starless @starless@pixie.town

@thufie ugh, right???

My guess is it's some kind of freeze peach internet crossover idea from a decade back, but I've got no clue. It's exhausting!

@stelepami yeah, that makes sense. I had some pretty big health/tech issues a little while back. Sometime, if you're up for it, it might be neat to hear/read/whatever more about your experiences, but absolutely no pressure.

I do mostly talk about not tech. :)

@stelepami hi there! I'm Starless and I'm also MSP local, though I'm not on MSP social. I tend to hang out and do computer stuff with the https://cyberia.club folks and like art.

I do sometimes talk about computer things, so very understood if following might be a bit spicy.

Just wanted to say hello! :)

@dragon nono, the kitty would! Just when you turn over the phone it would send the signal to print it

@dragon Thanks! Yeah, the printer looked *adorable* so I got it and forked the repo that hacked the BT control scheme.

Unfortunately, the graphics resolution isn't as good as the espos python one that I'd been using before, so there's that, but like... It's pretty cool, and people really get delighted by it.

If I could trivially make a little android app, I'd make one that calls the script when the phone is turned over (gyroscope?) while the app is running so that you 'draw' a card by turning over the phone (displaying the image of the back of a card).

@dragon https://social.pixie.town/@starless/108162394497787218

it's a little python script that prints out a pseudo-random tarot card (no fancy seeds or anything) and a little interpreted meaning on a receipt printer. I just updated it to work on a bluetooth cat printer off ali express ($20 if you've got cash to burn).

@dragon lol no worries. I was just like "Wow, they must be talking about my little cat tarot printer project. Okay, okay, this is weird, but maybe not that surprising for mastodon."

Silly me. :P

@dragon I think decreasing variable re-use is why most style guides I've used prefer local definitions over defs at the top of the function.

I think most compilers optimize lines like
for(int x = 0; x<3; x++)
{
int i = x +i
print(i)
}
such that i isn't actually re-allocated each time, but like, yeah, most places I've seen would have you define int i right before the loop, but not at the top of the function, and ideally, if i isn't used elsewhere, to wrap the whole thing in something for scope management. That loop does look a bit wasteful.

The little overview of what's to come is neat, though, I totally agree there.

@dragon Not to, like make this a paragraph, but I think I prefer the opposite.

The main benefit of defining your variables later is that they're closer to the context in which they're used/relevant.

It's a bit of a balance between "is my code interesting/hard to understand because of the logic it's driving, or is my code interesting because of the computer things it's accomplishing?"

If it's the latter, I could see having the memory all allocated at the same time as being real helpful, but if it's the former, it can help with local readability. I prefer to work on things that are logically interesting, but computationally boring, so my preferences might make some sense here.

To each is their own, tho. :)

@dragon I feel like I'm getting a code review via toot! :P

I mostly tend to focus on the end goal so much that I find I get bored with even the most minor complexity introductions until the whole thing 'works' end-to-end... But I might just be, like, some kind of barbarian dev here.