Most of us on Lemmy are nerds in many ways, it’s part of why we’re on something like Lemmy as opposed to the more narcissistic social media platforms.
However many of us are cool sociable people, or extremely capable in something that others look up to us for, we just have nerdy hobbies or careers or tendencies, what are those traits or abilities that make others enjoy being around us or look up to us or would otherwise be described as “cool”?
Life gets a lot easier when you stop worrying about what is cool and what isn’t.
Took me until college to sort that out. And that was 40 years ago so I have more not caring than caring in my timeline. That’s a good thing.
However many of us are cool sociable people
[citation needed] /j
I have a group of nerd friends. I’m mostly known as “that guy that talks about Rust (the programming language) way too much”. I suspect I’m not qualified to answer in this thread :P
Rust, the iron oxide, is also very interesting. Did you know that the Mianus river bridge in 1983, the Silver Bridge bridge in 1967, and the Kinzua Bridge in 2003, all collapsed because of rust? Don’t even get me started on bridges.
How do I get you started on bridges? And no Tacoma Narrows too easy
What’s your favourite thing about Rust? I’m especially down for hearing any ridiculously idiosyncratic opinions you have on this
I think honestly the biggest thing is just the fact that it has sum types. Sum types is just such a godsend. I don’t know how I could ever program again and enjoy it if I don’t have sum types. It’s seriously such a shame that older historical languages (many of them OOP languages) didn’t use this concept.
Many of these older languages are strongly typed but because there are no sum types, the type system is awkward and cumbersome and you have to resort to inheritance to kind of emulate it in a bad way.
This have given strongly typed languages a bad reputation the last many years and since then dynamically typed languages have gotten more popular - essentially because dynamically typed languages have sum types because you can change the type of any value at runtime whenever you want.
It’s such a shame because people think they don’t like strongly typed languages - but actually they just don’t like strongly typed languages that lack sum types.
Sum types is the future and we should never use dynamically typed languages for serious professional large-scale software engineering ever again.
How do you feel Rust compares to Python? I do a lot of Data Science coding but have thus far primarily used Python and Pandas to accomplish most of what I need to do. I’ve gotten it working pretty smoothly, but I am seeing Rust on a lot of job postings so I have been thinking of trying it out.
How do you feel Rust compares to Python?
I mean, they are very different languages. Python is an interpreted, dynamically-typed language that is known to be quite slow. Rust is basically the opposite; a natively compiled, strongly typed language.
I would say Python really is a scripting language and you shouldn’t use it for more than that - small scripts is where it shines, because you can get something running quickly and you probably don’t care if it’s super reliable or maintainable. And as long as the scripts are small, they are automatically easy to change because they’re small. Problem is that Python is “easy to learn” so lots of people know it so lots of companies use it. This leads to lots of problems if you ask me. Python is easy to learn, but that’s only because Python does basically nothing to help you create a proper, reliable and nicely structured program.
Rust is hard to learn, but it pushes you towards much better habits and it forces you to build better programs. These benefits feel cumbersome in the start, especially when you’re learning and you’re building small programs. Small programs is not when these benefits really start kicking in.
However, if you are working on a large system, the difference between Python and Rust is insane. Rust will help you so much. You change 1 line out of 1 million lines and Rust will tell you exactly where your change breaks other code, which will lead you to fix those other places. Meanwhile, if you change 1 of 1 million lines in Python, you need to pray that there are tests that catch whatever problems your change may have caused (spoiler: there probably aren’t).
So in my opinion, if you are doing serious professional software engineering for an employer where you are not the only one working on the code… Rust just provides so much more stability and reliability than Python.
You might be interested in Polars, which is kinda a successor to Pandas written in Rust (can also be used from Python).
