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Björn Fahller

@rollbear@fosstodon.org
mastodon 4.7.3
  • Open on fosstodon.org

I write code, I do not drink coffee

I'm old fashioned enough to think that it's important to understand what you're doing.

713 Followers
161 Following
25 Posts
Joined November 02, 2024
github:
https://github.com/rollbear
YouTube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe890crfljUnqpTb8ikk8Gy1Ehjc5rwnM
Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 3w ago
Help my poor memory. Early 90s, probably 1991, data compression was cool. The most widely used program, to the degree that that expression makes sense, was 'zoo''. None of the now popular algorithms were invented yet. There was a startup company that guaranteed at least 50% compression for any data. VC hype wasn't much of a thing yet, fortunately, but they still squeezed investors for money for surprisingly long before throwing in the towel and admitting failure. Anyone remembers the company?
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

When writing tests, mocks with default behaviours, are very convenient for writing tests that fail to catch when you accidentally introduce bugs, or even fail to catch bugs when the tests were originally written.

This post brought to you by a day of trouble shooting "well tested" code.

And furthermore, I think it's important to understand what you're doing.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

Functions that do different things depending on context. I call them Janus functions, after the Roman god. They can add hours of entertainment when learning an unfamiliar code base.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 7mo ago
Replying to
@lefticus Early in my career, it was "well known" that optimizers were dangerous and broke perfectly good code. I don't want to think about how horrible that "perfectly good code" was.
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 6mo ago

Breaking! New efficiency breakthrough in sorting algorithms: Faithsort is O(1) for any data.

faithsort(elements)

Blesses the sequence of elements as being sorted. You must have faith, otherwise it does not work. If you do have faith, you may try to find the criteria used, but it is futile for mere mortals to try to find the divine order of things.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 7mo ago
Replying to
@lefticus @DanielaKEngert Yeah, that's a problematic misnomer. It *is* reasonable to expect "-Wall" to enable all warnings, isn't it?
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

When I was still in Uni, a professor of economics began making headlines with his thoughts about quality. I liked this a lot, until I realized that he mostly talked about how to can get away with not offering quality.

Recent software upgrades reminds me of him.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 7mo ago
Replying to
@horenmar @lefticus @DanielaKEngert See also clang's "-Weverything", which actually does enable every warning, including "this is not compatible with c++98" (even if you explicitly state another standard) Grrr!!! The term "malicious compliance" comes to mind...
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

Damned.

I'm watching a Norwegian show. As a Swede, it works fine. There are things I don't get, but usually context helps and I'm in sync again. And then a Danish character turns up, and I'm lost.

Sorry Danes. It's not you. I'm just sad that I find it so hard to understand your spoken language, especially when reading it is normally not very hard at all.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

RE: @SwedenCpp@hachyderm.io

I *really* like this talk. @MatRopert@mastodon.social talks, not so much about performance, as about us developers and our attitudes to performance (and other software issues).

hachyderm.io
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

How's your day going?

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

Hello neighbour!

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@glloyd@fosstodon.org @dascandy@infosec.exchange Right. I was so enthusiastic about mutation testing after watching Seph Debusser's talk from NDC TechTown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-5_M8qZXaE But then I kind of forgot, I guess. I imagine it's great when writing new tests to ensure that you really do cover what you intend, but I fear that trying it on (in this case 12 year) old code, may be more of a time sink than value? Experiences?

Testing The Tests: Mutation Testing for C++ - Seph De Busser

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@DerPumu@mstdn.games @MatRopert@mastodon.social In the quoted post ;-)
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 7mo ago
Replying to
@DanielaKEngert @lefticus I think there are two separate issue here. One is UB itself, especially when it's non-obvious. Compilers that do not even warn is a huge part of the problem. That the language itself makes it difficult to warn is worse. The other is thinking that knowingly invoking UB is not really a problem because it happens to work "on my machine".
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 10mo ago
Replying to
@JSAMcFarlane@mastodon.ie Indeed! I usually also add -Wpedantic to avoid accidental use of extensions, and -Wconversion to catch expensive (or bug prone) hidden conversions. Not applicable to all code. YMMV.
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@streganil northern Norway has nothing on this in geology and flora, right? 😉
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@smurthys I believe that that actually is google's motto now.
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 6mo ago
Replying to
@PeterSommerlad It takes time and dedication to go from basic idea down to O(1) ;-)
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

The first time I learned that there are different kinds of birds, and that there are species with different names, was when I learned of the White Wagtail (such an appropriate name it has in English!) (Motacilla Alba).

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago

I suddenly remember this idea about dreams and colour. Where are you? Personally I have very vivid dreams in full colour.

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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 5mo ago
Replying to
@dascandy@infosec.exchange Exactly, and making it invisible what the tests actually expect, makes them hard to reason about.
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 8mo ago
Replying to
@e8johan@social.linux.pizza Ooohh. Nice! Where are you?
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 2mo ago
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop Do you still need a crappy CRT TV? I'm guessing not, but it'd kind of be cool
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Open post
Björn Fahller @rollbear@fosstodon.org
· 2mo ago
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop Wow, NTSC, even harder to get. HDMI seems a lot easier.
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