OpenStars

It isn't just a language, but it is a language - as it eventually gets around to saying, but it starts off by saying that it isn't, then later corrects itself to say that it is, etc. I feel like the focus of this ignores the historical context of what C was written to be for - at the time there was like Assembly, BASIC, Fortran (?), other long-dead languages like was it A and/or A* or whatever, there was a B language too! (developed by Bell Labs, if Google can be trusted these days), etc. - and C was developed to be better than those. So saying that like it lacks type conversions is very much missing the point - those were not invented yet. A lawn mower also lacks those, but it's okay bc it doesn't need them:-) I am probably nit-picking far too many points, I suppose to illustrate that the style of the article became a hindrance to me to read it b/c of those reasons. But thank you for sharing regardless.

That's the kind of insight I was hoping for, thanks for sharing!

C is also just a fun language to code in. You know, aside from pointers ofc:-). Though I have never done more than dabble around personally.

What is C essential for anymore these days? Genuine question btw.

I thought C++ was essential for microprocessor control, but that it depends and sometimes I gather people use C instead, but not always.

Use the language that the company hires you to know:-).

The Lemmy developers don't seem keen on writing that code to help people leave their instance, possibly bc they also administer the Lemmy.ml instance too and its a conflict of interest scenario, but I think rather that it is simply the case that the software is still in an advanced alpha / early beta stage of development. Many other features were simply a higher priority for them to want to work on. One day maybe they'll get to that though.

In the meantime, supposedly the ability to label content has already been added to the latest software release - v0.19.4. It will take some time to update various instances though - maybe half a year - and e.g. if you scroll to the bottom of your feed you'll see those UI and BE numbers for your own instance, Lemmy.World, are still at 0.19.3. As people upgrade, it would be good to label the most extremist instances like: "many people on these instances are often rude, condescending, and will spam your notifications for weeks after you indicate that you don't want replies anymore, and their admins refuse to do anything about it and sometimes even join in the fun"... or perhaps something more politely worded.:-P

With such a label, new users would not have to depend upon reaching any particular website that explains things - they could come here and start using the Fediverse directly, immediately:-). Another alternative that an instance admin mentioned is automatically blocking "those instances", but with a bot sending a new user information about how to remove the block, if they have a thicker skin and would like to engage. That would change everything, imho, bc it makes going to such a place consensual, which really does make a huge difference. If someone wants to get "dunked on", then by all means, enjoy! :-D

But it would protect people from wandering into "those places" without knowing. Which increases freedom for everyone across the entire Fediverse, especially since normal/average users may then be more comfortable to be on the Fediverse, and contribute their posts and comments and such:-). So I 100% get what you are saying - we need moar pictures of cute kittens, not fewer! But... it will take time. And in the meantime, this place is only for either those with a thick skin, and/or someone willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to use it i.e. to study the responses, identify where they come from, then block them to curate their overall experience - very much similar to needing to configure a Linux machine imho:-).

Me too:-). Anyone who says otherwise is surely lying, even if only fooling themselves. :-P

Speaking of, I found it interesting to read hexbear.net's own words as they defederated from other instances, even against the will of their users - i.e. they collected poll results, then went 100% in the opposite direction as they indicated:-P. Many of the individual users were saying similarly: that certain individuals needed to be banned bc if not then other instances were going to want to defederate from them, even if only at an individual user level.

However, they refused to do so: the individual users refused to hold themselves back, and then community mods refused to censor them, and then instance admins refused to ban them, and therefore other instances had to defederate from the entire instance as a result. It's like Russia or China irl not curtailing its own leader, thereby inflicting their ills upon the other nations of the world, near and far. Such authoritarian and nonconsensual behaviors need to be stopped, and perhaps will be eventually, but the longer it is allowed to flourish the greater number of innocents will get caught up in the drama first. i.e., it is perhaps the entire Fediverse that will suffer if content creators choose not to come here bc we are too extremist/leftist, bc we won't curtail our most excessive members - again they won't do it themselves, but also nobody else will either. i.e. it's not enough simply to block things on a personal level, if we want to entice more normal people (even those who don't use Linux!!?:-D) to join the Fediverse.

Yeah it's not just "around" but "to" me as in several tens of replies, first in Chapotraphouse, and then all that again in lemmygrad.ml.

Tbf, they should feel absolutely free to be however they want - if that's their therapy to dunk on people - but that shit needs to be labelled in my strong opinion. Like someone can drink their own urine that's fine, but don't put it in a glass and tell me it's Mountain Dew:-D. Consent makes all the difference!!

