[-] waigl@lemmy.world 92 points 2 weeks ago

This is something that has been occasionally happening in Europe (at least in Germany, don't know about France) for well over 10 years now. Probably more like 15.

What's sorely needed at this point is much more storage to make this energy available when it is needed instead of when it isn't. Before that happens, you cannot really decommission any gas or coal power plants, because you still need them during times of much less renewable production.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 72 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Writing good comments is an art form, and beginner programmers often struggle with it. They know comments mostly from their text books, where the comments explain what is happening to someone who doesn't yet know programming, and nobody has told them yet that that is not at all a useful commenting style outside of education. So that's how they use them. It usually ends up making the code harder to read, not easier.

Later on, programmers will need to learn a few rules about comments, like:

  • Assume that whoever reads your code knows the programming language, the platform and the problem domain at least in general terms. You are not writing a teaching aid, you are writing presumably useful software.
  • Don't comment the obvious. (Aside from documentation comments for function/method/class signatures)
  • Don't comment what a line is doing. Instead, write your code, especially names for variables, constants, classes, functions, methods and so on, so that they produce talking code that needs no comments. Reserve the "what" style comments for where that just isn't possible.
  • Do comment the why. Tell the reader about your intentions and about big-picture issues. If an if-statement is hard to parse, write a corresponding if clause in plain English on top of it.
  • In some cases, comment the "why not", to keep maintenance programmers from falling in the same trap you already found.
[-] waigl@lemmy.world 87 points 3 months ago

I'm sorry, is there actually anyone out there who takes the idea of tipping one's landlord seriously? I always thought this was just an absurdist running gag...

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 60 points 3 months ago

Also, the CIA panel is missing the part where they overthrew a small country in the process.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 66 points 3 months ago

Floating Point Unit. The thing that does mathematical operations on floating point numbers. It used come separately from the CPU as an add-on chip, but around the 486 era, manufacturers started integrating it on the same die as the CPU. Of course, as these things go, from the system programmers point of view, there is still no difference between an add-on FPU and an integrated one.

The one pictured here is an add-on FPU for an Intel 80386 CPU.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 72 points 3 months ago

Are sov-cits now also opposed to the word "me"?

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 83 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Is Charles III really that unpopular? My impression is that most people regard as him some mildly interesting oddity at best. Compare that to Charles II and his constant clashes with the English Parliament...

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 61 points 5 months ago

Sidenote:

HTTP user agents have become absolutely bonkers over the years.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 87 points 5 months ago

50 Euros a day is insane. That's a good portion of what I pay for a whole month.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 76 points 5 months ago

I get the joke, but in contrast to heating, you can easily just... not run demanding games while the electricity is insanely expensive for a day.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 63 points 6 months ago

Ever since Donald Trump was elected, I always had the impression that he just doesn't properly understand that being elected president is a fundamentally different thing from being crowned king.

[-] waigl@lemmy.world 64 points 7 months ago

AMD and nVidia on Windows: So your GPU is still very capable and useful for almost everything including most gaming tasks, but it's a couple years old and not making us money any more? Sucks to be you, have fun hunting for unmaintained legacy drivers with likely security holes from questionable sources.

Linux: Your video card is from a long bygone era of computing, before the term "GPU" was a thing, and basically a museum piece by now? We'll maintain a long-term support version for you for the next ten years.

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waigl

joined 1 year ago