardly my point.

When one intentionally designs a system with exploitable vulnerabilities, one tends to find them being exploited by rivals and enemies as well as allies.

[snow rampart]

System.out.println("Hello world");

[devout vault]

.choose do anything, flail around uselessly

[heavy dagger]

Choose result: flail around uselessly

[devout vault]

uber has spoken

...that was meant to be in making mods general

[sand frost]

I mean, flailing around uselessly is universal

it could be off topic

[devout vault]

True

[uncut seal]

order received 🫡

[cinder karma]

Thanksgiving is a good day to take off

[cinder karma]

Something behind me at work is beeping

If you never hear from me again, you know why

Also I need to get one of those shirts that say "if you see me running, run faster"

This shirt but for chemicals instead

[sand frost]

Something was beeping in the house yesterday

We thought it was the smoke alarms, but we took all of them down and it was still beeping

So we narrowed it down to the games cabinet with careful listening

But then it wasn’t the games!!

There was a smoke alarm hidden in the games

[cinder karma]

Haha I'm back in the lab today so

Hanging out with the high voltage

[floral parcel]

Oh darn, what job do you do?

[floral parcel]

Interesting place to put an alarm. Lol

[safe dragon]

the only time my smoke alarm has ever gone off was when I burnt a grilled cheese sandwich

[floral parcel]

Mine does it every time I cook pizza in the oven.

[sand frost]

The suspicion I have is that it was placed there as a convenient shelf when the smoke alarm was last being replaced

It doesn’t normally live there p sure

[pliant snow]

my fucking smoke alarm was going off very briefly in the middle of the night then stopping, every two weeks

after like two months i finally figured out which one was malfunctioning

[safe dragon]

my mom bought a smoke alarm once that every hour or so just does 1 very loud high pitch beep just to show that it's still working

it was miserable

[sand frost]

This one was chirping

[cinder karma]

Chirp!

[floral parcel]

Yeah that's terrible

[sand frost]

Just a little bip every minute or two

[cinder karma]

We make specialized integrated circuits

[safe dragon]

race course circuits

that'd be interesting

[floral parcel]

Nice, that sounds super cool!

[ivory shadow]

The last time I went through this it:

1. Started at 2am
2. Ended up being the carbon monoxide detector I had forgotten I even had

[sand frost]

It’s good to have one

Was it out of battery or was your house full of CO?

[ivory shadow]

Neither, it just got too old. I assume the sensor eventually goes bad like in smoke detectors.

[sand frost]

Makes sense

Mine are from early 2020, and usually these things are 10 year, so I haven’t had this experience yet

My grandfather died from CO poisoning, so I’m a pretty staunch supporter of having detectors

[cinder karma]

Oh I'm so so sorry 🫂

[ivory shadow]

Something I want to do when I eventually finally do smart home things is set up a bunch of air quality sensors.

[rotund violet]

Hopefully none of you have to deal with the hardwired detectors that shriek even louder if you try to disconnect them.

[sand frost]

That was the kind we were dealing with yesterday lol

Though if you yank the battery asap it's not too bad

[cinder karma]

Don't worry I'm very good at ignoring my esd monitor bitching at me

[sand frost]

Ancient house, ancient fire alarms

[rotund violet]

I was thinking of the hardwired ones that only use the battery as a backup. So removing the failing battery just makes them more angry. Don't even think about ignoring it, you can hear it loud and clear on the next floor or even in the next house.

Why anyone would design something so insane, I can't even guess. Maybe they expected the battery to literally last forever. Or maybe they just hate you.

[sand frost]

Luckily it seems like the ones yesterday aren't like that

But the fire alarm in that house likes to go off randomly

Like literally for no reason

[rotund violet]

That's probably a failing sensor, yeah.

[sand frost]

It's also a duplex, and the two sides are wired together, which sort of makes sense but is also hella annoying

So it could be any of like 30 different sensors

[rotund violet]

Yep, you can find entire townhouse blocks that are on one gigantic hardwired "network".

[sand frost]

There were 4 on one floor alone, and each side has 4 floors

So realistically who knows why, it could even be the neighbors doing something that actually reasonably sets off the alarms but isn't a fire

[rotund violet]

Even better if they're installed in a home with 9- or 10-foot ceilings, so good luck getting to one without a full ladder. Little step-stool or small utility ladder won't cut it.

At a certain point it makes you think, "I'd rather take my chances with the fire".

[cinder karma]

Clearly you need stilts

[rotund violet]

You forgot the second half of your pitch. ("And lucky for you, I just happen to be selling them at a 20% discount! Buy yours today!")

[pastel swan]

How powerful does a laptop need to be to run mods for sdv? I've been thinking of buying it on steam and trying to use mods but idk if my laptop will be strong enough

[lethal walrus]

#modded-stardew

[cinder karma]

it really does not feel like a friday

like

it feels like a saturday

[safe dragon]

you're correct

it is a Saturday

[sand frost]

Probably because of the holiday

[floral parcel]

Yeah same. I feel like I've had a longer weekend thanks to the Holiday.

[cinder karma]

I had one (1) additional day off this week, but today was pretty chill at work

and I suspect tomorrow will be chill too

[sonic mirage]

Re: Smoke Alarms: Everyone's favorite nerd has a video on the two types of smoke alarms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuAeaIcAXtg
(this reminds me that I need to swap out the annoying ionization one I have near the kitchen)

[simple eagle]

Anybody picked apart how Ui info suite 2 does the subtexturing for the weather icon? Though of taking some time to put in a pr making it more agnostic and potentially custom-weather compatibile, but don't really understand how its generating its own texture sheet

[rain apex]

#making-mods-general

[uncut seal]

I'm having more fun than expected with the LaTeX without GenAI assignment

I put a huge part of the Bee Movie Script in there

[wooden goblet]

Better off in #making-mods-general

[light jolt]

ok thanks

[wooden goblet]

Are there a lot of complex maths equations in the script that benefit from LaTeX layout?

