Ada 2020 target syntax (at)

I’ve already talked a little bit about Ada++ — just a waste of time, in my opinion.

Somebody once told me that he liked C because you can write

   a++;

where other languages require

   a := a + 1;

I don’t see the problem, but imagine that the variable to be incremented is longer:

   A_Long_Name_For_A_Var := A_Long_Name_For_A_Var + 1;

Well, in Ada 2020 you can write

   A_Long_Name_For_A_Var := @ + 1;

(Yes, Ada 2020, not in Ada 2012… GNAT already support -gnat2020 and this feature, but I suppose you must check what else is supported before embracing anything in Ada 2020.)

Let’s say it again: Ada++ syntax is a silly idea

Silly to say the least.

Now I’ve stumbled on A Modern Syntax For Ada and had goose bumps and thrills along my spine.

Before spitting on that job of Adacore’s core members, luckly I’ve read that it’s just a April Fool Prank.

Now I feel better.

But let’s compare the idea of this prank with Ada++…

Ada++ embraces part of those ideas scolded in the april fool prank!

• is becomes :
• pointless shortening (here return becomes ret, function becomes fn… Ada++ has priv instead of private…)
• begin becomes { and end }

So, I hope I am not alone when I say that Ada++ is a horrible idea and hopefully I won’t be the only one rage rejecting it.

Top 10 highest paid programming languages

I don’t think one should learn a programming language just because it is well paid. A programming language is just a tool, you can use it well or bad, to build or destroy, to make life great or miserable to your future self and your collegues — and your employer, I forgot to mention it…

But real life, alas, works like this: you choose your tools not just because they are the best to do what you want to do: you choose them because there’s someone willing to pay you to use them, even if they aren’t the best tools for the job — but, you know, everybody’s using this, or that, or that, or that…

Maybe that explains the success of certain languages and their ecosystems: nobody thinks to ask if they are the right tool anymore… At least, that’s so when the product isn’t, indeed, critically bound to such a technical choice, and hence market- and money-induced blindness don’t waste everything… Apparently…

Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn’t enrich my skillset just looking at boring lists of most paid this or that. It’s a dangerous path (maybe not for the wealth, but for the health of the consultants’ built digital world, it kind of is.)

Articles with titles like “Top N something” are almost click-bait. Be prepared to read BS — which doesn’t mean there isn’t some research and value in those words.

Well, do you really want to become rich programmer? Then, maybe the article Top 10 highest-paying programming languages in 2020 appeals to this secret desire.

Let’s see…

Absurd dependencies

Writing something in texinfo, it happens that I can’t use @subentry for the index. It seems Ubuntu 19.10 has an old texinfo. So I downloaded the latest and wanted to purge the old one. But:

$ sudo apt-get remove texinfo
[sudo] password for user: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  cantor-backend-octave dynare liboctave-dev lilypond lilypond-data matlab2tikz octave octave-bim octave-biosig octave-bsltl
  octave-cgi octave-communications octave-communications-common octave-control octave-data-smoothing octave-dataframe octave-dicom
  octave-divand octave-doctest octave-econometrics octave-financial octave-fits octave-fpl octave-fuzzy-logic-toolkit octave-ga
  octave-gdf octave-general octave-geometry octave-gsl octave-image octave-image-acquisition octave-instrument-control octave-interval
  octave-io octave-level-set octave-linear-algebra octave-lssa octave-ltfat octave-ltfat-common octave-mapping octave-miscellaneous
  octave-missing-functions octave-mpi octave-msh octave-mvn octave-nan octave-ncarray octave-netcdf octave-nlopt octave-nurbs
  octave-octclip octave-octproj octave-openems octave-optics octave-optim octave-optiminterp octave-parallel octave-pfstools
  octave-plplot octave-psychtoolbox-3 octave-quaternion octave-queueing octave-secs1d octave-secs2d octave-secs3d octave-signal
  octave-sockets octave-sparsersb octave-specfun octave-splines octave-statistics octave-stk octave-strings octave-struct
  octave-symbolic octave-tsa octave-vibes octave-vlfeat octave-vrml octave-zenity octave-zeromq texinfo texlive-full

Why? Why removing texinfo should bring down the whole texlive-full and whole pieces of octave and… WTF. Idiotic, nonsense dependencies.

So I will keep that old texinfo. And Ubuntu has one more angle to push me towards their personal nightmare (I mean, snaps).

Old times news

Weeks ago I digged into one of my dad’s hard drive on his Microsoft Windows office machine, searching for interesting stuffs he could have left there. Since I hadn’t the time to cope with all the amount of data found there, I did a simple

dir /s ... >a_file.txt

(or something like this) to have a list to check against the content of other hard drives at home. Likely what’s there was already copied here.