std::byte - great idea. Meh execution?

I love the idea of C++17's std::byte. A data-type that makes it explicit we're dealing with ugly low-level details? What's there not to love! One thing only, turns out.

First, the good part: separating character (human) representation from binary (low-level) representation is brilliant. No implicit conversion between the two separates the domains very well and creates a much clearer interface.

The bad part: std::byte is really really strict. It only accepts other std::bytes as operands(*). You'd hope this would work

auto f() {
  byte b{42};
  return b & 0b11;
}

It doesn't. std::byte only accepts other std::byte's as operands. The design goal behind it is good, sure. In practice, I've noticed this means casts are not limited to the interface between low-level and rest-of-the-world: casts and explicit byte's get sprinkled all over the place.

My prediction: most people will dislike the boilerplate std::byte adds and fall back to unsinged char's, until the type restrictions in std::byte are relaxed. I hope I'm wrong though!

(*) Yes, with the exception of shift operations. That was a good design decision!

-Wmisleading-indentation

This gcc switch is a few years old but I discovered it recently. I'm not sure if that means my code is always very clean or my toolchain too oudated... in any case, -Wmisleading-indentation (which you get with -Wall) warns about this gotcha:

if (foo)
   bar();
   baz();

Neat!

GitHub tip: Prefill a bug report

Getting feedback from users is hard. In a platform such as Android, with apps evaluated in a couple of seconds, it's even harder.

While trying to get bug reports for VlcFreemote I found a neat GitHub trick: you can pre-fill a bug report by using url parameters. For example, check this link: https://github.com/nicolasbrailo/VlcFreemote/issues/new?title=foo&body=bar

Awesome! Takes a second and makes life much easier for bug-reporters!

Happiest bug report

Something is wrong: I'm happy over a bug report!

A few years back I developed a VlcRemote control app for Android. According to this chart, I didn't actually save any time doing so. The time I spent spent developing the app is more than the cumulative time I would have spent by getting up from the couch and manually controlling VLC. That said, not having to leave the coziness of a warm blanket in winter probably made it worth the investment.

Not long ago I decided to submit this app to F-Droid. I'm too cheap to pay the 20ish dollars for Google App Store, and since I don't have any commercial interest I don't see the point. I didn't think I'd actually get any users there, but today I got my first bug report. So much happiness! You'd think I shouldn't be happy about my crappy software not-working, but hey, someone actually took the time to try it out. Even more, someone cared enough to submit a bug report!

Open source rules!