Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This Message Does Not Exist

kmjn.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 278 posts

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#51

Post by sherburt3 »

tikhonj wrote: post #46
cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

It's still funny that the text of a message can exist without being a message itself. That must make sense in the specific context of Outlook, but it shows that the conceptual design of the software does not match how we want to think about the domain abstractly.

I don’t think the model is that far off. In real life I can read a letter and retain the contents in my mind, then burn the letter.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#52

Post by [deleted] »

haiku2077 wrote: post #35
shpx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pending and rolled back are different transaction states. The former uses resources and locks and can prevent other transactions from happening. Rolling back a transaction twice probably indicates an error in your program, which Go's API is giving you a chance to report to yourself. Ultimately every network request can fail because of the Two Generals' Problem. Actually, every single operation on a computer can fail…

Falsehoods programmers believe: - Sleep(1) sleeps for exactly 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for approximately 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for at least 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for an unknown, but short amount of time. Certainly not weeks, months or years.

[deleted]

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#53

Post by Dylan16807 »

routerl wrote: post #48

Isn't all of this just equivalent to a pointer? "This variable doesn't exist" is a reasonable error message when you're, for example, dereferencing a pointer with a wrong data type: it could be the equivalent of "there's no integer at this address" or "this integer doesn't exist". The problematic "this" is just an indexical in that case, and it works fine in terms of ontology, just like we might say "this house doesn…

Your pointer scenario could have the same warning, but it does not match the scenario in the post. In the post, we have """the message""" displayed on screen. It's not a simple dangling pointer, the contents are right there.

We're standing inside the living room while saying the house doesn't exist. And as soon as we walk out the living room will disappear.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#55

Post by mFixman »

routerl wrote: post #48

Isn't all of this just equivalent to a pointer? "This variable doesn't exist" is a reasonable error message when you're, for example, dereferencing a pointer with a wrong data type: it could be the equivalent of "there's no integer at this address" or "this integer doesn't exist". The problematic "this" is just an indexical in that case, and it works fine in terms of ontology, just like we might say "this house doesn…

If it were a pointer, Microsoft's advice of copying the message would cause a segmentation fault.

Maybe a better comparison would be a weak reference to an object that's in line to being garbage collected.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#56

Post by routerl »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #53
routerl wrote: post #48

Isn't all of this just equivalent to a pointer? "This variable doesn't exist" is a reasonable error message when you're, for example, dereferencing a pointer with a wrong data type: it could be the equivalent of "there's no integer at this address" or "this integer doesn't exist". The problematic "this" is just an indexical in that case, and it works fine in terms of ontology, just like we might say "this house doesn…

Your pointer scenario could have the same warning, but it does not match the scenario in the post. In the post, we have """the message""" displayed on screen. It's not a simple dangling pointer, the contents are right there. We're standing inside the living room while saying the house doesn't exist. And as soon as we walk out the living room will disappear.

I'm sorry, I miss things nowadays, but I don't see where the post states that the message is still available.

If it is, that's probably a desync issue, like others have said. Still not particularly mysterious or ontologically interesting. So much of parallel and distributed programming is about solving desync problems.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#58

Post by routerl »

mFixman wrote: post #55
routerl wrote: post #48

Isn't all of this just equivalent to a pointer? "This variable doesn't exist" is a reasonable error message when you're, for example, dereferencing a pointer with a wrong data type: it could be the equivalent of "there's no integer at this address" or "this integer doesn't exist". The problematic "this" is just an indexical in that case, and it works fine in terms of ontology, just like we might say "this house doesn…

If it were a pointer, Microsoft's advice of copying the message would cause a segmentation fault. Maybe a better comparison would be a weak reference to an object that's in line to being garbage collected.

Yeah, I said "the equivalent of a pointer" because it was an analogy. I then spent the rest of the post trying to cash-in that analogy. Sorry I wasn't clear enough.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#60

Post by teddyh »

haiku2077 wrote: post #35
shpx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pending and rolled back are different transaction states. The former uses resources and locks and can prevent other transactions from happening. Rolling back a transaction twice probably indicates an error in your program, which Go's API is giving you a chance to report to yourself. Ultimately every network request can fail because of the Two Generals' Problem. Actually, every single operation on a computer can fail…

Falsehoods programmers believe: - Sleep(1) sleeps for exactly 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for approximately 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for at least 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for an unknown, but short amount of time. Certainly not weeks, months or years.

More Falsehoods programmers believe about time: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b...>
Post reply on HN