[uncut seal]

nope, it's just for filling material, to practice formatting

also I put some screenshots from it since I had to include figures.

[wooden goblet]

I normally use Lorem Ipsum for filler when I'm starting a new paper but I might give the Bee Movie script a try

[cinder karma]

It's almost time for....advent of code!!!!

[red crest]

hopefully I'll have the time to do more than 4 days of it this year

[safe dragon]

soon

I'll hopefully do all of them like the previous years

[uncut seal]

is there a private leaderboard for this server?

Idk about you but they get released at 14:00 every day for me, so it's a very good timezone

[safe dragon]

they release in the middle of the night for me and I can't do them till after work so I've never paid it much attention

I'm in a private leaderboard I've been in for years but I don't think half of them are even participating this year

idk if there's a leaderboard the modders have been using

[rain apex]

Ah it comes out at midnight

[cinder karma]

yeah they drop in the middle of the night for me

not helped by the fact that I get home late

[fleet wren]

tbh I used to do lots AOC, now you have to pay me to code in my free time
(SDV mods doesn't count)

[safe dragon]

seems legit

I enjoy AoC still

other than usually like 1 or 2 days near the 20

usually some optimization problem that takes 17 months to complete unless you figure out some specific trick

those are fun only when I do figure them out

[cinder karma]

Tbh AoC is the fun part of code isolated

Just puzzles and code, no maintenance or users

What's not to love?

[rotund violet]

I understand, but do not share your definition of fun.

[cinder karma]

Haha it's less "users" but the ten percent of really annoying users tbh

But I do find it fun to just mess around and not have to care about, like the future

Write some bullshit that runs really fast that isn't maintenable

[safe dragon]

slap in some random optimization that makes the code entirely unreadable and fail to work on an input that isn't your own

[supple ether]

Messing around with no finding out. The dream.

[safe dragon]

I like to throw in some Parallel stuff that I would never normally use

[cinder karma]

Fucking love rayon lol

Just

The magic of code goes fast

[rotund violet]

To me it's more about having a finished product that gives some sense of pride or satisfaction, and I don't really get that from contrived or academic problems.

Lot of folks obviously do - thus the "understand but do not share" part.

[cinder karma]

Fair! But I get the "useful project" from work already

Plus, I'm an academic at heart still lol.

[rotund violet]

I can get the "useful in a vacuum" sense from work - useful in terms of someone else's wants, needs, requirements, etc. But it's very abstract, and takes away a lot of the sense of personal connection and accomplishment.

[uncut seal]

Yeah, I even like to golf the first few days so that they aren't too boring

[safe dragon]

the advent of codening has begun

it starts simpler than last year

[safe dragon]

this laptop has proven itself extremely unreliable for benchmarking with some massive variability between runs

but on my server today's task takes 48 microsseconds

it is an evil abomination that would get me fired

completely free of heap allocations

barring loading in the input lines in the first place but that's placed outside my benchmark in a convenience wrapper

[safe dragon]

Avoiding the allocation of an array with stackalloc actually seems to make performance worse this time

but still fun to have a zero heap allocation version

[safe dragon]

so sad that it's faster with allowing some allocations

it's almost like the heap does actually exist for a reason

[thin estuary]

stackallocs, fancy

[safe dragon]

fancy but actually worse than just using arrays in this case

[cinder karma]

Oh, it's the first?

[safe dragon]

the first of december

[safe dragon]

improved a little further

https://github.com/CrumbsTrace/AoCSharp/blob/main/AdventOfCode/Year2024/Day01.cs

[lethal walrus]

Hmm should I try aoc this year

[safe dragon]

don't need to commit to all 25 days or anything

[lethal walrus]

Yeah I generally stop by day 10 ish

It gets really difficult later in

[cinder karma]

It's a work day so I guess I'll try

Haven't even picked my language yet

I'm thinking cpp

[safe dragon]

a life without rayon

[cinder karma]

Got cilk though

[safe dragon]

I can push it down a little further if I accept that it only parses the "real" input specifically where every number is exactly 5 characters with exactly 3 spaces in between the numbers

to 27.6

I don't like to go that far though

it wouldn't even work on the examples anymore

[lethal walrus]

yay

yay!

[safe dragon]

🎉

[manic anchor]

Wow! This a big community. ❤️

Hello Stardew Valley gurus! I just have an itch today. Do you know if there's a way to tail game events as they happen somehow? Google hasn't presented a mod or clear answer yet. I'm arriving from a web dev angle. I though it would be neat to track what day I'm on externally or have a guide show details for the odd item I just picked up. Too many ideas. Too little time...

[rain apex]

are you making a mod for stardew? if so head to #making-mods-general

[manic anchor]

I'm not sure yet. 🙂 I can ask there though for sure. I've never compiled a dll file, which is why I thought I would start here.

[rain apex]

ppl here dont play game thats why it's off-topic

[manic anchor]

Cool. Thanks for the context and have an awesome day! (I've been playing this game too much lately...)

[safe dragon]

wait there's a game?

[supple ether]

no you're mistaken. it's the stardew valley framework

[safe dragon]

a game engine

[latent bough]

Any of y'all done AOC today?

[safe dragon]

not today yet no

after work

part 1 looks simple

part 2 is apparently more substantial

but idk what it is

[uncut seal]

yup

[strange copper]

Part 2 not too bad because brute forcing it has no downside yet

[safe dragon]

probably does if you're strict on yourself for performance...

kills me that I won't know what part 2 is till after work

[uncut seal]

literally no point in doing that but you do you

[safe dragon]

I enjoy it!

I try to get all 25 days together to run in less than 1 second

did the same last year

done so two years so far I think

once in haskell and once in rust

now C#

[mortal obsidian]

So far did both days

I am trying to learn rust with it.

