Daily Shaarli

All links of one day in a single page.

April 23, 2023

eonarheim/TypeState: A strongly typed finite state machine for TypeScript

The project does not seem to be maintained anymore though :/

Why Developers Never Use State Machines - Skorks

Why?

  • We don't need one until we do

    • you almost never create an object fully formed with all the behavior it is ever going to need
    • when it is complex enough, it costs too much time to replace it with something that has equivalent functionality
  • the state machine is a fluffy bunny

    • there is the belief that state machines are more complex than they actually are
    • it is therefore nothing but pragmatism that makes us consider a “full-blown” state machine overkill.

BUT most state machines you’re likely to need in your day-to-day development have nothing in common with their computing theory counterparts

  • Adding a state machine library has a learning curve. It is rather small.

So moving to a state machine:

  • Integration is painless but moving all the code around to be inline with state machine is a big pain
  • Using it from the start is a breeze, as such as future changes.
  • We’re now able to easily introduce more states to give our users extra information as well as allow us to track things to a finer grain.
  • Return values from state transitions are 100% consistent. There are no strange objects, arrays, nil, boolean depending of the developers.
  • It is easy to log
  • Refactoring lead to greater code quality with state machines

We seem to shy away from state machines due to misunderstanding of their complexity and/or an inability to quantify the benefits

Perseus on Twitter: "5 tics de langage qu'on entend trop souvent. (et par quels mots les remplacer) - THREAD - https://t.co/j6mygp1hqt" / Twitter

À la place de "genre", dîtes

  • environ
  • au bas mot
  • en d'autres termes
  • par exemple
  • approximativement

À la place de "du coup", dîtes

  • de ce fait
  • en conséquence
  • subséquemment
  • dès lors
  • donc

À la place de "en mode", dîtes

  • comme
  • à la manière de
  • de façon

À la place de "en vrai", dîtes

  • en réalité
  • réellement
  • véritablement
  • à vrai dire
  • franchement
  • concrètement

À la place de "en fait", dîtes

  • réellement
  • contrairement aux apparences
  • en effet
  • en toute honnêteté
  • finalement
Memoirs from the old web: server-side image maps

An image map is a normal image on a website which has different clickable regions which take you to different pages. Image map functionality allowed polygons of an image to be defined as independent hyperlinks.

<!-- References an image map -->
<img src="image.png" usemap="#map1" />

<map id="map1" name="Map 1">
  <!-- An example of a rectangular area over an image -->
  <area shape="rect" coords="10,10,100,100"
        href="/foo"
        alt="Go to the Foo page"/>

  <!-- An example of a circular area over an image -->
  <area shape="circle" coords="50,50,200"
        href="/bar"
        alt="Go to the Bar page"/>

  <!-- An example of an arbitrary polygon over an image -->
  <area shape="poly" coords="10,10,100,10,100,100,10,100"
        href="/baz"
        alt="Go to the Baz page"/>

  <!-- Fallback if no other area matches -->
  <area shape="default"
        href="/default"
        alt="Go to the Default page"/>
</map>
La bibliothèque d'Imgur brûle : tout n'est pas permanent sur Internet - Numerama

Cette nouvelle décision à rebours de la précédente rappelle que la permanence des contenus tant décriée sur le web repose sur la volonté des grandes plateformes. Or, aucune loi ne leur impose de conserver les données stockées sur le web, qui constituent aussi une partie de notre culture collective.

Les grandes plateformes ne durent qu'un temps. Les données qu'elles possèdent disparaissent toujours car ce sont des systèmes fermées. Voilà un autre example.

☠ Bluetouff on Twitter: "👇 Un petit point sur la certification Twitter... on va aborder plusieurs sujets dans ce thread. Après la disparition des certifs pour les media, les OG et les marques, il peut y avoir beaucoup de questions sur ce que cherche à faire Elon, le taulier de ces lieux." / Twitter

Un idée de Bluetouff sur les prochaines actions de Twitter après l'ouverture du code

Terminé le modèle publicitaire dont tous les bagdes bleus qui chouinent nous alimentaient depuis des années. Vous ne voulez pas de pub, vous payez.

The Mutable Gallery

Some generative art in black and white. It generates fancy images :D

In defense of simple architectures
Why developers should be force-fed state machines

How to recognize a state machine pattern?

  • a state or status boolean flag
  • boolean fields such as published or paid. Also timestamps that can have a NULL value like published_at
  • a record that is valid for a given period in time

Then the transition history has to be kept. At some point the transition history will be an invaluable source of information. The simplest way to keep track of the transitions is to add a timestamp field for every possible state. However, it is often possible to revisit the same state multiple times. In that case, simply adding fields to your model won’t do the trick because you will be overwriting them. Instead, add a log table in which all the state transitions will be logged. Fields that you probably want to include are the timestamp, the old state, the new state, and the event that caused the transition.

Instead of removing an object, add an error state for any reason you would have wanted to delete a record. A spam account? Don’t delete it, set it to the spam state. A fraudulent order? Don’t delete it, set it to the fraud state.

Stablelm Tuned Alpha Chat - a Hugging Face Space by stabilityai

Another conversational assistant

L’ascenseur social en panne ? Ce que montre une étude sur les revenus des Français - Le Parisien

Selon une étude inédite de l’Insee, réalisée sur 16 années, l’échelle des revenus des Français évolue très peu. Ce qui signifie que les plus riches le restent très souvent, et que les moins aisés ont peu de chances de changer de catégorie.

Voilà