Xah Programing Blog
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Linux: Command to View/Delete Metadata in Image Files
minor update.
How to Input Unicode
updated
Microsoft Windows user interface design: mouse wheel does not always work
Gosh idiotic Microsoft Windows 10. Sometimes your mouse wheel doesn't work. For example, when in charmap.
idiotic Microsoft Windows 10, when you use Alt+Escape it hides the previous window. faaking idiotic extreme.
user interface design, to duplicate or not
[on whether site should open link in new window, and nerd opinion being no, let user decide.]
That's what typical nerd thinks, but i think does not fit reality at all. First of all, opening new window has a ton of proper use. For example, help/explain on links in a form, or show big picture, or go to external site (e.g. Done by facebook and twitter or youtube), which is actually appropriate because user often do want remain on the site, or for example on my site, link to amazon. (some of these are today done by in-page popup using js, such as view bigger photo.). But i began to think in past year, that possibly ALL links should open new window, except if it's a single page app. Because this is in fact i think more than 50% of clicks nerds do. It is also easier to manage. Because browsing history has tons of problems, well known. And widely talked about. I did a survey here, most nerds control click to open new window all the time. Also, interesting to note, in china, almost all sites, defaults to opening new links in new window, even links to the site itself. Also, as far as the notion let the user control, it falls flat on its face. Vast majority users (99%), do not even know wtf is a keyboard shortcut, or wtf is a software, or wtf is a browser. This is why, thing migrated to the phone, and also, we see vast UI that duplicate basic browser function such as going to top of page (can be done by just pressing Home). This is not caused by phone btw, it was so 15 years ago. And we see tons of UI widgets that duplicate basic browser function, even in NERD sites created by NERDS.
Frenzie: you mean like font size?.
XahLee: yes exactly. that too.
I think there's a tension in design, on one end is rely on basic functionality and not duplicate things, this side am on. On the other extreme, is to have as much functionality widget on the page or thing itself without any assumption. I think things are following the latter trend in past 20 years. Mac tends to be follow no-duplicate philosophy. Windows follow no-assumption philosophy. That's why the Win10 System Settings has one hundred spider web ways to get to the same panel. And , this no assumption way, apparently creates more massive users. Cuz most users dunno and no want to learn. This applies to programers too, for example, on programing languages or habits, or in areas programers not familiar with such as math or law. You start to prefer things or pages sans any assumption that you knew the basics.
while studying bitcoin. There is a nasty thought. It seems there's a tendency for it to be centralized, by the dealers. In fact, already is. More than 51% r controlled by 1 minter. (and they agreed to spread that). So, this indicate a central flaw, not bitcoin but humanity, like many other things that began decentralized such as internet)
this means, even if bitcoin became the number one money use in 10 years, it may still become centralized. We just have new overlords, instead of central banks or gov.
Another bout of the complexity and tedium of software engineering. How 10 minute job became 4 hours. HTML _blank noopener noreferrer Problem
the wolfram site is truly overwhelming. though, i think one third of it is marketing talk, and repetitious. i am trying to map out what's new of Wolfram since 2005. i knew it'll take a while, but seems there's exponential growth since 2010 or so.
There are a few aspects of me reading wolfram site.
- Find out what the company is doing , what products and services they have now. How they differ.
- Find out how M has changed in nature since y2k.
- Study math n computation from wolfram blog.
- For later, learn new things in Mathematica.
Xah Lee Site Article Count
on its own page
Minor update. Lots more to come in coming months.
major update.
best programing language for next 20 years
Starting my road to Mathematica. Been out for about 20 years. here's some random notes.
the best languages to learn today for the next 20 year are: golang, PowerShell, Mathematica.
golang is C++ replacement. Not replacing much now, and that's because momentum and habit. Wait for C++ coders to die, it will. [see Why I Love Golang]
PowerShell or the pwsh, is far better shell than bash and unix bag friends. [see Why I Love Powershell]
Mathematica, is the programing language far beyond any other in the computing industry. A magnitude beyond all existing. It is more than a programing language, because it is really a computational knowledge base. Asides from math functions, such as solving equations or integration symbolically and hundreds other special math functions only a handful mathematician understands, it also embodies just about every practical algorithm in computer science. So, given a algorithm, you might write it in lang X for a hour or days, but Mathematica has it as part of the language, just call a function. Mathematica has few thousand functions builtin, not even needing to load a library.
my Mathematica notes that's 20 years old, mostly done in 1990s. Wolfram Language, Mathematica. Now revising them.
new and updated.
