EliAndrewC

12 ms·

91.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
I've never quite understood this argument. If humans are causing and/or worsening global warming, then understanding how we're doing this will let us know what we can do to mitigate it.
92.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
They introduced a new "bytes" type which is basically just the old "str" type. So you can still do things the old way; if you say b"Hello World!" then it'll give you the bytes type, whereas if you say "Hello World!" then it'll give you the
93.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
I agree that it's a good time to learn Python... because it's always a good time to learn Python. However, be aware that no one in the Python community expects 3.x to be used widely for a few years. Even for new projects, if you want to
94.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
From the comment: THINGS GIT IS STILL NOT GOOD AT * windows (all) * large files (svn)
95.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
That may be the most costly bug ever in terms of money, but there have also been a (small) number of human fatalities resulting from software bugs. Those are arguably much worse than the Venus probe.
96.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
How could it hurt a language's lasting power for it to have powerful libraries? Do you mean that it might hurt Clojure specifically, because it relies on Java's libraries in particular? Or was it a more general point?
97.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
My friends and I run the Music and Gaming Festival (MAGFest: http://magfest.org/ ) and for the past few years I've been tinkering with a webapp to help us get more organized. I've been to a lot of conventions, mostly anime conventions, a
98.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Python 3.0 fixes this with the nonlocal statement. However, you are correct that this doesn't work in Python 2.5 and earlier.
99.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Since he blocks Google's ads, they're not profiting from his usage of their services. So he could argue that he's not really supporting him if he's merely a drain on their resources.
100.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
I haven't used Ruby enough to have used method_missing, but I have used Python's __getattr__ to accomplish the same thing. Can you give an example of something that would be easy to solve in Ruby with method_missing but hard to solve in Py
101.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Don't call it that.
102.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
You're correct, although it's worth noting that you can get around this problem in Rhino (Javascript on the Java VM). Steve Yegge talks about this in his semi-recent talk "Rhinos and Tigers": http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/rhinos
103.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Although that's true, the new account won't have any karma, which actually matters on Hacker News, since it affects whether you can downvote, etc. So while banning certainly won't have the same effect as on S.A., it can be useful despite ho
104.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Most programmers I've known learn whatever languages they're taught in school and then learn new languages are required by their jobs. So even if a "median programmer" is terrified by Lisp, if they work somewhere that uses Lisp and have to
105.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
I don't know precisely what the grandparent was asking, but many of us are curious about two things. First, when the next release will happen, since the previous release was 80 days ago. Second, what new features/functions/libraries are b
106.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
I think that it's only a lie to tell a child that they are an X if you also lead them to believe that this is a lifelong identity. For example, I don't mind telling children born in the US that they are American children. They might grow u
107.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
The comment can be found here: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-st...
108.
by EliAndrewC 18y ago
Actually he has explicitly listed it as being necessary to make the language popular in his essay "The Next Big Language" which you can find at http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.ht... "Rule #2" for what NBL require
109.
by EliAndrewC 19y ago
Paul Graham himself writes good essays with sensationalist titles. For example, "Microsoft is Dead" was a great essay, but he had to explain in the essay itself that he wasn't actually arguing that Microsoft is dead. This seems similar; a