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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Yeah, that seems bonkers, but it’s how npm works. I don’t always code in JS, but if I do: a) its code that’s going to run in a browser and b) I never ever use any JS dependencies aside from browser builtins. It’s about the only way to opt out of the dependency nightmare that is “modern web dev”.

    Ok, I lied a little bit. In my job, I sometimes do JS work on projects with Grunt, Bower, Backbone, jQuery and a gorillion other dependencies. But when I have full autonomy over a codebase like with my side projects, my style is as above.

    To qualify that even more, even in my side projects, I often use minifiers, but not ones written in JS or pulled in via NPM.

    Of course, that probably doesn’t help much when you have need of functionality that would be much less trivial to make yourself. Again at my job, we use JsBarcode to generate images of barcodes. That would be a royal pain to implement from scratch. If I needed that functionality in a side project, I’d probably just bite the bullet and pull it in from Bower with 30 other bulky dependencies. (Or more likely just refrain from taking on that particular side project. Or possibly generate barcodes server-side.)



  • Ah. Well, I still see the web interface pulling in new posts as I sit on the home page. But then, I also mentioned that my Lemmy instance (or, the instance I’ve joined, that is) is a couple of versions behind. (I’m not sure if they’re behind on both Lemmy and the UI or on just one.) If they’ve changed that behavior in newer versions, that could be why I’m still seeing the web interface pull in new posts while you don’t.

    And if that behavior is removed in the newer versions, then I can probably expect all the issues I’ve mentioned in this thread to be resolved as soon as latte.isnot.coffee updates to more recent versions of either Lemmy or Lemmy-UI or both.




  • Yeah. I’m definitely for some pretty seamless integration. Probably in the optimal case:

    • The wikis would be hosted on the same domain as the Lemmy servers.
    • Any account you had on the associated Lemmy server would automatically exist to the wiki as well.
    • If you were logged into Lemmy, you’d also be logged into the wiki.
    • Only mods would be able to enable wikis but the process of doing so would be trivially easy.
    • I’d personally say that it makes the most sense to just have the mods link the associated wiki from the sidebar rather than creating new special interface features to add a link outside the sidebar or whatever. (Unless some kind of plugin infrastructure that would allow that already exists.)

    But all that can be done without putting any wiki-specific code into the Lemmy or Lemmy-UI source repositories, which I think is preferable for the same reason you wouldn’t add flight simulator code to a spreadsheet application. (Ok, maybe a bad example, but you get my point.)

    Edit: And I’ll admit there are both upsides and downsides to my approach here. One downside would be that some Lemmy instances would offer attached wikis and others wouldn’t. It’s possible it also just wouldn’t catch on at all and nobody would enable attached wikis as a feature if it was a whole separate step to setting up “Lemmy”.


  • Mostly I mean the wikis for really informational subreddits like /r/bodyweightfitness or /r/personalfinance. Those would usually be the best place to get information on whatever topic that wasn’t mostly sponsored propaganda. And it had uses that the threads didn’t fill because the wikis would take a comprehensive view of the subject matter whereas threads would be about one or another detail.

    Who knows. Maybe I was the only one who felt like they got benefit from the wikis. Ha!


  • I don’t want to be constantly comparing Lemmy to Reddit, but on Reddit, the wikis were invaluable. As helpful as the threads were, the wikis frequently had amazingly useful info.

    That said, I’m not sure I think adding wikis to Lemmy is the right way to go. “One thing well” and all that.

    Maybe instead, some ancilliary wiki platform that can be run alongside Lemmy that lets a community mod easily set up a wiki that can be linked to in the sidebar?

    Or we could go really simple and just link specific posts in the sidebar with useful information of the kind you’d otherwise put into a wiki.



  • First off, you’re awesome and so is your daughter!

    It does seem like there are at least two potential aims here: to make a game and to become a better coder.

    If the primary aim is to make a game, there’s RPGMaker. I’m not very familiar with it, but from what I understand it’s a lot more drag-and-drop game assembly than programming, though it does have some scripting capabilities.

    If the aim is more about becoming a better coder and expanding her capabilities, PyGame is a very popular Python library for making games. And Python is widely touted as “a great beginner language.”

    Python is (qualifier, qualifier) “slow,” and so it’s possible she’ll run into some limitations there as well, but I’d imagine it should be a ton less restrictive than Scratch, and well up to the task of “a trimmed down ‘legend of Zelda: link to the past.’”

    Java is a language that people make “real” games in (like the original Minecraft, for instance.) But… and this’ll be a controversial statement, but… my experience is that it makes people worse coders. As in, it causes brain damage that is either overcame later or negatively affects their coding abilities for the rest of their careers. Python is very much the opposite; it’s the kind of language that makes you a better coder for having worked with it.

    I’ve been working with Golang and Ebiten lately, and I’m enjoying it, but it’s definitely a very “really real” programming language that may require a certain amount of background knowledge to appreciate the simplicity of. It’s an option, though. And I do believe it would be the kind of option you’d use if you were making a “real game” (like the kind that would be sold on Steam.) At her age, I probably would have been excited by the fact that that option also gives you a bona fide .exe file.

    Of all of those options, I’d probably be most inclined to nudge her toward PyGame/Python but lay out all the options above (along with any other options you come across.)

    Good luck to both of you! It’s always awesome to see 10-year-olds getting into game development. When I was 10, I wrote games and other programs in QBasic. That’s a dinosaur these days, but your daughter’s interest in software development may well turn into a lifelong interest and fulfilling career like it did for me.





  • TootSweet@latte.isnot.coffeetoLemmy@lemmy.mlLemmy is being gentrified
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    1 year ago

    As one of the folks who came from Reddit when everyone else did, sorry. :(

    It makes sense that any mass exedous from some other community will greatly change the destination community, and much of value will be lost in the process.

    So, is there anything I can do to help preserve and embody what I’ve helped destroy? I’ll definitely keep in mind what you’ve said here about “toxicity, entitlement, and stupid challenges,” and I’ll learn more about federation and keep an open mind. Any other advice how we former Redditors can help keep what made Lemmy great before hordes of Redditors flooded it?

    Any advice how we can help even enrich the Lemmy community and make it better than we first found it?

    I don’t want to go back to Reddit. And I don’t want to be a pariah or paracite here. And I accept that those who were on Lemmy have wisdom to share that newcomers can benefit from.