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"Unknown or expired link." - Why?

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Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#81

Post by pg »

bkmartin wrote: post #72
pg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of yes, sort of no. It's a rapid prototyping technique. Essentially you fix it case by case, by taking individual bits of code that use this technique and replacing them with the uglier and less flexible but more efficient alternative of a hard-coded url.

Paul, I really do not mean any disrespect here because you are truly a class act and first rate player in the start up world. You are also a great hacker that loves to push the limits. You've created an amazing community here that I have been able to learn a ton from. I have to ask, and I'll probably get down voted to hell because I'm naive or something, but what is so elegant about a coding technique that breaks und…

It doesn't make sense to call any specific amount of traffic "normal conditions."

What's good about this technique, and about rapid prototyping in general, is that you can write an initial version quickly in very little code, then gradually make it more efficient as the demands on the app increase.

The rate of expired links says more about how busy I personally have been lately than about the desirability of storing state in closures.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#82

Post by pg »

tomcreighton wrote: post #79

I find it interesting that most discussions I've seen about this exact topic are about Arc and closures... instead of about the fact that this may well be an interesting programming thing to do but it's a moronic user experience thing to do.

Your comment is in a sense its own refutation, because the ultimate test of user experience is whether users continue to use the software.

Getting user experience right depends on the users. I wouldn't use this technique in an online store. Random online shoppers would be confused by expired links, and you'd lose sales. But HN users aren't confused by them. What HN users care about is the quality of the stuff on the site.

Since I can't work full time on HN, I focus on the things that matter most. What I spend my time thinking about is e.g. detecting voting rings. Those affect what you see on the frontpage, which is what users of this site care most about.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#83

Post by DougBTX »

gnaritas wrote: post #63
debaserab2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not productive to have a site that randomly locks out visitors. No matter how clever the code design is, this is a product flaw.

No, it's a design choice, he favors ease of programming more than user experience. You might not agree with that choice, but it's not a flaw, he did it on purpose and knew the consequences.

A better name might be technical debt. It is a flaw from the perspective of someone seeing the error message. But for the developer it is a way of saving development time, which can be paid off later to fix it.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#84

Post by onedognight »

piinbinary wrote: post #16
jgrahamc wrote: post #13

It's an artefact of the way in which news.arc (actually srv.arc) uses functions for links. Here's the key code: (= dead-msg* "\nUnknown or expired link.") (defop-raw x (str req) (w/stdout str (aif (fns* (sym (arg req "fnid"))) (it req) (pr dead-msg*)))) If the fnid (function ID) isn't in the fns* list then you get the dead message. (def flink (f) (string fnurl* "?fnid=" (fnid (fn (req) (prn) (f req))))) In many place…

I would be interested to know how much state is in those closures. If it is less than 200 or so bytes, it would not be impractical to encode it (b64) in the url for the next page (rather than a reference to the state).

> how much state is in those closures [...] to encode it (b64) in the url

I would be interested to know if this is even possible to determine from a macro which variables are bound in the closure.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#86

Post by Natsu »

pg wrote: post #82
tomcreighton wrote: post #79

I find it interesting that most discussions I've seen about this exact topic are about Arc and closures... instead of about the fact that this may well be an interesting programming thing to do but it's a moronic user experience thing to do.

Your comment is in a sense its own refutation, because the ultimate test of user experience is whether users continue to use the software. Getting user experience right depends on the users. I wouldn't use this technique in an online store. Random online shoppers would be confused by expired links, and you'd lose sales. But HN users aren't confused by them. What HN users care about is the quality of the stuff on the…

You're right, but at times, I've found it nearly impossible to log in because I can't seem to get a new login URL. Nothing works except waiting it out. So please look into that if you can. I almost submitted a story like this because I've spent 5+ minutes trying to log in several times now.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#87

Post by tomcreighton »

pg wrote: post #82
tomcreighton wrote: post #79

I find it interesting that most discussions I've seen about this exact topic are about Arc and closures... instead of about the fact that this may well be an interesting programming thing to do but it's a moronic user experience thing to do.

Your comment is in a sense its own refutation, because the ultimate test of user experience is whether users continue to use the software. Getting user experience right depends on the users. I wouldn't use this technique in an online store. Random online shoppers would be confused by expired links, and you'd lose sales. But HN users aren't confused by them. What HN users care about is the quality of the stuff on the…

I don't dispute that you're a busy guy.

That said: I come for the community - and the community has obviously noticed that the site occasionally throws up an annoying 'error'. The fact that you've done something cool programatically has no bearing on what I get from HN.

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#88

Post by xentronium »

adamrmcd wrote: post #70
breckinloggins wrote: post #43

Steps to reproduce: 1. Open Hacker News 2. Go to lunch 3. Come back from lunch and click next Every. Time.

I wonder if this is exacerbated by people enabling the aptly named "noprocrast" setting in their profile, not knowing what it does... http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Noprocrast page is entirely different page from "Unknown or expired link"

Re: "Unknown or expired link." - Why?

#90

Post by herdrick »

tomcreighton wrote: post #79

I find it interesting that most discussions I've seen about this exact topic are about Arc and closures... instead of about the fact that this may well be an interesting programming thing to do but it's a moronic user experience thing to do.

Please don't call people or their work 'moronic' (or the like) here.
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