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mhoye

Great news everyone I've just had the worst idea.

12 Nov 2023 at 18:09 | Open on mastodon.social
16 comments
التنينوكس
mhoye

Look, I'm just saying that in the end, all those people who said "if code is hard to write it should be hard to read" stepped to the threshold and turned away in cowardice. They never fully embraced their iconoclasm, could not will themselves to push their ideology to its logical conclusion. But here, today, I have lit the path they could not bring themselves even to set foot on.

Bring me Comic Sans, Papyrus, Impact, Curlz MT and Wingdings. If code was hard to write, it should hurt to see.

12 Nov 2023 at 18:14 | Open on mastodon.social
Mark Eichin

@mhoye
Now do this with APL as the base language...

12 Nov 2023 at 19:33 | Open on mastodon.mit.edu
FJ!!

@mhoye Back in the late 90s I set my terminal font to something whimsical like comic sans but actually readable, to trick my brain into not taking code as seriously as if I was reading a textbook. I thought it would make debugging easier because I subliminally would be more skeptical of what I was reading.

Honestly I think it worked.

12 Nov 2023 at 19:38 | Open on tech.lgbt
Matthew Miller

@fj @mhoye

Comic sans for code that doesn't have test coverage.

12 Nov 2023 at 22:56 | Open on hachyderm.io
ChurchHatesTucker ☑
Ben Zanin

@mhoye RENDER THE <BLINK> TAGS INSIDE SOURCE CODE YOU COWARDS

13 Nov 2023 at 0:09 | Open on mastodon.social
Rob Ricci

@mhoye this is a subtoot of that new github font isn't it

13 Nov 2023 at 3:51 | Open on discuss.systems
prozacchiwawa

@mhoye css classes should absolutely be significant in identifiers.

13 Nov 2023 at 21:41 | Open on functional.cafe
MikeStok
M. Tashbook

@mhoye Code mixed with Vogon poetry (at least, aesthetically)?

13 Nov 2023 at 0:12 | Open on tenforward.social
Tim @toolbear#spicy@ Taylor 🌻🇺🇦🇵🇸✊

@mhoye
I've been experimenting with minimal indentation, fully left-right justified, and trailing whitespace so that all lines are a constant length.

I think trying out worst ideas in an Oblique Strategies way is one of the best ideas.

13 Nov 2023 at 20:55 | Open on tech.lgbt
mhoye

@toolbear fully left-justified is interesting, but…. I wonder what fully right justified feels like

13 Nov 2023 at 20:57 | Open on mastodon.social
Tim @toolbear#spicy@ Taylor 🌻🇺🇦🇵🇸✊

@mhoye
I've been using the LFSR from the game Pitfall as a practice problem. I keep starting from scratch every so often and see which stylistic and aesthetic choices I keep. Not unlike a painter doing many takes on a scene. In fact, this has been more an art therapy and meditative exercise than hobby coding. Or a mix.

Anyway, an example of some of the POSIX shell script implementing the Pitfall LFSR in the fully justified style. This one is 40 columns x 24 lines, so also organized in "blocks" or "cards", another arbitrary constraint I picked, inspired a bit by HyperCard). The intent is to homebrew a "notebook" coding style (think iPython / Jupyter notebooks) that I can use across any programming language (or config file or tiny DSL etc.).

It's slow going because it's art therapy, but it's also paying off when I tackle new things (like a Skyrim mod manager CLI in CMD.EXE batch script). I don't just think it's navel gazing, though it's also a lot of navel gazing on my part.

@mhoye
I've been using the LFSR from the game Pitfall as a practice problem. I keep starting from scratch every so often and see which stylistic and aesthetic choices I keep. Not unlike a painter doing many takes on a scene. In fact, this has been more an art therapy and meditative exercise than hobby coding. Or a mix.
13 Nov 2023 at 21:11 | Open on tech.lgbt
Tim @toolbear#spicy@ Taylor 🌻🇺🇦🇵🇸✊

@mhoye (also attempting zero side effects, purely functional, purely deterministic, and using pattern matching instead of if-else conditionals, and anything else I think to add that frees me from ever having to actually finish one of these pieces of "art")

13 Nov 2023 at 21:15 | Open on tech.lgbt
Tim @toolbear#spicy@ Taylor 🌻🇺🇦🇵🇸✊

@mhoye one reason the fixed, constant column width is something I'm curious about is that it would make right-justified (say, in a right-to-left language) look & feel just as normal as our left-justified, primarily written in English code does today.

A bunch of our tools have a lot of bias baked into them. Even the notion of "trailing whitespace" which is taken to mean "extra whitespace to the right of the last non-whitespace" and almost certainly isn't implemented in a right-to-left language neutral way.

So part of this is an exploration of the limits and biases of our software development tooling and common practices.

Enough infodumping for now. And also I think I did this to you several months back already :)

@mhoye one reason the fixed, constant column width is something I'm curious about is that it would make right-justified (say, in a right-to-left language) look & feel just as normal as our left-justified, primarily written in English code does today.

A bunch of our tools have a lot of bias baked into them. Even the notion of "trailing whitespace" which is taken to mean "extra whitespace to the right of the last non-whitespace" and almost certainly isn't implemented in a right-to-left language neutral way.

13 Nov 2023 at 21:18 | Open on tech.lgbt
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