• 3 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: February 26th, 2024

help-circle



  • I don’t understand why you’re getting downvoted. While I don’t share your conviction, I do admit it’s certainly a possibility.

    The advantage of doing things that way is that code becomes much more portable. We may finally reach the goal of “write once, run anywhere”, because the AI may write all the platform specific code.

    It does make a big assumption that the AI output is reliable enough though. At times people will want to tweak the output, so how are they gonna go about that? Maybe if the language is based on Markdown, you can inject snippets of code where necessary. But if you have to do that too often, such a language will lose its appeal.

    There’s a lot of unknowns, but I see why it’s a tempting idea.


  • You know, as a full-time Linux user, I think I rather have game developers continue to create Windows executables.

    Unlike most software, games have a tendency to be released, then supported for one or two years, and then abandoned. But meanwhile, operating systems and libraries move on.

    If you have a native Linux build of a game from 10 years ago, good luck trying to run it on your modern system. With Windows builds, using Wine or Proton, you actually have better chances running games from 10 or even 20 years ago.

    Meanwhile, thanks to Valve’s efforts, Windows builds have incentive to target Vulkan, they’re getting tested on Linux. That’s what we should focus on IMO, because those things make games better supported on Linux. Which platform the binary is compiled for is an implementation detail… and Win32 is actually the more stable target.









  • I would argue that because C is so hard to program in, even the claim to machine efficiency is arguable. Yes, if you have infinite time for implementation, then C is among the most efficient, but then the same applies to C++, Rust and Zig too, because with infinite time any artificial hurdle can be cleared by the programmer.

    In practice however, programmers have limited time. That means they need to use the tools of the language to save themselves time. Languages with higher levels of abstraction make it easier, not harder, to reach high performance, assuming the abstractions don’t provide too much overhead. C++, Rust and Zig all apply in this domain.

    An example is the situation where you need a hash map or B-Tree map to implement efficient lookups. The languages with higher abstraction give you reusable, high performance options. The C programmer will need to either roll his own, which may not be an option if time Is limited, or choose a lower-performance alternative.


  • Of course, but it needn’t be black and white. You can also diversify, make yourself less reliant on a single platform. And by doing so, enable your audience to follow you elsewhere. Or diversify into different activities altogether. And when it’s no longer half your income on the line, then switch.

    But doing nothing and saying, “but half my income!”? That’s not only a choice, but also complacency.





  • I found the title of that section slightly triggering too, but the argument they lay down actually makes sense. Consistency helps you to achieve correctness in large codebases, because it means you don’t have to reinvent what is correct over and over in separate pockets of the codebase. Such pockets also make incremental improvements to the codebase harder and harder, so they do come back to bite you.

    Your example of vendors doesn’t relate to that, because you don’t control your vendor’s code. But you do control your organisation’s.