rav's comments

On: Is my blue your blue? (2024)

[rav]

Looking in dev console reveals that the issue is an error response from https://cdn.skypack.dev/canvas-confetti - at the moment that URL returns:

        A server error has occurred

        FUNCTION_INVOCATION_FAILED

        sfo1::qcpj5-1777386477345-b792e22509f4

[pinjasaur → rav]

Looks like there's an outage currently: https://status.skypack.dev/

On: A Git helper tool that breaks large merges into parallelizable tasks

[rav]

Given a commit that both refactors (A) and adds a feature (B), you can go into the codebase and remove the new feature by hand (B^-1), commit the feature removal, and immediately revert the feature removal. This leads to three commits: (A B), B^-1, and B. Squash the first two commits to obtain a commit that only refactors, and another commit that only adds the new feature. I've written more about this technique ("the Hammer") here: https://github.com/Mortal/gittalk

On: High-Level Rust: Getting 80% of the Benefits with 20% of the Pain

[rav]

In TypeScript it's called "bivariance", which sounds very programming language theory like, but is not a term typically used in academic contexts, since it is unsound almost by default. It's described here: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/type-compatibil...

[drzaiusx11 → rav]

Key sentence in their justification seems to be:

"allowing this enables many common JavaScript patterns"

Honestly at this point they should make a new strict "no js" mode, as the ecosystem likely has reached a tipping point where you can get by without mixing typed and untyped js at compile time. Wonder if targeting wasm directly would help ensure those boundaries are ensured...

[drzaiusx11 → drzaiusx11]

https://www.assemblyscript.org/ is pretty darn close, but it would probably be better to converge and not split communities

On: Show HN: Llmswap – Python package to reduce LLM API costs by 50-90% with caching

[rav]

How is it "50-90%" savings? If a given application doesn't repeat its queries, surely there's nothing to save by caching the responses?

[sreenathmenon → rav]

Hey, Thanks for the great feedback! You're raising valid point.

Actually, this package started based on a hackathon project where I was burning the Anthropic API credits for our hackathon project which was RAG (internal documentation) + MCP.

There were question which were getting repeated several times. The 50% + comes from this experience. So, based on this, I was thinking of some of the use cases like this:

Multi-User Support/FAQ Systems: - How do I reset my password? - Reset password steps? - Forgot my password help - Password reset procedure

RAG based: - How to configure VM? - How to deploy? - How to create a network?

Educational/Training Apps Developer Testing scenarios, etc

You're absolutely right that apps with unique queries won't see these benefits - this won't help in - Personalized Content - Real-Time Data - User-Specific Queries - Creative Generation and other scenarios

I think I should clarify this in the docs. Thanks for the great feedback. This is my first opensource package and first conversation in hackernews. Great to interact and learn from all of you

On: Don't unwrap options: There are better ways (2024)

[rav]

You can rewrite it using let-or-else to get rid of the unwrap, which some would find to be more idiomatic.

    let value = Some(param.as_ref()) else {
      // Handle, and continue, return an error etc
    }
    // Use `value` as normal.

[epidemian → rav]

Small nit: the Some() pattern should go on the left side of the assignment:

    let Some(value) = param.as_ref() else {
      // Handle, and continue, return an error etc
    }
    // Use `value` as normal.

[the__alchemist → rav]

That part intrigued me about the article: I hadn't heard of that syntax! Will try.

On: Ask HN: Do you still use search engines?

[rav]

At the moment it seems like you can avoid AI search results by either including swear words, or by using 'minus' to exclude terms (e.g. append -elephant to your search query).

[nitwit005 → rav]

I have done that on occasion, but it's easier to just scroll a bit.

On: When you deleted /lib on Linux while still connected via SSH (2022)

[rav]

I often run rm -rf as part of operations (for reasons), and my habit is to first run "sudo du -csh" on the paths to be deleted, check that the total size makes sense, and then up-arrow and replace "du -csh" with "rm -rf".

[mekster → rav]

Use trash-cli and additionally git commit the target if you’re nervous before deletion.

On: AI Blindspots – Blindspots in LLMs I've noticed while AI coding

[rav]

My suggestion: Change the color of visited links! Adding a "visited" color for links will make it easier for visitors to see which posts they have already read.

On: Show HN: "Git who" – A new CLI tool for industrial-scale Git blaming

[rav]

On a small team I usually already know who wrote the code I'm reading, but it's nice to see if a block of code is all from the same point in time, or if some of the lines are the result of later bugfixing. It's also useful to find the associated pull request for a block of code, to see what issues were considered in code review, to know whether something that seems odd was discussed or glossed over when the code was merged in the first place.

[mckn1ght → rav]

I find the GitHub blame view indispensable for this kind of code archeology, as they also give you an easy way to traverse the history of lines of code. In blame, you can go back to the previous revision that changed the line and see the blame for that, and on and on.

I really want to find or build a tool that can automatically traverse history this way, like git-evolve-log.

[eichin → mckn1ght]

I've been carrying around a copy of "git blameall" for years - looks like https://github.com/gnddev/git-blameall is the same one - that basically does this, but keeps it all interleaved in one output (which works pretty well for archeology, especially if you're looking at "work hardened" code.)

(Work hardening is a metalworking term where metal bent back and forth (or hammered) too much becomes brittle; an analogous effect shows up in code, where a piece of code that has been bugfixed a couple of times will probably be need more fixes; there was a published result a decade or so back about using this to focus QA efforts...)

[follower → mckn1ght]

"Cregit" tool might be of interest to you, it generates token-based (rather than line-based) git "blame" annotation views: https://github.com/cregit/cregit

Example output based on Linux kernel @ "Cregit-Linux: how code gets into the kernel": https://cregit.linuxsources.org/

I learned of Cregit recently--just submitted it to HN after seeing multiple recent HN comments discussing issues related to line-based "blame" annotation granularity:

"Cregit-Linux: how code gets into the kernel": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43451654

[weaksauce → mckn1ght]

there is https://github.com/emacsmirror/git-timemachine which is really nice if you use emacs.

On: Hk, a new Git hook manager

[rav]

Ooh, core.hooksPath is quite nifty. I usually use something like

         ln -sf ../../scripts/git-pre-commit-hook .git/hooks/pre-commit

which simply adds a pre-commit symlink to a script in the repo's scripts/ dir. But hooksPath seems better.