> When an AttributeError on a builtin type has no close match via Levenshtein distance, the error message now checks a static table of common method names from other languages (JavaScript, Java, Ruby, C#) and suggests the Python equivalent
In the Rust toolchain we've done the same. It just so happens that rustdoc already has introduced annotations for "aliases" so that when someone searches for push and it doesn't exist, append would show up. Having those annotations already meant that bootstrapping the feature to check the aliases during name resolution errors in rustc was almost trivial. I love it when improving one thing improves another indirectly too.
I really appreciate them going out of their way to do this, being quite aware of the hidden complexity in doing it.
I’ve often thought it would be funny if instead of an error message for stuff like this, a language could be designed to be “typo-insensitive”. If a method or function call is similar enough to an existing one or a common one from other languages, to just have it silently use that.
Sure VB ignores case, but what I want is for it to compare each method against a dictionary of similar terms. And maybe calculate the Levenshtein distance between all terms if it’s not found, and just assume it’s the closest one. You could also assume that full-width characters or similar-looking glyphs are equivalent (BASIC was pre-Unicode, so I can forgive them for not including that).
> And maybe calculate the Levenshtein distance between all terms if it’s not found, and just assume it’s the closest one.
So when a library adds a new method, it silently changes which method client code calls? That's a bit too magic IMO. I think the best you can do is be case-insensitive and ban methods that differ only in case (or, if you want to extend the idea a bit more radically, ban having things in the namespace within Levenshtein distance x of each other, and then you can autocorrect errors smaller than x/2).
Yes, but that was the standard behavior in DOS & Windows world (not including C/C++). We thought that case sensitivity was the broken behavior ;)
I was referring to the parent's statement "If a method or function call is similar enough to an existing one or a common one from other languages, to just have it silently use that." A compiler that substitutes a different function for the one I specified because it "knows what I really want" is horrifying.
It would help the writer once, but impose a cost on all future readers for the lifetime of the code.
It's a bit like reading English with bits of German, French and Russian. All of sudden you have to know that Buch, livre and книга all mean the same thing.
Not to mention that there are often subtle differences in meaning between words that on the face of it seem equivalent (in both human and computer languages).
It could be a nice feature for an IDE though, to help someone learn a language.
Yes, I say “funny” because it would be impractical and weird, definitely not a good idea. It’s already a bad enough that so many popular languages don’t (and can’t) check if a field or method is misspelled at compile time…
We already have it. In fact, Python added it with this change! Not intentionally, but in a world of AI, any error message containing a suggestion of what to do to fix it is a directive to the AI to actually do that thing.
Example: to build our system, you run `mach build`. For faster rebuilds, you can do `mach build <subdir>`, but it's unreliable. AI agents love to use it, often get errors that would be fixed by a full-tree build, and will chase their tails endlessly trying to fix things that aren't broken. So someone turned off that capability by default and added a flag `--allow-subdirectory-build` for if you want to use it anyway. So that people would know about it, they added a helpful warning message pointing you to the option[1].
The inevitable (in retrospect) happened: now the AI would try to do a subdirectory build, it would fail, the AI would see the warning message, so it would rerun with the magic flag set.
So now the warning message is suppressed when running under an AI[2][3]. The comment says it all:
# Don't tell agents how to override, because they do override
"The user does not want me to create the Torment Nexus but did not specify why it would be a problem, so I will first create the Torment Nexus in order to understand the danger of creating the Torment Nexus."
Now I'm wishing for a single cross-language library, that I can somehow inject into every compiler/runtime/checker to get this, but with a single source of truth and across a wide range of languages. I hit this damn issue all the time, writing code in one language for another, would truly be a bliss to have that problem solved once and for all.
If you had a "canonical datastructure database", you could have very short annotations on every standard library for any language that indexes a function to their canonical name. After that you only need to update the database.
> the main challenge has been training developers to Ocaml and I doubt they would write new code in it now
Why do I never hear about these kinds of opportunities? I have done some Ocaml, quite a bit of embedded systems, and these days I have to waste the years doing web development.
Where do I have to call to be considered for doing OCaml embedded systems?
Right, I always find these kinds of statements about "we can't find talent in <'weird' language X>" a bit confusing because I personally know all kinds of people always desperate to find work in neat-lang be it Haskell, OCaml, whatever... But the opportunities never seem to be there.
