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mandw

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Ask HN: A news reader that will give you today 30 years ago

6 pointsby mandw3 jaar geleden3 comments

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2 maanden geledendiscuss

Lots of people were typing like that. As far as typing today, different layouts, hobbies with ergonomic keyboards etc we see far more people touch typing today than were in the 80's. I wouldn't call it abnormal, I was pecking - very quickly for a long time before I ever knew what vi was. I found vi on my first unix login in '85 and still pecked at it. I also know that today, with far more people typing, less of them probably gain the same knowledge as we did hacking back then. Good typing can't replace your computer knowledge. Today I never look at my keyboard, it's 36 keys and its no use looking as no symbol represents what happens when you press the key. I am a better typist, not better at software though.

2 maanden geledendiscuss

Fair enough. I assumed everyone would have watched it by now from here :)

2 maanden geledendiscuss

I have to admit, when a specific person died I was feeling so bad about it I never watched the last episode. I still have it on the drive how many years later.

6 maanden geledendiscuss

I did feel my post was a bit unneeded when I added my edit :)

   My point about the  30% was that you mentioned that he got in rust and attributed it to essentially, better algorithms in the rust lib he used.  Once he knew that then its hard to say that rust is 'faster' but the point is valid and I accept that he gained performance by using the rust library.

   My other point was that the speed of his code probably didn't matter at the time. If it was a problem in the past he probably would have taken the time to profile and gain some more speed.  Sure you cant gain speed that can't be had but as you pointed out, it wasn't a language issue, it was an implementation of the library issue.

   He could have arbitrarily used a different program that used a good library and the results reversed.

   I also agree that most devs are not working down at that level of optimisation so the default libraries can help but at the same time it mostly doesnt matter if something takes 30% longer if that overall time is not a problem.   If you are working on something where the speed really matters and you are trying to shave off milliseconds then you have to be that developer that can work C or Rust at that level.

6 maanden geledendiscuss

The only real question I have with this is did the program have to have any specific performance metric? I could write a small utility in python that would be completely acceptable for use but at the same time be 15x slower than an implementation in another language. So you do you compare code across languages that were not written for performance given one may have some set of functions that happens to favour one language in that particular app? I think to compare you have to at least have the goal of performance for both when testing. If he needed his app to be 30% faster he would have made it so, but it didn't need to be so he didn't. Which doesn't make it great for comparison.

   Edit, I also see that your reply was specifically about the point that the libs by themselves can help the performance with no work, and I do agree with you, as you were to the guy above.

6 maanden geledendiscuss

Yes, copied it in to my scratch buffer to read it, not readable in the browser at all with a dark background. It did then make all the elisp nice to look at.

7 maanden geledendiscuss

I think the same thing, and then I went a little smaller! I went to a large split then to a 58 key split, then to a 42 key split. At 42 I saw no advantage in going smaller other than it being smaller if you liked the look of it. Then I wanted to try a small dactyl and that lead me to an already designed 36 key split and I love it. I lost some more keys and found that I can easily handle that. I would not say that the move from 42 to 36 made it more ergonomic but not worse. While I went from 42 to 36 without thinking there were downsides, I think going any smaller does start to compromise functionality for the sake of form. At 36, I think that even on a bigger keyboard I would emulate the layout I have now as it is so easy.

7 maanden geledendiscuss

I don't think Miryoku is a good layout for many either, it will depend on your usage.

  A strange thing is that many come in to the small split keyboard world and then don't have the motivation to come up with something that works for them.   You can make anything work, so a lot make Miryoku work but I doubt for many that would be the best layout for them.

   I code a lot and find that its layout would not suit me. I have 99% of what I need on a the base layer and one more layer for doing development work - on a 36 key board.  I could not imagine that I would want to switch layers as much as I would have to  for a continuous stream of alphabet/symbols and numbers.

   I think Miryoku would be fine if you were an average computer user editing documents, emails etc and I do sometimes forget that there are a lot of guys out there using Miryoku doing only that.

vorig jaardiscuss

I recently downloaded a number of magazines froma now defunct publication from late eighties. No onesells them and annas archive was the only place i found them. its not exclusivly pirating, its a source for a lot of out of print.

3 jaar geledendiscuss

Thank you for the suggestion. The news I was after was usenet feeds, I have archives of some groups but thought it would be interesting to rather than go and read it all at once have it put a new days worth of posts every day from the past.

    As the messages are all in just text format with headers and timestamps I should just be able to extract the messages from a particular day and add them to my news reader, worst case changing the timestamp to today to have it appear in a sensible place and putting the original timestamp back where it can be seen when reading.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

If it could be OK for you other than that, there is usually a timeout setting that can be applied before it is recognised as a press.

    For example, any press under 200ms is ESC, anything over will register as Ctrl.   The timeout can be adjusted to work and not capture that time that you press it but then decide you don't want it.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

I remember this! Dad sold commodores and we had this, I think i had it on quite a bit.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

I am not sure people really optimise for speed, they do it for comfort. When I moved to dvorak my speed dropped by quite a bit and I never regained it but that was done for comfort, and it is more comfortable no doubt.

    I lost the speed because I wasn't doing as much documentation as I used to with qwerty.   For development, that loss of speed hasn't made any difference because I type just as fast for development purposes.

    But my main point is the people I know have not optimised things for speed, they have done it for comfort.  A ten hour trip in a plane takes the same time in business class as it does in economy but one is a nicer way to travel.

   I wouldnt run out and tell everyone to change their setup, people are usually driven to it for one reason or another, either just curious or have an issue they need to address but on a topic of ergonomics, thats exactly what ergo keyboards are about.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

I think your reply is still based on a standard keyboard. When you get to more ergonomic keyboards you can stay on the homerow and also reach modifiers without moving.

    While most people do not have an ergonomic keyboard then what you say is likely true and most ergonomists would agree but I think they would also agree that even better is not have to move and use an ergonomic keyboard.   That comes with cost and time which is why most still dont use them.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

    Yes, it's a good move for people using control a lot.  I am using evil mode in emacs so I have the escape in the same place.

    I also use homerow mods which i find really great.

    With the homerow mod, the homerow keyas 'asdf' and 'jkl;' are mirrors of 'gui, alt, ctrl, shift'

    So the a key is an a except of you hold it down and press another key, in that case it is the gui key.

    It works really well in emacs as well as on my tiling window manager where there is a lot of use of the combinations. (I have no idea why my font appears different)

4 jaar geledendiscuss

Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo Prolog, all things I got at an age when it was just a hobby in high school. In fact I can still look over at my bookshelf and see turbo prolog books.. some things you cant bring yourself to throw away!

     I use SBCL, just for hobby and it does everything I want but I agree that the price is not a lot for the tool if it offers something you want for that amount.

     We have got used to not paying for things and its not money we don't have, we have just spent it somewhere else because we have not had to spend it on tools but the price is not over the top - only if you have never had to pay for something.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

I have used tiling wm's for a while now, on the desktop and on the laptop. I have to say its made the laptop productivity so much better and shines even better on a smaller screen IMO. Thats a combo of not just tiling but often swapping virtual desktops that is a key part of tiling wm usage.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

You don't scan the screen looking for labels. You are looking directly where you want to be and a label should appear over the place you want to go. That is the label you type to jump, you will never even notice the others or scan them.

4 jaar geledendiscuss

I dont have that kb, you could keep that top left key mapped to tilde and move escape somewhere else. I put escape on the caps lock as its used a lot for vim/emacsevil.

    Caps lock is used a lot less so could be candidate for adding in to a layer.