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Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

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Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#81

Post by agentultra »

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,…

> And yes, it will be javascript.

It may trend that way for programmers. There's always the time-trusted argument to use a technology that "everyone else knows because maintainability," and often that's going to mean javascript (or whatever language the squeaky wheel likes the best).

But for the general population? I doubt it. We were told, 30 years ago, that everyone needed to learn how to program computers to compete in the economy of the future. That future is here and the majority of people I know aren't interested in learning how to program and don't need to.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#82

Post by intertextuality »

FreeFull wrote: post #55
intertextuality wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

I think the vast majority of people isn't even aware that programming is a thing. Back when computers used to present people with a BASIC prompt, people had a better chance of finding out about it and getting into it.

These days more people know about it in general because of the high salaries programmers earn. So in time I can see it becoming somewhat similar to wanting to be an engineer, doctor, or lawyer. Except those fields may more accessible even in the future.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#83

Post by cascom »

paddy_m wrote: post #79

I'm trying to help my girlfriend manage the inventory for her cactus business. She raises cacti from seed, cuttings, but mostly from wholesale suppliers. She has a square account and store. I’m trying to set up inventory tracking for her. There are couple of things that make her business different than most inventory holding businesses. 1. Generally her inventory increases in value over time because it grows. Over ti…

Talk about organic growth

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#85

Post by wbl »

paddy_m wrote: post #79

I'm trying to help my girlfriend manage the inventory for her cactus business. She raises cacti from seed, cuttings, but mostly from wholesale suppliers. She has a square account and store. I’m trying to set up inventory tracking for her. There are couple of things that make her business different than most inventory holding businesses. 1. Generally her inventory increases in value over time because it grows. Over ti…

Don't knock Microsoft Access for this sort of thing.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#86

Post by jwr »

paddy_m wrote: post #79

I'm trying to help my girlfriend manage the inventory for her cactus business. She raises cacti from seed, cuttings, but mostly from wholesale suppliers. She has a square account and store. I’m trying to set up inventory tracking for her. There are couple of things that make her business different than most inventory holding businesses. 1. Generally her inventory increases in value over time because it grows. Over ti…

> Custom business apps are tricky. As a programmer it's easy to turn my nose up at excel based solutions, but I totally see how they end up being built.

Both of these are true. And most people do not appreciate how tricky niche apps are. When I started writing PartsBox (for myself initially, later grew it into a business at https://partsbox.io/) several years ago, I thought I'd be done in a weekend. Nearly 4 years and almost 3000 commits later…

Spreadsheets are a pain for anything but the simplest things. And yet they are useful to a point, because making a domain-specific application is surprisingly hard: there are lots of edge cases that you don't think about initially.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#87

Post by ohnoabigshark »

iraldir wrote: post #72
ohnoabigshark wrote: post #64

Former CS major, current chef/owner checking in. Restaurants feel pretty ripe for voice assistants/AR but unfortunately lack the necessary technological and financial capital to make it happen, imo. Being able to record and retrieve important information without stopping your work (pulling up and scaling a recipe while chopping onions, for example) saves an immense amount of time in the kitchen. This is especially tr…

Not a chef or anything, but wouldn't reliability be absolutely necessary with no mistake whatsoever? I mean, when I ask alexa to play a song, and she gives me the wrong one, it's cute. If in a restaurant you order 500 kilos of flower instead of 500 kilos of flour, that's more problematic (except maybe on valentine's day). Same goes for any sort of vocal "note" you would like to make. if it has to be absolutely reliab…

This is very true. To combat the problem right now, I have some of my own logic in the middle to correct common misappropriations. I also have a small HUD-like tablet that shows me whatever I'm working on so I can see that the info went in correctly. Your point is still correct: the tech isn't quite there yet to do it without these other pieces.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#88

Post by ohnoabigshark »

perlgeek wrote: post #69
ohnoabigshark wrote: post #64

Former CS major, current chef/owner checking in. Restaurants feel pretty ripe for voice assistants/AR but unfortunately lack the necessary technological and financial capital to make it happen, imo. Being able to record and retrieve important information without stopping your work (pulling up and scaling a recipe while chopping onions, for example) saves an immense amount of time in the kitchen. This is especially tr…

I guess one of the main challenges is making things reliable. Voice assistants in their current form in loud, stressful environments sound like a source of endless frustration. > The need is there, my question lies in whether an industry with tight profit margins can afford to pay for such a product. If it actually saves time and helps fulfill orders quicker, why not?

This is true. I have tried wearing a mic to help with this and have seen some success.

When I say afford to pay, I'm thinking of all the development time that has to go into it to make a viable product. I do believe it is possible and honestly hope to be the person to do it. Even if I'm not, I hope someone does because there is plenty of potential beyond what I'm trying to do.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#89

Post by vetinari »

bitexploder wrote: post #23
kome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I almost feel like in the past there were more attempts at making this accessible to the end user, HyperCard, dbase etc, even just BASIC on your 8-bit machine. Oh for sure, look at web: we transformed something simple and beautiful like html+css in a complete shit show. Also, I don't feel like the new programming languages are easier then COBOL or BASIC, quite the contrary. We are making technology more complicated…

I still miss VB6. It was a beautiful tool and easy to make GUIs with. I still can’t handle writing native GUIs without a good WYSIWYG editor. Delphi was cool, but Object Pascal?! Many people still swear by Delphi and it’s because when your code is UI focused Delphi makes that super easy.

Object Pascal vs Visual Basic? That's not even a competition, Object Pascal, of course. At least it was somewhat internally consistent.

Re: Running a Bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL

#90

Post by dwild »

bluGill wrote: post #59
intertextuality wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a biased outlook, to be honest. For every handful of programmers I know, I know at least 100 others who maybe can barely use their computer besides basic apps. Programming is still not intuitive (nor enjoyable) for the vast majority of people, and I believe it will stay that way.

I don't want it to change by much. Yes we need more programmers, but we also need more doctors. It is not practical to become a great doctor and a great programmer. Those are but two of that millions of different jobs that are required for modern society to function.

> It is not practical to become a great doctor and a great programmer. > Those are but two of that millions of different jobs that are required for modern society to function.

Who said anything about being a great programmer? We have great writers, and believe me I'm not one, it doesn't stop all of us from gaining quite a bit from writing.

I'm not a native English speaker, I talk french. I'm far from great in linguistic, I'm not even great in English (my accent is atrocious and I require quite a bit of pause when I speak). Yet here we are and we both profit from me using that skill with you.

My sister has a criminology degree and one of her required class was SQL. She isn't a great programmer, yet she was able to use that skill to do more.

Personally I'm pretty sure programming should/will become a basic skill everyone will have. It doesn't means everyone will be great at it, it doesn't means it will fill every needs, but I believe almost everyone can gain from it. How many time have we used algebra in our daily life, I can count it without any hands for pretty nearly everyone ;) yet we all learn it. There so many time though that I saw people do repetitive tasks, that could be automated so easily on a computer, yet we don't learn that at school.

Not everyone will become full time programmer, but almost everyone can profit from that skill.

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