building construction Day 2 of Advent of Future of Code Brut

Question

building construction Day 2 of Advent of Future of Code Brutalist Convivial Computing with Teliva Check instructions here <https buttondown email reviewjam archive advent of foc day 2 brutalist convivial computing > thread Conversation about the task as comments to this message

s-ol · Answer

< Kartik Agaram> Here s my go

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

No video from me I haven t yet figured out how to do screen recordings under Linux which I switched to from macOS in October Just written feedback

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Following the instructions blindly failed pretty quickly make linux stopped because it didn t find gcc Normal since I do all serious work with Guix packages even though the host system is Ubuntu 20 04 So better list the dependencies in the instructions A quick look at the Nix script suggested what I needed and I ended up doing guix shell D lua openssl make linux That makes an environment containing all packages required to compile lua plus openssl

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Figuring out the counter wasn t hard but trying to edit it turned out to be tough as the screenshot shows there s a color problem that makes the text in the fields invisible Started from Ubuntu s default terminal which uses a dark theme

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

I had the screen in the instructions so I typed main to continue I got an editor but neither delete nor backspace works so I couldn t do what I wanted change the numbers in the initial loop Delete insets J on my machine backspace inserts with inverted colors

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Without any way to get the source code back into something correct I went for abort ^C which exits Teliva completely no questions asked But then the title did say brutalist wink

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Of course I opened counter tlv in Emacs in order to fix my mess but to my surprise I found a lot more stuff in there than just the Lua code and preferred to give up downloading a fresh copy looked easier Good old git habits wink

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Inserting hello world succeeded at first try Lucky for me since without being able to delete text experimenting would have been hard

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Task 2 looks impossible without deleting a character but I did succeed to make the counter jump by 10

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Task 2 is easier than Task 1 so from a pedagogical point of view it s perhaps better to invert them

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Would have loved to tackle the Towers of Hanoi but with the big picture screen illegible this looks hopeless

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

End of report

Kartik Agaram · Answer

Thanks a lot < s ol> < J Ryan Stinnett> and < Konrad Hinsen> My first lesson here is that I need to include a list of known issues in the Readme Backspace delete handling was a known issue sorry to waste your time Konrad I knew there was no way an international keyboard was going to work I don t know what smarts I need on top of ncurses but I think I ll pause features to first get this right I d hoped I d fixed the color issues the last time they came up but clearly they still need testing with a wider variety of terminals iTerm2 is an obvious miss since it s so ubiquitous I ll also include the Nix Guix instructions in the Readme thanks to < Mariano Guerra> for creating them for the jam Now to go watch < s ol> s video

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

< Kartik Agaram> My laptop has a US keyboard or more precisely what Dell calls an international keyboard here in France

Kartik Agaram · Answer

Could both you and < s ol> try typing `ctrl h` Does that work like backspace for you

Kartik Agaram · Answer

The ` ` in reverse video indicates that backspace on your keyboard is emitting `^ ` which is `delete` I thought only Macs did that thinking face

Kartik Agaram · Answer

I resisted learning about these long tail compatibility issues for years which is how I ended up up the Mu tree cry I need to just gear up and get through them Edit By long tail I mean not that they re unimportant just that there s a combinatorial explosion of cases here spanning OS terminal emulator color scheme and keyboard

Kartik Agaram · Answer

gt Of course I opened counter tlv in Emacs in order to fix my mess but to my surprise I found a lot more stuff in there than just the Lua code tlv files are currently a single literal Lua array consisting of a series of edits Each edit consists of the final state a Lua string between ` == ` and ` == ` of a single definition when you switched files or ran the program Each edit also contains a couple of bits of metadata a timestamp and an optional note commit message Unlike other version control systems Teliva lets you modify the description of a commit after the fact The code itself is immutable though Anyways if you go to the bottom of the file you should see your most recent edits

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

< Kartik Agaram> Ctrl H works fine for backspace I should have thought of it being old enough to have used terminals without a backspace key