I know I won't complete all 25 days (I am not that good) It'll be interesting to see how far I go

[lethal walrus]

oh
i should've read that
(image is of instructions)

[safe dragon]

brute forcing this is totally fine as it turns out even for me

[lethal walrus]

part 2?

[safe dragon]

I have a total runtime of 32 microseconds with a brute forced approach

part 2 yeah

[lethal walrus]

ah nice

[safe dragon]

I'm sure there's a smart way to do this

[latent bough]

I gotta do tomorrow's in ruby

that'll be interesting

This repo already looks like a mess lol

[safe dragon]

hope you don't get screwed with getting a very bad fit of a language for one of them

[latent bough]

oh cobol and fortran are on there

I've just been lucky so far

[latent bough]

Thanks :D

[cinder karma]

Ooh, that looks fun+

Aww, using Rust day1

[latent bough]

Mhm

[latent bough]

That's what the wheel landed on

:D

I was super lucky

[stray bison]

probably, I'll settle for just a way, though
I stayed up late working on it and my answer was wrong so I'm gonna make some unit tests tonight and figure out what I effed up 😄

[latent bough]

The rest of the days ended up being less kind

[safe dragon]

I fear day 21 in R

good luck

[sand frost]

zig is the only one I don't recognize

[cinder karma]

Fortran. You put in fortran

[safe dragon]

zig is neat

[sand frost]

Some people like to eat spicy peppers, maybe that's like putting Fortran down ?

[safe dragon]

you could have zig solve the entire problem in compile time and just have it print the result as a constant at the end

[rotund violet]

You could also do that with Rust, C++, Lisp.... Zig isn't really special here.

[safe dragon]

I mean true but as far as I know zig is quite loved for compile time evaluation stuff

by rust people anyway

rust is fairly limited as far as compile time evaluation goes

[rotund violet]

Limited how? Macros (proc or otherwise) can do just about anything.

Same sort of thing with C++ templates and so on.

[safe dragon]

idk the details tbh

[fleet wren]

can they do compile time tetris: https://blog.mattbierner.com/stupid-template-tricks-super-template-tetris/

[cinder karma]

Murderous rage against labview

[rotund violet]

AoC in Labview?

[uncut seal]

You should add uiua, it's a fun language

[uncut seal]

today's one is very easy with python

[safe dragon]

this was more an exercise in regex than my actual language

[mortal obsidian]

true

ig you can always challenge yourself to not use regex, but that would make the puzzle 10 times harder.

[cinder karma]

(No, work code.)

[alpine terrace]

i heard that in c++ (not sure if in c#) every thing is in classes just like in html every thing is in div

[safe dragon]

for C++ I believe that's simply incorrect

for C# that's almost kind of true

also not true for html but it's ok

though in the modern web landscape I feel like people are forgetting most html tags exist

[sacred halo]

im suffering through an assembly course rn

it sucks so much

[safe dragon]

good luck

jmp to the end

[mortal obsidian]

now in many websites div is the only tag that's used

[rotund violet]

I meant that you should do all 25 days of AoC in Labview.

[sand frost]

terrrrrrible

not even sure how feasible, but sure that it's terrible

[cinder karma]

I would reply but I'm not interested in breaking server rules today

[rotund violet]

Well now you're just making me curiouser.

[cinder karma]

Feel free to imagine what kind of insults I can come up with

[safe dragon]

exciting

[lethal walrus]

oh that was ||actually quite easy||

[latent bough]

Thank you

[rotund violet]

The best insults I can imagine you coming up with sound like Monty Python's Frenchman.

[latent bough]

Cobol is in there too but I never landed on it luckily

[latent bough]

I'm pretty sure someone did AoC in factorio

[cinder karma]

Monty what

[latent bough]

https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/comments/k5fmi7/day_01_solution_in_factorio/

Yeah it looks like they did

[rotund violet]

Even if you live in a bubble, everyone else knows what I'm referring to.
https://youtu.be/QSo0duY7-9s?si=O-XTHi8wCZgrFHdL&t=74
^ (That is Atra, I'm sure of it)

[safe dragon]

I don't need to click to know ye

[cinder karma]

Yup, I'm very dumb and grew up under a rock

[rotund violet]

Personally, I think you just pretend not to get half the pop culture/nerd culture references.

[rain apex]

Idk why but I thought atra is british

[rotund violet]

I've seen what looked like Spanish text in some of the mods, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything.

[worn remnant]

(atra asking "what is X" is something of a bit)

[rotund violet]

Yeah, sometimes it's very clearly farce, and sometimes I think it's implied non-farce but actually still farce.

[rain apex]

I am failing to find docs on linux task_struct

Prob missing something obvious here

[cinder karma]

It's one part real (I am not read into nerd culture) and one part a joke

Like I know enough to knit a Taylor Swift sweater

But if you ask me about TV I've watched, well

How do we feel about House MD?

[rotund violet]

Bad.

[cinder karma]

Plus I don't tend to watch TV or movies, and I'm pretty depressing in the books I read

[crystal wren]

(So I see from other server here!)

[rain apex]

I like how shaped the main actor is

[cinder karma]

Also this

This is the current book

[rain apex]

He would make a great plaster cast head for art students I think

[cinder karma]

Tbh Thirteen is hot

And I'll forgive a lot for thirteen being hot

[rotund violet]

Apparently I'm one of the 0.0001% of users on this server who aren't miserable.

[rain apex]

She is also very good shape much contour

[fleet wren]

if house was made in 2024 would they have made him and wilson smooch

[red crest]

god as my witness i thought House was still airing

[fleet wren]

you may be thinking of the other medical drama show that will keep getting new seasons until civilization collapses

[red crest]

you're talking about greys anatomy but no i thought thye were both still showing

[fleet wren]

house ended 12 years ago lol

[red crest]

i realize this now b ut i did not until just a minute ago

[safe dragon]

house may have ended but I don't think they ever stopped airing it anyway

they've got that one on perpetual reruns I swear

[cinder karma]

(I mean, a lot of us have major diagnosed mental illnesses yes.)