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-xp/bb490954(v=technet.10)
- Windows Script Host
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/windows-commands
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/wscript
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/cscript
Wolfram Language free! https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/05/launching-today-free-wolfram-engine-for-developers/
Dave Cutler, Windows NT creator.
[WinFS, Integrated/Unified Storage, and Microsoft – Part 1 By Halberenson. At https://hal2020.com/2013/02/14/winfs-integratedunified-storage-and-microsoft-part-1/ ]
readNow been on windows for a month. Still haven't installed linux yet. Seems i no need it. PowerShell does better, replacing unix command bags. Especially unix find grep diff.
who is behind archive.today
studying archive.today. who's behind it?
This guy. Seems one man operation. Seems a nerd, against big brother, a good guy https://twitter.com/archiveis
git newline config on Microsoft Windows
added to
git Frequently Asked Questions
history of unix fanaticism. The most frequently asked question, year 2002. Is Mac OS X Unix? Is Mac OS X Unix
One Language to Rule Them All? Or, What Language to Use for Find Replace?
added
Will the cross-platform PowerShell (aka PowerShell Core) be popular?
The situation of powershell... The new cross platform one pwsh, probably will not become popular on mac and linux.
And on windows, most will not move to pwsh.
The most critical force of popularity for shell is default availability.
So on windows, default is PowerShell (not the cross platform pwsh),
and on linux and mac, it's bash for scripting.
All installers rely heavily on default availability.
So that means, the cross platform powershell, will not become popular anytime soon.
It can function as better alternative, but as far as shell scripting goes, today there's too many alts, such as any of python ruby perl even deno js and golang, can all function as alt installer scripts. Some of them, such as deno js and golang, are even more cross platform.
Great Software for Windows
updated
Windows, uninstall gnu find util
choco info findutil
The findutil installs a useless Code.exe that gets in the way of VS Code's Code.exe.
And the unix find xargs locate updatedb are not useful on Windows . Use PowerShell
Get-ChildItem . -Recurse -include *html
see
PowerShell vs Bash
Microsoft Snip and Sketch App User Interface Problem
The Microsoft Snip and Sketch app is a pain and the ass. Doesn't support standard key to close window such as Ctrl+w , nor F11 toggle full screen.
updated. why Microsoft Windows is now my main machine. bottom.
Why I'm Switching from Mac to Windows
Spaceship Cuneiform 𒁷 Unicode Cuneiform 𒁷
how to call a unix command in Windows installed via chocolatey
for some commands, such as the find of gnu fileutils, you have to call it with full path, like this:
C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin\find.exe . -name "*jpg"
because some unix commands such as find, it has a cmd.exe command of the same name.
in emacs lisp, you have to use slash instead.
C:/ProgramData/chocolatey/bin/find.exe . -name "*jpg"
apparently, imagemagick's command convert is named magick on Microsoft Windows
it's installed at
C:\Program Files\ImageMagick-7.0.10-Q16-HDRI
the correct syntax:
magick convert ...
or
magick identify ...
See also ImageMagick Tutorial
demo Mathematica in livestream
soon am going to live demo Mathematica in livestream. lots things. will take me a month to warm up. been some 15 years. gonna demo not just most powerful functional programing, symbolic pattern matching, auto typesetting (beats the hell of TeX) but also veture into crypto, machine learning, neuro network, and interactive 3d graphics
Wolfram Language, Mathematica Wolfram Language, Mathematica
Mathematica is super expensive. but, it beats the hell out of python jupyter sagemath etc by a magnitude. Even just consider it as a super graphing calc as personal tool. it's free with Raspberry Pi. one easy way to explore.
object oriented programing reuse
why is gpu more powerful?
