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

You Are in a Box

jyn.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 138 posts

Re: You Are in a Box

#31

Post by chubot »

> there is no interop between powershell and nushell

FWIW I wrote a post about this design issue:

Oils Is Exterior-First (Code, Text, and Structured Data) - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2023/06/ysh-design.html#survey...

That is

- Powershell and nushell have an "interior" design (within a process/VM)

- while POSIX shell, bash, OSH, and YSH have an "exterior" design (between processes)

And I'll claim that the exterior design is the glue you need in large, heterogeneous systems. Making the shell "interior" and "easy to use" is at odds with the role as essential glue -- it creates pressure for something else to be used instead.

---

Maybe the more pithy statement is here:

A Sketch of the Biggest Idea in Software Architecture - https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2022/03/backlog-arch.html

The lowest common denominator between a PowerShell, Elvish, Rash, and nushell script is a Bourne shell script (and eventually a YSH script)

I also claim this isn't theoretical -- there are probably a non-trivial number of bash scripts gluing together PowerShell and other shells. IMO it's better to have 1 type of glue, than 2 or more types, which I call "Unix sludge / Cloud sludge".

---

And I disagree with this part, which references protocol buffers:

> how do you get a schema? well, you establish in-band communication. RPC is ...

Protocol buffers transmit schemas OUT of band, usually via a monorepo. The data sent over the wire can't be interpreted without the schema information compiled into the binary.

The monorepo works well enough within Google, but even there it failed to scale (probably around the time of "Alphabet", e.g. Waymo and other companies)

Also, protobufs are biased toward C++; users of other languages feel this friction to varying degrees. In general, they'd rather use .gob for Go, pickle for Python, JSON for JS, Java serialization, etc.

Re: You Are in a Box

#34

Post by ricoxicano »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #14
LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

i hate this writing style so much. i have to do extra work fighting autocorrect to make it seem like i just rolled out of bed and typed it out on my phone. i am so smart, see, i don't care about Big Establishment Grammar, my ideas are so good it will pierce through

... or people who type in lowercase just keep autocorrect off?

Re: You Are in a Box

#35

Post by staticshock »

LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

i tend to draft everything lowercase, and then go back and uppercase things depending on how much of a formal vibe i'm going for. capitalization rarely helps me formulate an idea, and so my writing often splits into phases: (1) formulation, (2) polish.

also, it's worth noting that proper capitalization does not automatically yield text worth reading. from that perspective, i like lower case text as a form of rebellion against the artifice of rules; any rebellion against particular aesthetics is fair game in my book. more generally, i'm skeptical of process advocacy in cases where the process seems to be done for its own sake.

on the flip side, good grammar helps me parse sentences, so i do sympathize with arguments in its favor.

Re: You Are in a Box

#36

Post by drcongo »

LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

I'd closed the tab by the end of the first sentence. If the author can't be bothered, then neither can I. I tend to find people who do this have a superiority complex, they think they're so much better than everyone else that they're justified in offloading their own tiny cognitive load on to everybody else.

Re: You Are in a Box

#37

Post by hombre_fatal »

LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

It's fine in tweets and even HN/Reddit comments, but it becomes a tacky affectation when used in longer form, deliberate content.

Re: You Are in a Box

#38

Post by soulofmischief »

LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

I do it a lot, do me a favor and don't attribute it to Sam Altman since some of us have been doing this for a long time. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it, but you also don't need to be patronizing and close-minded about how others choose to express themselves.

Re: You Are in a Box

#39

Post by brazzy »

LorenDB wrote: post #9

Am I the only one who finds the Sam Altman-esque 'all lowercase except for proper nouns like Linux but not including the pronoun i' writing style unbearable to read?

Weird. I actually never noticed that while reading the entire article. And I'm almost 50. No idea what that says about me.

Re: You Are in a Box

#40

Post by PaulHoule »

nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #3
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I feel this the most on mobile platforms where the phone really should be acting as your agent but instead we're stuck with all these apps.

interesting. how would you make it better?

Clear APIs and better semantics. Another post points out how gross mistrust gets in the way but there are alao little mistrusts. For instance if there was an API to compare restaurant menus and order things through an agent that moves power up to the agent who can influence who gets the business.

That is, I'm not afraid of being branded subversive because I like to eat strange foreign foods, I'm afraid that I'm going to get the worst pizza in town instead of the best pizza in town because somebody paid off Apple or because Google or Facebook can put up a tollbooth in front of new entrants or that they might not be interested in working with or being fair with independent restaurants because private equity has bought most of them up.

Post reply on HN