29 ms·

Welcome to Wikifunctions

307 points by edward 3y ago

userbinator 3y ago
There is a link on the main page titled "Decolonizing Functions", which leads to... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-03-02 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_... I'm not sure if that is satire, or for that matter this whole site.
- starkparker 3y ago
  [flagged]
- abathologist 3y ago
  That page seems totally reasonable and admirable to me. It’s literally just advocating for including the wide and varied history of algorithm development, in order to encourage readers from many different backgrounds to find ways to connect with the important topic.
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - cypherpunks01 3y ago
      > I don’t think an encyclopaedia should cater to racist views of its readers over factual information Uh, nobody thinks this. I'm sensing an straw man argument fast incoming.. > So it seems unreasonable to stretch the truth to diversify or narrow down the number of people you mention It's entirely unclear where you see the truth being stretched? Factually recognizing important contributions by people from under-represented backgrounds is doing the exact opposite of narrowing the "number of people you mention". It's literally mentioning more people who contributed to a certain effort or field of study.
      - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
        > Uh, nobody thinks this. I'm sensing an straw man argument fast incoming.. Of course they do. That's what they say: > The way I understand the program of decolonizing mathematics is to follow two principles: > first, to recognize the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, in order to offer more protagonists who can inspire and with whom more people can identify > second, to provide examples and motivations that are relatable to under-represented backgrounds and identities, in order to reach and be more immediately helpful to more people They imply that people will more readily identify and congregate with people of their own racial and ethnic background. That may be true, that doesn't make it any less racist. > It's entirely unclear where you see the truth being stretched? Factually recognizing important contributions by people from under-represented backgrounds is doing the exact opposite of narrowing the "number of people you mention". If you factually recognize important contributions, you don't have to make any efforts or care about the raised issue. > It's literally mentioning more people who contributed to a certain effort or field of study. Mentioning more than what?
    - atoav 3y ago
      If you want to write who invented the algorithm and there is one asian invention in 1303 and one by some eueopean in 1803 then leaving out the asian inventor is actively harmful to the encyclopedia as it distorts truth. This article to me just tries to raise awareness for the fact that our western history of who invented what is often incomplete and sometimes simply wrong. Historians right now have the unenviable task of considering how the history they work with has been distorted by racism (e.g. by playing down the role of certain people with the "wrong" race and instead attributing things to people with the "right" race). I'd like an encyclopedia to list all inventors of something even if they are not known in my culture — preferably in my own language as well, but that is a different topic.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    What exactly do you mean by "to find ways to connect with the important topic"? That sort of obfuscated language doesn't help explain anything.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      Hes saying non-whites feel like functions are foreign to them
  - Levitz 3y ago
    >It’s literally just advocating for including the wide and varied history of algorithm development, in order to encourage readers from many different backgrounds to find ways to connect with the important topic. I'm at a loss of words for what I feel towards respecting (even promoting!) the idea that a piece of knowledge ought to become interesting or valuable if there is ethnic relationship to it. It reeks of supremacist talk to me. If someone came up to me saying that he got into mathematics because Charles Babbage was a white guy, just like him, I'd think that person doesn't belong in current society. This doesn't change if the person belongs to any minority.
    - beepbooptheory 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Levitz 3y ago
        Feigning ignorance? I am explicit in pointing how minorities tend to get a special deal when it comes to supremacist talk. I just don't condone it. I don't believe that glorification based on race is something you can keep to certain races. I am simply not racist about racism.
        beepbooptheory 3y ago
        Gotcha, well good luck with that I guess.
    - ckoerner 3y ago
      Representation matters. Many people are not represented in the worlds knowledge, much less the creation of it.
- js8 3y ago
  Your outrage at this seems to be analogous to outrage of people who think that it is horrible that Unix has a "kill" operation. Basically, you don't understand that "decolonization" is a metaphor for a broader historical perspective, and instead you're trying to interpret it literally and in a bad faith.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    The only ones talking about "decolonization" are on one very extreme side of the political spectrum and trying to inject identity politics into everything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607032
    - js8 3y ago
      I don't understand your argument. Where is, aside from the word "decolonization", the author of that document trying to "inject identity politics"? And to what end? (And you certainly seem to be concerned by identity of the people making those claims..) Take a step back and think about how your statement really sounds. It's like saying that "a group of extremist geeks who wrote Unix is trying to inject violence into everything". It's faux outrage that misses the point.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        To what end? You’d have to ask the author and hope for a grounded answer. Probably internal satisfaction, virtue signaling, or advancing ideology. > Take a step back and think about how your statement really sounds. Why dont you tell him how you think it sounds instead of misrepresenting a consensus?
  - raincole 3y ago
    People also got mad at Git for having default branch named master.
    - js8 3y ago
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  [flagged]
- soared 3y ago
  > first, to recognize the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, in order to offer more protagonists who can inspire and with whom more people can identify second, to provide examples and motivations that are relatable to under-represented backgrounds and identities, in order to reach and be more immediately helpful to more people Seems pretty reasonable IMO. Feels like pretty mellow and easy actions to take. But the linked post I agree is a bit … condescending? Self congratulating?
noaoh 3y ago
https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code is a similar website for people interested in this sort of thing
- 20after4 3y ago
