Sorry, I don’t understand. Do you mean there have to be 6 digits of Pi in there, or the sixth character must be π? I’m down either way.
Sorry, I don’t understand. Do you mean there have to be 6 digits of Pi in there, or the sixth character must be π? I’m down either way.
Can’t it be both? :)
JSON patch is a dangerous thing to use over a network. It will allow you to change things inside array indices without knowing whether the same thing is still at that index by the time the server processes your request. That’s a recipe for race conditions.
It’s limited to JS runtimes, but this discussion might be of use: https://github.com/biomejs/biome/discussions/2467 I think you may find Boa fits your criteria, except for the JIT part.
Yeah, sorting is definitely a common use case, but note it also didn’t improve every sorting use case. Anyway, even if I’m a bit skeptical I trust the Rust team that they don’t take these decisions lightly.
But the thing that lead to my original question was: if the compiler itself uses the std sorting internally, there’s also additional reason to hope that it might have transitive performance benefits. So even if compiling the Rust compiler with this PR was actually slower, compiling again with the resulting compiler could be faster since the resulting compiler benefits from faster sorting. So yeah, fingers crossed 🤞
Yeah, it was the first line of the linked PR:
This PR replaces the sort implementations with tailor-made ones that strike a balance of run-time, compile-time and binary-size, yielding run-time and compile-time improvements.
It was also repeated a few paragraphs later that the motivation for the changes was both runtime and compile time improvements. So a little bit bumped to hear the compile time impact wasn’t as good as the authors hoped apparently. I’m not even sure I fully endorse the tradeoff, because it seems the gains, while major, only affect very select use cases, while the regressions seem to affect everyone and hurt in an area that is already perceived as a pain point. But oh well, the total regression is still minor so I guess we’ll live with it.
The post mentioned that the introduction of these new algorithms brings compile-time improvements too, so how should I see this? I assumed it meant that compiling applications that use sorting would speed up, but that seems like a meaningless improvement if overall compilation times have regressed. Or do you mean compiling the compiler has become slower?
Does the Rust compiler use their std sort algorithms, or does it already use specialized ones? If the former, it would be a great side-effect if the compiler itself receives additional speed ups because of this.
From what I understand as I skimmed over the stable sort analysis (https://github.com/Voultapher/sort-research-rs/blob/main/writeup/driftsort_introduction/text.md), it lost out against driftsort.
Smart pointers are really really nice, I do recommend getting used to them (and all other features from c++11 forward).
You’re recommending him to give up his sanity and/or life?
And conversely, something Go is very bad at. For example, os.Chmod
silently not doing anything on Windows.
I greatly fear refactoring in Rust. Making a single conceptual change can require a huge number of code changes in practice, especially if it’s a change to ownership.
I think this is a fair criticism, but I think you and the poster you responded to are talking about different things. Usually when people use the term “fearless” in relation to Rust, it means the language provides a high level of confidence that what you’re delivering is free of mistakes. This certainly applies to refactoring too, where usually after you are done, and things compile again, you can be reasonably confident things work as before (assuming you didn’t make other changes the type system can’t catch for you).
The kind of fear you are describing sounds more like a discouragement because of the amount of work ahead of you. That’s fair, because Rust does sometimes make things harder. I just think many Rust developers will disagree with you, not because you’re wrong, but because they may not feel the same type of discouragement, possibly because they’ve learned to appreciate the rewards more.
Agreed on all counts, except it being useless to think about :) It’s only useless if you dismiss philosophy as interesting altogether.
But that kinda misses the point, right? Like, all that means is that the observation may have created the particle, not that the observation created reality, because reality is not all particles.
I guess that depends on the point being made. You didn’t raise this argument, but I often see people arguing that the universe is deterministic and therefore we cannot have free will. But the quantum mechanical reality is probabilistic, which does leave room for things such as free will.