Now, am thinking, gpu is much more powerful than cpu is due to historical reasons, namely, the design baggage of x86. If itanium was successful, today we might not have gpu at all. Does any think so?
Apparently, the answer is No.
repost.
zsh color prompt
finally set my zsh prompt
See also
closure, a wart in coding hipster's brain.
xah challenge: is there a use of closure other than the function with side effect?
massive update of golang tutorial. Golang Tutorial
Between the programing language jargons map vs hash, i think map is winning over. Probably because the word makes more sense than the implementation oriented “hash table”. While pythons “dictionary” jargon, seems too unprofessional.
- languages that uses “map” include: java, golang, JavaScript.
- hash: elisp, perl, ruby.
- dictionary: python.
Linux: Sort Lines
minor update.
modern software history
updated.
Python vs Golang
Python is more readable. 0.8 as much code. But 5 times slower. Can't compile. More complex. And more coding error.
review maybe What Character Encoding Do Chinese Sites Use?
python code formatter. https://github.com/psf/black
Git pager is annoying
to set no paper, see added to git Frequently Asked Questions
[A fork() in the road (unix fork considered harmful) By Andrew Baumann Microsoft Research, Jonathan Appavoo Boston University, Orran Krieger Boston University, Timothy Roscoe Eth Zurich. At https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/04/fork-hotos19.pdf ]
god, spent 4 hours reading stephen wolfram. got so much to say, but don't have time to write about it due to real life duties.
[Where Did Combinators Come From? Hunting the Story of Moses Schönfinkel By Stephen Wolfram. At https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/where-did-combinators-come-from-hunting-the-story-of-moses-schonfinkel/ ]
such a spectacular research. and that is almost like every of Wolfram's blog.
And spend 1 hour reading this, haven't finished yet. Spectacular, it is.
[Combinators: A Centennial View By Stephen Wolfram. At https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/combinators-a-centennial-view/ ]
and as i've explained it here, gave me inspiration, answered my big questions. [ What's Ontology of Programing Language? ]
it's like that every time i read Wolfram. Inspires me, and also made me sad. daily, i diddle and fight with the idiotic hacker faaks. wasted my life for that.
petty emacs and lisp tutorials.
last 2 hours spend on reading about acting. that's some rl thing. a task.
What's Ontology of Programing Language? major update.
A friend, Hexstream, trying to revive Common Lisp. https://github.com/sponsors/Hexstream
The milen gen UI faak. You can't discover the key shortcuts for copy paste zoom etc. You got more fuzzy nested menus like “More”, needs more work to use. This began with Google, Chrome.
Guile scheme lisp, is python a lisp?, JetBrain vs Emacs editor, why clojure java. 2019-08-25
[A History of Clojure By Rich Hickey. At https://download.clojure.org/papers/clojure-hopl-iv-final.pdf ]
local copy clojure-hopl-iv-final.pdf
Linux: Compression How-to: tar gzip bzip2 xz 7zip rar zip
minor update.
comparing QT, GTK, WxWidgets, JavaFX, Electron. [Sad state of cross platform GUI frameworks By Royalsloth. At https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/sad-state-of-cross-platform-gui-frameworks/ ]
- Which Programing Language Has Best Documentation?
- Linux: Bash Manual in Chapters, Using Emacs for Info
- Emacs: Have You Read Emacs Manual?
- Emacs Manual Sucks by Examples
- Problems of Emacs Manual
- Why PDF Sucks
- Why Open Source Documentation is of Low Quality
- Why Python's Documentation Sucks
- Python Doc Problem: os.system
- Reading Programing Language Specs
If you have a question, put $5 at patreon and message me.
Lang Tutorials
Comp Lang Perving
On Lisp
Syntax Soup
Programer Jargons
Web Design
Voodoos of Software Engineering