  WikiFunctions, I believe, has a larger purpose in the context of Wikimedia wikis, and that is they are building a library of functions that can be called directly from wikitext and the code will be evaluated automatically when the page is rendered. I think the idea is to provide an easy way to embed dynamic content into the text of a Wikipedia article. This should provide a nice compliment to the way WikiData is used to dynamically insert data into articles. Note: I worked for the Wikimedia foundation in the past, however, I wasn't involved with WikiFunctions. I just have some vague memories of internal product planning discussions about the feature.
  - atdt 3y ago
    The ability to invoke functions from wikitext and interpolate the result into the rendered page has been a feature of Wikipedia for over 17 years[1]. The ability to write custom functions in Lua was rolled out a decade ago[2]. [1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/2MMGKQV5EDDXR27RLQVCZ6TCYIXK2R24/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lua
- itishappy 3y ago
  > We are not competing with sites such as gist, or sites such as rosettacode.org, esolangs.org, or helloworldcollection.de, where code snippets are collected either to share them quickly with others or around a specific theme in different programming languages. https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifunctions_is_not https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifu...
TekMol 3y ago
What are the holes in the namespace? https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z1 is about "Type: Object" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z2 is about "Type: Persistent object" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z100 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z500 is about "Error type: Unspecified error" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z1000 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 is about "Function: join strings"
- quiddity 3y ago
  Many of the built-ins are currently turned off, whilst the team continues configuring things and bug-fixing. The intended built-ins are listed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Reserved_ZIDs https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Reserved_... There are more interesting examples of some user-made functions at the Older Beta-deployment location the team has been using for the past year: https://wikifunctions.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Main_Page#Existing_function_examples https://wikifunctions.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Ma...
4mitkumar 3y ago
Wow... Would this collection be helpful as a free and curated source of coding blocks to train future LLMs on?
- nottheengineer 3y ago
  Probably, but LLMs seem to gain more understanding from seeing lots of different examples than they do from a few examples of good code so people won't stop scraping stackoverflow.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bestcoder69 3y ago
Is this a bet against LLMs?
- easeout 3y ago
  Doesn't seem that way. I think it's a way to collect high quality information for humans, but LLMs can still benefit as a side effect.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hobofan 3y ago
  No, the concept of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia has been brewing for some years. It's basically an extension/complement to Wikidata and the efforts to collect as much information as possible on Wikipedia in a language-agnostic way.
nologic01 3y ago
The documentation doesn't quite match the ambition of the project which may complicate the onboarding of new contributions Some suggestions for immediate questions that people might want to see on a landing page: * How does the function collection relate to existing function libraries in various programming languages * What are the target domain and range of the function set, i.e., what is the overall scope of the project. Even if its open ended it needs some meaningful and self-explanaory scheme to categorize and group them * What are some gee-wow uses. Why should one be involved. How can this be used outside wikipedia etc
- mormegil 3y ago
  Yes, I think a pointer to somewhere like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia or around (possibly under https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_Wikipedia) should be here. Also I'd say one of the more important pages here is actually https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifunctions_is_not https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifu...
  - starkparker 3y ago
    Also, from the well-buried FAQ:[1] > In the future: > * It will be possible to call Wikifunctions functions from other Wikimedia projects, and integrate their results in the output of the page. > * It will be possible to use data from Wikidata in functions. > * It will be possible to call data sets from Commons Data namespace. Everything right now is just transparency about the project's immaturity and publicly alpha-testing actual use cases.[2][3][4] 1: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ/en https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ/en 2: All open tickets on Wikilambda, the stack behind Wikifunctions: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/?project=PHID-PROJ-iswqgn24zcpq6fxwlobo&statuses=open()&group=none&order=newest#R https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/?project=PHID-PR... 3: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/IEFSAI3L4P3C5VZVORKAXNLPE3A4PAEI/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/abstract-wikiped... — "We encountered a number of issues while deploying, and it was fascinating to fix these live while the community was watching. There are still a number of high-priority bugs, and we need to fix those before we get to the next step. The current plan is to open the wiki for editing on Tuesday, August 1st 2023, and we’ll update you if that changes." 4: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-08-05 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2...
mg 3y ago
What is everyone's favorite function / formula? Mine is n/(n+x) It has a bunch of interesting aspects: As n gets bigger, it goes from 0 to 1. When n equals x, it is 0.5 As n gets bigger, the difference between n and n+1 gets smaller For two sufficiently large n's, the results are equal. Say somebody told you about a new cafe in town and that it is completely awesome. The best cafe ever. What probability do you assign to it really being an exceptionally awesome cafe? If your x is 3, then the probability after one person praised it is 25%: 1/(1+3) = 0.25 And if another person told you about that cafe being awesome, the probability becomes 40%: 2/(2+3) = 0.4 And after 3 people told you the cafe is awesome, chances are 50% it really is: 3/(3+3) = 0.5 The changes in probability are pretty strong at the beginning. But after 1000 people reported about the awesome cafe, the next report makes almost no difference anymore. It only ups the probability from 0.997008 to 0.997011. By changing x from 3 to 4, your formula becomes more "suspicious", by changing it from 3 to 2, it becomes more "gullible". I wonder if this formula has a name already. If not, "the trust formula" might be a candidate.
- anonymous_sorry 3y ago
  Doesn't quite work. If nobody has told you about the cafe, the probability that it is awesome should not be zero. Perhaps you only define the trust function from n=1+
  - Rayhem 3y ago
    Interesting philosophical question: is awesomeness intrinsic or extrinsic (a matter of perception)? Can anything be intrinsic? If it's intrinsic, then yes, the probability that it is awesome should not be zero if you've never heard of it. It's awesomeness exists independently of any measurement. But, by definition, you can't know it's awesomeness until you measure it, so awesomeness quotients only matter after they've been measured. And a measured value value must be expressible/observable outside the system (i.e. extrinsic).
