> Comptime? Vastly superior toolchain? Trivial C interop? Sub-second incremental compilation in large projects?
No comptime, but everything else, sure, Turbo Pascal (and then Delphi) had.
Maybe it'll blow your mind (not sure if you find this impressive or not), but Turbo Pascal had sub-second compilation per module on large modules back on my 486 with 4MB of RAM.
Sure, Zig has more features than Pascal, but not the ones you listed (except, of course, for comptime).
> Imagine having a virus escape a sandbox, why are we worried about the virus but not the incompetency of those who are responsible for setting up the sandbox?
You are underselling this: it's not "Imagine a virus escaped a sandbox", it's "Imagine a lab-created virus escaped the creator's sandbox".
There are two parts to this: the virus and the escaping. Both are artificially created.
Other than the first bullet point in your list[1], my contribution in this regard addresses everything else.
Don't have a link handy but it's on github called "rotsit" (revenge of the something issue Tracker).
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[1] That's the entire point of having the issue tied to a branch: if an issue is marked resolved in the branch you are looking at, then its resolved in the branch you are looking at. Storing the issues independent of branch means you need to also store extra metadat about which branch it is broken on.
The issue there was collaboration, one person would be on master and see no hint that a case was already being worked on (status, comments, etc all being different until the branch was merged). The other bullets, that put the information in different locations, were attempts to deal with this.
I can somewhat understand your point about issues tied to branch, but have some remaining questions about how this working in practice:
- If I am on a branch where this issue exists and unaddressed, is it easy to find out if there is another branch where this issue has been addressed
- I am on a branch that does not have the issue reported, but know it's reported on another branch -- does that mean the issue doesn't exist on this branch? Is it on the reporter to correctly identify the root branch where the issue was first created? Do you have to somehow merge to make this work "right"?
I haven't actually tried in practice (across a team I mean), but:
> - If I am on a branch where this issue exists and unaddressed, is it easy to find out if there is another branch where this issue has been addressed
I do not have a solution for that.
> - I am on a branch that does not have the issue reported, but know it's reported on another branch -- does that mean the issue doesn't exist on this branch?
The idea was to create issues only on on a separate branch which is constantly merged into master. Then all branches downstream of master will get the issue when they rebase/pull.
Scenarios:
1. You're on branch `x/y/z`, you notice something that should be added to the issue tracker, you stash, switch to `/issues`, add the issue, push, switch back to `x/y/z` and pop.
2. An issue is to be created, the creator clones `/issues`, creates the issue, and pushes.
This way, all issues are on all branches, but only the branch dealing with an issue will update it.
> It is absolutely wild to me how a corporation can be so toxic and abusive to its users and still be in business.
It's a long chain, but ultimately it comes down to incompetence... When I was younger (decades ago), I assumed that the incompetence lies on the side of the executives who were overriding knowledgeable technical folk.
I do not believe that anymore.
I have seen the following play out in 5 companies in the last 5 years:
1. The people making the purchasing decisions are told by the technical head what to buy. They get told "Buy Microsoft".
2. The technical head deciding what to buy will not buy something the technical division don't know how to support. He gets told "Buy Microsoft".
3. The technical division are not actually technical, they have just learned where to click when they want to do something. Learning concepts and/or where to click on a different system is beyond the mental acuity of the average professional Microsoft Mouse-Click-Systems-Engineer (MCSE).
4. Unwilling to explain that they are actually incompetent and non-technical, they blame the users when making their recommendation: "The Users Only Know How To Use Microsoft".
5. The users, OTOH, are wondering WTF is going on; collectively, they have no problem switching OSes because they use so many - Android, iOS, MacOS, that infotainment system in their bargin-basement car...
Over the years, I've been told many times by the IT departments "Users only know how to use Microsoft". I've been told exactly that even when when users were happily switching between Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, Blackberry OS, iOS and Android with no problems.
When I got told this, I always asked "Do you know how to do you daily functions on Linux", to which I'll always get some sort of "We tried running Exchange on it, and it didn't work", or "We tried running MSWord on it, and it didn't work", or (in one hilarious case) "We tried running Windows on it, and it didn't work" (No, I don't know what they actually fucking tried!).
It's incompetence on the part of the IT department.
> My mother-in-law has spinal surgery last christmas
I dunno if spinal surgery is comparable to shoulder surgery.
