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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Smaller file size, lower data rate, less computational overhead, no conversion loss.

    A 64 bit float requires 64 bits to store.
    ASCII representation of a 64 bit float (in the example above) is 21 characters or 168 bits.
    Also, if every record is the same then there is a huge overhead for storing the name of each value. Plus the extra spaces, commas and braces.
    So, you are at least doubling the file size and data throughput. And there is precision loss when converting float-string-float. Plus the computational overhead of doing those conversions.

    Something like sqlite is lightweight, fast and will store the native data types.
    It is widely supported, and allows for easy querying of the data.
    Also makes it easy for 3rd party programs to interact with the data.

    If you are ever thinking of implementing some sort of data storage in files, consider sqlite first.


  • I don’t use it anymore though because I found the suggestions to be annoying and distracting most of the time and got tired of hitting escape

    Same. It took longer for me to parse and validate the suggestion as it did for me to just type what I wanted.

    I do like the helper for more complex refractors.
    Where you have a bunch of similar, but not exactly the same, changes to make.
    Where a search & replace refactor isn’t enough.
    It manages to figure out what you are doing, highlights the next instance of it and suggests the replacement.
    I don’t think I’ve seen it make a mistake doing that, and it is a useful speedup.
    I guess the LLM already has all the context: the needle, the haystack and the term.


  • Yeh, my example was pretty contrived and very surface level.
    It grouped things that seemed related at a surface level but weren’t actually related at all. Which makes it a bad example.
    And realistically, you would use a timer class that raised events, and passed in an interval class that could be constructed from any appropriate units.

    It was more to highlight that types and classes are a fairly easy way to improve the context around variable.
    It can also use type checker to show incorrect conversions between minutes and seconds, Polar and Cartesian coords, RGB and HSV, or miles and kilometers. Any number of scenarios where unit conversions aren’t a syntax error.



  • I feel like variable or function names that become overly verbose indicate that a specific type or a separate class should be considered.
    I see it as a mild code smell.

    Something like int intervalSeconds = 5 could maybe have a type that extends an int called seconds. So then you are declaring seconds Interval = 5.
    It describes the unit, so the variable name just describes the purpose.
    You could even add methods for fromMinutes etc. to reduce a bunch of (obvious) magic numbers elsewhere.

    To extend this contrived example further, perhaps there are a couple of intervals. A refresh, a timeout and a sleep interval.
    Instead of having.

    int sleepIntervalSeconds = 0;
    // etc...
    

    You could create an intervals class/object/whatever.
    So then you have.

    public class Intervals {
        public seconds Sleep
        public seconds Refresh
        public seconds Timeout
    }
    

    The class/object defines the context, the type defines the unit, and you get nice variable names describing the purpose.









  • From the wiki, and I’m simplifying:
    VW was handed over to the German government after being offered free-of-charge to Ford in 1948 by the British government (who ran the factory up till then).
    In 1946 the produced 1000 cars per month. In 1949, 2 cars were sold in the US.
    In 1952, 12 VWs were sold in Canada.
    In 1955 they produced over 1 million Beetles.

    So 3 years on life support being ran by the British. Dunno how long being run by the German government before becoming GmbH.