  - mg 3y ago
    Good point! The formula indeed assumes a base probability of zero. That's actually why I put "The best cafe ever" in there and that it is called an "exceptionally awesome cafe". I got a bit lax later in the text just calling it "awesome". For a cafe aficionado, who spends most of their time in cafes, reading HN and thinking about formulas, the probability that some random cafe becomes their new favorite is virtually zero. In other words: The more cafes you already know, the closer to zero the chance that a random one will be the best of them all. So yeah, it is a formula for cafe lovers. Not for the casual person who is happy with a random filtered coffee swill from the vending machine. Those would have to add a base probability, turning the formula into something like b+n/(n+x)*(1-b).
wilg 3y ago
I love the idea of having a wiki-based spec for the best implementation and/or algorithm that has a bangin' talk page and I can generally trust for most situations.
guy98238710 3y ago
Wikifunctions is primarily intended to support Wikimedia projects, especially Abstract Wikipedia. It is the code complement to Wikidata lexemes. It might be used for cross-wiki templates to reduce existing duplication and other auxiliary tasks, but Abstract Wikipedia is the reason it was proposed.
- vasco 3y ago
  Abstract Wikipedia is in my opinion fully wasted work. Translation is free and instant for web pages. I've lived for 6 years in different countries where I don't speak the local language (and am also not native English speaking) and you can get all the information you need by translating. This works totally fine already today with Google translate on top of pages. And the pages that are in fact missing from "the other language wikis" are local myths, local detailed history, things that wouldn't even be in the English Wikipedia or in the "abstract" version in the first place.
  - zelphirkalt 3y ago
    Not everyone wants to use Google services to be able to read information on Wikipedia.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      And not everyone wants to donate to wikpeda to solve a solved problem
      - BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
        improving language (and communication) is never a solved problem
  - nologic01 3y ago
    This is wrong on two counts: 1) translation is not the same as abstraction and 2) having the world's encyclopedia translated by an advertising company is not exactly everybody's idea for how things should be organized Of course wrong criticism doesnt mean the project is a success (i think its been going for a few years now). The documentation in particular does not highlight what this infrastructure is good for.
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
This is I suspect what a Domain Driven Design should be - every compmay should have something like this. Things like "how do we estimate the number of headlamps needed from supplier A, B and C in the next three months"
ngc6677 3y ago
Wondering, if a function execution will be able to (a) be called from a URL, with inputs `https://wikifunctions.org/to-base-64?input=my%20string https://wikifunctions.org/to-base-64?input=my%20string` (b) retrieve the output from the URL `https://wikifunctions.org/tobase-64?output=bXkgc3RyaW5n https://wikifunctions.org/tobase-64?output=bXkgc3RyaW5n`? It could be used directly from the Browser's Omnibox URL address bar, such as with https://searx.be/info/en/search-syntax https://searx.be/info/en/search-syntax, https://duckduckgo.com/bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bangs, https://github.com/internet4000/find https://github.com/internet4000/find
- mormegil 3y ago
  Well, MediaWiki has a comprehensive API, so yeah, see e.g. https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=wikilambda_function_call&wikilambda_function_call_zobject=%7B%0A%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z7%22%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z7K1%22%3A+%22Z802%22%2C%0A%09%22Z802K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z40%22+%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z40K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z42%22+%7D%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z802K2%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z10%22%0A%09%09%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z10K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z6%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%22Z6K1%22%3A+%22arbitrary+ZObject%22%0A%09%09%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z10K2%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z10%22%0A%09%09%09%7D%0A%09%09%7D%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z802K3%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z40%22+%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z40K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z42%22+%7D%0A%09%7D%0A%7D%0A https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action... But I don't think Wikimedia Foundation wants to provide a free-to-all unlimited compute... No idea what the resource limit plans are, etc. But at least now in this early phase, the user rights are very limited, anyway.
erdtgyujiokiyut 3y ago
[flagged]
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  Don't look at Wikidata then
yosito 3y ago
I couldn't find a function for which the implementation is visible. Which leaves me quite confused about what exactly the nature of this wiki is.
- vrandecic 3y ago
  Sine the wiki hasn't been opened for editing yet, there is indeed only one function that has visible implementations (which was added for testing purposed): https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10000 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10000 - all others are built-in and then invisible. The two implementations are in Python and JavaScript (and rather trivial): https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10004 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10004 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10005 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10005
- brap 3y ago
  The implementation is in the 'details' tab, but even still this project is very confusing.
  - yosito 3y ago
    All of the details tabs I checked had a message saying that the implementation was hidden.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
firefoxd 3y ago
Well, that one hurts a bit. I think I got the domain name for close to 6 years now. Been paying ever since. Oh i got the hosting as well, been paying for that for 3 years at least. If only I ever got to finishing it. Though my version looks more like stackoverflow where people can upvote edits of functions.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  Don’t sweat it. It appears this wikifunctions is not intended for “mortals” to use. It’s an implementation detail of an upcoming structured data project.
deleted 3y ago
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andersa 3y ago