I had spinal surgery; the scans were conclusive (specific disks had ruptured), the surgery to put in prosthetic disks (2x in total) is apparently quite routine, and the procedure itself is simpler (limited 3D motion in each vertebra - if you lose motion between any two vertebra after surgery, you might not even notice).
Compare to shoulder surgery where the scans are frequently inconclusive ("we think this surgery might fix the pain, but we are not sure"), and the surgery is uncommon, and the procedure itself is complex (large range of large movements across a large number of axes).
I know about a dozen people in real life who have had spinal fusions, but not one who has had shoulder surgery.
> As someone who's going to the doctor next week to discuss potential shoulder surgery, this is timely.
I was in the same position at age 42-ish. Shoulder pain in right shoulder so bad that I could not even lift a cup of coffee.
> I really need to figure out whether it's going to make things better or worse, but unfortunately, that feels like something a doctor can't guarantee one way or the other.
I heard the same thing from 3x different surgeons (orthopedic, I think), which lead to...
> Any anecdotes or other experiences/thoughts are appreciated.
... not having any surgery. Over the course of the next 3 months it remained the same in severity (did not get worse, may have gotten better slightly or else I started learning to live with it). The subsequent six months the pain started abating. Over the next 6 months the pain went away almost totally. Now, 8 years later, I don't feel any pain at all.
Of course, I am diabetic, so make of that what you will. When the first surgeon checked my scans (MRI, Xrays and something else - ultrasound, maybe), and said they are not sure if surgery would fix it, I went to a second surgeon with the same scans, got told the same thing. When the third surgeon said the same thing, I decided to wait and see.
Good thing I did; surgery doesn't always turn out well.
> Tutoring is a process, and the end result is that the student gains a demonstrable new capability. The how isn't as important as the end result.
I disagree. If, after you have been tutored, you perform well, but still need tutoring for the next year's exam in that subject, then you haven't been "tutored", you've been given a similar enough copy of the exam questions to train on.
As I keep telling my kids, good results is a side-effect of good habits. If you're half-assing things, it shows up in your results. If you studious and methodical, it also shows up in your results, just in a different direction.
AI is used primarily to half-ass things, do things without checking, getting good vibes by that sycophantic tone.
Get your kids into a rut of good habits, and they'll run in that groove forever, regardless of tutors or AI. Half-ass your way through life, then sure, they'll get fucked over by AI tutors too.
I think you are doing a lot of assuming on how AI can be used for tutoring. I'm currently augmenting Chinese in person tutoring with a pi harness that helps me out with drills, lets me explore what things mean, get similar words or context related words and so on. It's not perfect, def not good enough to be a standalone thing, def has barrier of entry of being motivated to do honest self work but it's a massive value add into the process for me.
One huge issue IMO is that right now, around the world, most people are not taught at all how to learn for themselves nor how to critically think on their own. And that will indeed result in using it as a crutch and not a good tutoring tool.
> I think you are doing a lot of assuming on how AI can be used for tutoring.
I don't think so. In fact, I'll go one further: I don't think we're in disagreement, just that I've been communicating poorly.
Allow me retry: My point is NOT "AI makes tutoring worse". My point is that AI tutoring is irrelevant to sustained academic performance.
1. Academic success is a side-effect of good habits (high correlation, not all the way to `1`).
2. A good tutor will instill the good habits for a specific subject (IME, different subjects require different habits, but all require the student to be diligent and consistent at least)
3. Half-assing things, as a habit, will not materially improve outcomes.
4. Most AI use is for half-assing things.
I did not mean to imply that AI in tutoring cannot be successful, only that AI-use tends to result in half-assing things.
Your anecdote is almost the opposite of half-assing things.
> One huge issue IMO is that right now, around the world, most people are not taught at all how to learn for themselves nor how to critically think on their own.
That's a different problem, I think. As I am learning with my two boys, you don't need to teach critical thinking specifically. Critical thinking naturally arises out of being diligent and thorough.
No comptime, but everything else, sure, Turbo Pascal (and then Delphi) had.
Maybe it'll blow your mind (not sure if you find this impressive or not), but Turbo Pascal had sub-second compilation per module on large modules back on my 486 with 4MB of RAM.
Sure, Zig has more features than Pascal, but not the ones you listed (except, of course, for comptime).
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