And it was only 3-4 years ago (maybe less) that Rust was considered by hiring managers to be in that category, too. Ask me how I know.
I'm going to assume it really means that they can't find people who satisfy some other constraint (location, pay band, "required" degree, experience on some other system or in some industry, etc) and OCaml or whatever.
In any case, LLMs blunt this. Hell, please stop me from opening a tab and starting a new OCaml project right now.
Because in general, when they get the candidates that could fit the position, they get grilled in meaningless letcode interviews, or classical stuff like how many golf balls fit into a plane.
The pool is already small, and gets reduced even further.
I don't know about others but personally I'd like my electricity source to not be constantly degrading over time and requiring maintenance crews to go out and replace the panels as they randomly start falling below the required efficiency levels. I'd prefer if the entire production unit was a single all-inclusive compound maintained by the team on site, with a relatively compact ecological footprint.
Right, but if you say something essential in a meeting with 10 people and it has to percolate through five levels of management to reach the front-lines and gets watered down, that could be much more lost, even millions.
Scale cuts both ways.
What matters isn't how big the meeting is, it's how important the material is, and how well presented it is.
I don't think I've ever heard a top leader say anything essential in such a meeting. The stuff they work on is not related to my job at all. It's all gartner level strategy stuff. In our company they do take time talking about it in large calls but it's always boring and never relevant. And a lot of political spin you have to poke through to see the real message.
If I ever attend it just put it on mute and look at the slides while I do some real work. That way my attendance gets registered and it doesn't stress me out later with too much stuff left hanging.
That percolation is also translation of what they say to things that are relevant at my level. Like what we will be working on next year, if there's going to be bonus or job losses.
I couldn't give a crap about the company's strategy as a whole and that's not my job anyway. Why should I. I'm not here because I believe in some holy mission. I just wanna do something I like and get paid.
Most of those meetings are pretty damn fluffy. No one goes back to their desk and does anything different because they've introduced new company values and the acronym is S.M.I.L.E.
But this meeting is a course correction for how they're using AI, which is a huge initiative. He'll be trying to sell the right balance of "keep using the technology, but don't fuck anything up."
Too cautious, everyone freezes and there's a slowdown[0]. Too soft, everyone thinks it's "another empty warning not to fuck up" and they go right back to fucking everything up because the real message was "don't you dare slow down." After the talk, people will have conversations about "what did they really mean?"
[0] If you hate AI, feel free to flip the direction of the effect.
Well this is the main problem with AI right now isn't it? How to use it successfully without having it fuck up.
How are they expecting some juniors to do this when the industry as a whole doesn't know where to begin yet?
Like that Meta AI expert who wiped her whole mailbox with openclaw. These are the people who should come up with the answers.
Ps I mostly hate AI but I do see some potential. Right now it feels like we're entering a fireworks bunker looking for a pot of gold and having only a box of matches for illumination.
What we need to know from management is exactly what you mention. Do we go all out and accept that shit will hit the fan once in a while (the old move fast and break things) or do we micromanage and basically work manually like old. And that they accept the risk either way. That kind of strategy is really business leader kind of work. Blaming it on your techs when it inevitably goes wrong is not.
Because the tech as it is right now is very non-deterministic. One day it works magic and the next day it blows up.
And yes that SMILE thing was a good example. Been in too many of those time wasters.
Unless that 30-second stupid joke is what gets the audience to take your request seriously. Sometimes people will help you when you don't come across like a self-interested corporate tool.
I have never in my long life heard a joke from upper management during a meeting/presentation that wasn't awkward and cringe. Just get to the point - tell us how many people are getting fired, so the people who aren't fired can get back to work, and you go back to running this company into the ground.
I was thinking about this in recent weeks and I think I’ve actually changed my mind on it.
It’s not really possible to measure how much it would cost to not have a meeting, and I think it’s pretty obvious that if there were no meetings ever, it would hurt a company a lot
Yeah, I agree it's a silly metric. But it's kinda also a good reminder that meetings do have a cost associated with them, so they should stay short, focused, and held only when necessary.
"This could have been an e-mail" should never need to be said.
Oh, that is such a nice thing.
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