✪ vi4m Marcin Kliks vi4m

Why I Stopped Answering Most Questions

Recently, I started rejecting general questions. General questions are often wrong. Yes, you can ask wrong questions, and it's worse than giving bad answers.

It's especially evident today with questions about AI's future, the future of jobs, or other simplistic questions. Wrong questions lead to harmful actions and consequences.

For example, people often ask, "Will AI take my job?" Answering "yes" can lead to negative outcomes. Another bad question might be, "Are immigrants bad?" While some might be, asking such questions is harmful.

So, how to ask good questions? The more you know about a topic, the better the questions you can ask. No wonder the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42; the question itself is crucial.

How to use a `.xcconfig` file and a `.plist` file with SPM

Worth a read for some more context.

Create a Package.xcconfig file

Create the file in the root of the project (where your Package.swift file lives as well), and use the following contents:

/// Package.xcconfig

Profiling Swift in Linux

In order to profile memory leakage/heap growth in Swift on Linux, you need to a) run it on Linux b) use a profiling tool.

Docker and Valgrind to the rescue.

Installing Valgrind in a Linux container

We're using the official Swift image here: FROM swift:4.

Docker 1.10.0 RC1 with Docker Compose 0.6 and Docker Machine 1.6 and Xhyve on OSX

Updated install instructions for RC2 are available here

The steps below will uninstall docker, docker-machine and docker-compose under OSX using virtualbox (via either brew or toolbox, or both), and replace them with the latest RC versions of docker, compose and machine using the Xhyve driver for better performance under OSX using Hypervisor.framework.

Using Swift libraries in Python

So... this is obviously totally, 100%, like for. real. not. supported. by. Apple. …yet?

But still... I thought it was pretty badass. And, seeing how there's already a Swift buildpack for Heroku you could move some slow code into Swift can call it as a library function. But, you know, not in production or anything. That would be silly, right?

Now, having said that, the actual Python/Swift interop may have bugs. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

How to get Python code calling Swift functions:

TL;DR

Create 5GB FreeBSD image.
Install FreeBSD on xhyve.
Mount host directory.

	#! /usr/bin/swift

	//
	// - This is just some AppKit boilerplate to launch a window.
	//
	import AppKit
	@available(OSX 10.15, *)
	class AppDelegate: NSObject, NSApplicationDelegate {
	let window = NSWindow()
	let windowDelegate = WindowDelegate()

	import Foundation

	protocol Channel: IteratorProtocol {
	func send(_ value: Element?)
	}

	/// A blocking channel for sending values.
	///
	/// `send` and `receive` must run in separate separate execution contexts, otherwise you get a deadlock.
	final class BlockingChannel<A>: Channel {

	//: # Swift 3: Working with dates
	import Foundation

	let date = Date()
	let myLocale = Locale(identifier: "bg_BG")

	//: ### Setting an application-wide `TimeZone`
	//: Notice how we use if-let in case the abbreviation is wrong. It will fallback to the default timezone in that case.
	if let myTimezone = TimeZone(abbreviation: "EEST") {
	print("\(myTimezone.identifier)")

	// Variables just contain an integer. We can have a maximum of `Int.max` variables in our program. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

	private struct Var {
	static var freshVarIx = 0
	let ix: Int
	init() {
	Var.freshVarIx+=1
	ix = Var.freshVarIx
	}
	}