I agree that too much cleverness is unclever. Just don't use clever features and enjoy the rest of the language. Examples:
In some other comments somebody wrote about method_missing and ActiveRecord callbacks. Days ago we had a post about a state machine gem.
Leave method_missing to the inner workings of gems. Do not use it in your code. Even in gems, hide them well. Rails used to have auto-generated find_by_field1_and_field2 methods, by method_missing if I remember well. They eventually moved to where(field1: value1, field2: value2) and we are fine with that.
ActiveRecord before and after filters are just callbacks like many libraries have, in any language. They need discipline because of the obvious problems we can run into if we add a ton of code to the callback system, possibly with side effects and multiple definitions of the same callbacks in classes derived from a common model. That's actually a very bad code smell (and a broken architecture?) and something that we could be tempted to do but we learn not to do. I use them very sparingly. The whole validation system is a particular case of before save callbacks. I think that every ORM for every language has got a validation system.
Another case of callbacks are the ones for the state changes of finite state machines. We can define them with function pointers in C structs or with symbol names in Ruby, they are the same thing. The triggers for state changes: same thing.
If I can choose I go with the more explicit alternative because... Finally I confess that I lose time when reading some new code bases to understand if some object.something is an attribute, a method, a state machine callback or something else auto-generated by some other gem. I think that LSP servers have a very bad time following those methods and probably none of them do. Maybe heuristic in IDEs can do something about it.
If I feel that I would be in trouble there, I add a short comment explaining the origin of the method: "this is from gem XYZ", then the docs will explain how and why to the next developers. Maybe they will thank me.
I don't think that's what the commenter is claiming. I think they want to be able to sue the companies who indirectly benefit from this kind of spam, which is pretty ridiculous.
However, crypto has become such a menace to society that it's time that governments do something about it, if they even can at this point.
> I think they want to be able to sue the companies who indirectly benefit from this kind of spam, which is pretty ridiculous.
There's the legal concept of an implicit or implied conspiracy. Usually comes up in antitrust law, where sellers raise prices at about the same time without actually getting together to talk about it.[1][2]
It's a difficult area of law.
Can we please stop pretending that Ruby/Rails is in any way a good choice for software that needs to be safe?
I do understand that it is what it is and GitLab has to deal with it, but going forward, can we stop pretending a language and framework that prioritizes cleverness and hidden control flow is better than something more boring?
If I sound overly-annoyed it's because I have to work on a production Ruby codebase where I can absolutely see a scenario in which we have similar issues just waiting to be exploited, because someone thought seventeen layers of abstraction made the code super extensible.
Any language or framework that lets the caller specify if a parameter may be a string or an array of strings should probably be avoided, IMO. The cost of this one error likely outweighs the total value realized by use of the feature.
What are the chances the United States (and others) follow suit? For startups, I assume most will continue to live on the App Store lest they force their users into two different experiences based on their location.
Right now, very slim. It's not in line with how the US views antitrust, and there isn't any real demand from voters.
But it depends how this plays out in Europe. If 95% of popular apps stay on the App Store, then there will continue to be no appetite for change in the US.
But if suddenly Europe is getting different, better apps than Americans are, there might be popular demand to change things. But in that case it's still easier to see Apple making the changes out of public demand, rather than US legislation.
The most likely change in the US I would expect is Apple deciding to let Chrome and Firefox distribute their own browser engines in the US, if Chrome with a Chrome engine becomes popular in Europe and provides a lot of features Safari doesn't.
My take is this will follow in the US IF a few large states make rulings on this and higher courts decline to hear appeals. Ex. GDPR -> CCPA -> most companies just did compliance anyway for the US because of California's size
The problem with the US, and we're already seeing it play out with things like CCPA (California's GDPR-like privacy legislation), is that it is difficult to get momentum and bi-partisan support for sweeping changes in Congress. It either is watered down or gets deadlocked, so you end up in a situation where you have patchwork legislation, often conflicting in scope, state-by-state. I wouldn't expect much to change in the short to medium term.
I just love how we can have a critical study about a failure that could have possibly led to the death of dozens if not 100+ people, a failure in something as routine and critical as flying in an airplane, and the article is behind a paywall.
We're getting very close to the point where the combination of the competency crisis and the greed crisis are going to start causing more people to think twice about doing things that were once common, like flying commercial.
Personally, I cancelled my flight later this month and am going to start getting in the habit of doing long road trips again.
Just-as-if-not-more dangerous? Maybe, but at least I have a higher chance of my fate being in my own hands (swerving out of the way of an oncoming truck vs being sucked out from a fuselage plug failing).
Older generations wonder why younger generations are "quiet quitting" and using all this anti-capitalist rhetoric when in the same breath they're sending HR goons (great term for it) to do their dirty work.
It's funny that they're using peer-to-peer to literally mean sending payments from one person to another, rather than it being the technical definition.
I wonder if it's a marketing gimmick to make people think it's more libertarian/secure/private than it actually is.
Why would people want to send payments over Twitter (I understand it's X, but I'm using Twitter to emphasize that the product is still, exclusively, a microblogging platform with some audio features).
Is it to donate to personalities? I can see that use-case, but whenever I see these kinds of headlines it seems the vision to create an "everything app" means that "peer-to-peer" payments means adding something like Venmo or Cashapp. Do people add their IRL friends on Twitter? If so, why would they use Twitter for that sort of thing as opposed to Venmo or Cashapp?
I'm genuinely curious, but to me it seems like it's a play to get hordes of cash flowing into the platform so that X can rake in interest on it for use in their own debt payments.
Do you have a bank account? FedNow (US instant payments) just crossed the 400 financial institution mark, a little less than 5% of total US banks and credit unions (~9k), and it’s only been live for ~7 months.
Do you often pay people who don't have Twitter or Google Pay or Zelle or anything either but do use Twitter? I would think signing up for Venmo would be about as easy as adding a payment method to Twitter and a thousand times more useful.
I've literally never heard of anyone using google pay, zelle or venmo or cashapp. My prediction is that whatsapp will add payment functionality too if they dont already have it
>> I've literally never heard of anyone using google pay, zelle or venmo or cashapp
But you use Twitter..? That's some crazy bubble. venmo isn't even a tech savvy thing, everyone everywhere I know that moves money between individuals or super-small business transactions (think cleaning service, girl scout cookies, club dues) uses it...
In my area (South Side Chicago) I would say a majority of payments are made through Cash App. Either you're paying someone person-to-person (e.g. drug dealer on the subway) or you're using your Cash App debit card to buy something from a store. Literally every person I know in this area uses Cash App as their primary bank.
I'm banned from Cash App so I use PayPal as my primary bank.
Whatsapp does support UPI in India. To be honest it's a no brainer here imo.
UPI makes sending and receiving money as easy and instant as sending a text, that I can not believe how the rest of world lives without it. Free account to account transfers (upto ~1200USD/day) that work from any bank to any bank, in seconds. Even accessible without internet via ussd short codes.
Venmo and other platforms like that are more popular in the US. I've got the possibility to instantly transfer money to anyone in the country from my bank. There's no reason for anyone here to use a third party app to do it. Venmo is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist in a lot of places around the world.
I honestly think people like you are the target audience, but I don't feel like it's a huge population. And even for people like you, plugging your bank info into Twitter is only one step less than downloading Venmo and plugging your bank info into Venmo, so I don't think they're offering a whole lot of additional convenience