This has to be one of the most confusing documentation sites I have ever seen. Maybe I just don't get it, since I never edited Wikipedia. Opening some of the pages at random, like https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z828 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z828 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z110 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z110 There's a "try this function" section, which I couldn't get to take any sort of input on a few tries. It always ended up with a field that said "no results found" on typing things in it. There's a "current object" section, displaying some kind of alien script. Like, what is this? Is it supposed to tell me something? "Z1K1": "Z2", "Z2K1": { "Z1K1": "Z6", "Z6K1": "Z110" }, "Z2K2": { "Z1K1": "Z8", this goes on for quite a while Clearly I am not part of the target audience here. But who is?
- vrandecic 3y ago
  Thanks, that's really helpful to read! The page is still in a very early stage. You are right, the current object section is just confusing, we will remove it. Maybe a better start to understand what Wikifunctions does - but it is a very simple example too - is this function: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 The other functions that you found randomly are currently not well supported. We are working on it, to make it less confusing. Such feedback is very helpful.
  - vrandecic 3y ago
    As planned, with our first scheduled weekly deployment, the JSON object is not being displayed anymore.
- _aaed 3y ago
  I think the Current Object section is specifying the hierarchy for the current page and also the hierarchy compared to its relatives. All the Z something identifiers are objects/pages/concepts
- bawolff 3y ago
  > Clearly I am not part of the target audience here. But who is? That would be my biggest criticism too. It seems like the target audience and use cases are ill defined, vauge and hand wavey. I dont think it knows really what it wants to be, other than definitely some sort of function store for abstract wikipedia, which also seems unnessarily complex. Quite frankly i get massive wikidata-second-system vibes from the whole thing.
low_tech_punk 3y ago
Like https://val.town https://val.town but written in a wiki specific python or javascript? I wish there is an easy way to see the code for each function instead of the "low code" UI. Ref: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:How_to_create_implementations https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:How_to_crea...
fegu 3y ago
Most interesting functions use other functions. I did not find how they solve using existing functions, avoiding duplication of basic functionality, but also handling how things might break if an underlying function is independently updated. Does anyone know how they solve this, it is an interesting problem?
ulrischa 3y ago
Who should use this? When I search for a function I need it in a programming language I use.
- bawolff 3y ago
  In theory they want to have functions in all programming languages
layer8 3y ago
This gives some background: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Introduction https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Introductio...
zelphirkalt 3y ago
Has anyone figured out how to input lists? It shows inputs for selecting the type of each element of a list, but when I select a type like "String" the type input field is empty again. When I do not enter anything, but click the "dropdown arrow" right of the field, the field becomes grayed out and empty again. Not sure how to use this.
- trashburger 3y ago
  https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-07-20 https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates... > Initially, we will support two pre-defined Types for the inputs and outputs of Functions: Strings and Booleans. The creation of new Types will at first be restricted to staff members. Seems like no list support yet.
chrisjj 3y ago
I was about to say I stopped reading at: > the creation of new development environments or programming languages or paradigms will become easier, as they could simply refer to Wikilambda for a vast library of functions. ... except morbid curiosity compelled me to the end.
- olsonjeffery 3y ago
  https://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2011-May/058768.html https://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2011-May/05876...
  - lanstin 3y ago
    I remember being intrigued by this idea. I doubt it would work but it’s interesting to understand why. Seems the main hold up is that each function might have to point to other function as dependencies, so it’s not going to be linear but really a graph. And then you are immediately in the position of I like this code but I am user Log package N, but they use Log package M so I have to copy and edit. . Vs _ and how things are published and versioned is just implementation details.
    - olsonjeffery 3y ago
      it’s eminently workable. it’s every “modern” package system, but at the finest absolute level of granularity.
      - lanstin 3y ago
        Wouldn't you end up with 50 "get an URL" functions for different types of concurrency frameworks, different retry strategies, different SSL implementations, etc.?
deleted 3y ago
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sriku 3y ago
I keep the cynicism inside me in check usually, but these days finding it harder to do. So people contribute to this and then what? Google/MS/OpenAI etc train models on the data and try to sell it back to us?
chris_wot 3y ago
These look like they are all builtins. I’m really not sure what is meant by “decolonising functions”, it seems to take inspiration from a professor who allowed his class to speak and discuss mathematics in Spanish (admirable!)… but this is a website! I can’t even tell if there is a documentation area. Perhaps this may get better over time?
Havoc 3y ago
Also quite confused as to what this? Like a central directory of common programmatic tasks/algos?
osigurdson 3y ago
Perhaps if this would have been introduced 20 years ago it may have gotten some traction. ChatGPT / AI seems like the ideal spot to request functions as it can also tweak - though honestly it isn't as good as I'd like it to be (yet).
moritzwarhier 3y ago
So I spent what amounts to almost an hour today being amazed and entertained by the perceiced absurdity of this. Now, after a good dinner, reading the FAQ again, I'm starting to roughly feel like this might actually make sense, in another world, or maybe it might even make sense in reality when better fleshed-out? And also I start to remember what this reminds me of (plenty of other entertaining references already here in the comments): https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect Two days later he started poking around. He started with a seemingly-innocuous file called “customers.json” and stared in confusion at its contents: { "File" : "Customers.json", "Class" : "Customers", "Author" : "redacted@redacted.com", "Purpose" : "", "Functions" : [ 568, 899, 900, 901, 902, 1877, 2880 ] }
- pests 3y ago
  Wow I haven't seen thedailywtf in a long time. I used to read it daily back when Google Reader was still around.
starkparker 3y ago
Previously: "Wikipedia Is Trying to Transcend the Limits of Human Language" (2021) on the announcement of Wikifunctions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28389516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28389516
mikewarot 3y ago
It really doesn't explain what it's for.. so I'm left to guess that it's a RosettaCode clone.[1] I can't figure out how you're going to see implementations of a function in the language of your choice. Will there be C/C++/D/Go/Rust/Python/Java sections? [1] https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code

