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You can’t invert a binary tree on a whiteboard so fuck off (2015) (twitter.com/mxcl)
12 points by resalisbury on Dec 6, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



ChatGPT solves this problem readily. Maybe they should hire ChatGPT.

The problem always bugged me though. The word “inverting” makes me think of flipping something upside down rather than horizontally. Although that’s not strictly necessary, I’ve never heard the word “invert” used elsewhere in the same way.


Homebrew the package manager is quite popular but that doesn’t indicate that it is engineered well. For instance, it doesn’t work with multiple user accounts which is such a trivial thing!


this would mean it requires a redesign and think for separating user and system package. much like root and rootless containers


Sorry, but I’m failing to see how rootless containers are relevant.

Having multiple user accounts is a legit use case - think e.g. a shared device. A typical Linux package manager’s install is a privileged operation. Homebrew on the other hand gives the user that had originally installed it write permissions to certain directories. This strategy enables sudo-less brew install for the specific user and prevent it from being used by anyone else.


I remember this, and thought he was silly then and still think so.

Software becomes popular because it fills a niche, not because it is well written. If you have other people deciding what software to write, you don't need a niche-filler, you need a good software developer.


Even though this is old, it's kind of interesting even in today's environment.


Reflecting on it recently since Chat GPT3 + GitHub copilot make it even more relevant.




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