Serious answer: Posits seem cool, like they do most of what floats do, but better (in a given amount of space). I think supporting them in hardware would be awesome, but of course there’s a chicken and egg problem there with supporting them in programming languages.
Posits aside, that page had one of the best, clearest explanations of how floating point works that I’ve ever read. The authors of my college textbooks could have learned a thing or two about clarity from this writer.
I had the great honour of seeing John Gustafson give a presentation about unums shortly after he first proposed posits (type III unums). The benefits over floating point arithmetic seemed incredible, and they seemed largely much more simple.
I also got to chat with him about “Gustafson’s Law”, which kinda flips Amdahl’s Law on its head. Parallel computing has long been a bit of an interest for me I was also in my last year of computer science studies then and we were covering similar subjects at the time. I found that timing to be especially amusing.
The problem with github isn’t really a problem. It’s just accessible enough to borderline tech people who want a one click solution to a problem. They can find it, but using it requires more skill than they have. It’s a code repository, not an app store. The most useful things I find on github aren’t from some massive app developer, they’re from some guy who happened to have the same problem as me. Rather than screaming at that guy for an executable, level up. Learn something.
Or head over to the releases page (just saying, it can be an app store too).
Basically, if there’s no exe ready and you don’t want to learn to make it, that means it doesn’t exist for you. The github page might as well just say “Coming eventually!”.
Tbf the released page can be hard to notice/find, a lot of projects who use it simply have links on the main page to it because a portion of users will fail to navigate there
I mean I code extensively and it still pisses me off they kind of don’t make the “download zip” more prominent or explain to noobs that this isn’t compiled/ plug n play…nor are most of the apps for Windows users, really.
This isn’t the job of a Git repository nor is it for GitHub, this is an issue for developers which shouldn’t use it as their main download way.
The download zip is not meant for the average person and frankly useless for most projects. I don’t know why you expect a Git repository to explain to you that bare code isn’t compiled or plug and play? How would GitHub know other than you informing them that the app isn’t for Windows?
I don’t think you understand the concept of what Git and GitHub even are and their intentions.
There’s no qualification to be a developer to access github though, I think is what the person you responded to is saying. It’s entirely possible for a user to end up at github without a true understanding of its purpose. Therefore, it would be helpful if it was more clear to the average non-developer user that what they’re looking at is a code repository and is not meant for general consumption.
And that’s the problem with modern internet and consumerism. I get your point, but the “I’m here, so I should be made comfortable and tended to” mentality really has no place in some situations. If you end up on a car parts website and have no idea what’s going on, you don’t just comment “Hey, this is really complicated, and no one warned me. Please consider making it more noob-friendly” because people usually know better, and understand that some things are outside their grasp, and that’s ok. This can be applied to academia sources as well. You would rarely see “What the hell is this all about?” below a rocket science article. So, my point is, GitHub is for people who at least know how to open the command prompt on windows. Maybe they should use this as a warning next to any GitHub link, idk.
I see you you’ve decided to take the road of not reading anything that has been said. There’s no bad usability OR lack of features for literally anyone relevant to these platforms.
I agree with most of what you said but it wouldn’t hurt to create a watered down version of the site and put it on a subdomain like noobs.github.com … There can be separate UIs for different kinds of users.
They could ask when you register an account what you intend to use GitHub for and what your familiarity is.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding… but are you saying GitHub, the corporate entity acquired by Microsoft for 7.8 billion dollars 6 years ago, is a champion of the free and open software movement and that needs some rando on the Internet to stand up for it?
People have lived through many cycles of Microsoft doing this shit. They don’t deserve defending.
Maybe I misunderstood your comment. I’m talking from the layman’s perspective looking for a stable build of whatever the software is.
"
Anything outside of code repository stuff is outside their lane
" sounds like you’re talking about non-technical users when that was the context of the original comment. I understand what you mean now though, and I somewhat agree.
