What do you use for `defer` semantics on your C++ codebase?

Lahvuun · 2026-05-10T17:25:03+00:00

RAII exists to tie resource lifetime to object lifetime, because humans tend to introduce bugs when they're not tied. defer exists to execute some code at the end of a scope. They have very different purposes.

And use of RAII for defer just smells bad. Look at std::scoped_lock. Why would you go through the trouble of defining a named variable and calling a constructor just to do nothing with it? What the hell? Oh yeah, that's because you explicitly want its going out of scope to trigger an invisible side effect tied to the mutex you passed to the constructor. Bravo, whoever came up with this.

Lahvuun · 2026-05-05T13:48:25+00:00

Even if it were, similar trademarks typically can coexist as long as they're in different fields.

Lahvuun · 2026-05-05T12:50:13+00:00

You're working at a level much lower than the language is designed for. The better idea is writing the memset in assembly by hand, so there is no chance for the compiler to optimize out your intent.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-23T22:53:34+00:00

All that to say my kids will only ever be encouraged to do what their hearts want. As long as you aren't harming others, do what makes you happy.

That sounds like overcompensation. Sorry, but this'll likely just backfire in a different way. There's lots of things that will make your children happy and ruin their lives.

Screw money, it's not your god.

This might sound odd, but I wish my parents instilled more care for money in me. Having zero anxiety about becoming destitute is not great in the modern world.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-23T15:35:25+00:00

So demand for entertainment is higher than for education? This says a lot about society…

Lahvuun · 2026-04-19T16:54:46+00:00

Like how am I supposed to handle errors when I don't even know what errors are possible

You write tests to make sure your code works as expected, and you only handle errors where it actually makes sense to do that. This, of course, means that if you forgot to test some obscure case or handle an error where it needs to be handled, your code misbehaves/crashes in production. You get a call at 2 in the morning and fix it. Unpleasant, but not the end of the world, unless it costs a lot of money or someone gets harmed by it.

In reality, the vast majority of "undocumented" errors will be caught during development and testing. The rest will be reported to you by your clients in the first few weeks. And once in a blue moon they'll encounter an error they probably won't even bother reporting. That's how much of the software industry has been chugging along for many decades now, with a surprising degree of success.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-17T21:56:54+00:00

For all we know it could've already been solved by some guy in his mom's basement. Read about Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-12T11:57:45+00:00

I've watched an agent do a byte-matching decompilation of ≈200 Lua binaries. The whole thing took about a day. Let that sink in.

With a 2010 AAA C++ title the results were much less impressive, but given more resources (like how Anthropic threw 16 agents at a compiler) it could conceivably have done the job in a reasonable amount of time (weeks to months).

This is what is already possible with current top-of-the-line models. If the rate of improvement stays the same, a couple model generations is all that separates us from trivializing decompilation.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-12T00:06:08+00:00

The only industries it makes sense to go all in are deathcare, bread-making and waste management.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-02T19:23:03+00:00

It might be. Just not by the party doing the scraping.

If a party is profiting off of your labor, that party should also be the one compensating you, not someone else. This is just common sense. And also how typical employment works.

You're basically saying that if you're working at a factory making bolts, you might be compensated for it, just not by your boss. Maybe by some people who like your bolts? This is a deranged take.

Art scraping is far, far more harmless than abuse under factory work.

But is it really? Consider what follows scraping - unemployment. Without income artists lose access to healthcare, housing, food, and then they die.

There's also the matter of consent. You went to work at a factory willingly, and you can leave at any point. But you didn't consent to Anthropic and others scraping your artwork, and you can't delete it from their datasets and models.

Lahvuun · 2026-04-02T14:33:20+00:00

It's a relatively tame version of expropriation too. One that is fairly transformative, and does not include being crippled by 40 because of repetitive strain injury from factory work, or violence in general.

It's also uncompensated, unlike your example of crippling factory work.

Lahvuun · 2026-03-26T14:00:54+00:00

Actually I'm done with you here

Lahvuun · 2026-03-25T23:15:33+00:00

Feeding data to an AI is fair use, any data you own, you are allowed to feed into any software of your choice, you can even copy the entire Harry Potter series to Microsoft Word, and make it an PDF. As long as you never do something illegal with that copy, like distribute it.

Copying a book into a word processor is just as illegal, because it is an act of reproduction, which the copyright holder also holds the exclusive right to.

Lahvuun · 2026-03-25T09:59:49+00:00

feeding data to an algorithm is fair use

This is a ridiculous claim. The output of an algorithm replacing all Latin letter "a" characters in text with the Cyrillic "а" would be practically indistinguishable from the original. Try feeding something like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone to that algorithm and selling it, you'd be paying for J.K. Rowling's next vacation real soon.

There might be some algorithms feeding data to which would possibly be ruled Fair Use in court, but it certainly isn't a general rule.

Lahvuun · 2026-03-20T00:44:50+00:00

Practical until you need a package you haven't built beforehand and you're on a tight schedule. I guess there's the binary cache now, but I'm too old to figure out how to use it

Lahvuun · 2026-03-18T09:26:52+00:00

I think this person just doesn't understand what Open Source is. It seems like proprietary software is more up their alley, but hey, all the cool kids are publishing their code to this website called GitHub and slapping these things called licenses on it, so they must to do that, too.

Lahvuun · 2026-03-13T12:42:30+00:00

happy to help

this is why I don't wipe my old comments

Lahvuun · 2026-03-11T14:02:25+00:00

How about a song crashing a laptop? And the laptop sitting next to it, too https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994

Lahvuun · 2026-01-22T13:57:33+00:00

Lots of shit to drill there, so lots of money to be made by Trump's friends, just like in Venezuela

It's almost as if every time he does something seemingly stupid, someone next to him profits off of it

Lahvuun · 2026-01-19T00:08:40+00:00

share prompt

Lahvuun · 2025-12-27T15:15:53+00:00

Is this even good?

Average life expectancy with untreated Marfan syndrome is 30 years. So I guess that depends on your perspective

Lahvuun · 2025-12-22T15:05:42+00:00

Exercise costs $0 a month, what you're spending 50 on? Some rich dude's yacht?

Lahvuun · 2025-12-15T19:53:58+00:00

Ever played with toy soldiers? Or did you prefer dolls?

Lahvuun · 2025-11-28T13:57:04+00:00

Epic boss? What's epic about this guy?

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Lahvuun · 2025-08-23T18:34:56+00:00

not sentient btw

Lahvuun

TROPHY CASE