@davetron5000@ruby.social
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davetron5000

@davetron5000@ruby.social

Author of Sustainable Web Development with Ruby on Rails, The Senior Software Engineer and more. CTO @ Mood Health. Former Stitch Fix, LivingSocial. Posts about Ruby, Tech, Maybe Cats

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collin, to random
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What do you use the action button for on your iPhone? I don’t use it at all, but I’d like to.

davetron5000,
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@collin I have a shortcut that presents a menu: toggle espresso machine, toggle backyard lights, and volume off. This is the first time an iPhone can be made silent. My “volume off” turns the volume to zero and turns the ringer off. That makes it silent. It’s my most used feature.

Espresso machine is there to warm it up in the morning, but based on when I get up which is not a stable enough time to use a proper schedule.

davetron5000, to random
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Cool, another government website that doesn't work in Safari because they made an appointment-booking form an SPA with fancy nonsense instead of just using 1990's tech that worked great then and works great now. thanks, shitbirds.

collin, to random
@collin@ruby.social avatar

Is Lord Of The Rings the last popular movie trilogy that really nailed it?

I would qualify a trilogy as being three movies which were conceived as being three movies and are telling one story split up across three movies.

By that definition, I can only think of the original Star Wars trilogy and LOTR where all three movies are good and they stick the landing.

davetron5000,
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@collin the Nolan Batman movies?

davetron5000,
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@collin that is true but for me the through line elevates the third movie and makes it feel like a more epic story (as compared to The Matrix where the second two feel bolted on and kinda mid)

davetron5000, to random
@davetron5000@ruby.social avatar

CS Researchers: Here're some programming languages mathematically proven to make the computer do exactly what you say.

Programmers: «create vast complexity that no one person could comprehend in order to render a web page»

Also Programmers: What if we made the programming language English, required that the compiler run on a monstrously huge array of GPUs, and set it up so it only did what we ask sometimes, and other times just do nonsense, but we don't know which is which?

Hacker News: Neat!

davetron5000, to random
@davetron5000@ruby.social avatar

Oh no. The Sonos app icon has changed. What have they done now? I’ve read the tirada and am hoping none of this affects my usage. Which is to hit play and have a playlist play on the same speakers. Which has worked 90% of the time every time for the last few years since the last app update.

davetron5000, to random
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The problem with this notion—learn the web platform/fundamentals and you’ll be empowered—is that it's a brutal curve for newcomers due to:

• Zero official explanations about HOW to properly use these APIs
• Simple ain't easy, and newcomers need easy to get started
• Some of the APIs just don't make sense (CSS) and/or there's no explanation of why they are the way they are and what advantage that brings (e.g. shadow DOM)

Thus, "simple" frameworks will continue to exist.
https://ruby.social/@davetron5000/112451221805097028

collin, to random
@collin@ruby.social avatar

Something is either up with me or with new Star Trek, but I have been weirdly on the side of the grumpy captains we aren’t supposed to be siding with lately.

image/jpeg

davetron5000,
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@collin I think Picard in TNG was more grumpy than not. And Janeway would gut you and leave you for dead if she had to.

I kinda read Shaw as a clock watcher tho. Just doing his time and playing it safe.

collin, to random
@collin@ruby.social avatar

Do you have any kind of organizational scheme for your iCloud Drive folder? Part me wonders if I should have a top level folder I put all of my documents under so my root is just the app directories, downloads, and that.

I basically never want to see the app folders if I don’t have to.

davetron5000,
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@collin I like the app folders, otherwise I'd never find out where I stored e.g. spreadsheets. That said, I have !!tmp and !Travel for tmp/travel stuff that sorts to the top, !Avatars with social media headshots, then "Music Stuff” (manuals, patches, songs), "eBooks”, and finally the classic zzz-dunno.

collin, to random
@collin@ruby.social avatar

If Apple didn’t already have iWork, Final Cut, or Logic, would they make them now? Kind of hard to imagine that kind of investment in new software from them. What even comes close in the last fifteen years?

davetron5000,
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@collin I’m still surprised that professionals rely on Final Cut or Logic as I'd expect apple to let them languish and die at any time.

collin, to random
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Okay, this is the folder structure I'm thinking for my songwriting catalog. I'm still a little torn on underscores and date stamps versus just writing everything with capitalization and spaces. The only reason I'm leaning this way is because it's possible I might want to script this at some point.

davetron5000,
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@collin One thing I've found helpful when doing stuff like this is to have a delimiter for different "fields" in the filename, so like use a dash after the date, but underscores for the name, e.g. 20240405-my_awesome_song/ so if you have to script it, you can do e.g. date,name = dir.split(/-/). Sure, parsing yyyymmdd isn't a big deal, but quickly separating stuff can remove some friction.

davetron5000, to random
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Is there an explainer for what is actually the point of all the AI stuff? For crypto I was fine ignoring it as it was stupid on its face. I would ignore AI too if it were just hyped by tech companies and VCs, but it seems to dominate everywhere. I’m in a “CTO club” and it’s nonstop AI.

Internet search on this topic is, even via Kagi, tons of SEO nonsense.