[marble jewel]

And for the rest of us, they're undiagnosed

[cinder karma]

I've entirely given up on being happy lol

I'll take productive

[rotund violet]

"Underdiagnosed" is a pithy euphemism for "not a victim of medical malpractice".

[cinder karma]

Y'all might not be surprised to hear that I've not watched Friends

[safe dragon]

neither have I

[sand frost]

Me neither

I think im actually too young for it

[worn remnant]

i only have one problem with hugh laurie, which is that when i see him in anything, i tend to think "i would rather be watching jeeves & wooster right now"

[cinder karma]

Raise your hand if you can write capture groups without googlijg the syntax for accessing them

[cinder karma]

Because I never can lol

[sand frost]

no lol

[fleet wren]

uh there are parentheses?

and some combination of equal signs and some other symbols

[rotund violet]

For regular expressions? Sure, why not?

I do always forget the obscure stuff like negative lookahead and lookbehind, though.

[floral parcel]

I always forget the syntax for regular expressions. I usually have to google it.

[rain apex]

(?:myloved)

[stray bison]

I try to forget that regular expressions exist

[floral parcel]

It's not my favorite thing to use but I've found regular expressions to be extremely useful for certain stuff.

[mortal obsidian]

today's puzzle required 2 different solutions for each part. part 2 was easier in my opinion

[crystal wren]

https://c.tenor.com/bWUGOk1dAxcAAAAC/tenor.gif

[stray bison]

this is unfortunately very true

[safe dragon]

regex makes you actually feel like a wizard tho

it's the closest we get to manually writing obfuscated code

[cinder karma]

I love regex

But also sometimes you just forget bits of it

[lethal walrus]

advent of code is ||actually quite doable this year||

oh it works first try on the real input.. this is unusual

[ivory shadow]

Regex doesn't make me feel like a wizard. That's IL and transpilers for me. I write too much regex it's just normal stuff

Regular, you could say

[marble jewel]

People at my work think it's magic when I'm able to "automate" certain code changes using VSCode's regex replace in all files

It's stupid small things like needing to update a bunch of code to use a different linked service, and everyone's dreading how tedious it will be to make hundreds of changes manually, then I just handle it with a single regex.

[pliant snow]

dont be silly. That's what vim macros are for

[lethal walrus]

the sample works but not the input

[ivory shadow]

vim makes me feel like Iron Man. Not in the good way but in the "I'm stuck in a cave with something lodged in my chest and this is the nonsense I have to deal with" way.

Just make nano the default text editor already

[marble jewel]

I'm a never vim-er

It's nano when I have to. Otherwise, vscode is my text editor of choice.

[ivory shadow]

If I'm at a point in my life that I need to edit a text file from a shell, I never want to have to think about how to use the editor.

Linux maintainers don't seem to realize that

[marble jewel]

I know 10x programmers never have their fingers leave their split keyboards. I'm too much of an old dog to gain the muscle memory to not use my mouse.

[crystal wren]

When I can manage about 100wpm without even technically typing "properly" (never learned, just brute forced my own style), I think I'm fine just sticking how I am.

I'd like to love the split kind of keyboards, but...

[marble jewel]

I like the idea of having one of these and somehow having all the hotkeys burned into my brain to navigate the desktop, but at this time I don't have the patience to learn to walk again

I mean... I created a whole mod so that I wouldn't have to memorize any hotkeys in SDV

[worn remnant]

i literally have one of these, and i'm a vim guy and a never-nano-er

[worn remnant]

some distros do, and for me it is always a nasty surprise

[ivory shadow]

If a distro isn't Gentoo it should not use vim by default

[marble jewel]

10x programmer, here

[ivory shadow]

Like cool you like vim, but this kinda thing is literally why Linux adoption has taken so long. The default should be whatever is easiest for the average person

[worn remnant]

cool you like nano, but i do not care how fast average persons adopt linux

[ivory shadow]

It's not your job to care. It should be the job of people maintaining distros though

[marble jewel]

To really appeal to the "average person" there shouldn't be any reliance on the command line at all

But I do think there's a space between average and pro that is not as catered to. Like power users who aren't super well-versed.

[sand frost]

I panic every time I’m dumped into a text editor from terminal

I think it’s nano but idk

When it happens it’s time to gtfo and rethink what I’m doing

[marble jewel]

I get by pretty fine as an amateur sysadmin, but sometimes I run into cryptic issues that require me to copy+paste code that I don't fully understand to fix the issues.

[marble jewel]

It's probably vim

nano is the simple editor. Vim is the one that typing doesn't result in typing, but in issuing commands.

And you have to know all the commands to navigate, save, or even escape from that hell

[rotund violet]

The idea of different distros, though, as opposed to a monolith like Windows or Mac OS, is that some distros are going to be for text- and shell-oriented developers and tech sorts. For the normies you've got Ubuntu, Mint and so on, and I think (?) some of them do use nano as default.

[marble jewel]

That's the beauty of linux. There can be an endless possibility of distros that serve an endless possibility of people. I pretty much always go with Ubuntu.

I tried using Pop!_OS for a while and it only lead to a bunch of problems

[sand frost]

I know :x and :q and ctrl-C all help me escape

[fleet wren]

dang I can't believe I'm sharing this chat with a bunch of casuals

[cinder karma]

It's $400

I can't justify thad

[fleet wren]

what is the max amount you'd spend on a keyboard

[marble jewel]

Only a noob would buy for $400. Better to spend months and possibly more money to make one yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UXsD7nSfDY

If you don't print your own PCB are you even a programmer?