For the main project I’m a maintainer on we do have forums too but they’re pretty dead, we mostly just use Discord because that’s what everyone else seems to be using.
Discord is absolute trash if you’re a user searching for solutions. It simply doesn’t turn up in web searches. Why would you want your users to ask the same questions again and again?
It just so happens to be where all our users end up anyway so for us it’s been okay for the most part. Having moderator commands for frequently asked questions, and automating frequently asked questions tends to help even more. Discord also seems to work well for projects far larger than ours, ones like RPCS3 etc.
After reading the comments on several communities including Lemmy, reddit, YouTube and several others, I don’t get the feeling that FOSS users are as enthusiastic about discord as you portray. Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps it’s a restriction that you impose on your users?
Besides, all the bells and whistles of Discord don’t solve the biggest gripe that I have with it - the searchability and discoverability of questions and answers. Despite the history recording in Discord, it acts essentially as an information black hole. People’s efforts in solving problems are just lost because they can’t be found again.
And finally, there’s one thing that corporate social media has proven time and again. Eventually all of them pivot for some reason or another. Perhaps they want to monetize the platform on unacceptable terms (like reddit recently). That will happen to discord too some day. They are holding the community content hostage. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that they won’t ever try to make money off it, cutting the community from it.
I mean, I don’t disagree with you, but our forums are dead. Our users do seem to like Discord, we also have a Matrix and IRC but those are dead too. Discord is where our users seem to flock to.
All I can really say is my experiences, and what I have seen in other cases too.
I wish Discord weren’t the giant that it was, and I wish it were open-source, but unfortunately that’s just how these things go sometimes I guess.
Again, I think another good example of this is RPCS3. They have forums that are pretty dead, and they have a Discord that has a ton of users in there.
Our users do seem to like Discord, we also have a Matrix and IRC but those are dead too. Discord is where our users seem to flock to.
What is really happening is that people are looking for documentation or support, seeing that the forum, the IRC and the Matrix are dead, that the only other thing is discord, and give up. Minus some fraction who already use it for other purposes (gaming, probably) and don’t mind using it.
But from your perspective, it looks like everybody is joining discord and liking it, because all of the other people just give up. It’s only a very particular demographic that uses discord. Most likely (I might be wrong, but this is what I guess) very young, male, gamer, european descendent, and from a relatively wealthy western country. That’s a very small part of humanity.
If you as the maintainer go and use the forums, and maybe announce this in discord, the users will follow.
I’m a member of a Discord that is the primary source of discussion and information about a piece of hardware, including technical & usage tips, firmware announcements, etc. It’s a terrible way to track this stuff.
That said, the only other forums that have decent communities around it are Reddit, Facebook, and Elektronauts - none of which are even close to as active, but in which many of us will post important info & tips to get the news out. Over 3 years into the project (which is not open source) it would be ridiculous to try shifting the whole community to a new platform. We’re kinda stuck.
Luckily the community as a whole seems to realise this, so we happily answer noob questions over and over and provide links to the appropriate resources, discussions, and pinned posts without snark or judgement. We’ve all been there. It’s the nature of the beast, it’s not efficient, and it’s not the end of the world.
Finally, with the state of search engines in decline due to monetisation, encroachment of AI bloat, and general enshittification, it’s a matter of time before very little real information will be easily searchable. Insular communities who decide to withdraw and do everything their own, better way will likely become the norm. The internet needs a reset anyway.
We have been using the forums. It’s been announced in Discord, we have a webhook that posts in our main Discord channel every time there’s a post in our main forum section. Every announcement goes to both the forums and the Discord, and the Discord announcements link to the forum posts.
We are using the forums. Our forums are still dead.
You’re the maintainer and presumably you control the discord server. You can decide to move things to a more available platform by removing Discord as an option.
There is one possible explanation for that conundrum. There are two types of people who are looking for solutions:
Those who want quick answers. They don’t want to do the research - to see if the problem has been addressed before. They don’t care about if the question has been asked before.
