@allenholub Is usually pretty funny how little the people who make these analogies know about house building, too.
@SteveLionel It is!
function box() { t="$1xxxx";c=${2:-=}; echo ${t//?/$c}; echo "$c $1 $c"; echo ${t//?/$c}; } # Make box around text. By bartonski
I made an explanation of how this works a while ago here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZ85aMuf6c
@SteveLionel You might like it; has incredibly powerful macros, no types, and extremely interactive development, though nowadays is not widely used. More alive than BLISS though!
@mlliarm @elfprince13 The problem is not that a function has side effects.
@SteveLionel How do you like Forth?
@radehi @alexandru I do, other than the difficulty of figuring out that you had a missing dot somewhere. BLISS macros were incredibly powerful and could help you write clear and maintainable code. BLISS is far better than C for systems programming, in my opinion. ELUDOM
@SteveLionel @alexandru Do you miss BLISS?
@shay @cemerick Well, obviously enough, those systems don't work.
Maybe we have to choose between banning certain information and enjoying liberal democracy. Shouldn't be controversial, really; is an extreme novelty, this idea that liberal democracy can coexist with prosecuting people for reading certain things.
@mfowler Might want to delete and repost this with an URL that isn't localhost:1963
Implementing a New Memory Safety Approach, Part 1 - Evan Ovadia @ Vale Lang: https://verdagon.dev/blog/making-regions-part-1-human-factor
@davew Oh wow, thanks.
@deshipu This looks vaguely like a Klann linkage but needs twice as many servos.
@davew What the feature is called?
@davew This is something you can do? Mastodon supports OAuth or something?
@chribonn @NorCal_Lynne @jeffjarvis @tomwatson Your analogy is wrong.
You don't need to understand PAL-M to watch TV usefully, but you do need to understand that different TV channels are operated by different companies, which are granted government monopolies on transmitting on those channels, and that they're heavily regulated and mostly ad-funded.
If you're sharing photos of mass graves in Ukraine or taking part in protests in Iran, you probably need to know if your instance is run by the Russian, Ukrainian, or Iranian government. You definitely need to understand that it's a possibility, and that the instance owner can read your DMs, trace your IP address, and take over your account.
Keeping activists, journalists, and their sources safe is more important than being appealing to the masses.
@rmerriam I want to engage in ways I don't regret later.
@chribonn @NorCal_Lynne @jeffjarvis @tomwatson Moreover, to use intelligently the Fediverse, you need to understand that nobody can be banned from the Fediverse or even Mastodon. You need to understand that, like Twitter users, many instance admins are hobbyists, volunteers who run their instances because they like to do it. You need to understand that your company can set up its own instance. Because these are facts that underlie the social interactions that happen here.
Putting a GUI over a computer system that makes it easy to use is laudable, because using computers is in itself morally neutral and often useful.
It is evil to put a "GUI" over a volunteer community that makes it easy to use, because it forces you to use people like inanimate objects, and using people like inanimate objects is evil. To participate in a community, you should engage sincerely with that community, seeking to create mutually beneficial interactions with them.
And the first step in doing that is treating that community as a community you are joining, not a company you are buying services from or a tool you are using.
I read a lot. Sometimes I learn things. I like making things. I think reading and doing are complementary.