I can summon up a voice if needed, but yeah normally not thinking in words. Aphantasia means I don't think in pictures either ;) What I think mostly is in patterns and connections, and flows.
Honestly, rust is slightly more readable than obfuscated perl. I think I prefer K&R C, and I don't like K&R C. In terms of readability, maybe equivalent to early Win32 API? [3000 lines to set up API, then call to activate].
With C++ you have a range of readable from - easy and very approachable - to 2000s era Microsoft STL. (where not only is it close to unreadable, many many hidden bugs are ... somewhere. And behaviour is not consistent).
I will admit I don't find Rust quite as unreadable as the 2000s era Microsoft STL, but the latter's one of the things that pushed me far more into Linux dev.
Rust is the kind of language that would push me to write a new language that isn't rust. And maybe work on supporting all the zillion platforms rust doesn't support. Or maybe just stick to C. I'm not a fan, but there are worse, and yeah - there are some C++ libraries out there that are worse. Lots that are better, too, eg llvm source.
> Honestly, rust is slightly more readable than obfuscated perl.
> Rust is the kind of language that would push me to write a new language that isn't rust.
It's wild how draconian and forced the use of Rust has become. It's one thing to be caught up in corporate induced hype, yet another level to force one's preferences or ideology on everybody else.
Many people don't like Rust, for various acceptable reasons, and their right to choose should be respected. Sticking with C, is an equally acceptable option. In addition to there being various other newer C alternatives languages; with greater readability, memory-safety, and ease of use. There is also Fil-C[1][2], that can provide memory-safety, with no to minimum changes to the code.
Lisp - historically - did not work well with others. Did not share spaces, did not coexist with other systems particularly well. Or if it did, it would wrap them very carefully in "unsafe" and keep as much to the boundaries as possible.
It's not like it's the only system that suffers this, but "working well with others" is a big key to success in almost every field.
I'm absolutely fascinated by what worked and was possible in that venue, just like I find rust code fascinating. These days lisp is much more workable, as they slowly get over the "must coexist with other software". There are still things that are really hard to put in other computer languages.
> slowly get over the "must coexist with other software"
I dunno, as a Lisper I don't even have to think very hard - virtually any platform available to me, I can write almost anything in Lisp - for JVM and .Net - with Clojure; for Lua with Fennel; for Flutter with ClojureDart; Python - libpython-clj; C/C++ - Jade, CL, Carp and Jank; BEAM - Clojerl and LFE; Shell-scripting - babashka; For targeting js there are multiple options - clojurescript, nbb, squint.
Knowing some Lisp today is as practical as it gets. I really feel like a true polyglot coder - switching between different Lisps, even for drastically dissimilar platforms incurs virtually zero overhead while jumping even between JS and TS is always a headache.
These days Lisp works pretty well with C because C has a defined ABI. That was historically not the case for C++, so to call C++ functions you needed to first wrap them in C.
"sort of". C++ is a lot more stable ABI these days, but linking still means looking into name mangling and data types. At least it no longer seems to be changing between compiler patches, as with - say - earlier GCC. (gcc 2 through 4 were not fun for this)
From a look a little, it seems rust has this pretty reliably - probably helped by sharing link environments with LLVM.
(I've only explored this a little from time to time). Mostly my work is all C and a bit of C++.
I do a lot of work in Gambit, which integrates very well with C, C++, and Objective-C. But that's because it transpiles to C source. Gambit does a lot of other stuff these days, including x86 and even JavaScript compilation, but its roots as a scheme-to-C compiler are still in evidence.
Speaking as someone who just started exploring Prolog and lisp, and ended up in the frozen north isolated from internet - access. The tools were initially locked/commercial only during a critical period, and then everyone was oriented around GUIs - and GUI environments were very hostile to the historical tools, and thus provided a different kind of access barrier.
A side one is that the LISP ecology in the 80s was hostile to "working well with others" and wanted to have their entire ecosystem in their own image files. (which, btw, is one of the same reasons I'm wary of Rust cough)
Really, it's only become open once more with the rise of WASM, systemic efficiency of computers, and open source tools finally being pretty solid.
I've worked with Japanese and German code. It is definitely unfamiliar and gets me thinking a lot more about how I approach code. I'm liking your description as I keep wanting to map "english" to "technical, correct" too and this helps. thank you!
Partially competition, as a couple of provinces have large car manufacturing. (Ontario and Quebec, mostly). Partially that there's no repair or maintenance infrastructure, nor guarantee a car will keep functioning if (say) the manufacturer shuts down or a model gets discontinued.
As to how much of which, that's a good question, and not one I've seen any answers to.
I don't miss IE 4/5/6 [etc subversion hell]. Supporting these tripled the time it took to build any site for WWW. Pick any w3C standard: some chance it worked - on one of the browsers but not others. Some chance each had entirely incompatible workarounds. Documentation? Good luck. What did exist tended to deny html standards other than their own existed so they didn't even give any clue how to solve this. Had to support them, never enjoyed it. There was nothing fun or rewarding about supporting any of them.
that's pretty accurate ;) I used to live in Vancouver too and ... some of that culture's like that. Most is good 'ol "people in suits" though.
A long time ago, Vancouver was a center of gold mining scamming too. "Gassy Jack" downtown was one of the major scammers near the founding of the city.
... Visit first. When I left (2018-ish) Vancouver was one of the most expensive cities on the planet. (put it this way : the only places more expensive were in China ...). It's a beautiful city, close (ish) to skiing - especially Whistler (2 hours drive, or various other transportation methods) but there are a lot of closer ski sites too. Warmer and wetter than Seattle (slightly) due to being surrounded by mountains. I have to admit I miss Vancouver badly.
Toronto's a much better "hub" for tech work. (I work remotely out of Winnipeg now, and am liking that too).
Mind, Vancouver does have a lot of tech, and if you want to work more with tech world that speaks other world languages, Vancouver is very good, too. Or music, or film, or really media of any kind. Also better diversity and cheaper food than almost anywhere I've visited.
Just not - unless you really figure out where and how to look, or if you have good connections - a particularly affordable city, at least as far as rent goes. Everything else though is good.
Thanks for a great answer.
I did visit Vancouver last year. Just arriving at the airpoirt with its lush green-blue colour scheme and a small river running through the hallways towards entering the country where the two tall totem poles wish all visitors a warm welcome. It felt like coming home.
In Vancouver we rented a car and visited almost all suburbs. For me the absolute dream would be Vancouver West, Vancouver North followed closely by Kitsilano. North and West seemed like a Twin Peaks dream all surrounded by the woods and mountains. I fell in love.
Downtown was in our view, beautiful but broken by (1) homeless roaming, (2) homeless with psychiatric issues making a scene and (3) opiate drug users aka junkies. It is not somewhere I want my kids to roam. This was terrible, but we are willing to overlook it.
We also went to Toronto. World class city. But we stayed in Vaughn and had to endure 1 hour commute in traffic each direction. Being stuck in traffic is not an appealing lifestyle.
Toronto felt like an awesome world class metropolis city with more opportunities probably than Vancouver. Anecdotally the standup shows were better (actually most hilarious of all) in Toronto than Vancouver too :)
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