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My Software North Star

kristoff.it

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Re: My Software North Star

#91

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you realize that the lack of a feature is the same as the presence of a bug then "fixing all bugs" also means "adding all the features", then you also accept that you will never be done. This doesn't make sense at all. Your email software mangles my email. Or your media player randomly skips. That's a bug. No big philosophy needs to be hidden behind it. That your media player doesn't have the shuffle feature i…

There are things that are clearly bugs and clearly features. And a lot of things that are somewhere in between. It’s not black or white and as such perhaps not worth categorizing? Especially with dramatic processes like ”always fix all bugs before implementing any feature”.

[deleted]

Re: My Software North Star

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

oytis wrote: post #84
flooow wrote: post #7

I imagine it's a difficult time to be a Zig developer. In the near term, Bun choosing to switch from Zig to Rust specifically to fix all the memory errors seems to have done the Zig community some psychological damage. But more significantly, in the medium term it looks likely that AI coding is going to overtake the industry before Zig gets properly established. And it is going to be very hard to justify choosing Zig…

I don't understand the idea behind Zig. What I have read sounded like "let's make a language like Rust, but not memory-safe", which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Even Rust has an unsafe subset. There's a meaningful question about how to make such an unsafe language as easy and comfortable to use as possible, and Zig is a decent answer to that particular question. The libraries Zig ships with are especially relevant here, rather than the core language per se: Rust's library facilities are outright terrible to write unsafe code with, because the usual requirements of safe code are assumed throughout and the whole point of unsafe code is to break those. (You can selectively relax those requirements, e.g. take &Cell not &mut T, to allow for benign aliasing - but most stdlib code doesn't bother to!)

Re: My Software North Star

#93

Post by [deleted] »

alkonaut wrote: post #88
coldtea wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some times there is, and in many cases there is not. Distinguishing a feature from a bug requires having some kind of spec. In some cases you can have obvious sign the behaviour is unintended/not desired, but in other cases it's not so easy. For example a customer reports a bug, your program can't print. Oh, you say, we never even had that feature! Please post again, as a feature request.Customer mumbles and reques…

Not even a development team can (or should!) be able to agree on whether something is a bug. Just because there is never a complete spec. It’s a mental state of the team. Or expectations among stakeholders.

[deleted]

Re: My Software North Star

#94

Post by marcosdumay »

flooow wrote: post #7

I imagine it's a difficult time to be a Zig developer. In the near term, Bun choosing to switch from Zig to Rust specifically to fix all the memory errors seems to have done the Zig community some psychological damage. But more significantly, in the medium term it looks likely that AI coding is going to overtake the industry before Zig gets properly established. And it is going to be very hard to justify choosing Zig…

Why do people even try to vibe-code stuff in low level languages?

You either care about non-functional aspects of your code, or you don't. Running your code through the shredder that destroys everything you don't test while insisting on writing it on a language that specifies non-functional properties... I don't have any other word, it's stupid.

Re: My Software North Star

#95

Post by sakjur »

alkonaut wrote: post #39
0815beck wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you mean "there is no way to distinguish a feature from a bug"? of course there is

Some times there is, and in many cases there is not. Distinguishing a feature from a bug requires having some kind of spec. In some cases you can have obvious sign the behaviour is unintended/not desired, but in other cases it's not so easy. For example a customer reports a bug, your program can't print. Oh, you say, we never even had that feature! Please post again, as a feature request. Customer mumbles and request…

> For example a customer reports a bug, your program can't print. Oh, you say, we never even had that feature! Please post again, as a feature request.

As a sidenote, I dislike it when a vendor makes me care whether something is a bug report, feature request, or support query prior to filing it. I'm willing to make an assessment on whether the query is of a public or private (if I'm unwilling to publish publicly, sensitive customer info, potential for vuln et c.) nature but beyond that I don't want to spend any time arguing about classification.

Re: My Software North Star

#96

Post by ivanjermakov »

Not all software is about usefulness. Especially in context of hacking, where software is a way of self expression and making something fun.

In enterprise usefulness is not the end goal either. Software can be very useful, but if no one is going to pay for it, it holds very little value for the business.

Re: My Software North Star

#97

Post by bwfan123 »

epolanski wrote: post #49
Zakis1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed unfortunately, if Zigs whole selling point is meant to be a "nicer C" (and a much nicer DX than Rust because no fighting the borrow checker etc) - does that really matter in a world where an LLM is writing the code? I am not going to be fighting the borrow checker, the LLM is. And as always, the response you'll hear is: but AI sucks/hallucinates/could never replace me etc... Just look at the progress LLM'S hav…

Why's everybody obsessed with the popularity contest? Rust is a great language with some great killer features. It does not need consistent propaganda preaching how it's a better choice than "insert other language". Every system programmer is aware of Rust and it's pros. Doesn't mean it's a language that fits the use case, project, constraints and even preferences. It's not just about generating code, it's also about…

> It does not need consistent propaganda preaching how it's a better choice than "insert other language".

Indeed. There is an irrational urge in some folks to become language-missionaries. Usually such folks have gained expertise in that specific language and want to protect and expand their turf. There is a wide-range of software usecases requiring a variety of tools and no one language fits all.

Amusing side-note. xai was all-in on rust for their ai-stack back in 2023. But now, spacex controlled xai is apparently coding ai in C - perhaps with the attitude that if a language is good enough to control rockets it is good for ai.

Re: My Software North Star

#98

Post by Ygg2 »

n42 wrote: post #72
Ygg2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how you dont't get. It links about memory safety (with a link towards an extremely biased article in Rust's favor) and a link to design to correctness (that leads to Zig project). There is a lot to dislike about this paragraph: It doesn’t matter that the language you use is memory-safe, if you didn’t design for correctness or have no process that will eventually lead you to fixing all bugs. Hang on. If I…

Not if choosing statically checked memory safety sacrifices for correctness where it is a local optimum

If you sacrifice memory safety for correctness, that just means it's not correct. If safety is crucial, it must be safe under all inputs, and if there are data races.

It's a bit like saying, "Yeah, our system is safe, but if there are two threads racing or use after free somewhere, then all bets are off."

Re: My Software North Star

#99

Post by generic92034 »

alkonaut wrote: post #86
coldtea wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you realize that the lack of a feature is the same as the presence of a bug then "fixing all bugs" also means "adding all the features", then you also accept that you will never be done. This doesn't make sense at all. Your email software mangles my email. Or your media player randomly skips. That's a bug. No big philosophy needs to be hidden behind it. That your media player doesn't have the shuffle feature i…

There are things that are clearly bugs and clearly features. And a lot of things that are somewhere in between. It’s not black or white and as such perhaps not worth categorizing? Especially with dramatic processes like ”always fix all bugs before implementing any feature”.

Claims from maintenance contracts in B2B depend on classifications like this. So, it is absolutely worth categorizing, for certain businesses.

Re: My Software North Star

#100

Post by abecedarius »

jiggawatts wrote: post #17
darkwater wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it links to this post https://joshlf.com/posts/memory-safety-life-and-death/ Under a "it doesn't matter it's memory-safe if..."

You may be misinterpreting the intended meaning. It's like saying it doesn't matter if surgery is done another antiseptic conditions if the patient isn't also given a course of antibiotics during recovery. It's not an argument against safe practices, it's an argument for amending one kind of safety with others.

Antiseptics did make a big difference in the century before antibiotics...
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