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Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

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Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#131

Post by TremendousJudge »

rekshaw wrote: post #70
lm28469 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's the opposite, just like everyone has a car but barely anyone could do the most basic maintenance on it. This is arguably getting worse in every sector because of increasing complexity. (trade off for increasing convenience, as usual) Familiarity is not knowledge. I'd even say that technology sets us back because know we're all thinking we're much smarter than we are, I can google any issue I have and fin…

Valid counterpoint. However, we could still be witnessing metaphorical "acne" resulting from instant communication. With no more time-delays or costs associated with communication, the threshold for what makes something worth communicating drops. What I'm speaking of is not 20 years from now, but 500. When we've moved past the banal, when people have assimilated instant communication but have also learned the preciou…

Maybe even longer. It took thousands of years from the invention of writing to everybody being able to read and write. Being a scribe was a viable career path for a long, long time. And even now, most people know how to read and write but do it rather badly. Just a few are actually good at producing and/or understanding text. I reckon the same thing is the future path for computer programming.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#132

Post by B-Con »

nickjj wrote: post #67
rekshaw wrote: post #41

As people flock to become programmers, as a population we will become increasingly technologically literate. Sooner or later we will enter an age where programming is as second nature as writing. Communication at the end of the day is a way to get people to understand what we want. Programming is very similar only directed at machines, and as machines continue to replace people in trivial (and not so trivial) tasks,…

Lots of people are already really good programmers, they just don't know it. I know a few people who are really good plumbers, electricians and general contractors. Basically, they can see a problem and have the skills to break it down and then create a solution. None of them can type very well and barely know how to use the internet but I bet if they focused on learning the basics of computers they would end up bein…

Conversely, there are a lot of really good plumbers, they just don't know it.

There's a reason why they didn't be come a plumber.

There's a reason why they didn't become a programmer.

I think this thread greatly overestimates people's desire to do things themselves rather than just consume the products of other people's labor. There are a million things in my own life that I could do but don't.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#133

Post by mkesper »

gmfawcett wrote: post #40
ken wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people used WP5, with its cryptic codes and huge keyboard overlays. I don’t believe that’s any easier than Emacs (or HTML). People can figure things out, when they have to.

Cryptic, yes, but discoverable! Recently I was trying to help someone fix their bizarrely broken Word document, and I would have given my right arm for "F5 Reveal Codes."

Emacs is quite discoverable, too. Spacemacs even more, I think.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#134

Post by euroclydon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #111
euroclydon wrote: post #100

Using emacs with 7 million keyboard shortcuts to accidentally press, and then... lisp!! No thanks. This would be more approachable in an Anaconda notebook.

Your loss. (Also, Org Mode beats the crap out of Anaconda/Jupyter notebooks. You can still code Python, but the interface is actually ergonomic.)

Actually I use org-mode. I could implement what the blog suggests pretty quickly. But... A blog post aimed at bakers... Highlighting Emacs... OK.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#135

Post by FredFS456 »

jedberg wrote: post #119

This reminds me of the time I used Python to fill out my Wife's 4th grade report cards. She kept all the records in google sheets, so when it came time to do report cars, she already knew what all the grades should be. But the school only provided a terrible app where you literally had to make three clicks with a mouse to enter each grade. Each kid had about 20 grades to enter, and there were 30 kids. That was a lot…

Rewrite the output logic with PyAutoGUI doing the keyboard shortcuts and grade typing? https://pyautogui.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#136

Post by TeMPOraL »

mkesper wrote: post #133
gmfawcett wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptic, yes, but discoverable! Recently I was trying to help someone fix their bizarrely broken Word document, and I would have given my right arm for "F5 Reveal Codes."

Emacs is quite discoverable, too. Spacemacs even more, I think.