[ivory shadow]

I've spent $200 on a keyboard. Wouldn't really want to spend more than that

[marble jewel]

I've spent $100-$200 on a keyboard... like 6 or 7 times...

[crystal wren]

My current lifetime keyboard budget is... sort of embarrassing, yeah.

[marble jewel]

I just got a new keyboard and I'm already feeling like I need a new one. I love the software and the switches, but I'm not totally pleased with the layout.

[fleet wren]

I spent about $400 on mine. I'm happy with it... mainly because I spent $400 on it

that's one advantage of spending lots of money; it forces me to use it until it explodes 15 years later

[rain apex]

Is it a budget if you already spent

[marble jewel]

This is my current keyboard+mouse setup

[fleet wren]

fellow gmmk numpad user

[marble jewel]

This keyboard almost would be perfect if it wasn't missing HOME+END keys

[worn remnant]

the monstrosity was costly, but i enjoy using it. i do wish it had just a few more keys though; i mostly don't use the layers so i would like a few more easy buttons

[marble jewel]

I absolutely hate the software for my 10key, but as a 10key it serves it's purpose well

[worn remnant]

i've become accustomed to ortholinear keys, so going back to the stagger always feels bizarre and crooked

saddens me that the MNT reform (a computer i did not buy) got rid of their ortholinear keyboard

[ivory shadow]

I've tried an ortholinear before but I have stupid fingers that refuse to adapt.

[rain apex]

What's the purpose of ortholinear?

Is it just aesthetics

[crystal wren]

I think it's just to not be qwerty with how qwerty was designed with typewriter levers and such in mind?

[cinder karma]

You jest but

[crystal wren]

Yeah, if anyone here could make a 100% custom keyboard...

[worn remnant]

some ergonomics specialist could probably tell you (and it might even be accurate) something about natural finger extension or whatever. to me it just feels nicer to type on

[stray bison]

I got one of these, it was very expensive and my wrists still hurt. OT says it's because my problem is tendons not nerves

[ivory shadow]

I made a custom head unit for my truck once. That's kind of like making a custom keyboard? Has a couple physical switches and a rotary encoder. ... no custom PCB though, it's Pi-driven.

[cinder karma]

Tbh I have issues with anything over like $20

[ivory shadow]

Mostly touch screen, but not having physical buttons for some things in a vehicle is a huge pet peeve for me.

[cinder karma]

I'm a cheapsake

My parents keep on telling me I don't have to live like that

[marble jewel]

It's better than the alternative of spending irresponsibly and finding yourself in crippling debt

Which thankfully is not the case for me, but there was a time....

[fleet wren]

I take this is your daily driver then? /s

[cinder karma]

Nah, got a cheap Logitech lol

[crystal wren]

I have one response to that keyboard.

https://tenor.com/Sdcv.gif

[worn remnant]

this is viscerally unpleasant. i'm vomiting

[fleet wren]

(my parents had one of those. it feels like trying to pop bubble wrap with ten fingers)

(but uh not half as pleasant as actual bubble wrap)

[cinder karma]

Popping bubble wrap is a guilty pleasure tbh

[fleet wren]

speaking of wack keyboards, I saw one of those laser projection keyboards some time ago. I can think of zero practical use for those, no idea why they are invented or even built

[marble jewel]

Portability perhaps?

[ivory shadow]

Portability is why Selph's fruit roll up up there was invented

Laser projection keyboards are just a completely impractical "hey look at this it's shiny"

[cinder karma]

Personally I'd rather have brain surgery

[ivory shadow]

atra don't get a neuralink don't do it typing with your mind isn't worth it

just pay a little more for a keyboard

[cinder karma]

(It's a joke because I'm seriously considering vagus nerve stimulation tbh)

[worn remnant]

i'm willing to believe that typing with my mind may be worth it in some different future where the world's largest baby is not involved. but it's definitely not worth whatever neuralink is up to

[ivory shadow]

Mostly killing monkeys from what I've gathered

(Also, lying about killing monkeys.)

[rotund violet]

I've never had a keyboard with a layout I liked better than the MS Natural keyboard, it's just too bad that the construction itself is meh. Have to choose between mechanical keys or an ergonomic form, it seems.

[ivory shadow]

On a related note, it annoys me how much emphasis there was on the home row when I was in school and they had typing classes. Like you HAVE to keep your fingers on ASDF and JKL: the entire time if you aren't going for a specific letter.

And that's not even a comfortable natural position for your fingers. Mine rest on AWEF and JIO: naturally. (I use a standard US layout, staggered keyboard)

[safe dragon]

damn I'm late to a conversation about ergonomic keyboards

my opportunity to once again shill the Moonlander keyboard

or glove80 if you prefer

honestly I'll shill any keyboard with thumb clusters and QMK/ZMK

having experienced thumb clusters I don't want to do anything beyond regular typing without having them

[cinder karma]

Tbh if I could take a photo of my worksetup I would

Lol

Cheap keyboard, random pcbs everywhere

Ergonomic this is not

[safe dragon]

our office desks are probably opposites

[cinder karma]

The keyboard is literally on the base of my monitor rn

[rotund violet]

Eh, split keyboard isn't automatically ergonomic to me.

[safe dragon]

I can share my desk so here u go

the regular keyboard is still connected for those moments where someone else wants to type something at my pc

[fleet wren]

clean

[fleet wren]

yeah my work laptop is a glorified SSH client, I would use a desk PC if they offered it

[ivory shadow]

Man the DP report has me looking at Framework's website again. I want a new laptop so much, lol.

[safe dragon]

I would say yes immediately if they offered a desktop pc instead of a laptop

[rotund violet]

Hmm, looking this up again, Dygma Defy looks promising. Expensive as hell, though.

[safe dragon]

while I love it, the nice programmable ergonomic keyboard market is pretty expensive

[crystal wren]

This month's report was by far my largest so far.