I can agree with your view to say observation doesn’t create reality, but then it does still affect it by collapsing the wave function. It’s a meaningful distinction to make in a discussion about consciousness, since it leaves open the possibility that our consciousness is not merely an emergent property of complex interaction that has an illusion of free will, but that it may actually be an agent of free will.
And yes, I fully recognise this enters into the philosophical realm and there is no science to support these claims. I’m merely arguing that science leaves open a path that enters that realm, and from there it is up to us to make sense of it.
There is the philosophical adage “I think therefore I am”, which I do adhere to. I know I am, so I’ll consider as flawed any reasoning that says I’m not. Maybe that just makes me a particularly stubborn scientific curiosity, but I like to think I’m more than that :)
can you define physical for me?
The distinction I tend to make is between physical using the classical definition of physics (where everything is made of particles basically) and the quantum mechanical physics which defies “physical” in the classical sense. So far we’ve only been able to scientifically witness quantum physics in small particles, but as you say, there’s no reason it can’t apply at a macro scale, just… we don’t know how to witness it, if possible.
it doesn’t require an observer to collapse the wave function
Or maybe it does? The explanation I have for us being unable to apply the experiments at a larger scale is that as we scale things up, it becomes harder and harder to avoid accidental observation that would taint the experiment. But that’s really no more than a hunch/gut feeling. I would have no idea how to prove that 😅
In fact, one of the great mysteries of physics right now is why only quantum objects have that property, and in order to figure that out we have to figure out what interaction “observation” actually is.
This does not stroke with my understanding of quantum physics. As far as we know there is no clear distinction between “quantum objects” vs “non-quantum objects”. The double slit experiment has been reproduced with molecules as large as 114 atoms, and there seems no reason to believe that would be the upper limit: https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html
This proves that the wave is in fact real, because we can see the effects of it.
The only part that’s proven is the interference pattern. So yes, we know it acts like a wave in that particular sense. But that’s not the same thing as saying it is a wave in the physical sense. A wave in the classic physical sense doesn’t collapse upon observation. I know it’s real in an abstract sense. I’m just questioning the physical nature of that reality.
Thanks, that seems a fair approach, although it doesn’t have me entirely convinced yet. Can you explain what the physical form of a wave function is? Because it’s not like a wave, such as waves in the sea. It’s really a wave function, an abstract representation of probabilities which in my understanding does not have any physical representation.
You say the building does not start acting like a wave, and you’re right, that would be silly. But it does enter into a superposition where the building can be either collapsed or not. Like Schreudinger’s cat, which can be dead or alive, and will be in a superposition of both until observation happens again. And yes, the probabilities of this superposition are indeed expressed through the wave function, even though there is no physical wave.
It’s true observation does not require consciousness. But until we know what does constitute observation, I believe consciousness provides a plausible explanation.
Do elaborate on the batshit part :) It’s a scientific fact that physical matter does not exist in its physical form when unobserved. This may not prove the existence of consciousness, but it certainly makes it plausible. It certainly invalidates physical reality as the “source of truth”, so to say. Which makes the explanation that physical reality is a product of consciousness not just plausible, but more likely than the other way around. Again, not a proof, but far from batshit.
I see that’s certainly a different way of looking at it :) Of course I can’t say with any authority that it must be wrong, but I think it’s a flaw because it seems you’re presuming that consciousness arises from physical properties. If the physical act of copying a brain’s data were to give rise to consciousness, that would imply consciousness is a product of physical reality. But my position (and that of the paper I linked) is that physical reality is a product of mental consciousness.
let alone if it’s technically “real” (as in physical in any way.)
This right here might already be a flaw in your argument. Something doesn’t need to be physical to be real. In fact, there’s scientific evidence that physical reality itself is an illusion created through observation. That implies (although it cannot prove) that consciousness may be a higher construct that exists outside of physical reality itself.
If you’re interested in the philosophical questions this raises, there’s a great summary article that was published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/436029a
This is the real reason we have linters.