Christos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
Help me resolve a domestic dispute issue about #twitter
Help me win a solid $50 by voting on the birdie site
https://twitter.com/ChristosArgyrop/status/1611533974345781250?t=M2jRKYot6xaN5Mp5ZXDNfg&s=19
ChristosArgyropoulos MD, PhD FlozinatorInChief on Twitter

“Place a bet with the wife about the longevity of twitter. I will come up with $50 if the site survives until the presidential election, and I will get $50 (hyperinflated) dollars if the site ceases to exist before the next elections. Are you with:”

Twitter
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop I think you need to define your terms, What do you mean by “survive”? E.g., #Myspace “survives,” but is a shadow of its former self.
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhD
@mjgardner www.twitter.com goes the way of the Atari. Wife thinks a MySpace future is possible, I claim clinical death.
Jan 7, 2023 at 1:37amTusky
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop Nothing ever really dies: #Atari is still a brand. They were bought by a French gaming company in the early 2000s and recently shipped a middling “Atari VCS” #Linux-based console and some #blockchain / #Web3 crap: https://atari.com
Atari | Official Games, Consoles, Merch & News

Discover classic consoles and cartridges, modern titles and never-before-seen art and collectibles from Atari.

Atari®
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner lol. I owned an Atari STF. We're you an Amiga person?
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop Yes, my platform progression was #C64 -> #Amiga -> classic #Mac (standard issue at #Drexel University at the time) -> #PC -> #MacOSX / #macOS

I grew up in the same town as #Commodore world headquarters, so the school system had a lot of their stuff.

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner went from STF straight to PCs. I have an old iMac mini from 2010 from a surplus sale
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner #C64 was so cool. I still remember the fights between those who had one and the kids owing an Amstrad (I don't think those were ever sold in the US).
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop Yah, #Amstrad was very much a European thing from the UK, along with #Sinclair, #Dragon, #Oric, and #Acorn. (Sinclair licensed the #ZX81 and #ZXSpectrum to Timex for a couple US-based models.)

It’s funny how everybody grows up thinking that their experience is the One True Scene for any pop culture or subculture, whether it’s music or TV or computing or whatever.

#retrocomputing

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner Unrelated: I can't figure out if given-when is totally out , with the demise of smartsmatching. This is very confusing lol
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner totally out : kiss whereis and whereso
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop @Perl given/when are enabled by `use feature 'switch'` which is listed as experimental at https://perldoc.perl.org/feature#The-'switch'-feature and throws warnings when used. It was included in version feature bundles from `:5.10` through `:5.34`, but it’s gone in `:5.36`: https://perldoc.perl.org/perl5360delta#use-v5.36: “If you want to use it (against our advice), you'll have to enable it explicitly.”

So it’s officially Considered Harmful. Use `for` as a topicalizer as I described here: https://phoenixtrap.com/2021/02/14/switching-up-my-switches/

feature - Perl pragma to enable new features - Perldoc Browser

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @Perl yeah, hash-lookup like the way some C compilers implement case-switch. Seems 5.36 is cleaning house
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @Perl The #Perl housecleaning has been picking up steam for the past few years. v5.14’s perlpolicy document drew a line in the sand, and as the release process has moved from pumpkings to the PSC we’re finally making good on it: “Our community has a long-held belief that backward-compatibility is a virtue, even when the functionality in question is a design flaw.” https://perldoc.perl.org/5.14.0/perlpolicy#BACKWARD-COMPATIBILITY-AND-DEPRECATION
perlpolicy - Various and sundry policies and commitments related to the Perl core - Perldoc Browser

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @Perl out of curiosity, isn't there a concern about performance with keeping so many special cases around? Python cut clean with 3.0, so perhaps at some point (Perl 7) this may have to happen here. Same thing could be said about Fortran. Not debating, or challenging, just curious
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @Perl I defer to the PSC on that. I’m just a loud gadfly.
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop @Perl All these behaviors are set on BEGIN so likely does not matter much. At some point though, the books must be updated. I left the Lang at 5.8 , so many things are new to me and it is fun to see the things that went in favor and fell from grace. But others probably disagree lol
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @ChristosArgyrop @Perl I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Too many folks either left #Perl at a similar time and froze their opinions, or worse, still use Perl at that level and also have frozen opinions.
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @Perl The hash lookup in that article’s second example says it’s mainly useful for exact string matching. The `for` topicalizer pattern is still good for arbitrary conditions like the #RegularExpression matches I list, but it could just as easily use `isa` for class matching, or whatever.
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @Perl the topicalizer with the do is a great idea. Cool trick
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner then I will lose my 50. I think Twitter is worth more dead (all the DMs and explicit picks in them) data for sale in the dark web than alive in life support
Show threadKodaJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop I wanted an atari tattoo on the back of my neck for a while, but knowing the brand might get "revived" in ways like this kept from from doing it.
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@zaskoda @ChristosArgyrop The #Commodore brand has similar carpetbaggers trying to trade on its nostalgia, but they’re so laughably incompetent at shipping anything that no one pays attention
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@zaskoda Get the tattoo. Nobody’s going to think you’re a fan of anything made after 1996. @ChristosArgyrop
Show threadKodaJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop you know, I think maybe you're right...
Show threadHaplogroup News    Jan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner

I think it is going to be like Yahoo Groups and fold. BlueSky might be able to create a user base about the size of the one for Diaspora from the remaining active users?

