there's no escape! brew another cup!

I bet the wheel would be better if it was written in Rust.

(Disclaimer: I have never actually written Rust.)

Hello, Rust developer. [My name, etc.] It works fine, and is written in C++. [Rest of challenge is the same.]
Truly diabolical
- But it's not memory safe!!
rust is a terrible material for wheels. Corrosion is not usually a good thing.
- You just have to rebrand it as "iron-based ceramic".
- I think they mean to write the word "wheel" into surface rust.
Look, I'm not saying the wheel is wrong. It rotates, but what if two people try to turn the wheel at the same time, in opposite directions?
What if—instead of risking misuse of the wheel—we have a my_wheel::Wheel, which only one person can rotate at any given time? The multiverse could enforce this safety at compile time by making it impossible for there to exist a universe where two people both think they own the right to rotate the wheel. In fact, it could even make it impossible for me to lend out the wheel to more than one person at a time.
And, maybe... we could make the wheel even better. Cars rest on top of wheels, sure. But what if I wanted to make a car that rests on top of other cars? If we rotate the super-car's wheels, we don't want to make the sub-cars flap around—we want the sub-car wheels to rotate. It would be more future-proof to make a Wheel trait, then to make RubberTyre implement Wheel. Then, if we ever needed to make cars into wheels, we could have them also implement Wheel—but delegate the responsibility of rotating to their own wheels.
In fact, we should make it into a whole library. Our other projects could need wheels. Mr. Mittens might need them eventually!
- If the goal is speed then just use a few turbofish.
Disclaimer: I have never actually written Rust.
neither have most of the people advocating for (or against) rewriting stuff in Rust lol
- I'll have you know, I've started several projects in Rust!
  Only to realize I don't have time to do unpaid work even if it IS fun.

Just putting the finishing touches on GNAW (Gnaw's Not A Wheel)

That name may be taken, depending on how you look at it! Game developer Tim Cain wrote an OS abstraction library called GNW (GNW's not Windows). That allowed games like Fallout to be built for DOS, Windows, and Mac without major changes. I highly recommend his Youtube channel!

Developer: Kill me if you must but i've turned the wheel into a modular service called systemd-wheel

Investor: Can the wheel be made into a subscription service?
- Consumer: It say's here I can subscribe to 'Wheel Pro' for only $69.99/month and I will automatically receive all the latest features the second they come out!
  Noob: I just use WIMP, it's free and does 99% of what Wheel Pro does. I don't need all those extra features.
  Consumer: Psh, WIMP is ugly and you can't even adjust the tire pressure by millipascals.
  Noob: They added that feature in March.
  Consumer: I NEED IT FOR WORK OK!
GNOME developer: "Stop forcing us to use wheels! Why can't you just import GTK in your project?"

I have had plenty of suggestions to do very simple things in the games I mod to blow up the lines of code and do the exact same thing I already am doing, but in a more complicated, roundabout way that ends up working slower.

"Why are you spawning blank soldiers and then equipping them, instead of spawning already equipped soldiers?"

"Because I can only spawn soldiers already equipped with stuff from a pool of premade classes, and I want to customize their loadout. It also takes 5 minutes longer to load them in already equipped for some damn reason, whereas when I do it this way it only pauses the game for 10 seconds before it's good to go."

"... ARMA's engine sucks."

"Agreed."

You just gave me flashbacks to that abomination of a programming language they call sqf.
- I hate for asking, but can you grace us with a hello world in squeef?
- Does that stand for SQL WTF?

Here's the real question... What licenses are the wheel and door using?

The door is obviously open. Not sure about the wheel, though…
- And remember open does not imply free

I bet it uses ffmpeg...

I read that as ffmpreg, and I thought it was some new ao3 trope where two girls impregnate a guy or something.
- No no, ffmpeg is completely different! It refers to two women pegging a man.
- That does not have to be a contradiction
- Least brainrotted fediverse user
- https://codeberg.org/gruf/go-ffmpreg
- Close. Final Fantasy 1000. It's a game that's fallen through a time hole from the future and contains technology that can do absolutely anything to anyone, including that.
  Why? It's a nineteenth-stage capitalist thing. Something about gods of wealth, insatiable hunger and first-borns.

Does the wheel fall under any cumbersome non free licenses or patents? If I want to modify this wheel to suit my needs, then share that work and information with others, am I free to do so?

It is MIT licensed, but it's not implemented in rust.
- Clearily it must therefore be rewritten.
If I want to modify this wheel to suit my needs
Steepled fingers
Evil laughing
Another victim!!!
The wheel is Open Domain and does not belong to anyone.

How is it licensed, Jigsaw? Eh? What distro is it from? Is that a fucking Snap wheel?