[rotund violet]

I don't care about programmable, I want (a) mechanical keys, (b) forward tilt and (c) tenting which is sort of related to (b).

[safe dragon]

damn

[rotund violet]

You'd think it'd be an easy combo to find, but... not.

[safe dragon]

programmable is one the main things for me

or more specifically, being able to define more layers

[rotund violet]

Not that it's a bad feature, I do like the media keys, it's just not absolutely essential.

Also my calculator key.

[safe dragon]

I rely heavily on my symbol layer for programming. Having {}()[] and the likes all right there in convenient spots

what's the DP report

[fleet wren]

Nexus Donation Points

[rotund violet]

You're talking about the thumb cluster again?

Well, the Dygmas have that too... it'd be my first time using them, but you're right, that does sound convenient for the various brackets.

[safe dragon]

well the layer key is on one of the thumb clusters but the symbols in question aren't

I just hold a key on my right thumb cluster and then I have a symbol layer + numpad combo

[rotund violet]

It really comes down to ergonomics, though. I don't care about saving a quarter-second on some keystroke because I spend most of my time thinking, not typing.

What I care about is having my wrists hurt after spending 8 hours on that.

[safe dragon]

oh yeah i just find it comfortable. My typing speed has never really been a factor when it comes to programming

if all the code I wrote was so easy to write that my ability to type it out quickly was the limiting factor... idk what I'd even be doing

[crystal wren]

I don't know about any of you, but I don't do thinking when I'm typing generally. I pre-think what I need to type, and do the typing when I've "finished" what I need.

I also... honestly don't really care about saving a teeny tiny amount of time on keystrokes.

[safe dragon]

I just want all the keys to be somewhere that allows me not to move my hands very much

[rotund violet]

I'm definitely thinking at the same time as typing. Typing is almost an entirely unconscious process.

[safe dragon]

while I am also a vim keybind user I also don't use that due to some potential slight improvement to my keystroke efficiency

it just makes programming a little more comfortable with all the navigation and handling being possible with simple to reach keys and no mouse

[crystal wren]

Yeah, it's not that typing takes up thought for me, it's just that... even though I type fairly quickly, if I think while I'm doing it, my brain will overtake my fingers and then I'll hit a brick wall and probably explode or something.

[rotund violet]

So I am curious, do you use the brown or blue key switches?

When I got the Corsair one (that I kinda hate), I wasn't paying attention and just saw the "Cherry MX". But it's the blue that I actually like, and it's not very common. I notice the Moonlander offers it though.

[safe dragon]

uh I use silent tactile switches so closer to brown but with much of the mechanical noise also dampened/removed

I don't like when my keyboard makes noticeable amounts of noise

[rotund violet]

Ah... probably one of the Kailh then.

[crystal wren]

I'm either hard blue (I'd use buckling spring if modern keyboards were made with them and were affordable and looked nice), or perfectly linear.

[safe dragon]

I use boba u4t silent tactile switches if you want the specific ones...

[fleet wren]

I use Pandas

[rain apex]

I thought blue is just clicky

[rotund violet]

It's not the noise I like per se, it's the feel. But the ones they call "tactile" often don't really have that.

[safe dragon]

these boba switches made me realize how chery mx browns are barely even "tactile"

[fleet wren]

tbh MX brown being the representative of tactile switches kinda give tactiles a bad name

exactly lol

[safe dragon]

these boba u4t thingies have a very noticeable large bump when pressing them and I love it

I can't stand linear switches

idk how anyone types on them

[rotund violet]

So you bought something as expensive as a Moonlander and replaced all the switches?

[safe dragon]

yup

I also have two

😌

one at the office and one at home

[red crest]

all this keyboard talk tempting me back into that impulse keyboard purchase i almost did a while ago but didnt have the confidence in

[safe dragon]

I already had the switches before I got the first moonlander though

I first got the switches for a keychron K2

that keychron is now happily used by my sister instead

I have spent more money on keyboards than any rational human being ever should but I don't really regret it cause I do actually use them

[rotund violet]

Looks like the Kailh brown are the most similar to Boba U4 (but not as good).

[cinder karma]

I'm surprised that keyfeel matters so much to y'all

Tbh

[fleet wren]

you did say popping bubble wrap is a guilty pleasure

[rotund violet]

The Pandas actually look like they'd suit me, although apparently they have to be lubed.

[cinder karma]

+60k/-60k

Joy

[rotund violet]

Is this the Panda you were talking about? https://www.gloriousgaming.com/products/glorious-panda-mechanical-switches
Their website is hella confusing to navigate. And no idea if they're compatible with other keyboards.

[fleet wren]

that's the one I use, yes, but there are Pandas made by other brands
they use the standard MX stems and sockets, so they should be compatible with the vast majority of hot swappable keyboards and keycaps

[safe dragon]

in rare cases hotswappable boards don't support the 3 pin switches but I only remember seeing that once

or wait was it something else

[rotund violet]

Cripes, that $360 is just the base price, with all the extras they want to charge you $600+ for a freaking keyboard.

[safe dragon]

yeah it's wild

[rotund violet]

At that price point there really needs to be some try-before-you-buy thing.

[fleet wren]

well there are key switch testers

[safe dragon]

even those are often fairly pricy however

[rotund violet]

Key switches I'm less concerned about, it's like $30 for a box of switches so I could just buy a new box if I don't like the first.

If I don't like the ergonomics, though, I'm out $600 because of some wireless, RGB and tenting stuff that would have been essential if it was the right fit.

Ah well, filed under the "maybe someday" category.

[fleet wren]

this is where working with traditional retailers would be helpful, though I suppose that's only an option for the most mainstream of brands

[rotund violet]

It's a bygone world, gone the way of Fry's Electronics.

Maybe not gone forever, but a lot would have to change in order for it to make a comeback.

