2/2/2026 at 5:58:16 PM
Nice idea, but "small composable programs" includes R scripts? That's great if you're already using R, a bit much to install if you're not.You could simplify things by cribbing from the Hacker's Diet (https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/) and using an exponentially weighted moving average as your filter. 10% of today's weight + 90% yesterday's EWMA. That's almost a one-liner in awk or perl, or a simple function in bash.
Copilot suggests: awk 'BEGIN{alpha=0.1} NF>=2 { date=$1; w=$2; if (NR==1) ewma=w; else ewma=alpha*w + (1-alpha)*ewma; printf "%s\t%g\t%.6f\n", date, w, ewma }' input.txt
by criticas
2/2/2026 at 8:57:23 PM
For the giggles:nice idea, but "small composable programs" includes perl scripts? That's great if you're already using perl, a bit much to install if you're not.
There shouldn't be any burden of portability for the one writing small tools like these. You're free to rewrite it, of course, but expecting someone to go out of their way to stay within the unix/posix/whatever environment seems a bit much given the context of an unpaid endeavor.
by ablob
2/2/2026 at 7:54:14 PM
I don't think "small" has ever been meant to include the runtime. Is R much more complex of a runtime than awk perl or bash?by dooglius