@matigo What skills or concepts or things in your life have seemed unnecessary at one point in time, but later became useful to you, perhaps to your surprise or delight?
I've noticed that as I get older, it's harder to study new things without considering the practical applications.
Maybe some things don't need to be immediately practical for you to keep studying them. The enjoyment of learning and the feeling of achievement might just be enough. Things could become clearer as your learning deepens.
…or at least, so I tell myself.
@peemee Are those performance improvements going to affect how you use the device, or make things easier?
@phoneboy Ah, the 13-inch M1, I see… I believe that was the only Apple silicon model ever to feature the Touch Bar. Is your Touch Bar on the fritz?
@matigo I tend to think that the developer or manufacturer makes it closed-sourced when money is being charged, or at least, that seems to be the standard practice.
// @phoneboy
Now studying the use of the ternary in JavaScript. I never knew about this… for instance, the expression
voteable = (age < 18) ? "Too young" : "Old enough";
means that the voteable variable gets the value of "Too young" if the age is less than 18, and gets the value of "Old enough" otherwise. It's kind of cryptic when you first look at it, but then it makes sense when you break it down. Ah, JavaScript…
@matigo Back in the days when you had to pay for browsers and operating system upgrades… it’s amazing how browsers now have become so ubiquitous that no one would ever dream of charging for them.
// @phoneboy
@phoneboy Ah, the Apple ][… my friend in elementary school owned an Apple ][+ back in the day. For some reason, I was taken with the old Atari 8-bit computers like the Atari 800. BASIC programming was all the rage…
I felt like Mac computers kind of went through a rough patch just before Apple silicon, what with the butterfly keyboards, the flirtation with the Touch Bar and the relative mismatch of Intel and Apple hardware. Now that Apple is using their own processors, I feel like their machines are doing a much better job of living up to their potential.
Apple just announced a new MacBook Pro 14-inch model with their new M5 chip. I must admit to being all-in on Apple products, but find myself feeling rather pessimistic about the need to catch up with the latest processor technology… I already own a machine with an M1 Pro processor and one with an M2 processor, and I really don't feel any inconvenience, at least as far as what I do. About the most demanding things I do processing-wise are running a Windows 11 VM and also using the other Mac for music production… but I guess I simply have not begun to tap the power of the processors, since everything is working smoothly. No insufficiencies.
Besides, I promised my partner that I would not make any tech purchases this year, and so far I have kept my word! I even find that trips to the local HardOff electronics store don't tantalize the imagination and burn a hole in my pocket like it used to… I haven't purchased anything there this year, to my recollection.
It's great to get new gear, but it's equally satisfying when you can enjoy the stuff you already own. Wonder if I will be abstaining from purchases in 2026 as well…