Activity Log
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 08:24
A hill I will not die on, but will side-eye malignantly until the day I die:
A “util” namespace in your package or project is an architectural yellow flag.
Starts as a good bucket for functionality that’s still cooking.
Forever after, provides temptation to just drop a new function in utils rather than finishing and filing it.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 08:33
What’s worse than a util namespace is multiple util namespaces without meaningful associations.
Like – I sometimes use “helper” namespaces, which is semantically equivalent to “util”. I’ll split it up though: “slug_helpers”, “date_helpers”, etc. And my shame will eventually fold them into a real module.
One library I looked at had “util”, “utils”, “util2”, “util3”, “util3_final”
okay not really on that last one but yes on the first four
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 08:36
@jnkrtech Knowing my own ability to adhere to my own READMEs and prescribed practices, I’d lean towards the latter.
Some solid dev practices are just reflexively flinching away from the stove because you remember those times you burned yourself.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 09:01
And for the bloggers out there:
Titling your weekly note “weeknote” or “snapshot” or whatever? That’s a util namespace for your blog. That’s why I stopped doing them.
(a beehive I’ve been wanting to shake for most of the year)
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 09:25
@carlton I mean I love the weekly, monthly, or “when I think of it” updates and I want to do more of them again.
But at least identify a theme for the interval you’re posting on, and use that to come up with a title.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 09:46
@carlton I’ve been chewing on that information-architecture-wise. I’ve dabbled with taking a tumblelog approach to short posts, where the current timestamp serves as title. The problem comes two years later, when I’m trying to find a link I know I left somewhere in that span, but I don’t remember the name.
Titles give me more context hooks than timestamps. So I shouldn’t generalize to everyone else’s case when it’s more about my specific ADHD flavoring.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 09:54
Unexpected side effect of digging deeper into TypeScript for the Astro iteration of my site: I really want to get back into playing with Julia.
Not sure why. Thought process something like “TypeScript types are interesting. Remember what else had types and was fun to sketch quick ideas in? Julia!”
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 09:58
@calcifer @remotenemesis right, I gotta agree on the pragmatics. Semantically I prefer “helpers” but do I recognize there’s a spot for generically helpful functionality. But it should be kept as small and simple as possible.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 10:06
@carlton yep! Doing the public brain was an attempt to add that context. I haven’t given up on that, but will be chewing on the plan for a bit.
One thought is to borrow liberally from Dendron, particularly their approach to note hierarchies.
Do my writing in a nicely structured batch of Markdown files, add links as needed, and have a distinct namespace for journaling / snapshot posts.
(also possible in Obsidian but the tidiness of Dendron’s approach appeals to me)
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 10:07
@carlton unfortunately, Dendron itself is a) tied to VS Code; and b) in maintenance mode now.
But it had some great ideas that shouldn’t be discarded.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 10:15
@carlton ooh yep very similar to one of my ideas, combining thoughts from Dendron, Riv, and nb for a CLI-friendly structured RST brain.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 10:16
@carlton that’s the problem is too many ideas, not enough executive function to address half of them
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 12:56
I haven’t decided whether Melvor Idle is fun, but I do enjoy watching the numbers go up.
#FediGames
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 15:59
First time watching The Dead Don’t Die and enjoying the casual conversational fourth-wall breaking.
Now imagining a Jim Jarmusch Deadpool movie.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 17:48
@vantablack why’d you type *******
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 19:53
I enjoyed The Dead Don’t Die. But yeah that’s another sleepy movie. Probably wouldn’t play it for someone else unless I thought they needed a nap.
Definitely appreciated Deputy Adam Driver immediately after the first mysterious murder scene, goes “I’m thinking zombies.”
Extremely rare for someone to out and say it in a zombie movie.
It didn’t end well. But still.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 19:56
@aburka @timbray It started happening immediately, and has been extremely depressing.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 20:17
@ireneista @AlgoCompSynth especially reasonable since hovering over an autoplay thumbnail adds that video to your history.
hackers.town: 2024-12-26 Thu 20:46
Finished 12 of 31 Astro site revamp items. Only five or six of the remaining tasks are required to avoid breakage, if I maybe put a big 🚧 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 🚧 GIF somewhere
