Biweekly update 2020-04-22; A lot of programming
Sigh. What an eventful month.
Object wiki update
Serialization
I've spent too much time thinking about object serialization protocols, their advantages and disadvantages.
Specifically protocol buffers, capnproto, and flatbuffers. In the end, I've decided to skip this step at the moment and just use pickle (python's internal object serialization format), because I can always add schemas and object generators later, when it will be actually needed. There is no point in over-analyzing something that is not really needed at the moment.
Transactions
Then I've thought that it may be good time to think about support for transactions. So I've worked on that, a lot. There will be an article about adding transaction support to your object tree later. At the moment, transactions work, so it is time to focus on the client/server protocol and how to put everything (PyQt, transactions, client/server) together.
Another developer
Also, I've talked about objWiki with my friend, and then had something like two and half hour long video talk with him, where I described my vision and set of features and necessary steps to achieve them. At the end, he was convinced that this is good idea and requested some work. Since then, I've given him some PyQt tasks, and he implemented them really quickly.
Other coding
I've had to debug a segfaulting PyQt program in production. Catching core dumps was quite interesting by itself. Toying with the core dump using gdb, where I had to manually go through CPU registers and find address of the Python's frame object, taught me something new. I should probably write an article about it when I am done.
Book report
I've finished Anathem for a second time, and for a second time, I am blown away by the world Neal Stephenson invented.
Anathem is about different dimension, where earth like planet never went through dark ages. Science and scientists continued with the original tradition, which in our world would be based on old Greek and Roman philosophy.
Then, bad things happened, partially thanks to the scientists, and everyone that wanted to think about science got cast into monasteries for thousands of years.
Monasteries have different "circles". One part of the monastery opens every year. Other every ten years. Another every hundred of years, and last one every thousand.
We are getting to know the strange and beautiful planet of Arbre, alternative to our Earth, through the eyes of Erasmus - young adept in the decimal "circle" of the Concent of Saunt Edhar.
The book is about science, philosophy, math, many worlds theory and much more, all packaged in beautiful story. The book is definitely high in my top ten books of all time.
At the moment, I am reading The Human, the newest book from Neal Asher, and several others I shall name when I'll finish them.
Writing
I didn't manage to write a lot, except for most of the article about transaction support. I have several articles almost ready for publishing, but it all requires last reading and corrections, and I just didn't felt like it.
So far, I've published a part of 📂Improvements section.
Improvements
Because of corona, I've decided to upgrade my workspace at home. I've bought AlzaErgo ET1 for standing setup:
I'll have to improve cable management sometime soon, or it will get so complicated and tangled, that it'll spawn AI from emergent properties.
Random stuff
Steven Wolfram published Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful, and it really is beautiful.
I've finished Devs, a miniseries about quantum computers, multiverse theory and predeterminism. It had fascinating visuals and music.
Some time ago, I've bought a Kindom Come game for playstation, and like most of the games I've bought, I wasn't able to play it. I've had too little time, and the game wants me to invest too much.
Warhorse studio, the company that developed Kingdom come has a lot of great talks about game design (only Czech language, sorry), and I've watched them in systematic manner, more and more fascinated with the technical aspect of what they done.
Anyway, this motivated me enough to give the game another try. So far, I've played for two hours and I liked the experience, so maybe that's what I'll do for relax.