Don’t tell me about it writing emails or code. I understand that part. What actual problems is it supposed to solve?

davetron5000, to random
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Feels like all these new Browser APIs can be used to make an app or make it easier to do so but will instead be used to juice engagement, show ads, beg for mailing list signups, and generally make for a very poor user experience on web sites that just render text.

davetron5000, to random
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DORA tells you:

• Shipping anything faster than slower is good
• The only failures that matter are those you know about
• All failures are equal
• Failures are fine as long as you fix them

And, in a dysfunctional org run by people that don't understand software, these are bad incentives.

But look what they incentivize:
• Taking time to review code is bad - just ship
• Taking time to avoid failures is bad - just ship
• A slow app isn't a failure, so it's tolerated

davetron5000, to random
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Came to my basement hang out to listen to some records. Volume cannot be adjusted until Sonos does an update. Which it could not do. I'm in the middle of the second attempt and it's not working. I have never seen a piece of amazing gear go downhill so quickly as Sonos after the last couple of years. None of their stuff works on wifi—I have to use ethernet or it constantly gets lost. And now these frequent updates that, as far as I can tell, make things worse.

davetron5000, to random
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This is how I felt when I first learned about React, that it was built by Facebook to make it easy to make high performing web apps. But, like, Facebook's app/site was slow as hell. It was fast at putting up a white rectangle, but nothing about it screamed fast. GitHub was fast. But it no longer is, it is now super slow, too.

Vercel is even worse. Their site has always been dog slow, which made me wonder why would anyone ever use it if THEY, the vendor, can’t?
https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/112139544077247912

davetron5000, to random
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Reading devs being excited to use LLMs to generate tests seemed super odd at first, but it gets to a core use case of Gen AI: automating tasks perceived as busywork.

Meaning: these are devs that perceive tests as busywork. A thing to be done after coding due to their team’s policy. A thing for which they don’t see any more value than ticking a box.

And in turn, I am lucky (?) that I have never had a programming job where I felt this way. But I can understand it.

davetron5000, to random
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If Apple Arcade goes away, that is too bad. I am not a big gamer, but I play games on Apple Arcade because they are generally pretty good, and I know that I can basically just play games and not have to sit through ads or make micro-economic decisions.

I have noticed the quantity and quality of new games going down over time. I'm guessing Apple is pathologically hooked on their casino-games-for-children of the normal app store.

https://mobilegamer.biz/inside-apple-arcade-axed-games-declining-payouts-disillusioned-studios-and-an-uncertain-future/

collin, to random
@collin@ruby.social avatar

I wonder what it would look like to put one of these old recorder type workflows into an app. I mean, not a skeuomorphic reproduction, but like, everything is a channel strip with just one EQ and compressor option. One or two effect sends. Calibrated VU metering.

davetron5000,
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@collin I had (er…still have :) the Yamaha version of this. No sweepable mids :(

I think part of the appeal of a mixer-style workflow is the immediacy. Yeah, the constraints can drive creativity, but it's so much nicer/more fun to reach and twiddle knobs than mouse around in a DAW.

davetron5000, to random
@davetron5000@ruby.social avatar

In the name of security, Lively is adding a password for voicemails, meaning my parents will no longer be able to use voicemail. I don't understand why tech companies are so obsessed with passwords. Like, I think they are literally obsessed with them. They want more passwords, more security, more stuff in the way of accessing services we pay for. Thank god my mom's computer doesn’t support passkeys, or she'd be unable to use Amazon due to their new obsession with asking for passkeys.

davetron5000,
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My wife—who is not an elderly person with cognitive challenges—inadvertently made her amazon account inaccessible by saying "OK" to their passkey nag. Fortunately, her description was enough to make me think it was passkeys and I was able to figure out how to turn it off for amazon. The proliferation of passkeys will effectively end my parents’ ability to use the Internet. It's already hampered greatly by password rules, Shop Pay, Login with Google and endless marketing growth hacks.

kerrizor, to random
@kerrizor@ruby.social avatar

So usually when writing about a method in Ruby, we prefix it with a # so like:

"That's when I used String#chomp"

I can't remember, but I seem to recall a different notation for referring to class methods?

(I'm also oddly embarrassed I don't remember this.)

davetron5000,
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@fxn @kerrizor I thought it was two colons?

davetron5000, to random
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Wrote up my experience using #WebComponents in Earnest:

https://www.naildrivin5.com/blog/2024/01/24/web-components-in-earnest.html

This is a long read about the app I built for making a palette: https://ghola.dev

Here's a sample palette: https://ghola.dev/?primaryColor=%233a88fe&otherColors=complement%2Ctriad-lower%2Ctriad-upper%2C%23929292&compact=true

The blog post outlines the custom elements I created, how they were designed with demos. There is a code walkthrough of a few interesting bits as well as how I tested them + notes on my failed first attempt at making React-style Web Components (i.e. that render themselves).

davetron5000,
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@simevidas Yeah…I'm struggling to figure out what the problem is, but working on it

davetron5000, to random
@davetron5000@ruby.social avatar

In my quest for hobbies that do not involve computer screens, this is my recording setup w/ the best 4-track circa 1994. The POD v2 is awesome, still sounds great after all these years. Entire setup is based around "immediacy”. All those knobs, no mouse, no trackpad, no drivers, etc.

The Micron is standing in for my Minilogue XD which is in the shop.

I almost have type sync working to drive the sequencer.

@collin this setup will set you free 😂 Hold down record & play and start the rock

davetron5000,
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@collin The 4 track replaced an 8 track cassette recorder I used in college. It still works, but is clearly slowly deteriorating so keeping it even simpler.

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