307 points by edward 3y ago

There is a link on the main page titled "Decolonizing Functions", which leads to... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-03-02 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Abstract_... I'm not sure if that is satire, or for that matter this whole site.

starkparker 3y ago
[flagged]
abathologist 3y ago
That page seems totally reasonable and admirable to me. It’s literally just advocating for including the wide and varied history of algorithm development, in order to encourage readers from many different backgrounds to find ways to connect with the important topic.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cypherpunks01 3y ago
    > I don’t think an encyclopaedia should cater to racist views of its readers over factual information Uh, nobody thinks this. I'm sensing an straw man argument fast incoming.. > So it seems unreasonable to stretch the truth to diversify or narrow down the number of people you mention It's entirely unclear where you see the truth being stretched? Factually recognizing important contributions by people from under-represented backgrounds is doing the exact opposite of narrowing the "number of people you mention". It's literally mentioning more people who contributed to a certain effort or field of study.
    - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
      > Uh, nobody thinks this. I'm sensing an straw man argument fast incoming.. Of course they do. That's what they say: > The way I understand the program of decolonizing mathematics is to follow two principles: > first, to recognize the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, in order to offer more protagonists who can inspire and with whom more people can identify > second, to provide examples and motivations that are relatable to under-represented backgrounds and identities, in order to reach and be more immediately helpful to more people They imply that people will more readily identify and congregate with people of their own racial and ethnic background. That may be true, that doesn't make it any less racist. > It's entirely unclear where you see the truth being stretched? Factually recognizing important contributions by people from under-represented backgrounds is doing the exact opposite of narrowing the "number of people you mention". If you factually recognize important contributions, you don't have to make any efforts or care about the raised issue. > It's literally mentioning more people who contributed to a certain effort or field of study. Mentioning more than what?
  - atoav 3y ago
    If you want to write who invented the algorithm and there is one asian invention in 1303 and one by some eueopean in 1803 then leaving out the asian inventor is actively harmful to the encyclopedia as it distorts truth. This article to me just tries to raise awareness for the fact that our western history of who invented what is often incomplete and sometimes simply wrong. Historians right now have the unenviable task of considering how the history they work with has been distorted by racism (e.g. by playing down the role of certain people with the "wrong" race and instead attributing things to people with the "right" race). I'd like an encyclopedia to list all inventors of something even if they are not known in my culture — preferably in my own language as well, but that is a different topic.
- userbinator 3y ago
  What exactly do you mean by "to find ways to connect with the important topic"? That sort of obfuscated language doesn't help explain anything.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Hes saying non-whites feel like functions are foreign to them
- Levitz 3y ago
  >It’s literally just advocating for including the wide and varied history of algorithm development, in order to encourage readers from many different backgrounds to find ways to connect with the important topic. I'm at a loss of words for what I feel towards respecting (even promoting!) the idea that a piece of knowledge ought to become interesting or valuable if there is ethnic relationship to it. It reeks of supremacist talk to me. If someone came up to me saying that he got into mathematics because Charles Babbage was a white guy, just like him, I'd think that person doesn't belong in current society. This doesn't change if the person belongs to any minority.
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Levitz 3y ago
      Feigning ignorance? I am explicit in pointing how minorities tend to get a special deal when it comes to supremacist talk. I just don't condone it. I don't believe that glorification based on race is something you can keep to certain races. I am simply not racist about racism.
      - beepbooptheory 3y ago
        Gotcha, well good luck with that I guess.
  - ckoerner 3y ago
    Representation matters. Many people are not represented in the worlds knowledge, much less the creation of it.
js8 3y ago
Your outrage at this seems to be analogous to outrage of people who think that it is horrible that Unix has a "kill" operation. Basically, you don't understand that "decolonization" is a metaphor for a broader historical perspective, and instead you're trying to interpret it literally and in a bad faith.
- userbinator 3y ago
  The only ones talking about "decolonization" are on one very extreme side of the political spectrum and trying to inject identity politics into everything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33607032
  - js8 3y ago
    I don't understand your argument. Where is, aside from the word "decolonization", the author of that document trying to "inject identity politics"? And to what end? (And you certainly seem to be concerned by identity of the people making those claims..) Take a step back and think about how your statement really sounds. It's like saying that "a group of extremist geeks who wrote Unix is trying to inject violence into everything". It's faux outrage that misses the point.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      To what end? You’d have to ask the author and hope for a grounded answer. Probably internal satisfaction, virtue signaling, or advancing ideology. > Take a step back and think about how your statement really sounds. Why dont you tell him how you think it sounds instead of misrepresenting a consensus?
- raincole 3y ago
  People also got mad at Git for having default branch named master.
  - js8 3y ago
nonethewiser 3y ago
[flagged]
soared 3y ago
> first, to recognize the contributions of people with diverse backgrounds, in order to offer more protagonists who can inspire and with whom more people can identify second, to provide examples and motivations that are relatable to under-represented backgrounds and identities, in order to reach and be more immediately helpful to more people Seems pretty reasonable IMO. Feels like pretty mellow and easy actions to take. But the linked post I agree is a bit … condescending? Self congratulating?

noaoh 3y ago

https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code is a similar website for people interested in this sort of thing

20after4 3y ago
WikiFunctions, I believe, has a larger purpose in the context of Wikimedia wikis, and that is they are building a library of functions that can be called directly from wikitext and the code will be evaluated automatically when the page is rendered. I think the idea is to provide an easy way to embed dynamic content into the text of a Wikipedia article. This should provide a nice compliment to the way WikiData is used to dynamically insert data into articles. Note: I worked for the Wikimedia foundation in the past, however, I wasn't involved with WikiFunctions. I just have some vague memories of internal product planning discussions about the feature.
- atdt 3y ago
  The ability to invoke functions from wikitext and interpolate the result into the rendered page has been a feature of Wikipedia for over 17 years[1]. The ability to write custom functions in Lua was rolled out a decade ago[2]. [1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/2MMGKQV5EDDXR27RLQVCZ6TCYIXK2R24/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lua
itishappy 3y ago
> We are not competing with sites such as gist, or sites such as rosettacode.org, esolangs.org, or helloworldcollection.de, where code snippets are collected either to share them quickly with others or around a specific theme in different programming languages. https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifunctions_is_not https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifu...

