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After 47 years, OpenVMS gets a package manager (VSP)

Published: 2025-03-21 | Origin: /r/programming

As of February 18, 2025, OpenVMS, a stable and high-availability operating system that's 47 years old and has been adapted for four CPU architectures, has introduced a package manager. The article discusses the usage and limitations of this early beta version. Unlike Linux package managers (like apt/yum/dnf), this one lacks automatic dependency resolution, update management, and package removal functions, and it only supports the official VSI repository. It does, however, correctly identify architectures and

Engineering Zulip's new groups-based permissions system

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the successful transition of Zulip, an open-source team chat application, to a new group-based permissions system designed for managing permissions in a performance-sensitive environment. This update allows permissions to be assigned to any combination of roles, groups, and individual users, affecting channel and organization management. The transition was complex, involving 115 out of a total of 800 database migrations over ten years, due to the need to maintain existing installations for thousands of organizations. Previously, Zulip's simpler model

Reinventing notebooks as reusable Python programs

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

We've launched our YouTube channel featuring tutorials and demos related to our project, marimo, which is free and open-source on GitHub. The blog post discusses the redesign of Python notebooks, advocating the use of a new notebook format that treats notebooks as Python software rather than error-prone JSON scratchpads. This new approach allows for improved maintainability, reusability, and interoperability. The blog outlines how notebooks are represented as Python files, enabling features like version control with Git, module importing, and

Retro Boy: simple Game Boy emulator written in Rust, can be played on the web

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

Retro Boy is a simple, cycle-accurate Game Boy emulator developed in Rust, designed for web use through WebAssembly. The emulator utilizes wasm-pack to convert the Rust code and is supported by the Web Audio API and HTML Canvas for audio and graphics. It also features local storage for saving cartridge RAM data. The frontend is a React/TypeScript application using Material UI, allowing users to load ROMs and control the emulator with options for playing, pausing, and fullscreen mode. The implementation includes

First Known Photographs of Living Specimens

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The author expresses surprise at realizing it has been over two and a half years since their last journal post for a project, apologizing for the lack of updates. The project has seen significant growth, accumulating over 7,000 observations and exceeding 2,000 members, aided by mentions in recent iNaturalist blog posts. The author reiterates the project rules for new members, emphasizing that contributions must be the first photographs of a species, excluding any previously published images regardless of the platform. This requirement

The future of AI is Ruby on Rails

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/ruby

Large language models (LLMs) excel at generating and editing code, making them a crucial application of AI, exemplified by tools like GitHub Copilot. They perform well with small codebases, but struggle with larger ones due to context limitations, leading to broken functionality and unintended bugs when code exceeds the model's context capacity. Even models with larger context windows tend to perform worse as the input size increases. In-editor completions remain the most effective method for AI-assisted programming, leveraging LLMs

OpenAI Audio Models

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

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Claude can now search the web

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

Claude now has the ability to search the internet for more current and relevant information, enhancing its accuracy for tasks that require up-to-date data. When presenting information from the web, Claude provides direct citations to allow for easy fact-checking. This feature expands its knowledge base with real-time insights, delivering answers in a conversational format. Currently, this web search capability is available in a feature preview for all paid users in the United States, with plans to extend support to free users and other countries in the future

Automatic Iceberg Maintenance Within Postgres

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

Crunchy Data Warehouse has introduced built-in maintenance for Iceberg, enhancing its functionality by incorporating PostgreSQL-style maintenance directly into Iceberg tables. This new feature includes autovacuum workers that optimize Iceberg tables by compacting data and cleaning up expired files. Iceberg organizes data into Parquet files stored in object storage like S3, allowing for efficient handling of analytical queries on large datasets. Users can interact with Postgres tables backed by Iceberg as they would with regular Postgres tables, using

EmptyEpsilon open source spaceship bridge simulator

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

EmptyEpsilon is an open-source spaceship bridge simulator game inspired by Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. Players take on the roles of bridge officers—including Captain, Helms, Weapons, Relay, Science, and Engineering—collaborating best in a team of six. Each officer has a unique role, with most operating specialized screens while the Captain commands the crew. EmptyEpsilon was developed to address limitations found in Artemis, such as the simplistic comms station and game synchronization issues. The game is free to

Typst equation editor – autocomplete, snippets, and PNG/PDF generation

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The online Typst equation editor is an unofficial tool not affiliated with the official Typst company. It operates in Math mode by default, meaning that typst code is automatically enclosed in dollar signs. Users can toggle Math mode on or off, and they can utilize RGB colors or HTML color names for customization. Links to the official Typst editor and LaTeX editor are provided, as well as references to Typst matrix documentation.

