cliffbean

9 ms·

31.
by cliffbean 13y ago
If you implement a GC which runs on its own thread, doesn't pause the application, and achieves good overall performance on any real-world code, then it would be a terrific thing to mention in your big blog post announcing the system.
32.
by cliffbean 13y ago
This blog post is either spectacularly naive, or ridiculously over-hyped, or both. "Consistent performance. (not like the V8 engine pausing the whole application for GC)" Static complication doesn't get you out of having to w
33.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I take issue with the "nobody is forcing you" part. If you want to use Linux, and there are good reasons for it, it will likely be increasingly difficult to avoid systemd. You can argue whether that's "forcing" or j
34.
by cliffbean 13y ago
On some pointers, for example function return types, restrict is defined to be meaningless. Also, restrict pointers can be copies of other pointers, and copies can be made of restrict pointers, subject to certain rules. So it's more in
35.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Few people actually know Fortran anymore, but in reality, C99's restrict covers only a narrow subset of what Fortran's aliasing rules covered. restrict's numerous limitations substantially reduce its usefulness, which is one
36.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I meant the "Why Are There So Many Pythons" blog post that is the topic of this conversation.
37.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Futamura projections are what PyPy is doing, as described in this blog post. PyPy uses the first and second projections. In fact, it's likely that the author is actually familiar with the Futamura projections, but wanted to describe Py
38.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I think the all-or-nothing attitude is an attempt by many people to play against their own psychology. For many people, "I'll just do whatever I feel like each day" is problematic, because the moment right before lunch isn&#x
39.
by cliffbean 13y ago
This sentiment, expressed collectively and somewhat unsympathetically, portrays the entire profession as prioritizing job security over true excellence.
40.
by cliffbean 13y ago
> We do? Yes, we do. We, as in many of us here on HN, do want Firefox OS to win. And by win, we don't mean that other platforms have to lose. Spare us the lectures about "normal consumers" not caring. We know all that. But
41.
by cliffbean 13y ago
You're right. Git really isn't crypto, and this news blurb does sound a bit odd. Hopefully this is just a misunderstanding in the reporting. Matching hashes is probably a pretty good sanity check, but it isn't the kind of sol
42.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Before the Internet arrived, very few people had a big need for it. It makes some things marginally harder, and it's more work to implement, so it makes sense that it got left off. By the time the Internet generally arrived, and people
43.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Because if it's a common pattern, then it's nice to put it in a common library anyway, instead of having everyone write it out by hand. It makes the code cleaner and more efficient. Win win!
44.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Sure they do! Optimizing is more than just low-level efficiency. It's also about using appropriate data structures and algorithms, and using advantageous APIs (like buf_concat here) when they're applicable.
45.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I guess it is at least useful to teach people that performance isn't one dimensional. Most people don't measure performance in MFLOPS, for example. Relative to the amount of code in the world there are vanishingly few loops which
46.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I think I get why some people rage against inheritance, but I don't understand one of your remarks here. Human isa mammal (let's say). Human is a Liskov substitute in any context requiring a mammal. What's the problem here? I
47.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Oh, I thought I was clearer than I was. I feel zero-based is more natural. However, I do agree with you that in the vast majority of loops there aren't any interesting index tricks. For this reason, I actually think language constructs
48.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I agree that we're having an educated and civil discussion. And I agree with the sentiment of using the right tool for the job, in principle. However, I disagree that we're in full agreement :). I actually do think that there is a
49.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Read their explanation though: "For example, the coefficients of a polynomial a0 + a1 x + a2 x2 + . . . + an xn clearly cry out for the zero-offset a[0..n], while a vector of N data points x i , i = 1 . . . N calls for a unit-offset x[
50.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Using 0 as a special error value is a kind of a hack though. What you're really doing is returning "either an error or an index", which is a different type than "an index". Empirically, using one language type for t
51.
by cliffbean 13y ago
I agree that it's not at the same level, but there certainly are developments.
52.
by cliffbean 13y ago
It's true that humans hadn't discovered zero until relatively recently in mathematical history. Should we reject these "new" developments in numeracy, and go back to roman numerals? One could make a pretty strong case th
53.
by cliffbean 13y ago
You don't see yourself as evil, so no one should call you evil?
54.
by cliffbean 13y ago
The best new technology in science fiction might be warp drive. However, that's currently thought to be physically impossible . Fast consumer delivery is merely impractical . It's so impractical, that we often think of it as imp
55.
by cliffbean 13y ago
He complains about message-passing being prone to races, when earlier in that same paragraph he complains about the lack of shared memory between tasks? It sounds like he has some legitimate concerns, but this blog post reads more like a ra
56.
by cliffbean 13y ago
Ordinarily, unsigned left shift silently shifts bits off the end. 0xffffffff << 0 is 0xffffffff 0xffffffff << 1 is 0xfffffffe .. 0xffffffff << 30 is 0xc0000000 0xffffffff << 31 is 0x80000000 It is de
57.
by cliffbean 13y ago
PNaCL and asm.js are roughly the same in terms of "exposing" the code in this sense. Both can be easily disassembled/prettified using readily tools readily available today.
58.
by cliffbean 13y ago
We've had other languages running in browsers for quite a while now. eg.: http://mozakai.blogspot.com/2013/05/lua-in-javascript-runnin...
59.
by cliffbean 13y ago
As a quick reality check, we're talking about boring old URL rewriting here. "Cool new invention mangled by legal paranoia" is a solid story, but other stories would probably fit the circumstances better.
60.
by cliffbean 13y ago
This part is interesting: > "If better precision, directed roundings, and exception handling capabilities latent in hardware but linguistically inaccessible remain unused, their mathematically provable necessity will not save them f

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