I wonder how many active accounts Twitter really has excluding the Bots, the trolls, and the general shit-posting accounts?
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@HaplogroupNews @mjgardner it is really going downhill. I think Australia and NZ had an outage that lasted 14hrs? I would not hold my breath about Bluesky. I think setting one's server may be the only survivable option.
Show threadHaplogroup News    Jan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner

Well, now that I have settled in a bit, I have to say that Misskey servers have impressive tools out the gate. I would never share one, but for a personal social media platform, they are great. Do you know TypeScript?

That is unless you have decided to join the Mastodon on EMACS crowd?
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@HaplogroupNews @mjgardner not interested in TypeScript. My interest in computing is simply data crunching , pushing the envelope on the RNA sequencing protocols we are developing for research work (lots of text there, so I am back to #Perl ) and having fun after work. Never had an interest in anything related to web programming
Show threadHaplogroup News    Jan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner

Ah yes. I have been having ChatGPT explain your papers to me.
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner switching to the tech account . We have a nice short paper in preparation where we used #Perl 's regex to speed up a probability calculations for RNA sequencing applications. Too bad #Python's regex / re modules are not as fast. I have been telling a couple of friends who are in real AI/Machine Learning roles to revisit the "old" languages as they have constructs that can speed up their models
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop You might even be able to get decent mileage out of #awk if you can fit your problem into how it expresses things.
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop nah. Too many in the bioinformatics community show off their shell prowess and then complain about write only #perl code. This is the equivalent of many procedurally oriented physicians and I was never into this.
In more practical terms, I prefer having a more powerful scripting language at my disposal
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop Oh, I agree completely. But I’ve been impressed with #awk’s raw performance compared to equivalent #Perl pipelines when I didn’t need to bring a full scripting language to bear on a problem.

In general, though, I’m with you—I tell the #bash-heads that Perl is waiting for them when their one-offs get bigger than a screen or two, and next time they might consider just starting with Perl.

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop ultra wide monitors were invented for the #bashers
Show threadBill RickerJan 12, 2023

@mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop

Power of AWK is one of the reasons i was so late to the Perl party!
(P4/P5 transition; one would think P5 finally getting OO would have been important to me but i was still segregating ^scripting^ from ^programming^ then.)

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 12, 2023
@BRicker @mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews I went the opposite direction. Way back when, I had developed a C program to do some calculations on images but did not want to write the stupid I/O interface and link the image libraries to analyze them through shell scripting. So I did it by using swig to wrap the C code and call it from perl using the ImageMagick library. The scripts still work , which is kinda surprising
Show threadMark GardnerJan 12, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop @BRicker @ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews Glue is glue
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 12, 2023
@mjgardner @ChristosArgyrop @BRicker @HaplogroupNews glue is code. This was the amazing thing about #perl . It still is: the language delivered with the underpowered computers of the 90s; while we have more powerful ones, the tasks we are using them for, have grown even more. This is why I returned to the language : raw, unadulterated flexibility and considerable performance without compromise.
@Perl
Show threadRandomatic  Jan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner

Have you tried the re2 module for Python? It is much faster.

https://pypi.org/project/google-re2/
It's also available for other languages, including Perl.

Paper: https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp3.html

google-re2

RE2 Python bindings

PyPI
Show threadMark GardnerJan 7, 2023

@randomatic @ChristosArgyrop @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop A previous employer of mine used re::engine::RE2 for many things, because a) you can cap the memory usage to avoid #DoS attacks, and b) the lead developer was all about premature optimization. https://metacpan.org/pod/re::engine::RE2

But you can’t use the /x flag for better readability, and we ran into some nasty #Unicode bugs and had to fall back to regular Perl #RegExps in those cases.

re::engine::RE2 - RE2 regex engine - metacpan.org

RE2 regex engine

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@mjgardner @randomatic @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop #Unicode support not critical for me, but limiting memory use is , as we are trying to run the codes in resource limited devices
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD, PhDJan 7, 2023
@randomatic @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner I will take a look. We are using a particular regex that executes in our Xeons about 2900/s in #Perl , 10-20x slower in Python regex and more that 10,000 slower using re. Considering that our typical project has to run the regex between 1 to 20M times, and that there is competition for resources among the cores, speeding the regex would be invaluable (losing the /x flag sucks)
Show threadauthor_is_ShrikeTron🔠💉x5Jan 7, 2023

@ChristosArgyrop @randomatic @HaplogroupNews @ChristosArgyrop @mjgardner This always gets me interested in jumping in to do some profiling and comparison trying re in C, or whatnot language, for more tuned speedups.

But nothing I can remember beats Perl's existence already as a thin shim on C in easy, compact script.

Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@ShrikeTron @ChristosArgyrop @randomatic @HaplogroupNews @mjgardner +1000
Show threadChristos Argyropoulos MD PhDJan 7, 2023
@HaplogroupNews @mjgardner I consider myself a scientific s..poster 🤣🤣🤣 trained during the good old days.
Wife who does not have a blue check account gets a constant feed of Nazis, me with carefully controlled block campaigns, carefully craftedposts designed to lure people to block and the bought blue check, just get the disorganized feed. I running out of people to block with just 1/50th of @EricCarroll 's 100k blockathlon
Show threadHaplogroup News    Jan 7, 2023
@ChristosArgyrop

There is the kind of shit posting that hearkens to classical college evenings shooting the bull, and then there is acting like a snot nosed 11 year old without real friends. Or so I tell myself...

@mjgardner @EricCarroll