95% AI-written code? What do we think of the Y Combinator CEO’s recent claims...

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses a recent statement by Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, highlighting that about 25% of current startups in their accelerator use AI to generate 95% or more of their code. This trend allows founders to operate with smaller teams and requires less capital, potentially leading to shorter hiring pipelines for software engineers and increased investor pressure for quicker profitability. Tan expresses a sense of anxiety in the job market among younger software engineers, suggesting that those who might not land jobs at large tech

Pushing side projects forward with almost no free time

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The author compares tackling large tasks, like washing a pile of dirty dishes, to managing side projects, emphasizing the benefits of breaking them down into smaller, manageable tasks. For example, rather than postponing a side project due to its perceived enormity, one can accomplish small steps—such as naming the project or creating a directory—in short bursts of effort. By focusing on these smaller tasks, progress can be made without feeling overwhelmed, leading to the completion of the larger project over time. The key takeaway

The Frontend Treadmill

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The author argues that many frontend teams mistakenly believe that rewriting their frontend will lead to success, but stresses that the choice of frontend framework is not the most crucial technical decision for a product's longevity. They assert that frameworks will likely become obsolete in five years, as the frontend landscape is constantly evolving. Instead of getting caught in a cycle of replacing frameworks, teams should deeply understand and master their current tools. The author advises engineers seeking jobs to use their preferred framework as a criterion to avoid unnecessary disruptions in teams

ActualDbSchema v0.8.4 is out

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/ruby

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Translations in Stimulus Controllers

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/ruby

The excerpt is a preview from the upcoming book "JavaScript for Rails Developers," focusing on Internationalization (i18n) within web applications. It highlights the importance of preparing apps to support multiple languages and regional settings, which involves more than simple translations—it also includes formatting dates, numbers, and phone numbers. While i18n can often be deprioritized in product development, it is manageable in Rails, which has strong built-in support for it. The author explores integrating i18n with Java

Mnemosyne: a Java cache library

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: /r/programming

The Mnemosyne Cache library is a small, customizable caching solution for Java applications that facilitates efficient memory management through a common Value Pool for objects of the same type. It supports different caching algorithms, such as FIFO and LRU, and allows developers to create custom algorithms by extending an abstract class. Currently, it integrates with Spring, with plans for more integrations in the future. Mnemosyne is particularly useful when dealing with frequent method calls that retrieve transactions from a slow remote database. It addresses the challenge

Austral: A Systems Language with Linear Types and Capabilities (2022)

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

Austral is a new systems programming language, designed to be simpler and more reliable than other languages like Rust or Ada. It incorporates a strong static type system, linear types, capability-based security, and modularity. The article introduces Austral with a focus on its design philosophy, emphasizing simplicity as the main goal. Simplicity is defined in terms of how easily a system can be described, advocating for short, clear descriptions to avoid the complexity found in languages like C or Python. The rationale behind Austral

Fetch-MCP: Playwright-Based MCP Server with Batch URL Fetching Support

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The content outlines the functionality of an MCP server that utilizes the Playwright headless browser to fetch web page content. Users can run the server directly using npx, and debug it with the --debug option to view the browser interface. It offers the ability to retrieve content from a single URL or to batch retrieve content from multiple URLs concurrently. Configuration instructions for Claude Desktop are provided for both MacOS and Windows users. Additionally, users are advised to install the necessary browsers for Playwright and use the MCP

The Pain That Is GitHub Actions

Published: 2025-03-20 | Origin: Hacker News

The author has spent two weeks rewriting CI scripts in GitHub Actions, marking the third reconfiguration of their CI setup after previously transitioning from GitHub Actions to Earthly and back. Their CI environment is complex, involving merge queues, various runners, Rust builds, Docker images, and extensive integration tests. They face challenges with GitHub Actions, which, while technically capable, presents frustrating setup issues, hidden complexities, and debugging difficulties. The key to maintaining a clean main branch involves utilizing GitHub's merge