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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • This is exactly right. However, something that I’ve found frustrating is that in many projects (at least the ones that I’m interested in), it feels like there’s a secret roadmap that’s not documented anywhere outside of the maintainer’s head(s). You can scour the wiki, watch the IRC channel and mailing lists, and read through the issue discussions, and you still won’t have a good sense of what they want done next or if the change you want to make is incompatible with some big planned rewrite. I know the answer is to just ask—and I’ve done that more and more recently—but that can be a big hurdle if you’re just getting started.

    I’m trying to build a community for a project right now, and this is something I’m very aware of. I’m trying to report on what I’m working on and planning in the project chat so that if someone else comes along, hopefully they’ll (a) understand the current status and (b) feel comfortable asking about the overall vision.





  • My commits tend to be pretty verbose. Here’s an example log from one of my projects.

    I follow the standard imperative style for the commit title, and then I use the body to summarize any important internal changes, reflect on the overall project status (for example, what milestones this commit crosses or what other work it might enable or require), and state what I’m going to work on next. I’m sure some people find it too wordy, but I like having the commit history show lots of details about the overall status.

    Edit: I always have a descriptive summary, i.e., never one word commits or similar.


  • Nim is one of my favorite languages, and has been one of my primary languages in rotation for projects for the last five or so years. I’ve written servers (and web frontends, CLI tools, quick scripts, etc.) with it and am very happy with the results.

    It’s hard for me to put into words why I like it so much, but I think it might actually be because it’s such a mishmash of paradigms. If I’m in a functional mood, I can use lots of ideas from functional programming. If I feel like using OOP everywhere, I can do that too. And if I want to mix both together, it’s no problem! Nim kind of feels like the Wild West, and while that’s something I’d dislike in most languages, for whatever reason it works when writing in Nim.


  • Well said and agreed. It felt awkward because next week was supposed to be a lighter period for me at work after some sustained intensity, while she’s ramping up for a big project due at the end of the month. So all along, we’d planned for me to shoulder more of the packing and last minute planning. I just wanted to make sure that she knew that I appreciated how much extra work I was passing on to her, and to express that I needed to find ways to make it up to her.

    However, late last night I found out that the choir’s original plan worked out and they don’t need me to go at all. So…yeah.


  • To cap off one of my strangest days in recent memory, I just got a call asking if I can go to England all next week to accompany a choir tour. Nothing’s confirmed yet, and I’d have to pull some major strings to get out of my obligations here. However, I’d really love to go.

    Unfortunately, we’re moving a few days after I’d get back, so I’d pretty much dump all the packing on my partner. She says I should go regardless, but I definitely don’t feel great about that.

    I also just finished up a take-home interview project for a part-time software development job. I’ve been trying to break back into that world for some time now, so I’m very excited about the opportunity.





  • It’s a reference to my last name, which, at least in the U.S., is much more commonly spelled with an e on the end. I always have to clarify that there’s “no e on the end” whenever I give/spell my name to anyone.

    I also make no secret of my actual identity and only say things I’d be comfortable saying in person. I know there’s some risk of running into a crazy stalker person, but thankfully I haven’t dealt with anything like that so far in my Internet years.


  • I have a pretty unique perspective on this as someone who’s worked in churches my entire adult life. Probably the hardest interview question I’ve ever been asked–across both technical and non-technical interviews–was when I was interviewing to be the organist at a large UMC church in early 2019, right before the General Conference vote that set all of this off. They basically summarized the situation to me and then asked if I was comfortable coming into the position not knowing which way the vote would go. In many ways, this question felt like asking if I had principles and if I was willing to stick to them. As a progressive person, I had to really think about if I’d be ok being in a place where I wouldn’t be allowed to play for a same-sex wedding.

    That church’s senior pastor was one of the leading figures in the movement to affirm LGBTQ members. We quietly performed at least one same-sex marriage while I was there, which was technically in defiance of the denomination’s restrictions. Since then, I’ve moved to one of the most prominent progressive mainline Protestant megachurches in the US. We’ve had long standing partnerships with many LGTBQ organizations, and we do lots of tangible things for all sorts of underrepresented communities. We had a visiting trans pastor speak about a month ago, and they received an instant ovation from the congregation.

    My point in all of this is that it frustrates me to see comment sections like much of this one where people insist that every church is a highly regressive place. As someone who’s in the closed door meetings, I promise you that there are many that are not, and it’s not just all a ploy to try to stay relevant in today’s society. Some places really do support these causes because they believe in them.

    (As a footnote, I’ll say that I don’t like to talk about my religious views online, as it might put me in a weird position with my current and potential future employers. An acquaintance of mine wrote a great blog post that sums up my feelings well.)


  • This is interesting—I hadn’t heard of vis or Sam. Thanks for sharing!

    I will say that I like to think of myself as a reasonably advanced Vim user, and the substitution commands used for the example wouldn’t have even occurred to me for changes 1 and 2. I would have automatically done it the alternative ways listed. I’m pretty sure those would be faster to type too (they’re fewer keystrokes). Is it really true for most people that “the substitute command is used 90% of the time when using commands”?