Those who prefer searching for solutions. They don’t like joining any community just to search for those solutions.
Group 2 is going to be very invisible to you (maintainers), because they ask questions only if they can’t solve the problem themselves and nobody has asked it before. (I know this because that’s me). This group isn’t a minority.
Group 1 is the vocal type that you are more likely to interact with, since their first instinct is to ask. If you provide them a choice between forums and chat rooms, they always choose chats because that’s where they can get away with providing minimal background information on their questions and doing minimal to no research.
This doesn’t mean that the majority of your users are happy with chatrooms. It’s just that your observations are going to show this survivorship bias.
I didn’t advocate for IRC. I’m strongly on the side of forums. But in case you want to compare, IRC is still a better deal than Discord. IRC has loggers and searchable web archives where it matters. Discord on the other hand is holding the conversation hostage. Someday the closed nature of discord will come to bite. The honeymoon isn’t going to last forever.
Recommending the use of a software for a purpose it wasn’t meant or designed for, is the real bad argument. There are a lot of projects that use forums for support questions just fine. Instead when you offer a chat room, people will try to get away with quick answers. But it rarely ends up like that and all the conversation that ensues also becomes buried.
Short lesson - use software for what it’s meant for. Don’t shoehorn a support forum’s job to a chat application simply because people already use it.
Everything beats a proper forum because most proper forums are basically dead since small projects won’t have many users and only a small number will sign up for a specific forum.
Forums used to be great since there was not much else, they still are good for large communities, but other than that, nope.
only a small number will sign up for a specific forum
Most people don’t have to sign-up, 90% of cases should resolve on just searching the problem. Good chances it was already asked and answered.
Most of the time, forums with few users aren’t dead, they’re just really slow, whenever you post a question - expect at least 12-hour delay. I’ve never seen a message on Discord answered 12 hours later - you either get somewhat instant response or it’s ghosted forever. Also good luck asking questions if there’s heated/rapid discussion in the room, or you have a little time and other responsibilities other than checking discord every couple minutes.
Recently switched jobs from maintaining a 15 year old Windows Forms .NET Framework legacy codebase.
At the new job we stick to Clean Architecture, use unit and integration tests, have a code generation tool, actually make nice use of generics and use dependency injection. Also agile processes, automatic build tools, whatever. The difference is night and day and I’m so glad my ex boss fired me because I told him he’s an asshole and his codebase is shit.
My first job out of college I have been able to see a steady improvement in the codebase. A little while ago I had to go back to an old tag and was horrified with what it used to be and impressed how much it improved.
Same, I run 3 devices all on Lineage and its great. Who know that you could still get updates and support for a device from 10 years ago, suck on that apple.
It’s just kind of sucks that updates consistently breaks banking apps and other stuff relying of passing safetynet. Every time I update I have to do the Magisk workaround again which is really annoying.
Well, according to the first biography about him, he was coding quite a lot in Zip2 and perhaps also some in early PayPal. Bit the code was supposedly hastily written and very bad.
Neat! To save others a search, “Post Production - Ground Control” turned up for my search.
Edit: If I ever worked on a Sega CD game, I would wear that as a badge of pride. It wasn’t a good game system, but it was an interesting era in the history of gaming.
This, always try to have cash pillow to have ability send everyone go fuck themselves and search for next at least half decent place, also i see alot of people struggling with self respect nowadays, been there done that, even today i gotta remind myself that i should never betray myself no matter what happens, even if i can’t “fight” at least i shouldn’t endure shit
The stalebot is most times useless. The only scenario where I can see use of it is a maintainer waiting for the reporter to add information. But closing issues because no maintainer checked on them? That’s garbage and discourages bug reports.
Amateur. You want real performance? Code in prod. Literally could not be better for collaboration to have the whole team working directly from production servers. Best part? You get INSTANT feedback.
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