[marble jewel]

I don't imagine it ever truly coming back. Big box retail in general is mostly dead aside from wherever they're able to continue existing.

I had a Micro Center nearby where I used to live. Arguably just as good as Fry's used to be. I'd love to have one of those in my current area.

[rotund violet]

I was thinking somewhat more of the smaller hobby shops than big box retail, but it's a similar story in both cases.

[safe dragon]

it's not quite as dire here but it's mostly webshops now, just small webshops

especially computer hardware. That doesn't really have gigantic retailers where I live

though finding anything except the most popular keyboards that exist within my country at all is a tall order

[rotund violet]

Northern Europe is not nearly as far along that path as the USA is, and Eastern Europe even less so, but they look like they're heading in the same direction right now.

Web shops don't have much of a sense of locality or individuality and will almost always eventually be overtaken by Amazon or some Amazon-like entity. It's consumer demand for the brick and mortar itself that keeps them in business.

[cinder karma]

Speaking of unmonetized hobbies....if my local habit for humanity doesn't do builds, do I have a good source for physical (ie build shit) volunteer work?

[rotund violet]

Like, property construction, as opposed to gadgets? I'm sure you'd have no shortage of takers with a Facebook or Nextdoor post. Although it's actually better to charge a nominal (small) fee so that it doesn't come across as a scam.

[safe dragon]

our amazon-like entity is Bol.com

amazon has tried very hard over the last few years to gain a foothold but they've failed as far as I can tell

[stray bison]

wh... where's all the STUFF
did someone rob your desk??

[cinder karma]

I know, right?

Who doesn't have a low noise amplifier on your desk?

And a pile of papers

And ofc two teas and one coffee

[stray bison]

a plate or two, some ibuprofen

last week's mail

[cinder karma]

Three textbooks

[stray bison]

a cat

[cinder karma]

Awwww I don't have wfh

[rain apex]

1 kirbo

[cinder karma]

Toe of a handknit sock

[stray bison]

pretty!

[cinder karma]

Wish we could have cat at work

That won't end badly at all I swear

[rain apex]

there was a doog at work today

[stray bison]

She's a great coworker

Although I did heat up some pie earlier and had to get her treats of her own to get her to stop climbing on me

But she's cute, so.

[cinder karma]

God, I miss having a pet so badly

(I won't get into it.)

[stray bison]

omg who's fluffy?? is it you??

[sand frost]

Sooooooo cute!!!!

[sand frost]

Fluffy!!!!

[cinder karma]

Nice things about Christmas: everyone's lights make it so much easier to run at night

Bad things: I think this neighbor is trying to give people seizures

His lights are flashing

[floral parcel]

My neighborhood is usually very dark during Christmas. Nobody sets up lights outside.

[rotund violet]

I like to see a nice mix of tasteful lights and actually-Christmas-themed decoration.

[floral parcel]

Same. I try to go Christmas light hunting at least a couple times during the season.

[sand frost]

i like lights

don't care about any other decor

[rotund violet]

I have no aesthetic sense when it comes to landscaping and decoration so I usually personally go with the bare minimum.

But the neighbors do a good job. I appreciate it.

[uncut seal]

today's AoC is quite nice

[safe dragon]

it was a very simple one

I'm waiting for the first one where there's actual concerns with run duration

so far they've been very fast

[latent bough]

So

I wanted to be silly

so I

I think it'll crash at the integer limit though

might have to use BigInteger instead

or make an actual algorithm

[safe dragon]

I'm not sure I"m fully grasping what you're doing

[lethal walrus]

oh i forgot about aoc

[latent bough]

it's

randomizing the input

until it passes all the rule checks

[safe dragon]

oh god

[latent bough]

I just added some optimizations and reran so it'd go faster

but yeah it's taking a bit

Lol

[safe dragon]

the irony of adding optimizations to a very unoptimal way to do it

[latent bough]

plus it's funnier if i brute force it

[latent bough]

hey I mean now I can generate random stuff faster

I just didn't really want to think of an algorithm to work around "cyclical" cases

[rain apex]

How does the gov free game bot work?

Is someone manually posting as the bot

[safe dragon]

I believe people report free games in dms and then they're posted through governor

[pliant snow]

For the free epic games it does automatically check, but for everything else, one of the mods add it to a queue

[crystal wren]

The couple of commands live here if you're super curious: https://github.com/aquova/governor/blob/master/bot/games.py

[pliant snow]

Thats classified

[crystal wren]

https://tenor.com/sju8.gif

[leaden marsh]

i too like posting classified info on a public github repo

[crystal wren]

It's the ultimate disguise, really.

You'd never think anything in a public repo could be important or classified!

[leaden marsh]

truly, remember when several corporate API keys were leaked because someone just scraped github lol

[crystal wren]

That would absolutely never happen.

Oh, wait...

...this repo is a hellscape.

Public/private certificates, too!

[rain apex]

What is opsec

Wow the Governor defeated Mayor Lewis

[pliant snow]

In glorious combat

[fleet wren]

This "GitHub" seems to be a hosting service like AWS, I suppose we can host our password DB there

[safe dragon]

secrets management

[ivory shadow]

For absolute privacy, store your secrets in /dev/null. No one will ever steal them.

[pliant snow]

The dev stands for developer

[lethal walrus]

the loops.. (aoc)
i appreciate labelled loops so much now

[ivory shadow]

You can label loops in JS

[safe dragon]

needs more loop

[lethal walrus]

you can

[ivory shadow]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/label

Not sure how good TypeScript's support of labels is, but base JS definitely has them.

[lethal walrus]

yep

extremely useful

YAY first try on real data

[pliant snow]

I miss rusts loop labeling in other languages a lot

[safe dragon]

I miss it in C#

but only really during AoC for some reason

I don't think I've ever had a need for that in actual work

[cinder karma]

Be brave. Use a goto

[safe dragon]

I did in a quick draft for aoc this year

[lethal walrus]

this is unprecedented. I got part 2 first try too

[safe dragon]

gratz

I got part 1 wrong the first try cause I was dumb

[dusty pollen]

move / there for ultimate safekeeping

[cinder karma]

Saw a cat!!

