Tagged “computers”

incredible project, that has inspired me to try unbinding a book

Mapping Fn is useful. Mostly saved it for this best ever outro:

I'm also secretly hoping to start crafting wood flutes and composing music so that I don't have a need for remembering any hotkeys anymore.

Things get more complicated as they get more complex

How to talk to aliens (other people, who are very different)
Ask Butler

Rigorous Systems Design - Joseph Sifakus
The Design of Design - Fred Brooks

The "premature sheen" that happens when using computers, if stuff sounds ok enough too early, then you are reluctant to make big necessary changes later.

This is what blogs are about. Specifics of adding binary coded decimals on x86.

really quite excellent explanation of a bunch about sound

The shift from being online being the fun part of your day to it being the core part of the day. Not only makes it feel more like work, but makes the other online aspects feel more work-like.

Great writeup, and fun to go through the questions and explanations. I really went off the rails with grep and parsing estimates, others were mostly solvable.

HN Discussion has people alternately arguing about whether modern programs are fast, or bloated and slow.

I don't think Moore's Law is an excuse to not worry about program performance, and the current slew of slow apps (web and otherwise) is not acceptable. Many electron apps really do feel slow. Waiting for my password manager to open (either electron app or chrome extension) is frustrating. It's minor, but it's friction to something that needs to be frictionless.

That isn't to say that can't be made fast. VSCode is a good example - that uses electron but has remainined very performant. They got boot up time down real low (actually relevant for me as I open/close sessions often). BUt on my older laptop (4gb RAM) I can't have it open alongside browser, so mostly use editors in the terminal. It does still mostly work, but they have focused on perf speed rather than footprint. Still some tradeoffs to be made there, and again another hard thing to think about.

There are definite costs to the abstractions, but also benefits. But none of this is free. Perf is hard, and computers being faster doesn't mean we don't have to think about it - time has been unchanged. Only our expectations have (of features and speed).

Also remember to take damn breaks

Sometimes I think "I am a huge nerd". Then I read things like this and feel either normal or inadequate.