Snap
Ok, this set me off.
- What I hadn't anticipated in my 20 years away from Linux was not only had teams of unpaid volunteers been beavering away behind the scenes to make everything work better, other much more enthusiastic teams have been thinking up new and exciting ways to break it again.

We'd rather re-create reality where we know everything rather than taking the time to learn how to use a system someone else wrote.

IT and DevOPS does this too.

I worked with a group once that re-invented XML so that non-technical people could create text-based rules instead of writing code. But it ended up with a somewhat rigid naming structure with control characters and delimiters. The non technical people hated it more the actual XML they had used prior.

You're talking about YAML? /s
- LOL. not far off
  They started out with something close to YAML. As the project moved forward, they found out they needed to represent logic with interlinked sections. They needed section 3, point a to link back to section 1 point 3, sub point 2. So they toyed with some assembly-like operations. Then they needed some inheritance. They really just slowly re-implemented the common applications of xml one at a time, it just had less brackets and <> symbols when they were done.
Re: the not-XML-instead-of-code thing. Eventually, this sort of thing turns into a programming language. It's just like carcinisation. Or you wind up writing ever-more code to support the original design. The environment inevitably creates evolutionary pressure that only if/else and iteration logic can solve, forcing the design ever closer to being Turing-complete.
I woulda tried them on JSON. As long as they use an editor that keeps track of nested brackets I think it's much more natural than XML.
- I switched to TOML for my stuff.

unjerk: pretty bold to compare software to a wheel. it's more so like some roughly rollable shape which is why some people think they can make it more rollable, and yes those people fail from time to time

Yes, let's not reinvent any wheels to save time and money. What? Why do you have to use three different screens from two different applications to get the information you need for one shipment invoice? Because we didn't reinvent any wheels. You're welcome.
- Why do you have to use three different screens from two different applications to get the information you need for one shipment invoice? Because ~~we didn’t reinvent any wheels~~ everyone has a bespoke wheel design and there's no interoperability or uniform interface.
  FTFY
- The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented, meanwhile a certain wheel is pushing for the complete removal of adblocks in its extensions.
  Probably not fair to equate that piece of software as a wheel, or better yet, let's just reinvent it with the Adblock.
The wheel of the metaphor-of-thing-as-wheel exists and is widely understood, but apparently needed to be reinvented as a metaphor involving a roughly rollable shape?
Challenge failed.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as wheel, is in fact, GNU/Wheel, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus wheel.

The Wheel weaves as The Wheel wills.
- Use the -w flag and the wheel will weave as you will.
- Wtf did not expect a Wheel of Time reference lmao

I’m thinking WaaS

Circular thinking

There is a whole extra spoke in the wheel. Look, I'm not gonna reinvent it... I just... need to... adjust some values... and there! Look, its fine.

Wait.

Why is it wobbling like that?

Hold on, I just need to get rid of this other spoke...

Spent months setting up my home server with Docker containers while learning Linux. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Then I realised Ubuntu Server is just a Debian-flavored landfill. Switched to EndeavourOS. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Then I made NixOS my daily driver and thought, "Hey, let’s ruin my weekend." Migrated the server. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Found out I could run containers as systemd services. Replaced Docker out of sheer spite using compose2nix. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Then I heard btrfs was the bee's knees. Reformatted my drives, migrated again, and spent a week learning why subvolumes are better than sex. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Got a free MacBook. Slight hardware bump. Migrated again. Spent hours fighting T2 drivers while deepthroating Tim Apple's cock. Everything worked perfectly fine.

Rewrote every systemd service as NixOS modules. Why? Something something George Mallory. Everything still works perfectly fine.

Did I ever notice a difference from the frontend? Nope.

Was this a good use of my time? Fuck no.

Did it need to happen? Does the pope compile from source in the woods?

I mean it sounds like you just enjoy spending your time doing that sort of thing. I'd say that was a good use of your time if you wanted to do it, no?
Im at the compose2nix phase of this pipeline. Ive got a bunch or sevices in Docker compose files and all of my systems have been running Nix for over a year now. Ive gotten the hang of my repo and made a couple modules for my specific uses and im hooked.
What would you suggest to migrate all my compose files into a nix friendly environment? I use flakes as well.
NixOS Chad

One of the worst parts about this is that I would never have thought about reinventing it until he told me not to.

Bloody reverse psychology still working on me. >:(

Reinventing the wheel leads to a profound understanding of why wheels are round.

That's what documentation is for.
- Documentation is written exclusively for people with PhDs.
- Well, it would have been if people updated it when making changes; now it's just all an incorrect snapshot of an older version of wheel that no longer reflects reality.
- That involves knowing how to read

I'll just steal the wheel and reinvent it later

Tech bro strat.
gasp! You wouldn’t download a wheel!
Do you work for Apple?
Better make sure the wheel isn't under copyright tho!