TekMol 3y ago

What are the holes in the namespace? https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z1 is about "Type: Object" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z2 is about "Type: Persistent object" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z100 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z500 is about "Error type: Unspecified error" https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z1000 404 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 is about "Function: join strings"

quiddity 3y ago
Many of the built-ins are currently turned off, whilst the team continues configuring things and bug-fixing. The intended built-ins are listed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Reserved_ZIDs https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Reserved_... There are more interesting examples of some user-made functions at the Older Beta-deployment location the team has been using for the past year: https://wikifunctions.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Main_Page#Existing_function_examples https://wikifunctions.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Ma...

4mitkumar 3y ago

Wow... Would this collection be helpful as a free and curated source of coding blocks to train future LLMs on?

nottheengineer 3y ago
Probably, but LLMs seem to gain more understanding from seeing lots of different examples than they do from a few examples of good code so people won't stop scraping stackoverflow.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bestcoder69 3y ago

Is this a bet against LLMs?

easeout 3y ago
Doesn't seem that way. I think it's a way to collect high quality information for humans, but LLMs can still benefit as a side effect.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hobofan 3y ago
No, the concept of Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia has been brewing for some years. It's basically an extension/complement to Wikidata and the efforts to collect as much information as possible on Wikipedia in a language-agnostic way.

nologic01 3y ago

The documentation doesn't quite match the ambition of the project which may complicate the onboarding of new contributions Some suggestions for immediate questions that people might want to see on a landing page: * How does the function collection relate to existing function libraries in various programming languages * What are the target domain and range of the function set, i.e., what is the overall scope of the project. Even if its open ended it needs some meaningful and self-explanaory scheme to categorize and group them * What are some gee-wow uses. Why should one be involved. How can this be used outside wikipedia etc

mormegil 3y ago
Yes, I think a pointer to somewhere like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia or around (possibly under https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_Wikipedia https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Abstract_Wikipedia) should be here. Also I'd say one of the more important pages here is actually https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifunctions_is_not https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:What_Wikifu...
- starkparker 3y ago
  Also, from the well-buried FAQ:[1] > In the future: > * It will be possible to call Wikifunctions functions from other Wikimedia projects, and integrate their results in the output of the page. > * It will be possible to use data from Wikidata in functions. > * It will be possible to call data sets from Commons Data namespace. Everything right now is just transparency about the project's immaturity and publicly alpha-testing actual use cases.[2][3][4] 1: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ/en https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ/en 2: All open tickets on Wikilambda, the stack behind Wikifunctions: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/?project=PHID-PROJ-iswqgn24zcpq6fxwlobo&statuses=open()&group=none&order=newest#R https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/?project=PHID-PR... 3: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/IEFSAI3L4P3C5VZVORKAXNLPE3A4PAEI/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/abstract-wikiped... — "We encountered a number of issues while deploying, and it was fascinating to fix these live while the community was watching. There are still a number of high-priority bugs, and we need to fix those before we get to the next step. The current plan is to open the wiki for editing on Tuesday, August 1st 2023, and we’ll update you if that changes." 4: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2022-08-05 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2...

mg 3y ago

What is everyone's favorite function / formula? Mine is n/(n+x) It has a bunch of interesting aspects: As n gets bigger, it goes from 0 to 1. When n equals x, it is 0.5 As n gets bigger, the difference between n and n+1 gets smaller For two sufficiently large n's, the results are equal. Say somebody told you about a new cafe in town and that it is completely awesome. The best cafe ever. What probability do you assign to it really being an exceptionally awesome cafe? If your x is 3, then the probability after one person praised it is 25%: 1/(1+3) = 0.25 And if another person told you about that cafe being awesome, the probability becomes 40%: 2/(2+3) = 0.4 And after 3 people told you the cafe is awesome, chances are 50% it really is: 3/(3+3) = 0.5 The changes in probability are pretty strong at the beginning. But after 1000 people reported about the awesome cafe, the next report makes almost no difference anymore. It only ups the probability from 0.997008 to 0.997011. By changing x from 3 to 4, your formula becomes more "suspicious", by changing it from 3 to 2, it becomes more "gullible". I wonder if this formula has a name already. If not, "the trust formula" might be a candidate.

anonymous_sorry 3y ago
Doesn't quite work. If nobody has told you about the cafe, the probability that it is awesome should not be zero. Perhaps you only define the trust function from n=1+
- Rayhem 3y ago
  Interesting philosophical question: is awesomeness intrinsic or extrinsic (a matter of perception)? Can anything be intrinsic? If it's intrinsic, then yes, the probability that it is awesome should not be zero if you've never heard of it. It's awesomeness exists independently of any measurement. But, by definition, you can't know it's awesomeness until you measure it, so awesomeness quotients only matter after they've been measured. And a measured value value must be expressible/observable outside the system (i.e. extrinsic).
- mg 3y ago
  Good point! The formula indeed assumes a base probability of zero. That's actually why I put "The best cafe ever" in there and that it is called an "exceptionally awesome cafe". I got a bit lax later in the text just calling it "awesome". For a cafe aficionado, who spends most of their time in cafes, reading HN and thinking about formulas, the probability that some random cafe becomes their new favorite is virtually zero. In other words: The more cafes you already know, the closer to zero the chance that a random one will be the best of them all. So yeah, it is a formula for cafe lovers. Not for the casual person who is happy with a random filtered coffee swill from the vending machine. Those would have to add a base probability, turning the formula into something like b+n/(n+x)*(1-b).

