bpyne

51 ms·

451.
by bpyne 16y ago
I started in 5th grade in the late 70's. We learned binary arithmetic and punched cards to program the school system's only computer. Learning computers varies in the US. As I understand it, high schools today in the US teach basic computer
452.
by bpyne 16y ago
During the 70's/80's in my home state, 7th grade would be about normal to start learning a foreign language if you were seen as college bound. Otherwise, you had to wait until 9th grade. In my area of the US, French, Spanish, Portuguese, an
453.
by bpyne 16y ago
I was pretty sure that's what you meant by "localism" but didn't realize this purchasing tendency had been raised to the level of an "ism". My family and I started going in this direction around 10 years ago. To be clear, we prefer locally
454.
by bpyne 16y ago
What are the back-to-the-land and localism movements?
455.
by bpyne 16y ago
Clojure has been bootstrapping really well, but any kind of help should be appreciated. Thanks to Contegix.
456.
by bpyne 16y ago
Thanks for the reply. Yes I have. I didn't want to mention it in my original response to avoid taking the topic away from Haskell and Clojure.
457.
by bpyne 16y ago
It's troubling that you make this observation. A friend of mine did his Ph.D. in East European studies before the Berlin Wall fell. He told me 15 years ago, over a few Newcastles, that "the US is ripe for fascism". I find the thought terrif
458.
by bpyne 16y ago
I'd like to look at a different facet of the issue. My employer mostly implements COTS; our vendors drive our technology choices. The vendors of our two most critical systems decided on JVM based languages - Java and Groovy - so we're movin
459.
by bpyne 16y ago
Honestly Paul, I wouldn't worry about how others spend their time too much. It's true that social media encourages "consumption" instead of "production" but people learn to moderate themselves over time. Or they get fired, go into poverty a
460.
by bpyne 16y ago
Hi, my name is Bill and I do crappy designs. But, I think with help from this post I'm ready to move onto Step 2. In all seriousness, the post comes at a great time. I'm starting to do front end again for the first time since early 2K. I've
461.
by bpyne 16y ago
Fantastic list but just to add a few items from my experience. 11) COTS enterprise software, as often as not, is a Frankenstein mismatch of packages purchased by the vendor and stitched together. Our major software system is on its third ow
462.
by bpyne 16y ago
It's not a huge audience but Jane Street and CSFB make for an important audience that can introduce functional programming languages into the financial world. Couple it with MS's marketing and end-to-end IDE/infrastructure pieces and it bec
463.
by bpyne 16y ago
"Simon Peyton-Jones is another heavy hitter at MSR." If F# does well, I have to wonder if a sanctioned dialect of Haskell for the CLR is in the making. The only thing giving me doubt is that I can't think up a business case for it. OCaml ha
464.
by bpyne 16y ago
I'd like to re-enforce that life passes quickly. Higher hurdles develop as the years pass so that simply leaving a job without a plan has higher costs. Once you "settle down" you have to consider how to pay the mortgage, keep health benefit
465.
by bpyne 16y ago
Do the scripts have the ability to change the weight of features on the fly? For example, sender becomes the most important feature when the sender is, for example, my boss or particular end users. Otherwise, other features may be more domi
466.
by bpyne 16y ago
ErrantX and I weren't claiming organic farming has no benefit. We were only making the point that side-by-side comparison of nutrients for a (e.g.) zucchini grown using organic methods vs. one grown using pesticides yields little differenc
467.
by bpyne 16y ago
"For the most part there is no real extra benefit for Organic food - assuming you are not opposed to the idea of pesticides and other treatments (which are mostly benign anyway)." From a nutritional viewpoint, what you said agrees with what
468.
by bpyne 16y ago
A physician friend of mine explained to me once that humans are hardwired to like fat and sugar. Fat has a high number of calories per gram and is necessary for brain development. ("Healthy fats" are necessary anyway.) Sugar stimulates our
469.
by bpyne 17y ago
Something that I think gets overlooked as a reason why people choose automatic is that they're much nicer to drive in heavy stop-and-go traffic. Accelerate to 5 MPH for a few seconds, then stop. Repeat ad nauseum for 1.5 hours. Do it again
470.
by bpyne 17y ago
"I personally believe 'cheap and barely works' triumphs over "beautiful and works well" often enough that things will turn out okay." I agree with your sentiment. I'm not especially alarmed about this new walled garden. Our industry has bee
471.
by bpyne 17y ago
I feel for you. Eight years ago I worked in a department encouraging that workflow, except I was on the DBA team. We could be a little (let's be nice and say) menacing at times.
472.
by bpyne 17y ago
What SQLServer provides is interesting: I need to read more about it. From the Oracle side, you'd normally run the query through "explain plan". This utility generates the optimizer's plan for query execution. Reading the plan takes some pr
473.
by bpyne 17y ago
I'm in 100% agreement. Btw, the book I referenced is "Beyond Category" by John Edward Hasse.
474.
by bpyne 17y ago
Jazz not being in the limelight anymore is not really a fault of the music, the listeners, or the players. It's not an unhealthy turn of events either. I think it's as simple as a new generation has come up who wants to "have their say": th
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by bpyne 17y ago
I read a book on Duke Ellington in which he expressed concern for the emerging BeBop style's destruction of Jazz. It seems like he foresaw the move from structured, dance-able music to explorative music as isolating the music from the large
476.
by bpyne 17y ago
Saul is a classic Anti-Social Personality (sometimes referred to as socio-path). People are tools for achieving his personal goals. Anti-Social Personalities tend to have high social IQ's as evidenced by Saul's ability to pick out the "happ
477.
by bpyne 17y ago
Relational databases are not limited to hierarchies. You can create complex graphs if you want. It's all how you model your information. They were created due to the limitations of hierarchical and network db systems. There was an interesti
478.
by bpyne 17y ago
A lot comes down to past experience as well. For good doctors, it's a learning process that starts in residency and never finishes.
479.
by bpyne 17y ago
Yes. It's why pediatricians recommend cutting hot dogs and grapes into pieces about half the size of your thumb nail for toddlers. As cautious as my wife and I are, redesigning a hot dog seems absurd as long as you follow the pediatrician's
480.
by bpyne 17y ago
"you'd never catch these first world people getting their water supply from a 10' deep hole in their backyard - they're totally in favor of chlorine, municipal water, and more." Wells are actually pretty common in the US. It depends on the

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