I will take a look at Polaris. I started out in C and C++ years ago, so I all no stranger to strong typing. The Python devs have realized that there needs to be ways to add strong typing, so you can now explicitly type inputs and outputs to functions, which helps a lot. Also, there are places where other companies have implemented things in Python, so you are somewhat pigeonholed into using Python or reverting back to the C++ SDK for them, which can be a nightmare in its own right. Lucky for me I am the only one really touching the code I am working on and it is all bespoke, but someone will need to maintain it later so I have been taking to the strong typing in my recent work.
I will have to take a look at Rust some more and see how it feels. Thanks for the analysis.
If you’re familiar with C++ and C, Rust should be easy to learn. It’s basically just enforcing all the stuff you shouldn’t do in C/C++ - double free, too early free (dangling pointers), reading and writing to stuff from two different threads at the same time (data race). And at the same time modernizing the whole experience (actually useful compiler error messages, easy and convenient dependencies that “just work” without having to worry about a build system, in-built test system, etc.)
Ooo, that all sounds kinda sexy. I may have fun.
Listen… I am a really good people person. Folks love to hang out with me. I am not quite sure why but I think that I am a good listener and others love this. My problem is, that I don’t enjoy that. I’m really good at something that I don’t enjoy.
I just quietly do my own thing, and people seem to want to talk to me. I don’t think I’m cool, but maybe laid back and approachable.
I get this vibe from you for sure.
What I have found works well is to own it, but in a resonable manner.
Learn some fun facts, truly fun I mean, stuff that normal people can see the funny part of.
I am a bit of a nerd about public transportation, and I work in a department with many people who like sports, they go to matches, the watch games on the TV, they play sports themselves, so when I found out that there is an annual tram championship it was fun to share that with the rest of the team, it was even better when I found out that they take place during the summer and are broadcast live on youtube.
Summer is our slow season, and we have several TVs set up for monitoring system in the office, one of them has been shut off for a lobg time but you can still use it, so I put it up on the TV on mute, and people found it interesting to watch, the sports people could relate to the competition part of it and I enjoyed seeing the skill and trams used in the competition.
For those nerds who are interested here is the video from the 2023 championship:
https://www.youtube.com/live/GMI7UaJMwWs
Perhaps not as suave as you are thinking but an example of owning it in a responsible manner.
This is amazing! I randomly selected somewhere in the middle, and the driver had to jump out of the tram to extinguish a fire and quickly jump back in to carry on.
Look around in the world and notife what is ‘cool and normal’ and ask yourself, would you like to be like that? I don’t, so I don’t care how to be ‘cool’.
Just go about youre life and live it the way you want, there is only one person who’s opinion should matter, you. (Maybe a 2nd, as living alone can get a tad boring)
I live north of 99,9% of the world population so whenever I walk outside, I get cool real quick during this time of the year. Does it count?
If I ever saw you outside in person I’d think damn, that guy looks pretty cool.
Yeah… I need to stop wearing shorts when I go to the gym in the winter
I’ve developed courage that I never thought I’d be capable of. I can be very scared and keep myself moving.
Also I’ve got a bunch of great spotify playlists, from my time as an Uber driver (a job that lets you listen to and hence curate music for twelve hours a day). Today when the overhead music failed in the store I worked at, it was a bit awkward meeting with my clients. So I pulled out my phone and put on my “Jazz Low” playlist, which is for low-energy loungy jazz.
What? I’m not cool. But did hear someone at work tell someone else that I am “so funny”. Something I guess, at least.
I’m not a nerd, why would you say that?
(nervously scratching my face while looking for any cool and elegant piece for clothing in the closet)
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thanks dr. peterson!
I’m still trying to figure that out. I definitely don’t feel like I ring any cool bells to anyone.
I still wanna be like you when I grow up.
Aww thanks <3
Confident but not cocky, try and make someone’s day better with laughter or a compliment. Ask questions that confirm you are really interested. Listen intently. Have a basic set of clothes that combine well into something about 25% the way of 'well dressed", whatever that may be in your style.
I have long hair and a particular fashion sense. That’s about it.
I dress well, if you can be presentable it really opens a lot of social doors that don’t seem always available.