Black and white stray

[latent bough]

wdym?

[hollow marsh]

http://www.geeksoutfit.com/cdn/shop/files/sql-clause-is-coming-to-town-ugly-christmas-sweater-mens-style-s-107.webp?v=1732528320

[rain apex]

why is there IReadOnlyList but also ImmutableList

[cinder karma]

One is an interface

The other is a. Concrete type

[rotund violet]

Read-only describes the API, not the data structure. Read-only lists aren't necessarily immutable, they just don't provide any methods to mutate.

The purpose of IReadOnlyList is for the receiver of the list to be able to say "I want a list and I'm only going to read from it"

[uncut seal]

didn't need to, it would make the exercise impossible.

[lethal walrus]

||i felt so smart doing part 1. part 2 will be painful||
on the bright side, ||these would be fun to visualise||

[uncut seal]

for today's or yesterday's

[lethal walrus]

today

[safe dragon]

today's task was the first one with genuine performance demands

[stray bison]

oh boy. I haven't gotten to it yet.

I hate getting behind

..because then people are talking about a completely different one, but, I'm using it to learn new stuff so I need/want to spend more than an hour or two on each one!

[safe dragon]

I spent hours optimizing the one for today cause of my arbitrary personal goals of staying under 1 second for the total runtime of all days combined

getting to know the jetbrains rider profiling tools

while the trial on it lasts, luckily for the whole of AoC

[uncut seal]

I think it's possible to bruteforce in reasonable time (less than a minute), but my BF solution was wrong somehow

but my optimized solution worked without issue, so I won't look into it too much

[safe dragon]

yeah I mean you can brute force it within a few seconds

we're not yet at the ones where if you fuck up the time complexity it takes 12 centuries to compute

[stray bison]

what language are you using?

[safe dragon]

C#

I've done the same thing in previous years with Haskell and Rust

also did two years with elixir but I didn't have a performance requirement for that one

I think I would've cried if I had to stay below 1 second total using elixir

for rust it didn't end up really being challenge

for haskell I fought for it

[fleet wren]

do it in python

[safe dragon]

I don't even like python

[rain apex]

cython go brrr

[pliant snow]

what you want is a python-esque language, but compiled and statically typed

-# and don't want parallelism

[safe dragon]

there's an entire programming category dedicated to "python-esque but fast"

I technically go by my home server benchmarks to see whether I stay below 1 second but I hadn't tried it yet for the ones for this year

day 6 really was brutal. Appparently much more on my server than on my pc where it runs in 5 ms

I'm sure there's worse performing days ahead

[uncut seal]

if only there was such a thing... I believe C++ is the next best thing.

[safe dragon]

yes we all know python and C++ are pretty close in experience

hopefully next year there will be some funky language that intrigues me to do this with

waiting for that 0.1 release for the Roc programming language

[cinder karma]

Use Julia

[safe dragon]

I did consider julia at one point but the language was strange to me

I don't really understand languages that really try to push a repl on you

julia has had many years to mature since then though. The editor that was recommended for it at the time has even been discontinued by now(atom)

julia was very clearly for a kind of person that I am not. Like data science or mathy people

[latent bough]

today marks my first advent of code "failure"

technically

because I did solve parts 1 and 2

but I did so using python which violates the challenge

I was able to get part 1 in Haskell

but I failed part 2 in Haskell

Still got the answers

but I'm only giving myself half a point for that since part 2 was python

[safe dragon]

imagine day 21 in R

[latent bough]

Yeah... Tomorrow is R as well...

For the ones I'm unfamiliar with I will attempt to write them in python and then convert to the other language

usually I can get the logic right but implementation in unfamiliar territory is hard

[cinder karma]

That's a super cool challenge btw

I wanted to do polyglot but I don't have time this year

[latent bough]

what's that?

[cinder karma]

New language per day

No repeats

[latent bough]

oh for advent of code? Mine had repeats because of the AoC picker I used

it didn't remove names after getting them

[cinder karma]

Yeah the polyglot challenge is that you get to pick your language but you can't do repeats

So you pick yhr worst language first

Ofc I haven't even started this year yet lol

I don't really have free time after work at the moment (other than exercising which is super important)

[stray bison]

oh okay this explains our diametically opposed preferences in languages 🙂

[stray bison]

wait a minute, what?? 😆 I've been doing them all in Python

[latent bough]

That's fine

[stray bison]

I mean, I'm happy enough with it. It's fun and I'm getting to try lots of new things.

[latent bough]

The challenge I'm doing is on my github which is attached to my profile under the repo name AOC-2024

Just trying to solve it in a random language each day

Here's a link actually: https://github.com/V-Karch/AOC-2024/

[stray bison]

Hah, cool! I don't think I could do that, but that's awesome

[latent bough]

For ones I'm not familiar with I'm just writing them in python and getting the logic down and then trying to swap it over to the new language

[stray bison]

Oh that makes sense!

[latent bough]

I was able to for part 1 of day 6 but not for part 2 of day 6 so I'm going with a failure for that one even though I got the right result from my initial python code

[stray bison]

at least you know if you ever need to find an elf historian in real life, you'll (probably) be ok

[uncut seal]

well, I managed to BF both of today's stars, I'm not very proud of this one but it works

good old ||from itertools import product||

[safe dragon]

today was pretty alright

another day the list

2.5 millisecond runtime for this one on the server

[uncut seal]

Would you mind sharing how to solve this type of problem without BF? I've always been able to ignore it so I've never looked into it

[safe dragon]

my solution is simply bruteforce so I can't

just making the brute force as fast as I can