Week 9 of 2023

Weeklies are my notes of things not big enough for a blog post but worthy of being mentioned and linked to. Find all of my Weeklies at /weeklies.

• Please just stop saying "just" by Scott Ringwelski

  First and foremost, the word “just” implies that an idea is simple.

  Words that indicate implied simplicity are dangerous. Scott goes into great detail showcasing why this is the case in this great post from a few years back.

  Another similar phrase is a "quick question" since it's impossible to know if the question (and implied, answer) is quick or not. You only know that based on the answer and if you're asking, it's very likely you don't know the answer.

• 6502 Assembly Crash Course by NesHacker

  At the beginning of the week, I watched through NesHacker's 6-video series on writing 6502 Assembly to build NES games.

• More Batteries Please by Carlton Gibson

  Python is often referred to come with "batteries installed", meaning its standard library comes with a lot of good and useful functionalities so you don't need to install that many external dependencies. How large a standard library should be is a discussion that pops up every now and then with many languages. Some prefer a barebones standard library with everything installed as-needed while others want the language to be good to go from the get go.

  In this post, Carlton Gibson discusses his desire to have more batteries in Python.

• The SSCCE - Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example

  When you ask technical questions, a powerful way to make it easy for others to help you is to provide a good example. SSCCE is a helpful guideline for making sure you create good ones.

  And they put it very nicely:

  We are not proposing that every single problem needs a SSCCE in order to be solved. We are also not suggesting an example is, or should be, compulsory.

  It will, however, make people much more likely to help, and will therefore increase the chance of finding a solution.

• AI is making it easier to create more noise, when all I want is good search by Rach Smith

  There’s been a lot of hype around AI-written content. If you ask me, if there’s one thing we don’t need more of on the internet, it is more soulless content written for “SEO” purposes, with enough wordcount to inject ads between.

  Yup. This is one of the reasons why I'm not excited about ChatGPT and other solutions. For technical forums, it's also a moderating nightmare when people post generated answers that are wordy and sound good but are just wrong.