wilg 3y ago

I love the idea of having a wiki-based spec for the best implementation and/or algorithm that has a bangin' talk page and I can generally trust for most situations.

guy98238710 3y ago

Wikifunctions is primarily intended to support Wikimedia projects, especially Abstract Wikipedia. It is the code complement to Wikidata lexemes. It might be used for cross-wiki templates to reduce existing duplication and other auxiliary tasks, but Abstract Wikipedia is the reason it was proposed.

vasco 3y ago
Abstract Wikipedia is in my opinion fully wasted work. Translation is free and instant for web pages. I've lived for 6 years in different countries where I don't speak the local language (and am also not native English speaking) and you can get all the information you need by translating. This works totally fine already today with Google translate on top of pages. And the pages that are in fact missing from "the other language wikis" are local myths, local detailed history, things that wouldn't even be in the English Wikipedia or in the "abstract" version in the first place.
- zelphirkalt 3y ago
  Not everyone wants to use Google services to be able to read information on Wikipedia.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    And not everyone wants to donate to wikpeda to solve a solved problem
    - BSEdlMMldESB 3y ago
      improving language (and communication) is never a solved problem
- nologic01 3y ago
  This is wrong on two counts: 1) translation is not the same as abstraction and 2) having the world's encyclopedia translated by an advertising company is not exactly everybody's idea for how things should be organized Of course wrong criticism doesnt mean the project is a success (i think its been going for a few years now). The documentation in particular does not highlight what this infrastructure is good for.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

This is I suspect what a Domain Driven Design should be - every compmay should have something like this. Things like "how do we estimate the number of headlamps needed from supplier A, B and C in the next three months"

ngc6677 3y ago

Wondering, if a function execution will be able to (a) be called from a URL, with inputs `https://wikifunctions.org/to-base-64?input=my%20string https://wikifunctions.org/to-base-64?input=my%20string` (b) retrieve the output from the URL `https://wikifunctions.org/tobase-64?output=bXkgc3RyaW5n https://wikifunctions.org/tobase-64?output=bXkgc3RyaW5n`? It could be used directly from the Browser's Omnibox URL address bar, such as with https://searx.be/info/en/search-syntax https://searx.be/info/en/search-syntax, https://duckduckgo.com/bangs https://duckduckgo.com/bangs, https://github.com/internet4000/find https://github.com/internet4000/find

mormegil 3y ago
Well, MediaWiki has a comprehensive API, so yeah, see e.g. https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=wikilambda_function_call&wikilambda_function_call_zobject=%7B%0A%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z7%22%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z7K1%22%3A+%22Z802%22%2C%0A%09%22Z802K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z40%22+%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z40K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z42%22+%7D%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z802K2%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z10%22%0A%09%09%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z10K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z6%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%22Z6K1%22%3A+%22arbitrary+ZObject%22%0A%09%09%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z10K2%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C%0A%09%09%09%09%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z10%22%0A%09%09%09%7D%0A%09%09%7D%0A%09%7D%2C%0A%09%22Z802K3%22%3A+%7B%0A%09%09%22Z1K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z40%22+%7D%2C%0A%09%09%22Z40K1%22%3A+%7B+%22Z1K1%22%3A+%22Z9%22%2C+%22Z9K1%22%3A+%22Z42%22+%7D%0A%09%7D%0A%7D%0A https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action... But I don't think Wikimedia Foundation wants to provide a free-to-all unlimited compute... No idea what the resource limit plans are, etc. But at least now in this early phase, the user rights are very limited, anyway.

erdtgyujiokiyut 3y ago

[flagged]

formerly_proven 3y ago
Don't look at Wikidata then

yosito 3y ago

I couldn't find a function for which the implementation is visible. Which leaves me quite confused about what exactly the nature of this wiki is.

vrandecic 3y ago
Sine the wiki hasn't been opened for editing yet, there is indeed only one function that has visible implementations (which was added for testing purposed): https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10000 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10000 - all others are built-in and then invisible. The two implementations are in Python and JavaScript (and rather trivial): https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10004 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10004 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10005 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z10005
brap 3y ago
The implementation is in the 'details' tab, but even still this project is very confusing.
- yosito 3y ago
  All of the details tabs I checked had a message saying that the implementation was hidden.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

firefoxd 3y ago

Well, that one hurts a bit. I think I got the domain name for close to 6 years now. Been paying ever since. Oh i got the hosting as well, been paying for that for 3 years at least. If only I ever got to finishing it. Though my version looks more like stackoverflow where people can upvote edits of functions.

zarzavat 3y ago
Don’t sweat it. It appears this wikifunctions is not intended for “mortals” to use. It’s an implementation detail of an upcoming structured data project.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

andersa 3y ago

This has to be one of the most confusing documentation sites I have ever seen. Maybe I just don't get it, since I never edited Wikipedia. Opening some of the pages at random, like https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z828 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z828 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z110 https://www.wikifunctions.org/view/en/Z110 There's a "try this function" section, which I couldn't get to take any sort of input on a few tries. It always ended up with a field that said "no results found" on typing things in it. There's a "current object" section, displaying some kind of alien script. Like, what is this? Is it supposed to tell me something? "Z1K1": "Z2", "Z2K1": { "Z1K1": "Z6", "Z6K1": "Z110" }, "Z2K2": { "Z1K1": "Z8", this goes on for quite a while Clearly I am not part of the target audience here. But who is?