Yup. It's called a "self-documenting editor" for a reason :). From built-in help on every command, function, variable and keybinding, through apropos and tutorial, through a full-length manual - all available off-line, in the editor - it's easy to get your bearings around using and customizing Emacs. That is, once you adopt the old-school, pre-web notion of software actually having documentation.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#137

Post by istjohn »

photonios wrote: post #50
istjohn wrote: post #33

I have only ever been a tech hobbyist, but I have leveraged my Python skills in a similar way. I run a home cleaning service with my wife, and I started using Airtable to track clients, jobs, expenditures, employee hours, etc. The data entry became tedious due to having to make entries in multiple tables for each job, so I wrote a Python script to use a simple command line read-eval-print loop to collect job informat…

What about Tkinter? https://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter Very simple and maybe a bit limited, but quite easily extended with some libraries.

I've looked at it, but I would be writing hundreds of lines of code just for the interface, which would really slow me down. I really want to be able to focus on business logic and slap together a minimal interface in an hour or so. And unfortunately, I'm not able to code every day, so the more interface cruft I have to wade through, the longer it will take me to dig back into it in the future when I need to make changes. EasyGUI is built on top of TkInter but takes care of all the details to give you a handful of super-easy-to-use basic widgets. It would be perfect if it was just a little more finished.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#138

Post by drieddust »

zeveb wrote: post #114
drieddust wrote: post #73

I keep coming back to Emacs reading these stories but it never became a habit primarily I have to work across many desktops/laptops computers with Windows & Linux as well as Android mobile. Emacs not being usable on mobile is a big problem and biggest roadblock in the path.

Emacs runs on Windows as well as Linux (& on macOS, too). It works fine on the terminal in Android, but you'll want a keyboard, too. In principle you could add special Android bindings for emacs which would make using it without a keyboard somewhat useful.

A mobile interface for Emacs will be killer. I heard about Orgazly and tried using it but it's a very slow interface. A mobile first design even with limited features will go a long way.

Mobileorg was that app for a while but it's development stopped and it's no longer usable.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#139

Post by nickjj »

lm28469 wrote: post #74
nickjj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are already really good programmers, they just don't know it. I know a few people who are really good plumbers, electricians and general contractors. Basically, they can see a problem and have the skills to break it down and then create a solution. None of them can type very well and barely know how to use the internet but I bet if they focused on learning the basics of computers they would end up bein…

Or maybe you'd be a top notch electrician. Some people enjoy their craft (or don't want to sit at a desk all day), in the past few decades programming became really hyped but it's not some kind of goal everyone should try to attain. At some point we'll have to stop with that "technology can and will solve everything" mentality.

I was just trying to say that there's a lot of general skill set overlap between being a programmer and something like a plumber or electrician.

It's mostly breaking down problems, having a general curiosity on how things work and being able to read documentation. The only real difference between an electrician and a programmer is the context of how they apply those skills.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#140

Post by TeMPOraL »

whynotminot wrote: post #9
kiallmacinnes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a downside to this though .. For this bakery, if you hire someone, theres a reasonable chance they can use a spreadsheet (maybe not add new recipes etc, but use..). I'd bet is very unlikely the same will be true of SQL and emacs. In tech/development, it's akin to someone building a system in some obscure language, because they are most productive and the only ones developing it today.. It's likely that syste…

This is a very important point. Choose tools that are: (1) right for the project (2) right for the current team (3) right for the future team (3) might be hard given you don't know who joins later, and the engineers might also not have a say if they're not involved in hiring. But you can generally make decent guesses. The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel?…

> The odds of the next baker you higher knowing SQL and emacs? Pretty low... the odds they know Excel? Probably higher.

Odds that you can teach them the basics of SQL and Emacs? Pretty high. At the level needed here, it's just UI like any other. Journalists are routinely taught SQL as a part of their studies, and secretaries and writers are known to use Emacs.

As for your points for tech projects, I really dislike the emphasis on (3). It sounds reasonable from business perspective, but business is always hoping for candidates who already know everything they need to be 100% productive from day one. It's an impossibility, and structuring your workshop around such requirements only drags your project down - because instead of using the right tool for the job, you end up using the lowest common denominator tool.

It's kind of like refusing to use excavators, because not everyone knows how to operate them, but everyone knows how to use a shovel and shovel wielders are cheaper.

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