You can't do that because I hate you • Hacker News Board

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#11

Post by andy99 » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 8:53 PM UTC

mrblampo wrote: post #3

First example seems odd? The author acknowledges that the two proposed alternatives (printing " " or actually exiting) aren't great. The fact that the Python REPL provides a helpful hint seems like extra effort to make your life easier. This is especially notable given that in the next example, the author's complaint is about a command _not_ providing special guidance about the thing the user is probably trying to do…

Vim iirc has a similar hint telling you to exit when you try something that should exit. I don't remember how it's triggered, ctrl-q maybe (edit, ctrl-c). I see the point, if you know what someone is trying to do, better to just do it, or ignore it, not give a condescending "nudge". Though personally the hint doesn't bother me.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#12

Post by jmholla » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

et1337 wrote: post #9

The last example is actually a great argument in favor of this “user-unfriendly” mindset. The removal of that CLI flag forced the user to actually figure out the root cause of the problem rather than paper it over with a workaround they didn’t really understand, which would inevitably metastasize and explode later in an even more frustrating way. All of these examples are devs trying to make sure users understand wha…

> The removal of that CLI flag forced the user to actually figure out the root cause of the problem rather than paper it over with a workaround they didn’t really understand, which would inevitably metastasize and explode later in an even more frustrating way.

I wish the author had written what the real issue is. It feels like they are contributing the the very problems they are complaining about with a flippant line about it being something else.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#13

Post by ambicapter » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

> “Unstable features”???? How is wrapping text an unstable feature in a code formatter?

Haven't finished the whole thing, but wait till you start reading about LaTeX.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#14

Post by TheCoreh » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

The unstable warning preventing you from wrapping the comments actually seems pretty reasonable to me.

It is implemented, but there are probably edge cases where the proper way to wrap and retain the best possible formatting is still disputed. Since a lot of people format on save, via commit hooks or during CI, having this feature enabled as stable and _changing the behavior later_ would cause massive annoying diffs in the future, or CI failures for a ton of projects.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#15

Post by v9v » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

I like the MATLAB REPL a lot with regards to this issue. If you make a typo in a function or variable name, the REPL fixes it automatically and you press enter to send the corrected command. From the story submitted here about Medley Interlisp, I gather that its REPL also has such a feature.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#16

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

Do what I mean, not what I said can be problematic for tools. That being said, the example where the devs left a link to file an issue to beg to restore functionality was maddening.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#17

Post by ssgodderidge » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #8

mrblampo wrote: post #3

First example seems odd? The author acknowledges that the two proposed alternatives (printing " " or actually exiting) aren't great. The fact that the Python REPL provides a helpful hint seems like extra effort to make your life easier. This is especially notable given that in the next example, the author's complaint is about a command _not_ providing special guidance about the thing the user is probably trying to do…

I'd have done both the hint and the actual result. Like this: >>> print >>> exit Hint: Use exit() or Ctrl-D (i.e. EOF) to exit >>> This way, it does do the thing you literally asked for, but also does help a newbie out.

> does help a newbie out

… or a long-time dev that switches languages fairly often :)

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#18

Post by burnte » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

zem wrote: post #6

the trouble with "do what I mean" is that if the software guesses, and guesses wrong, the results are far worse than just not doing it. an "if you really meant to do this here is the correct incantation" error message seems like the best possible thing to do.

The problem with this argument is the low hanging fruit. EXIT is pretty unambiguous. I HATE that some tools the help argument is -? and others use --? when everyone COULD just print help on both is maddening, especially when you use the "wrong" one and it just says "do the other for help". You KNEW what I wanted, and didn't do it, just like the article says.

Yes, mindreading is tricky, but sometimes you don't need to read minds to just work with the user.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#19

Post by thatguysaguy » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

It's so strange to me that the first example is one where the devs went out of their way to help the users. There's no world in which that's maliciousness or anything of the sort.

Re: You can't do that because I hate you

#20

Post by Arnavion » Thu, Dec 28, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

>It wasn’t seeing my file, despite it absolutely being part of the project. It even found the lib.rs in my crate but not this particular source file. I have no idea why,

Because it's not in fact part of their project, despite their assertion that it is.

>But you can’t. cargo fmt doesn’t have an option for that. How is even possible for your format command to not let you format an individual file?

Because cargo is a tool for working with projects, not with individual source files.

>Problem is, I had never even heard of rustfmt.

Putting "rust how to format a file" into a search engine returns rustfmt in the top results. But in any case, the problem they needed to fix is to make that file a part of their project so that `cargo fmt` will format it, not work around that by running rustfmt manually. But alas they've convinced themselves that's not the problem.

>At this point I was just hopping mad. It knew that I wanted to wrap comments. But it refused, because this was “unstable”. It knew that I wanted to opt into experimental features, but refused again.

Whatever method they used to install nightly, they're not using it here. The error is coming from the non-nightly rustfmt that they were using originally.

>It would literally have been better if they had not shipped this wrap_comments feature at all. Instead they just keep dangling it in front of my face and snatching it away as soon as I try to use it. Because they hate me.

I'd be amused at this trolling if I didn't know the author is completely serious.