Hmm... How many significant figures of pi was it made to?

Astronomer: “Eh, I guess pi is close enough to 10. Let’s just use that.”
Gotta make that configurable now
ONE

The wheel has had a number of innovations over the years. The earliest wheels were flat disks of wood that were heavy and slow turning. The Romans invented spokes and metal rims which made them faster, more durable, and gave them more traction. Questions we need answered: What is this wheel in particular designed to do? Is there any way we could make it work more efficiently at its task? Do we value performance over reliability, or vice versa? Etc. Etc.

I think we need to take a bit of a step back and consider what kind of shed we might use to store this wheel...
- To answer that, we'll need to do a deep dive into foundation technology (to determine if it is lacking and needs some improvements) (because we don't want our wheelshed to sink).
What is this wheel in particular designed to do? Is there any way we could make it work more efficiently at its task? Do we value performance over reliability, or vice versa?
It works fine. It's a perfectly good wheel.
Hey where is Underwaterbob?
He's trapped in that Jigsaw room.
The door is unlocked though?
Yeah, but there is a wheel in there and UWB won't leave until he figures out if there is a way to improve it.
Has any one asked him to?
No
Will he get paid to improve it?
No
What does the wheel do?
You roll it out of the way so you can exit the room.
- Will he get paid to improve it?
  No
  Well, now I'm clearly going to have to find a way to monetize the wheel as well.
Sounds like proprietary blobs.
Yeah but neither the romans, or medieval peasants had computers, so why are you on about?
- Now we do have computers! Think of the models of wheels that could help us improve wheels!

So, your plan is to kill people of starvation and sleep deprivation?

All those wheels made without any unit tests. What was humanity thinking?

Hmmm what if this wheel could roll itself? If we use the power of 7 suns we could put AI cocaine in it.

"I WOULDN'T BE REINVENTING IT IF THEY DIDN'T FORCE ~~systemd~~ AXLES ON EVERY WHEEL!!!"

Have you ever used wheel-el in emacs? It really sets a high bar.

As if I don't have a stash of previously reinvented wheels to choose from in my personal code. Buuuut, who can resist reinventing the wheel for the 25th time?

This is a poorly designed horror trap. Here, let me help you!

Listen here, "bro". "Fine" is well below my standard, ok?? The world wasn't built on "fine", now was it? No! It wasn't! ᶠᶦⁿᵉ ᶦˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ᵉⁿᵒᵘᵍʰ ᶠᶠˢ ⁻⁻⁻ ⁻⁻ ⁻⁻⁻⁻ ⁻⁻⁻⁻ ⁽ᵗʳᵃᶦˡᶦⁿᵍ ᵐᵘᵐᵇˡᵉˢ⁾

Back half of that comment is the start of a Cave Johnson rant.

sudo systemctl stop sawtrapd

And don't forget
systemctl disable sawtrapd
so it won't restart again.
- sysyemctl disable --now sawtrapd to do both in one command.

Joke's on you, the wheel was reinvented plenty of times.

but is it written in 6510 assembly, with cool graphics and catchy music with fast arpeggios?

I mean surely it could at least be optimized somewhat...

It probably could, and don't call me Shirley.
- ✈️🥨

Not even in programming but I'd have to at least test the wheel see if it's as good as I'm told

What do you mean developer? As soon as I got a dock so I could actually use my steam deck like a desktop, I started experimenting with everything!

Obviously, I would never escape that trap...

2025 is the Year of the Desktop Reinvented Wheel.

Sure wheel 7 and wheel 10 were Ok, but wheel 11 is crap.

But it doesn't conform to every cars specifications! A new standard must be invented!

Relevant xkcd.

Is the wheel FOSS? No? Guess I have to then.

But my wheel will be much better. I will start from the center with a very simple skeleton and build on top of it as needed. It will be very modular, elegant and easy to understand. It will be my masterpiece.

I feel this! When I need to do something in my computer my first impulse is usually to think about writing the code. Doesn't matter how many free tools are already around. Why? Because software design and coding is fun! It's not cost-effective in terms of time and effort, but way more fun than reading a manual for an existing thing and getting good at that thing. Example: right now I'm looking for a self-hosted wiki to organize my upcoming D&D campaign. As I look through the docs for dokowiki and wikijs I'm already thinking, how hard can it be to write one? A mind is terrible thing!

It's like climbing a mountain. It always looks quite doable from ground level. Only when you're two thirds of the way up and exhausted, and another peak has just come into view and the sun is setting and there's a storm rolling in, do you realize why other people chose not to do this. If you survive you'll put it behind you and have the same idea again next week.
- Never give up! Never surrender!

rm rf saw

Wheels need manuals

STEP AWAY FROM THE WHEEL!!1!