benrbray

31 ms·

1. 271.▲
   by benrbray 5y ago

   I've had trouble understanding the use case for mindmapping software, so I'd be curious to hear what you use Xmind for! I feel like I'd have to constantly fight with the layout to prevent my diagrams from turning into a big
2. 272.▲
   by benrbray 5y ago

   I like this way of looking at the problem, I wouldn't have thought of this! I think this relies implicitly, too, on incompressibility of the fluid, no? As well as surface tension? Otherwise, we might imagine the fluid having less de
3. 273.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   Always glad to see better citation tools! Some feedback about the site: After clicking through all the links on the top navigation bar as well as some of the links in the footer, and I didn't see anything except for marketing fluff an
4. 274.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   Since there are no other comments here, I will post this link to the Software Foundations book [1] by Benjamin Pierce et al., which may be of interest to anyone who wants to learn Coq. > The Software Foundations series is a broad introdu
5. 275.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   Sure, we could assign price tags to every human interaction and never stop. But isn't it better for everyone to build a collective wiki of knowledge that we can all share and rely on? If I spend an entire day digging through the webp
6. 276.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   I see your point, but I do think the amount of time spent writing type specifications is (usually) negligible, in return for an extremely large benefit whenever the code needs to be read by you or someone else later. I would certainly arg
7. 277.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   Everyone needs types. Here's one of my favorite quotes: > "Dynamic typing" The belief that you can't explain to a computer why your code works, but you can keep track of it all in your head. — Chris Martin ( https:&#
8. 278.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   I have a different idea that maybe I can get some feedback on here. Maybe it's really dumb for obvious reasons, so please tell me. Construction companies that build residences are clearly creating value for society, so they should be
9. 279.▲
   by benrbray 6y ago

   I too am puzzled that a post about diagrams has not a diagram in sight ! I'd like to see a two-column comparison with the text + rendered image side-by-side for each.
10. 280.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    This happened in 1977, and none of the people who signed it are public figures today, certainly not in the tech sphere. Academics who study philosophy and literature are well aware of the checkered past of the influential figures throughou
11. 281.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    > He wants to have a discussion about what makes sex between people of varying ages wrong. Great, it's an interesting philosophical question. If the issue is so important to him, he should transition to a career in philosophy, or s
12. 282.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I think it's fairly common for even established companies to prioritize short-term costs over long-term costs, even when the long-term costs of NOT investing in good tooling are astronomical. So absolute cost isn't really the dec
13. 283.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    It's pretty damning too when an operation like "merging directories" comes with this warning: $ rsync -a /images/ /images2/ # note: may over-write files with the same name, so be careful! This is s
14. 284.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    This is but one of many comprehensive texts about mathematics written Jean Gallier and Jocelyn Quaintance! They are all a little unpolished, but still an invaluable resource to students! Here are some more book titles copied from his websi
15. 285.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I feel you, it's been really tough on me too, for many of the same reasons. I don't feel like part of the team, and it's not really clear what my purpose is. When this is all over maybe I'll take a break from this lone
16. 286.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    If the senior developers are grumbling about not wanting to be in the same room as their coworkers, I wouldn't be surprised if the junior devs feel nervous about asking for a few minutes of their time. It is the job of senior devs to m
17. 287.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I think the tough part is that fresh grads will benefit a lot from the senior developers being physically present, but I get the impression that many senior devs will choose not to come to the office unless they are required to. So, I don&#
18. 288.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    Thanks for sharing, I think the "no hidden discussions" idea is important. I had a few internships in the before times, and I learned the most by pulling up a chair to other engineers / researchers who were already talking a
19. 289.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    Those of you who think that remote-work-by-default would be a good thing, can I ask how your companies are handling career progression and collaboration, as well as mentorship of junior developers? Listen to Adam Savage [1] talk about his e
20. 290.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    fwiw I saved up for months to buy a student edition of Flash CS3 for maybe $150 when I was about 12 years old. I later received a copy of CS4 (flash+photoshop+a few more) as a gift from my parents. I'm still using that copy of photos
21. 291.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    This was a graduate-level research seminar, whose purpose was ostensibly to prepare graduate students to conduct research in this area. Unfortunately, my undergraduate compilers course covered more material than this one. I think these day
22. 292.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    Uh, I don't know many grad students willing to blow US$495 on software like this when they can just use a combination of Overleaf / Jupyter / RMarkdown.
23. 293.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I went to two top-ten public research universities and can confirm they were glorified boot camps, unless you get really lucky in your course selection. Some of the worst offenders were: * A graduate-level parallel computing class taught in
24. 294.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    (I vouched for this comment since it exposes a common misconception people have about derivatives, and I'd rather reply than have it buried) It's unfortunate that the connection between matrices and linear transformations, and the
25. 295.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    You're right, thanks!
26. 296.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I think it conceptually helps a lot to distinguish between row and column vectors, even if they are coalesce in any production code you might write. (0a) An (nxm) matrix A represents a linear transformation f(x)=Ax from R^m -> R^n (0b) A
27. 297.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    Simon Peyton Jones (of Haskell fame) is part of a group at Microsoft Research that has taken this idea and run with it! See for instance [1,2,3] [1] Applying Programming Language Research Ideas to Transform Spreadsheets -- https:/&#
28. 298.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    I agree, the database angle is fascinating! There's an interesting CSTheory.SE answer here [1] with some pointers to further reading, written by one of the creators of the Datafun [2] query language. [1] https://cstheory.st
29. 299.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    If you’re curious about this stuff and don’t know where to begin, the first chapter of Fong & Spivak, “An Invitation to Applied Category Theory: Seven Sketches in Compositionality” [1] also introduces category-theoretic ideas using part
30. 300.▲
    by benrbray 6y ago

    Even if this is true (I think it's absurd because drivers eat meat too), it doesn't account for the fact that bicycles are slower than cars, so people who commute by bike will travel (much) fewer miles per day than the average car