vrandecic 3y ago
Thanks, that's really helpful to read! The page is still in a very early stage. You are right, the current object section is just confusing, we will remove it. Maybe a better start to understand what Wikifunctions does - but it is a very simple example too - is this function: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Z10000 The other functions that you found randomly are currently not well supported. We are working on it, to make it less confusing. Such feedback is very helpful.
- vrandecic 3y ago
  As planned, with our first scheduled weekly deployment, the JSON object is not being displayed anymore.
_aaed 3y ago
I think the Current Object section is specifying the hierarchy for the current page and also the hierarchy compared to its relatives. All the Z something identifiers are objects/pages/concepts
bawolff 3y ago
> Clearly I am not part of the target audience here. But who is? That would be my biggest criticism too. It seems like the target audience and use cases are ill defined, vauge and hand wavey. I dont think it knows really what it wants to be, other than definitely some sort of function store for abstract wikipedia, which also seems unnessarily complex. Quite frankly i get massive wikidata-second-system vibes from the whole thing.

low_tech_punk 3y ago

Like https://val.town https://val.town but written in a wiki specific python or javascript? I wish there is an easy way to see the code for each function instead of the "low code" UI. Ref: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:How_to_create_implementations https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:How_to_crea...

fegu 3y ago

Most interesting functions use other functions. I did not find how they solve using existing functions, avoiding duplication of basic functionality, but also handling how things might break if an underlying function is independently updated. Does anyone know how they solve this, it is an interesting problem?

ulrischa 3y ago

Who should use this? When I search for a function I need it in a programming language I use.

bawolff 3y ago
In theory they want to have functions in all programming languages

layer8 3y ago

This gives some background: https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:FAQ https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Introduction https://www.wikifunctions.org/wiki/Wikifunctions:Introductio...

zelphirkalt 3y ago

Has anyone figured out how to input lists? It shows inputs for selecting the type of each element of a list, but when I select a type like "String" the type input field is empty again. When I do not enter anything, but click the "dropdown arrow" right of the field, the field becomes grayed out and empty again. Not sure how to use this.

trashburger 3y ago
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates/2023-07-20 https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/Updates... > Initially, we will support two pre-defined Types for the inputs and outputs of Functions: Strings and Booleans. The creation of new Types will at first be restricted to staff members. Seems like no list support yet.

chrisjj 3y ago

I was about to say I stopped reading at: > the creation of new development environments or programming languages or paradigms will become easier, as they could simply refer to Wikilambda for a vast library of functions. ... except morbid curiosity compelled me to the end.

olsonjeffery 3y ago
https://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2011-May/058768.html https://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2011-May/05876...
- lanstin 3y ago
  I remember being intrigued by this idea. I doubt it would work but it’s interesting to understand why. Seems the main hold up is that each function might have to point to other function as dependencies, so it’s not going to be linear but really a graph. And then you are immediately in the position of I like this code but I am user Log package N, but they use Log package M so I have to copy and edit. . Vs _ and how things are published and versioned is just implementation details.
  - olsonjeffery 3y ago
    it’s eminently workable. it’s every “modern” package system, but at the finest absolute level of granularity.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      Wouldn't you end up with 50 "get an URL" functions for different types of concurrency frameworks, different retry strategies, different SSL implementations, etc.?

deleted 3y ago

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sriku 3y ago

I keep the cynicism inside me in check usually, but these days finding it harder to do. So people contribute to this and then what? Google/MS/OpenAI etc train models on the data and try to sell it back to us?

chris_wot 3y ago

These look like they are all builtins. I’m really not sure what is meant by “decolonising functions”, it seems to take inspiration from a professor who allowed his class to speak and discuss mathematics in Spanish (admirable!)… but this is a website! I can’t even tell if there is a documentation area. Perhaps this may get better over time?

Havoc 3y ago

Also quite confused as to what this? Like a central directory of common programmatic tasks/algos?

osigurdson 3y ago

Perhaps if this would have been introduced 20 years ago it may have gotten some traction. ChatGPT / AI seems like the ideal spot to request functions as it can also tweak - though honestly it isn't as good as I'd like it to be (yet).

moritzwarhier 3y ago

So I spent what amounts to almost an hour today being amazed and entertained by the perceiced absurdity of this. Now, after a good dinner, reading the FAQ again, I'm starting to roughly feel like this might actually make sense, in another world, or maybe it might even make sense in reality when better fleshed-out? And also I start to remember what this reminds me of (plenty of other entertaining references already here in the comments): https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect Two days later he started poking around. He started with a seemingly-innocuous file called “customers.json” and stared in confusion at its contents: { "File" : "Customers.json", "Class" : "Customers", "Author" : "redacted@redacted.com", "Purpose" : "", "Functions" : [ 568, 899, 900, 901, 902, 1877, 2880 ] }

pests 3y ago
Wow I haven't seen thedailywtf in a long time. I used to read it daily back when Google Reader was still around.

starkparker 3y ago

Previously: "Wikipedia Is Trying to Transcend the Limits of Human Language" (2021) on the announcement of Wikifunctions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28389516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28389516

mikewarot 3y ago

It really doesn't explain what it's for.. so I'm left to guess that it's a RosettaCode clone.[1] I can't figure out how you're going to see implementations of a function in the language of your choice. Will there be C/C++/D/Go/Rust/Python/Java sections? [1] https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code