Plurrrr

Thu 27 May 2021

Liocheles australasiae

Last Monday I ordered a Liocheles australasiae online with Geleedpotigen.com located in Belgium. The Dwarf Wood Scorpion was shipped on Tuesday and arrived today just before noon.

Liocheles australasiae in a vial
Liocheles australasiae in a vial.

The scorpion came well packed: in a vial stored in a Styrofoam box with heatpack and paper to prevent it from bouncing around. The Styrofoam box itself was packed inside a carton box. Also included was a nice card which thanked me for the order. I paid €25,00 for the scorpion and €9,99 for shipping.

Liocheles australasiae on 5mm grid paper
Liocheles australasiae on 5mm grid paper.

The vial had a message which told me that this species loves to play dead (thanatosis). However, this specimen was moving normally when I got it out of the vial onto a piece of 5mm grid paper. After taking photos I put the scorpion in a small cup with the moist paper it came in.

Later I prepared a small terrarium. First, I made very dry coconut coir moist by putting it in a Ziplock bag and adding water. Next I mixed the water and the coir by kneading carefully. I had to keep adding water several times until the coir was quite moist.

Liocheles australasiae in its terrarium
Liocheles australasiae in its terrarium.

I put the coconut coir in a plastic container with small holes drilled in the sides and the lid for ventilation. I placed a piece of cork bark for a hide, and some plastic plants for decoration. When done I added the small scorpion. I also added a small pre-killed mealworm which it might eat in the night.

As this species is well know for being parthenogenetic, i.e. females can give birth without having been in contact with a male. In this case the offspring are all females. I expect a brood somewhere in the summer since all species in the hobby seem to be females.

Functional programming in Go with generics

Functional programming is an increasing popular programming paradigm with many languages building or already supporting it. Go already supports some of these features such as first-class and higher order functions and enabling functional programming.

One key feature that’s been missing from Go is generics. Without this feature, functional Go libraries and applications are forced down one of two paths: type safe + use-case specific or type-unsafe + use-case agnostic. With the upcoming release of Go 1.18 in early 2022, generics are expected to be added to the language which will enable new sorts of functional programming solutions in Go.

Source: Functional programming in Go with generics, an article by Ani Channarasappa.

Why Go Getting Generics Will Not Change Idiomatic Go

After years of overly-acrimonious online discussion, Go is continuing down the chute towards getting generics. I'm already seeing the inevitable "functional" libraries (plural) coming out. I'm going to explain why none of these libraries are going to materially impact what the community considers good style.

They may see some use. I may even use some of them myself on small scales. Some iconoclasts will program with them extensively, and their code will work, in the sense that it will do what it was designed to do regardless of how the code reads. But they are not going to change what generally-good style is considered to be.

Source: Why Go Getting Generics Will Not Change Idiomatic Go, an article by Jeremy Bowers.