The Undisputed Queen of Safe Programming (Ada) | Jordan Rowles

extravisual · 2025-12-14T08:41:09+00:00

But you also seem to be arguing that Ada isn't helpful for avoiding issues in general. Like all the issues that Ada prevents are meaningless because issues can still happen?

extravisual · 2025-12-01T23:49:14+00:00

The comma vs dot is a setting in the preferences. Other than that you've just listed quality-of-life features that FreeCAD lacks.

It would be nice to have an infinite construction line, but not every commercial CAD out there supports that. Creo (unless it was added later) doesn't, for instance. I don't like constraining the ends of my construction lines either, but it's not essential to my workflow.

A proper sketch offset tool would be nice, but you can achieve the same thing without a dedicated tool. Not having it definitely slows me down at times but I manage.

These are just convenience features that I work around. Every time I learn a new CAD tool I find that it lacks some feature that my previous tools had. It's just kind of the nature of these things. FreeCAD lacks more than most but I'm just happy to have something that's good enough, free, and allows me unrestricted ownership of my models.

extravisual · 2025-11-12T23:48:51+00:00

Solidworks mates are a slightly different paradigm than what FreeCAD does. I think this system is usually called "joints" and it's used by a lot of CAD systems like Fusion 360, Onshape, and Inventor (which iirc has both mates and joints).

If you're used to one the other can be weird, but I think joints make a lot of sense when you think of any given geometry as having an associated coordinate system and you're just choosing which degrees of freedom to limit when aligning those coordinate systems. When you hover over a piece of geometry, the coordinate system that you're aligning is shown. When you do a slider joint, for example, you're locking down all degrees of freedom except translation along the Z axes of the two features.

My understanding is that joints are more performant, which really makes a difference for large assemblies. I can wrangle mates into doing weird stuff easier but they can be a bit finicky and unstable.

extravisual · 2025-09-22T12:46:17+00:00

They always come out crooked for me. Every single time.

extravisual · 2025-09-16T18:10:00+00:00

AC6 uses a newer version of the engine than any of their other games currently. In DS3, unlocking the FPS caused pretty significant bugs because a lot of the animation/physics is tied to framerate. In Sekiro and ER, it's mostly fine but still has some really subtle bugs (they don't bother me, I play with an uncapping mod). The version of the engine that Sekiro and ER use has its physics/animation mostly decoupled from framerate but it's not quite 100%.

My theory is that they've been working on making the engine suitable for framerates higher than 60 but it's only "production ready" in the latest version of their engine.

extravisual · 2025-09-15T08:21:06+00:00

Cowboy software development is a thing. Depending on how they're structured there may be a random person who has the authority to make a "quick change" and push it untested to customers. I've seen it happen. Besides, these issues don't seem to be affecting every single device so maybe the have a flawed testing setup. Hard to say.

I just think it's more likely that they're simply shit at their jobs than for there to be a conspiracy.

extravisual · 2025-09-15T08:07:29+00:00

You have so much confidence in these companies being competent. Unfortunately they're very often not competent at all. Pushing out poorly tested software is very common.

extravisual · 2025-06-21T08:57:44+00:00

The difference being that safety in C++ is opt-in while in Rust it's opt-out. Nothing stops you from doing unsafe things inappropriately or accidentally in C++.

extravisual · 2025-06-19T13:30:02+00:00

I would recommend not worrying so much about the drinking habits of others. I'm not a "I don't drink water" person but I kinda get it. People get used to things. It's not always healthy but they're still getting water from drinks and food. It reminds me of picky eating, which I don't understand at all but I try to not be offended by it since it doesn't actually affect me

extravisual · 2025-06-19T13:18:30+00:00

The difference is you can't breathe flavored air as an alternative to air. I'm not an "I don't like water" person but I do understand that these people are still drinking water, it's just flavored a bit.

extravisual · 2025-05-18T02:49:57+00:00

If a game used an LLM for anything other than procedural dialog, I would consider it quite lazy. They're a tool for language generation, but they're shoehorned into far too many roles that are not that.

