This is great. Overdue if you consider the values they espouse. Quite feasible for a compiler project to ignore the network effects of Github. Is their Discord usage next :-)

There is https://tauri.app/ coming up to let Electron app developers debloat their offerings.

Ruby/Crystal seem to have P … Q for inclusive ranges and P … Q for right-exclusive ranges.

What kind of programs do you, or would you, write in C? For most programs, writing in C would leave you, as you put it, stuck.

Having all these amazing worked-through ideas by Bret Victor available in the open is itself amazing!

And was on the ActivityPub committee before that.

And created GNU MediaGoblin before that.

That is what Delta Chat and Monocles do on different protocols, with WebXDC. https://webxdc.org/

Anything from djb can be expected to be good 👍

The simplest tool I had come across was memoize.py (and others like it). Given a build script, it uses strace on a from-scratch build to figure out dependencies. On future builds, it rebuilds only what has changed. It naturally captures edge cases like, rebuilding everything if the compiler changes! But also the typical case, of include files etc.

On a lighter note. There are Git experts? ;-)

I remember glancing at NodeBB (in my ignorance, I am averse to node.js). Activitypub seems to be an integration in it rather than its basis.

I get that it is an evolution, but building on top of SBCL seems like it would have made more sense.

Apparently, this should be possible now (and, for apps, the result would be as “usable” as Electron) thanks to WebIDL. For example, Webkit’s code to support Javascript access of browser objects is generated from a WebIDL spec. Generating support for <your_language>'s access to Webkit’s browser objects is “just work”.

Actually, https://tauri.app/ …

Enough of this tangent now!

I suspect writing cross-platform desktop/mobile apps in HTML/CSS/JS was another big pull in this direction.

Many popular languages are bad, yet JS is the one with a widely-deployed OS interface written in it (WebOS).

If free-software/open-source devs hadn’t got caught up chasing all this, there was a chance of replacing JS with other languages in the stack. HTML/CSS/your_language probably for apps initially, even making browsers support plugging in languages later. The docs say anything other than JS is not supported, so no <script type=“text/your_language”>. If only!

The first fully-developed prototype-based OO language was Self, original Javascript seems quite similar.

As a long-time toe-dipper in functional programming waters, I am yet to appreciate the gestalt of any individual language. Going by Joey Hess of Debian and Git Annex fame, #Haskell is what is most bang for the buck.

I have found, though, that the most useful aspects, in isolation or in combination, are pure functions, immutable data and pattern matching syntax. Maybe you will find them in a language you like. Personally, I am enjoying foraying into #Prolog and #Erlang (or Elixir).