Interests: News, Finance, Computer, Science, Tech, and Living

  • 16 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I think you just like the truth test. Frankly I have used Python for over 25 years and have been doing programming for almost 50 years in many different languages. If you think I am somehow a beginner, I would disagree. The truth test is just like so many other Python specific idioms that grow in number by the year. They are not at all obvious unless you are deep into Python. Moreover, the truth test and the len() test are not the same test. One might be able to use either in a specific case, but that is case specific and which is more readable is up to the developer and we may well disagree on that choice. The other consideration in Python, speed of writing code which is often why many of us use Python and that may lead to different choices too including based on habit.

    Lot of this reminds me of the Pascal vs. C debate of the 1980’s. Pascal was all about readability over compactness. C on the other hand, seemed to attract people that loved to write very compact code that was almost impossible to figure out on first glance. Me personally, I guess I’d choose C over Pascal but write the C in more of a Pascal authoring philosophy. Similarly, with Python, I often do not go for all of the Python idioms. Lot of that is just writing what I am thinking, and the rest is probably habit. If I am going to test 0 length then I’ll probably test zero length. I do not find it at all obvious that, oh, I want to test 0 length so the Python idiom for that is to truth test. I absolutely know that to be the case on certain types of objects, but it probably is not going to be my first choice.



  • That is not what they said. They said operationally nothing is changing. However, they are basically in-part ad supported and so with that comes some strings. All of this can probably be configued out but it is a pain.

    For me, hard call. Fragmenting into maybe better browsers reduces Firefox popularity and that impacts wheather web developers will test against anything but Chrome. When that happens these other browsers become irrelevent. So using other browers has a consequence.





  • Look at FairPhone. I got a Pixel 8a recently and flashed Graphene and I think this is the best tradeoff but I understand wanting jack etc, as I would have liked too.

    In hind site for me, turns out Blutooth is great as it works well with my OTC hearing aids and my Bluetooth headphones too. I liked the hearing aide support as it gives me proper calibrated sound where generic stuff will not.




  • I use primarily debs but if your using Ubuntu it will include Ubuntu supported snaps. This is all from the distro supplied repos generally.

    Installing random stuff not distro support contains a lot of addition risks such as potentially more bugs and malware.

    I think the only 3rd party program I have installed is an AppImage of Joplin. I found the snap buggy.

    I am not big fan of snaps or flatpacks as I had issues with both. One rarely needs them on Debian based distros anyway.






  • The big upside of signal is that it is better then SMS, and has more adoption then any of the other reasonable options. Adoption is still not enough to make it that useful when compared with Messenger and SMS and even with this addressbook thing your complaining about trying to drive it.

    Big downsides abound too including needing a phone number, and being tied to a phone.