https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMGT59HrR7U

C++’s mascot is an obese sick rat with a missing foot*, because it has 1000+ line compiler errors (the stress makes you overeat and damages your immune system) and footguns.

EDIT: Source (I didn’t make up the C++ part)

I could understand method = associated function whose first parameter is named self, so it can be called like self.foo(…). This would mean functions like Vec::new aren’t methods. But the author’s requirement also excludes functions that take generic arguments like Extend::extend.

However, even the above definition gives old terminology new meaning. In traditionally OOP languages, all functions in a class are considered methods, those only callable from an instance are “instance methods”, while the others are “static methods”. So translating OOP terminology into Rust, all associated functions are still considered methods, and those with/without method call syntax are instance/static methods.

Unfortunately I think that some people misuse “method” to only refer to “instance method”, even in the OOP languages, so to be 100% unambiguous the terms have to be:

• Associated function: function in an impl block.
• Static method: associated function whose first argument isn’t self (even if it takes Self under a different name, like Box::leak).
• Instance method: associated function whose first argument is self, so it can be called like self.foo(…).
• Object-safe method: a method callable from a trait object.

public class AbstractBeanVisitorStrategyFactoryBuilderIteratorAdapterProviderObserverGeneratorDecorator {
    // boilerplate goes here
}

The ultimate backdoor runner (and cryptominer)

It’s funny because, I’m probably the minority, but I strongly prefer JetBrains IDEs.

Which ironically are much more “walled gardens”: closed-source and subscription-based, with only a limited subset of parts and plugins open-source. But JetBrains has a good track record of not enshittifying and, because you actually pay for their product, they can make a profitable business off not doing so.

I’m not involved in piracy/DRM/gamedev but I really doubt they’ll track cracked installs and if they do, actually get indie devs to pay.

Because what’s stopping one person from “cracking” a game, then “installing” it 1,000,000 times? Whatever metric they use to track installs has to prevent abuse like this, or you’re giving random devs (of games that aren’t even popular) stupidly high bills.

When devs see more installs than purchases, they’ll dispute and claim Unity’s numbers are artificially inflated. Which is a big challenge for Unity’s massive legal team, because in the above scenario they really are. Even if Unity successfully defends the extra installs in court, it would be terrible publicity to say “well, if someone manages to install your game 1,000 times without buying it 1,000 times you’re still responsible”. Whatever negative publicity Unity already has for merely charging for installs pales in comparison, and this would actually get most devs to stop using Unity, because nobody will risk going into debt or unexpectedly losing a huge chunk of revenue for a game engine.

So, the only reasonable metric Unity has to track installs is whatever metric is used to track purchases, because if someone purchases the game 1,000,000 times and installs it, no issue, good for the dev. I just don’t see any other way which prevents easy abuse; even if it’s tied to the DRM, if there’s a way to crack the DRM but not remove the install counter, some troll is going to do it and fake absurd amounts of extra installs.

Usually when I buy bigger packs of salmon, the amount varies and the only thing roughly consistent is the weight. So if they decreased the weight, you might either get 2 bigger fillets or 3 smaller fillets depending on the package

But aren’t the GPUs used by AI different than the GPUs used by gamers? 8GB of RAM isn’t enough to run even the smaller LLMs, you need specialized GPUs with 80+GB like A100s and H100s.

The top-tier consumer models like the 3090 and 4090 have 32GB, with them you can train and run smaller LLMs locally. But there still isn’t much demand to do that because you can rent GPUs on the cloud for cheap; enough that the point where renting exceeds the cost of buying is very far off. For consumers it’s still too expensive to fine-tune your own model, and startups and small businesses have enough money to rent the more expensive, specialized GPUs.

Right now GPU prices aren’t extremely low, but you can actually but them from retailers at market price. That wasn’t the case when crypto-mining was popular

I replaced it with online docs, Github Issues, Reddit, and Stack Overflow.

Many languages/libraries/tools have great documentation now, 10 years ago this wasn’t the case, or at least I didn’t know how to find/read documentation. 10 years ago Stack Overflow answers were also better, now many are obsolete due to being 10 years old :).

Good documentation is both more concise and thorough than any QA or ChatGPT output, and more likely to be accurate (it certainly should be in any half-decent documentation, but sometimes no).

If online documentation doesn’t work, I try to find the answer on Github issues, Reddit, or a different forum. And sometimes that forum is Stack Overflow. More recently I’ve started to see most questions where the most upvoted answer has been edited to reflect recent changes; and even when an answer is out-of-date, there’s usually a comment which says so.

Now, I never post on Stack Overflow, nor do I usually answer; there are way too many bad questions out there, most of the good ones already have answers or are really tricky, and the community still has its rude reputation. Though I will say the other stack exchange sites are much better.

So far, I’ve only used LLMs when my question was extremely detailed so I couldn’t search it, and/or I ran out of options. There are issues like: I don’t like to actually write out the full question (although I’m sure GPT works with query terms, I’ll probably try that); GPT4’s output is too verbose and it explain basic context I already know so it’s just filler; and I still have a hard time trusting GPT4, because I’ve had it hallucinate before.

With documentation you have the expectation that the information is accurate, and with forums you have other people who will comment if the answer is wrong, but with LLMs you have neither.

Choose Rust. Problem solved.

/s

I’d like a programming language and compiler community like r/ProgrammingLanguages: recent developments, personal projects, opinions and ideas, and general questions

Display name: Programming Languages

URL: ProgrammingLanguages