Xichekolas

13 ms·

61.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
In all fairness, I grew up about five miles from the Garmin headquarters, and most people in that area don't believe Jesus rode a dinosaur to work (that would be in Wichita). However, Olathe is a town of suburbs and schools and not much els
62.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I was told once that they don't rank on karma, but if they recognize your name from discussions around here it helps your case.
63.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
So my question is, what sort of data plan does AT&T force you to buy in order to use this? AT&T's data plans are so confusing right now. There is a $30 "unlimited data and texting plan", but then there is a $50 version that is "unli
64.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Good point. Judging from the table of contents, he added a chapter up front on various types of trees, tacked on Haskell source in the appendix, and mushed all the conclusions together. But I'm a poor grad student, so I'll read the free dis
65.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
If you haven't read Okasaki's dissertation: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/theses/okasaki.pdf I'd highly recommend it. It's hard to find a dissertation that reads like a novel, but he somehow managed to accomplish such a feat.
66.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Not to mention the obvious question... is there really a point to breaking everything down seven ways from Sunday? At that point it becomes a video game, and loses any semblance of meaning anything whatsoever.
67.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
While I would agree that students shouldn't be passed with impunity, I'm not sure the fix is kicking students out. The motivational factors that make sense to adults don't necessarily work on kids. Thinking back to when I was 13-14, being k
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
That may be the correct solution, but I'm sure the current option was chosen more because it was the quick solution.
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Ask HN: Where is my dream monitor?
7 points by Xichekolas 17y ago|2 comments
70.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I think the truth is somewhere in between. Yes, there are a ton of failing school districts, but it's not as if kids are clamoring to learn all they can and being told no. Kids aren't really motivated to learn the stuff (not that they ever
71.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
E Ink's big problem is the Mirasol technology that Qualcomm has. Mirasol supposedly has better power usage characteristics than E Ink, and does color and full-motion video to boot. It's also basically ready now, with Qualcomm promising both
72.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
To get from NY to LA in 6 hours would require a train that averages 410mph. This is exactly the type of route that trains will not take from planes any time soon. The fastest train in the world is China's maglev that does almost 270mph. But
73.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
> there is a link between them in the sense that for almost any activity that you could call programming you need to be able to read and write. I couldn't agree more. With that in mind, his last paragraph really bothered me: "Thirty
74.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I want to qualify what I'm about to say with the fact that I love love love trains, and have spent significant (1000+) hours riding them. I think trains, due mainly to speed, have a sweet spot to fill, and a future without air travel is not
75.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
While his definition of 'programming' is a bit broad (he lumps in 'configuring things via menus' with writing code) and his vision for the application of programming skills in the future shows a lack of understanding of what code is useful
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Programming is the new literacy(edutopia.org)
51 points by Xichekolas 17y ago|36 comments
77.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Most likely that constraint is the shape of the battery. They probably did the same thing they do in the unibody mac, which is make the battery fill every possible nook and cranny, with no real compartmentalization to speak of. With that ty
78.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Well said, but I don't think it's a problem per se. Lisp was way ahead of its time, but it also hung around until everyone caught up with it. Programmers tend to think about code at the level of the most powerful language they know. Show so
79.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
For a mathematician with an interesting and unusual life story, I'd go with Srinivasa Ramanujan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan Of course, there are more traditional "greats" like Leonhard Euler, Leibniz, Euclid, or Riem
80.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I partially disagree. The point of the PhD process is not to create knowledgeable, creative, courageous scientists. As you point out, they can (and do) come to be that type of person on their own. The value of the PhD is to teach the buddin
81.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
High School can definitely be tedious, but it does leave a lot of free time to tackle things on your own. When you get to college, that time may diminish somewhat (coursework is a bit more demanding), but the important thing to realize is t
82.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I'm not sure that counterargument could really be made. Anyone holding out for an ideal person is going to be looking forever. Everyone has faults. The relationship depends on whether you can still be happy despite those faults. That said
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
But he does draw direct equivalence: "Local color so you can sound like you know what you’re talking about: in Haskell-land, a closure is called a “thunk”." Which just isn't true. A closure is called a closure and a thunk is called a thun
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I'm not sure what I said that you are disagreeing with, but it's not clear to me that "monad" is strictly an adjective like "red". My understanding is that a monad is a data type paired with a properly implemented bind and return (proper in
85.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
When jrockway said the burrito thing, I think he was referring to the Brent Yorgey post about the "monad tutorial fallacy": http://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuitio... To summarize: everyone, once they learn Haskell, c
86.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Many tracing JIT implementations do the compilation in a separate thread from the running VM, only providing the compiled code when it's ready. This reduces the overhead considerably, and should pretty much prevent any pauses in execution (
87.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
What's wrong with 'open brace'/'close brace'? Same amount of effort to say.
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I was bothered by him equating closures and thunks. While they are kind of similar (a thunk is almost like a closure with no arguments), they aren't really the same thing.
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
University of Kansas
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I would stress composability (which fits in with that whole DRY fad). Also, the ability to reason about your code is a big selling point of side-effect free code. When you don't have to keep track of a bunch of state in your head, it's much

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