Author | Lightnews

Garrett Serack

@fearthecowboy.bsky.social

210 followers 320 following 340 posts

By day I am a principal software engineer at Microsoft working on C/C++ dev tools, and other open source things. By night, I'm a maker, a father, a husband and a Seattle Kraken fan.

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Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · 1d

Hmmm... I just went and tested them with a match, and two did nothing.

I just ordered replacements for all of them, Amazon will have them here in the morning

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · 1d

Huh. How did I not know this before??!?

Shit, all mine are 29 years old.

They do still work but... I gotta go buy new ones...

Is there a standard power plug they have?

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · 18d

The standard UI for this sort of thing would be a slider switch, which then you could tell if it was enabled or not. The ambiguity here is particularly bad.

Back in the day, when I worked at Microsoft, this would have been caught really early. I guess standards are slipping ...

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · 18d

This is bad UI

In the Sound settings in Windows 11 - you can disable a sound device that you don't want apps to be able to use

However, when you open the UI to do that you are faces with a button that says "Don't Allow" or "Allow" - Which really doesn't tell you what the current state is

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Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 25

I spent several months writing some code in Ruby.

I'll grant that it's not the least lovable language (by a wiiiiiide mile) but I found it weird as hell.

Actually, it probably doesn't even make my top 20 least lovable languages list.

But it's no TypeScript :D

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 24

I'd say something quip like "Just declare Ruby a deity or something, and then it's all allowed by the IRS because it's a religion"

Except that the mere existence of Ruby itself is undeniable proof that there is no god.

:D

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 22

Jfc.

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 17

No...

😂

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 10

If you like that, you should make your own

I use half n half- take 2 liters put in a pot and heat to 180F for a minute. Cool down to 110f and then stir in a dollop of your favorite yogurt. Wrap in a towel and leave on the counter for 12-24 hr. chill and drain in cheesecloth overnight. Mind blowing

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 8

I've been saying this nonstop for a year now. Hardware costs and energy costs are both magnified by usage, and features drive usage thru the roof. This stuff gets more expensive over time, and there is no rational means that will go the other way.

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Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 7

And the "Likelihood that I would recommend either it or Windows to a friend" is zero. They can stop asking.

I don't "recommend" nagware to friends.

Really, I don't "recommend" much of anything to friends.

I do the reverse tho.

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Sep 7

I'm working remotely in a hotel room, and I just had to break down and get a couple of those cheap portable external monitors.

However, I feel like @bitcrazed.bsky.social is judging me.

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 22

The ability to map text from a "What I have now" back to a "Where did this come from" is a huge deal.

I would really love to see such a thing with LLMs as a means to 'cite their references' too.

🧵 [5/5]

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 22

Other languages have their debug symbol formats (ie, .pdb or COFF/XCOFF/DWARF symbols) but these aren't really designed for source-to-source transformations at all.

🧵 [4/5]

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 22

But, in reality, if you have several steps (say a code generator or something), there is nothing stopping you from crafting source maps from your 'source-of-truth' to the generated code that you emit. There are many tools that let you navigate or visualize source code based on source maps.

🧵 [3/5]

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 22

Source maps provide a means to map from the 'final' code output, to the original source of the code. Usually this means you can debug the actual TypeScript code while you run the 'compiled' code thru the debugger and other things, like having accurate stack traces in your `Error` objects.

🧵 [2/5]

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Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 22

I think one my absolute favorite things about the JavaScript ecosystem, that nobody ever talks about, is support for source maps, and just how complex and innovative that is.

🧵 [1/5]

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Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 18

Yeaaaah. Some things are not bad, but then some times it goes off the rails and results can be pretty lousy

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 13

Wow. Is docker desktop ever bad at what happens when disk space hits zero.

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 6

Meh, what can go wrong?

Seriously tho' ... I discovered an actual viable reason to check the second box

Docker desktop is A BIT DISK INTENSIVE ... so I moved the vhdx files for that to an otherwise unused drive

It's for test/dev work only, so I don't care about the contents

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 1

Chevrolet

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Aug 1

That'll show them! Send another letter, this time STRONGLY WORDED!

And then follow up by playing this card:

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Jul 16

Latté and I are coding out on the deck this morning.

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Jul 13

And today is my last day of continuation too

Garrett Serack @fearthecowboy.bsky.social · Jul 13

I am 34 days shy of getting my 55/15.