Long read. Fantastic perspectives on programming, software, architecture, teams, computing ... in a Q&A from Forth land
https://www.forth2020.org/about-forth
#Forth #Programming #Computing #EmbeddedSoftware
Erlang achieves Dan Ingalls' Smalltalk goals
Choice in software systems design seems hampered by the scaffolding needed to use shared memory and message passing between threads and processes. Dan Ingalls: "An OS has the things not there in the language. There shouldn't be one.". It was about #Smalltalk but the #Erlang VM seems to solve that, with shared binaries between processes and transparent message-passing across nodes. Maybe your language and database should run on the #BEAM ?
Greetings, people! I am a software developer. Outside of work, I use free/libre software almost exclusively. I am pained that we continue to allow nature and community to get degraded by crony individualism. We can do much better, e.g. the voluntary refugee concept.
I have been chuffed with the #Fediverse almost all of the time I have been on it. There is plenty of food for thought in many a toot out there. I am having to move off @wyatwerp now, and really happy to find a Fediverse instance that ... uh ... federates.
@alex I have the same situation, and both of us have been on Fedi for some years.
I think the perceived dominance of mastodon.social might hide a worse issue - what happens is a lot of people join up and simply abandon Fedi as its "not quick/interesting enough" whereas those who have got to the stage of finding another instance have generally decided to invest enough time and effort in remaining on the network..
Signal just released a "poll" feature with great fanfare, while all #deltachat apps already integrated a full suite of chat-shared apps, checklists, polls, shopping lists, calendar, editor + tons of games.
Better, anyone can create new apps, eg as github/codeberg forks from existing apps, and post it to their chats for instant deployment. No need to ask for permission, register an account, and no hosting or DNS: actually "server-less" and fully end-to-end encrypted :)
👍 If there was a company that made home appliances (fridges, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, etc.) that simply do what they're told without trying to be "smart" about it or doing something unrelated that I don't approve of... I'd buy all their stuff, I'd buy it right now, and I wouldn't care if it's at a premium. 👍
🤔 The fact that there's no such company clearly means that there's an enormous conspiracy to enslave us via our home appliances. 🤷
@nullagent My personal opinion is #Rust developers aren't serious about security because those same people would've used #Ada before Rust became mainstream, but they haven't. So its pure hype. I'm a big fan of formally verified code and this hype trend is on one hand good – more people are conscious about type safety, but on other hand bad because those very same people tend to completely ignore decades of research on formal program verification.
How many of them know about ATS/Postiats for example or even more mainstream Ada SPARK?
Ironclad OS tops the news: a Unix-like kernel crafted in Ada and SPARK, bringing formal verification to a real-time, POSIX-friendly world. 🧠🔐 Debian/GLIBC-like familiarity, MAC security, and growing portability—plus Gloire on top. Learn more: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/ironclad_os_unix_like_kernel/ #IroncladOS #Ada #SPARK #UnixLike #OSDev #newz
Am I just bad at finding information or does the Nlnet Ada Bootstrap compiler page have zero information on what party is tasked with the development, where a project blog may be found or even just a project repository?
Campaign idea: Just Send The Prompt
To participate, tell everyone who will listen that if they want to use "ai" to email or Slack or whatever a message to you, they should "Just Send The Prompt".
The "ai" doesn't add anything; everything that matters has to be in the prompt, so please Just Send me that.
Add it to your email signature, "think of the environment before slopping this email; Just Send The Prompt".
"I judge you for using Copilot; please Just Send The Prompt"
As it turns out, the last time I had extended the expiration date of my GPG key, I forgot to upload the public key to my Web Key Directory (WKD). Which is yet another mark against GPG. It’s just too damn complicated for me. And I maintain a manual of sorts! 😵💫 https://alexschroeder.ch/view/ugg – there a gazillion ways to make mistakes and as I grow older, I need to watch the pit traps. By comparison, Delta Chat seems to offer all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.
I just need to figure out how to use that mail account and its keys from my Debian laptop, too.
@ploum
FTP? Nah. Gopher? Nyet. Slopmachine? Oh yes, uncle Google, give us the moneybag! Em, we mean, the users want it.
So I suppose it's not clear to me what a 'good' window into unreliable, systemically toxic systems accomplishes, or how it changes anything that matters for the better, or what that idea even means at all. I don't understand how "ethical AI" isn't just "clean coal" or "natural gas."
There's a real technology here; stochastic pattern recognition and repetition seems like a powerful tool for solving some problems. But solving a problem starts at the problem, not working backwards from the tools.
@harrysintonen rust is really retro computing for an alternates universe made up entirely of rule following masochists. Not to yuck their yum, but please keep it in the alt.* hierarchy where it belongs and not in my tools.
Playground: Haiku running Haiku in qemu, I already had a setup earlier for this with 64bit, now with a local build for 32bit Haiku I can now boot this on a 64bit host. Not for building large (resource hungry) packages, but still nice.
Also enables me to quickly check dependencies for packages in the depot. :)
pro-libre software, pro-holisticism
pro-communalism, anti-consumerism
fan of #Plan9 and #HaikuOS
anti-witchhunt, see https://stallmansupport.org
I write software (C++) for a living.