codesections @codesections@fosstodon.org

I want to be able to tell my friends why #mastodon is better than the birdsite, so I wrote a thing: "Mastodon Is Better than Twitter: Elevator Pitch"
https://www.codesections.com/blog/mastodon-elevator-pitch/

I want this to be as persuasive as possible to outsiders, so I'd appreciate as much feedback as possible from Mastodon users

Is there a difference between describing a language as "sell hosting" versus describing it as "bootstrapped"?

I was just using those terms in a different toot, and realized I wasn't sure if there's a distinction.

Programming language designers: [noun] – a group of people obsessed with ergonomics, yet who oddly all seem to end up with RSI

What is it about the letter R?

#rust, #racket and #raku are all incredibly interesting languages. No other letter is as well represented! :D

#irc etiquette question:

What's the best way to mention someone on IRC without pinging them? On Mastodon, I'd just leave off the @

Response to asking "Why can't I do $thing" by programming language:

#rust:
You can't do it for very good reasons. Here's a link to a 47-page RFC where someone proposed letting you do $thing, with discussions of all the reasons why it's bad.

#raku:
Oh, you can't do $thing? I hadn't noticed – I've never wanted to do that. Well, if you *want* to, here's a few lines of meta programming that would let you do it. Oh, and if you want to do $thing a lot, here's how you'd add it as a new operator.

When writing software, I strive to write a series of extremely practical jokes

(cf. Alan Kay, _The Early History of Smalltalk_)

Perhaps a silly question: are there any decent #IRC clients for Android devices?

I came across an interesting article on the HackerNews front page this morning: https://mikestone.me/twitter-got-hacked-is-mastodon-immune

This "Mike Stone" guy sure seems to have good understanding of Mastodon and #fosstodon!

( @mike, I hope your server is holding up ok :D )

Here's a (somewhat) old fashioned way of building software that should make a comeback:

A long running daemon server that runs a full language interpreter and responds to user commands – without constantly shutting itself off.

It's not the right fit for *every* situation, but it kills me to see how many python/node/ruby/etc scripts fire up and entire runtime just to run a few commands – only to kill that runtime off even though they'll predictably need it again a few seconds later.

Good to remember:

> Let’s face it. You are not Google scale and you never will be. Stop cargo-culting technology just because “Google uses it” and therefore “it’s an industry best-practice.”

https://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/protos-are-wrong/index.html