samir, a distributed system

@samir@functional.computer
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Trying very hard to avoid computers, and failing miserably.

A 30-something British-born coconut Indian living in Zürich, Switzerland. I speak English, and enough Hochdeutsch to order a pizza.

Occasional, inadvertent arsehole. If observed, please call me out.

Fascists, racists, Zionists, TERFs, homophobes, and other bigots can fuck right off.

Admin and sole user of this self-hosted instance.

This profile is searchable.

pronounshe/him; they/them
locationZürich, Switzerland
bloghttps://functional.computer/
Show threadsamir, a distributed system1h ago

Musing on this a little more, I am more and more convinced that natural language interpretation is what happens when the needle swings too far, flying past “the language is governed by the procedures, not the host” and all the way through to “the language is subject to interpretation based on whim”.

I shall repeat: prompts won.

https://functional.computer/blog/prompts-already-won

Prompts already won / Ideas for free

samir : coffee → nonsense
samir, a distributed system13h ago
tech? no! man, see...Mar 13, 2018
Golang is unusual because in most languages the type system tells you when you made a mistake, but in Golang the type system tells you when Rob Pike made a mistake.
Show threadsamir, a distributed system15h ago
I do like nushell a lot, but it’s not good at this. It wants you to conform, and this means you really can’t make big scripts in it. (Some would argue that’s a feature; I disagree.)
samir, a distributed system15h ago

It has taken me way too many years to figure out, but:

I have just realised that a core feature of a shell language is that it has very little grammar.

In other words, the language needs to be maximally permissive, so that you can layer whatever you need on top.

Take, for example, switches. They work because as far as sh/bash/etc. is concerned, starting a string with a hyphen is absolutely reasonable.

Numbers are integers, when you need them to be. Or they’re strings. Whatever you need.

samir, a distributed system15h ago
Louie Mantia, Jr.1d ago

You know, I could write a whole blog post about this—and I might—but I think we need to start addressing the very likely possibility that the *entire thesis* that “UI should get out of the way” and “apps should focus on content” is wrong.

Apps aren’t just for looking at photos or videos. They’re for navigating through these things, organizing them, editing them. The tools to do those things should not get out of the way. They should be clearly defined and separate from the content.

samir, a distributed system17h ago
Show threadAnupam 🇮🇳《ミ》λ≡18h ago
@samir @RosaCtrl you can do the same with android btw, lest anyone think it's an iOS specific feature
Show threadsamir, a distributed system21h ago
@welshpixie, I feel that your essence is captured admirably in these.
samir, a distributed system21h ago

The Tiny Angry Witch continues to be a delight.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/132347561

samir, a distributed system23h ago

I recently relaxed WhatsApp’s permissions on my camera roll so it has “limited” access (it can see the pictures I choose to send).

Just undid that. Thanks for the heads-up, @RosaCtrl!

On iOS, if you remove a messaging app’s permission to access photos, you can still send them through the Share button in the Photos app. https://social.vivaldi.net/@RosaCtrl/114760250358923656

Rosa Control (@RosaCtrl@vivaldi.net)

“Meta tells The Verge that it’s not currently training its AI models on those photos, but it would not answer our questions about whether it might do so in future, or what rights it will hold over your camera roll images” https://www.theverge.com/meta/694685/meta-ai-camera-roll

Vivaldi Social
samir, a distributed system23h ago
The Seven Voyages Of Steve23h ago
The state of programming in 2025 that makes vibe coding so attractive is IMO the result of terrible decisions in tech over the last couple of decades. Non-existent stdlibs that normalise the use of a thousand micro dependencies, blindly pulled. Constantly mutating frameworks as performance art. Untyped languages that need huge test suites to prevent basic errors. It all generates mountains of boilerplate that *of course* people want to offload any way they can, even if it’s wrong half the time