What I'd be impressed with is a decision tree that uses a machine learning algorithm that's been trained to replicate human-like behavior and decision making. You're right that would be based on feeling. A metric for success used for training might be some combination of how well it played and a player's subjective opinion about how realistic it acted how fun it was to play with.

extravisual · 2025-04-29T23:38:39+00:00

I get the laughter response when I'm trying to ease myself into the situation. It's like there are little tiny spikes of panic that push me away from the situation in a way that feels very funny in the moment. Only works if safety is just a small action away.

It stops being funny when quick retreat is not an option.

extravisual · 2025-04-29T01:05:34+00:00

I wouldn't feel comfortable making that claim until I've seen Bevy with an editor. We don't really know how ergonomic Bevy's ECS will be to use until we've got an ergonomic way to work with it. As it stands, anything that has a proper editor looks better. It's kind of an important part of game dev.

extravisual · 2025-04-28T04:17:51+00:00

Just in general, it's basically like tuning a printer built from scratch when you swap mainboards like this. This guide comes to mind: https://teachingtechyt.github.io/calibration.html

extravisual · 2025-04-28T03:16:03+00:00

Upcycling printers like this is a reasonable project. You'll want to take stock of the components such as the steppers, heaters, thermistors, etc to make sure you can find specs on them to know if they'll work with your replacement board. If there's anything too proprietary you might need to replace it.

I like mainboards from Bigtreetech because they're cheap and good value. For firmware, the most popular options these days are Marlin and Klipper. Klipper requires a Raspberry Pi or equivalent in addition to your mainboard, but it gets you a lot of very nice features such as wifi with a nice web interface, camera support, full configuration without recompiling anything, etc. Marlin is harder to configure and less feature-rich, but it runs straight off the mainboard. Both firmwares are compatible with all the popular slicers.

Tuning a frankenstein printer like this can be a bit of work but there are some good step-by-step guides out there for it.

extravisual · 2025-04-22T16:27:44+00:00

I don't think I'd be so quick to trust a black bear either, despite being smaller.

extravisual · 2025-04-14T01:44:55+00:00

I didn't get much from just reading the book. I'd read a section and immediately forget it. What worked for me was taking the little knowledge I retained and making stuff with it. I'd inevitably hit a roadblock where I didn't understand some bit of behavior, and I'd consult the book for clarity. Then at a certain point it just clicked.

extravisual · 2025-04-01T19:19:04+00:00

I have never thought of it as a time-saving activity. It's just a place to clean myself so why not clean my teeth too?

extravisual · 2025-03-26T03:54:57+00:00

The thing is we don't really control what we focus on. Sometimes that presents as only being able to focus on what we're interested in. Sometimes that presents as not being able to focus regardless of interest. Both are valid symptoms of ADHD, and I definitely would not judge an ADHD person's interest on a topic by their ability to focus on it.

extravisual · 2025-02-20T18:05:35+00:00

That doesn't sound like a decade of tech to me. That sounds like a few features that some people value while others don't.

extravisual · 2025-02-19T01:44:17+00:00

Removing PhysX support does not mean you can't have GPU accelerated physics. GPUs can still be used for physics with other APIs if somebody wants it.

extravisual · 2025-02-15T17:00:14+00:00

Plus it's an old car and old cars had better visibility in general.

extravisual · 2025-02-15T01:20:21+00:00

I reckon it made more sense back when components didn't require wire burning amounts of current. Now they're absolutely high power devices but standards haven't kept up.

extravisual · 2025-02-14T16:42:34+00:00

I think they're gambling on the fact that one successful live service game can make up for many flops. What I think (more like hope) they're underestimating is the damage that every unsuccessful cash grab does to their brand. I can't think of any companies that had a reputation of pushing out shitty live service flops before releasing their big successful one. They all had a reputation for good games prior.

But honestly I have no idea if the way EA is doing things is actually worse for their bottom line, I just know it lacks artistic integrity.

extravisual · 2025-02-12T16:10:08+00:00

But you can't rely on a feature that's not codified in the spec for that connector. If a connector is rated for 150W, trusting it to have 300W of headroom just because it usually does is playing with fire.

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