• 28 Posts
  • 711 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 1st, 2023

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  • If selecting a server is too much, then directing them to a random on that fits their criteria should solve the problem. Which joinlemmy, joinmastodon, joinoixelfed, and so on do.

    If even that is too much, then I’m totally fine without those people as I question what kind of stuff they’ll be saying.

    And this isn’t even elitist. It’s not “you have to have the ActivityPub spec memorised” or even know what ActivityPub is. It’s like “which email host should I pick”. No deeper than that.

    If Facebook and Apple have eroded people’s brains to the point where such a simple question cannot be answered without freaking out, then we’re in trouble.

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  • What’s there to understand? Does the average person understand that reddit consists of a frontend written in a frontend framework that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JS? Do they understand that HTTPS is used to make the request between the client and server on port 443? Do they know that the request is processed by a back end connecting to postgresql and redis or memcache for faster responses? That most assets are probably delivered by a CDN?

    Probably not. And why should they? They don’t need to understand how the fediverse works, nor do they have to understand how email works. All they need to do is select a server, create an account, and start interacting. Same as email.

    There’s no mystery. The fediverse isn’t complicated unless you freak out and start realising that the entire internet is more complicated than the shiny, glossy thing on top of it - which doesn’t need to be understood to have simple interactions with.

    Anti Commercial-AI license


  • Honestly, if picking a server is too difficult, how have you survived this long? It’s literally like picking an email host. That’s the UX people are complaining about. How far have we fallen that making a choice is now a problem? “Pick what you like” leads to people going “OMG, this is terrible, I have to make my own decisions😭😭” No wonder people love AI, because they can’t think for themselves.

    The only improvement would be setting a default or giving them themes to choose from which they are interested in and selecting a server for them based on that.

    Anti Commercial-AI license









  • Thank you for typing all that out. PHP seems to have come a long way (or at least thanks to Laravel). Probably the reason I still encounter projects without Laravel are because there are many old and established PHP projects out there from before whenever it became popular. Probably switching to a new framework is too much work for them (quite understandable), but they have unfortunately majorly tainted my PHP experience.

    I’m glad you’re enjoying PHP and have given me another perspective on the subject.

    Anti Commercial-AI license





    • express the project in your language in max 5 words
    • merge them e.g big long table index --> blotin, blotidex, bilotadex, big ol tadex
    • search for “word for $expression” and peruse the results
    • translate the expression into other languages then do the same as above
    • find synonyms for the words in your expression
    • build an expression that is the opposite of your project and just prefix it with a negative then repeat above
    • find a pun from your expression
    • pick your favorite animal (or pick random one) tack it onto the expression and repeat above
    • take your own name and use initials then spell out the initial e.g John Wallace -> J.W -> Jay Dub
      • tack that onto the expression (or the expression it fits best) e.g Jay Dub Index, Jaydudex, Judex, Dubidex, Jadubin

    Or if you want to be completely unoriginal like, take a wordlist, pick a random word from it --> tada! You have a name. (what follows ia rant). The list can be an entire dictionary, anime names, movie names, name of mythical gods from wherever in the world, etc.
    Then come up with some bullshit explanation that sounds sophisticated for example you randomly picked.

    For example, I went to https://randomword.com/ and got “xylary”: “of, like or pertaining to xylem.” No bloody idea why “xylem” is? Yeah, me neither.

    noun Botany.

    a compound tissue in vascular plants that helps provide support and that conducts water and nutrients upward from the roots, consisting of tracheids, vessels, parenchyma cells, and woody fibers.

    Oho, great! It has nothing to do with a big long table index, but let’s make it so! “Xylary is a performant database index. Just like xylem are paramount to performance of plants, xylary is paramount to the performance of queries to your database.” Voilà. The meaning of xylary is botched, but who gives a fuck, it sounds COOL, starts with X, and probably unknown to the majority of the world. So now you can piss off people in the field by polluting searches with your project.

    But at least you have a project name bro 😎

    Anti Commercial-AI license


  • Asking whether you’ve tried $simpleSolution, why you did something, and what you were thinking is not toxic. They’re trying to understand your reasoning and what your goal is. It’s like debugging where you have to step through the code then get to the point where something went wrong.

    It is entirely possible that there are some people who have trouble asking such questions in a tone that doesn’t emit hostility, but it may be due to a lack of social skills or (of course) malice. The way forward here is not to assume malice but them feedback “hey, can i give some feedback on the session we’re having? I came to you seeking for help, but the way you ask these questions makes me feel $emotion. Would it be alright if you used $wordOrTone when helping me out? It would really make me feel more at ease”. Something like this.

    If the interlocutor reacts negatively, it may be that they are also feeling attacked by your words. Feedback is not always received well. In these instances it’s good to apologise, but stand firm that your feelings were hurt and you would just like to make a way forward where you both can work comfortably with each other.

    This of course flies out the window if the co-worker is being a straight dick. “PFF, you didn’t even think of doing something that simple?”, " well that was a waste of time, you should’ve been able to do that yourself", and so. That straight up deserves a higher up getting involved. For more egregious actions and words, that spells HR involvement.

    But to simply write of all the people as “That Guy” is not the way forward. It’s prejudiced and can easily lead to generalisations.

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  • Other self-taught narratives, such as starting with Wordpress-based design backgrounds and moving from more simple themes to more complex themes where PHP knowledge is required, to plugin development is a completely valid narrative, but a path that is predominately for women.

    Where the heck did that come from? What does any of this have to do with women? Are most Java and PHP developers women?

    The argument the author is trying to make is hinged upon this argument that comes out of nowhere. The rest of the article makes some good points but has more of these deviations that just break the flow and make me say “what does that have to do with anything?”.

    My problem with PHP is the language and the ecosystem. I’m genuinely impressed that people are able to build useful things with it, but the language is, at least to me, far from easy. Starting with array not being an array but a hashmap/dictionary, to complete clusterfuck that many projects are in terms of setting up and tooling. Only C and C++ projects can beat that (or so I have experienced). There is just an assumption that whoever’s picking up a PHP project knows LAMP and its components, has root access, and won’t be using a debugger.

    The PHP debugger has been one of the most frustrating debuggers I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to setup. You have to know how to configure php itself, which extensions to install, how to configure those, and how to setup whatever editor or IDE you have to interact with the debugger. Most PHP projects I’m come across haven’t set it up and I can understand why.

    Also, to use PHP sensibly, you have to learn about zend or whatever the name of that big framework is. But that can break in the most mysterious ways and for PHP beginners it can be a nightmare to understand what went wrong. Add in that its favorite pattern is dependency injection and the language isn’t typed and understanding code is downright awful.

    One of my bigger gripes is that many projects do not use containers whatsoever. It’s either LAMP on your machine or good luck getting that thing to run. If you’re new to PHP, well fuck you, you should’ve known PHP before trying to contribute to the project - that’s what it feels like. There are often C/C++ like guides for setting up. first “sudo apt-get install some stuff here”, oh wait, you don’t use debian? Fuck off chump.

    I have sworn off touching PHP projects ever again. The experience has left me scarred.

    Anti Commercial-AI license