Anyway, beyond my "delicate sensibilities", this tolerance of the intolerant affects us all. People are leaving, or not joining, the Fediverse b/c of this. I used to recommend it to people but I no longer do that. We talk collectively as if we desire more content, yet we turn away the source of that content - people. This singular issue has the potential to doom this project to failure from the start. Not entirely - b/c some people will remain no matter what happens - but for it to gain wider traction, we need to get past this. Consent should make all the difference! (But right now, it does not.)

So that is why I don't shut up about it:-). Even though it happened months in the past, and I've long since blocked them all. It does affect you - and all of us - even if only indirectly.

I made the mistake of replying to someone in Chapotraphouse once, something I considered fairly innocuous like Biden had done better than my initial absolutely zero expectations for him.

What followed was a hailstorm of WEEKS of replies with the most batshit insane - and more importantly derogatory and demeaning - replies, worse even than I had experienced on Reddit, which at this point is really saying something! I stopped replying, I think I deleted the original comment or edited to say that I would no longer be replying, nothing helped. My consent to the "dunking" process was irrelevant - never mind that I was not OP, never mind that I had not read the community statement prior to engaging bc it appeared as an isolated post in my All feed, I was now being used as a target to vomit their feefees (feelings) all over onto.

And then a week later I did the same in a lemmygrad.ml post. I almost left the Fediverse after that - there is zero reason to put up with such nonconsensual and unannounced shit voluntarily. However, I was not made aware bc I was relatively new to the Fediverse, and my prior instance (Kbin.Social) had preemptively defederated from them, so I had no idea what I was walking into. Fortunately v0.19.3 came out allowing user blocking of an entire instance, so I blocked them all, recently adding lemmy.ml to that list, and now I'm happy.

So go to those instances at your own risk. No, it's nowhere close to mere differences in "political thinking", it's more like if you want a polite conversation using factual statements and logical reasoning vs. the polar opposite of that where if you don't parrot the talking points precisely then you get ridiculed ruthlessly for not knowing their internal set of "alternative fact talking points". i.e., I suppose it's what passes for "political differences" these days, like Russia would like to commit genocide in Ukraine while the latter would like that to not happen - you know, a "political difference".

If you are interested, here is a link to where I previously answered someone asking why people defederate from hexbear.net, including a link to read their very own words along with my commentary on that.:-)

It is definitely best to check first, but if not, then that sounds like a great random act of kindness to create one and get it started here!? :-)

Edit: somehow I find it hilarious to think about people downvoting this OP and also my comment without any explanation whatsoever - like what a random act of kindness indeed, to just pop in unannounced with disapproval, as in you get a Karening and you get a Karening and you also get a Karening, imma give Karenings to all mu-wha-ha! :-P I know, I's iz sillies, and I like it that way:-P.

It could be neat if there was such a thing as like a FairPi (like FairPhone I mean, e.g. repairable). Arguably that would have almost defeated the main purpose of a $5 USD Pi, but sustainability is still cool, for those of us willing to pay 3x the price or whatever.

Okay so they are both quite "fun" :-)

C++ is a bit easier to use on a daily basis though, and a scripting language easier still:-D.

Damn asm was fun though...

Assembly was my first language after BASIC - I know I'm weird, and I'm okay with that:-). Tbf it was for a calculator, so simplified. Any language ofc can go off the deep end in terms of complexity, or if you stick to the shallows it can be fairly simple to write a hello world program (though it took me a month to successfully do that for my calculator, learning on my own and with limited time spent on that task:-).

For those of us who read developer code better than PO/PM "english", indeed code is the documentation, or at least can be. Ofc when the code is thousands of lines long, split between multiple files, interacts with networked resources that you've never heard of, sending signals that do who knows what downstream, upstream, sidestream, flipstream, or whatever... yeah documentation can be important too:-). Also when the code is in some other language that you don't know quite as well.

By "testing" I should clarify that I did not necessarily mean things like user or unit testing - though that stuff has its place too - but rather even more foundational "verify that your code does what it is supposed to do" kind of testing:-). One could argue that that is just straight-up "writing code", but then too writing documentation could be folded into that as well, e.g. having things like human-readable variable names, Pre & Post conditionals for functions and the like, so it all gets a bit fuzzy here.

And if we are being pedantic, a "quick call?" could save a month or year's worth of time "writing code", to ensure that you know what needs / desires to be done. Likewise, updating Jira could save someone else SOO much time, or even yourself down the line when you wonder about something that was never mentioned. So I assume that OP was not taking this all that seriously, and just joking about "yeah, meetings are less fun than writing code", and we all ofc have to pile on with our further opinions about what's fun:-).