Kartik Agaram · Answer

I think I ve improved the situation with colors and the backspace key < Konrad Hinsen> your backspace isn t yet supported but I ve at least tried to make the `ctrl h` hotkey a bit more discoverable I d appreciate some eyes on the state of the menu in various contexts big picture view recent changes editing a definition ctrl f when editing a definition ctrl g when editing a definition Do the tips make sense In particular I m not sure how to describe what the backspace key does Feedback appreciated

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Maybe I have been using computer for too long but for my taste backspace is a pretty good description of what backspace does That s what I d use as a label for `^H` The menu keeps getting more complete but it still lacks something essential a back button It s the undo of navigation the button you hit when you moved somewhere by accident or just to take a quick look at something `^G` go is useful but also confusing When I edit `main` I start with the cursor at the beginning Now I press `^G` and the menu proposes to go to `function` An excellent idea But all I get is a blank screen What would I expect Probably a help page explaining why `function` is not something I can edit

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Bug report At some point after various jumps and edits I did `^e` while editing `main` and Teliva just quit Worse I can t get back in Running the same command line again has no effect

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Color feedback the two screenshots below show some progress in particular for the big picture but in exchange the syntax coloring of main is hard to read

Kartik Agaram · Answer

Thanks a lot Konrad Sorry about all the troubles sweat Could you share the tlv file that doesn t start Either here or by DM email github <http akkartik name contact>

Kartik Agaram · Answer

One ongoing conversation with < J Ryan Stinnett> over on github do y all think 256 colors are now prevalent enough in terminals that I can start assuming everyone will have them Say any computer refreshed in the last 10 years or so

Kartik Agaram · Answer

I just added three 256 color color schemes 1 Do the attached screenshots have any low contrast bits 2 Could you try them out on your side see if they look different or if you spot any more subtle issues You ll need to tweak `COLOR SCHEME` at <https github com akkartik teliva blob main src teliva h|src teliva h> and then rerun `make` for your platform `make linux` `make macosx` etc The solarized isn t really more just a sense of where I m getting my inspiration The default 256 color palette isn t really good enough for Solarized

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

These all look OK though I can t say I like this version of solarized And they look the same when I run Teliva on my own machine

J. Ryan Stinnett · Answer

Just tried it out locally all of the themes match your screenshots so this seems like a good approach to avoiding issues with local terminal theme smile Contrast is decent in all of them though the blue background one is bit hard to read for me

J. Ryan Stinnett · Answer

Maybe you should make the theme some kind of Teliva system data so that it can be changed at runtime nerd face

Kartik Agaram · Answer

< Konrad Hinsen> Thanks for the file Your bug is a doozie Start Teliva with any tlv program Hit `ctrl e` to edit Select any function Position the cursor on any Lua keyword The cursor in the editor starts out on the word `function` which will do Hit `ctrl g` and jump to the word at the cursor You ll now see a blank editor and you re already doomed All ways to go elsewhere or run the program will drop a definition for the keyword into the image file And running with any such definition causes Teliva to just silently quit Now trying to understand why this happens

Kartik Agaram · Answer

I probably need a way to exit the editor without saving Protections against losing data are too strong Ugh UX is hard

Kartik Agaram · Answer

This commit slightly improves things but more importantly it lays out the desired solution and some interactions with other parts of my long term plans <https github com akkartik teliva commit 46aa8c2cf8>

Kartik Agaram · Answer

I ended up completely redoing Teliva s file format Now tlv files are no longer parsed as Lua so they re more secure just string literals no arbitrary code execution and also eliminate the bug you ran into < Konrad Hinsen> The new format is plain text kinda reminiscent of YAML and tlv files always include some documentation up top to help you make sense of what you see

Kartik Agaram · Answer

One drawback of Lua this experience has uncovered it s less principled than Lisp in separating `read` from `eval` At least I haven t been able to find any sign of a C interface that parses a chunk of Lua without also executing it In still other words Lua doesn t expose its AST to manipulation

Konrad Hinsen · Answer

Early Python was the same there was eval built into the language but no plain parser It was later added as a module in the standard library I d be surprises if there weren t any Lua parsers out there if only as add ons It seems like code is data is something that some language communities discover rather late