dougk16

44 ms·

361.
by dougk16 14y ago
This emergence of "essays" lately is interesting, and I've been thinking about the differences between them and blog posts. Conclusion: essays don't have a place for comments on the bottom.
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by dougk16 14y ago
He was just being sarcastic...that's why he put it in quotes.
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by dougk16 14y ago
Just because a language is "better" doesn't always correlate with its popularity. I do agree that C# is better (at least when I used it a few years ago), but I'm asking more about what platform/ecosystem changes occurred to increase its po
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by dougk16 14y ago
Just curious, what do you think caused the increase in C#? I'm totally out of touch with Microsoft's doings nowadays.
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by dougk16 14y ago
Funny, about half the links I've put in comments end up as submissions soon later ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5119372 ). I'm not saying people are using my comments as fodder, just a funny coincidence. Guess I have to start makin
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by dougk16 14y ago
I'll take your pedantry and raise you one: "Slingshot", the shot (rocks, clay, etc.) that is slung from a sling. It's a stretch though...
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by dougk16 14y ago
Not sure if you strictly mean karma per submission, or karma per comment, or both. As for karma per comment at least, reaching a critical mass of absolute karma points seems to have a big impact on your KPC, regardless of the comment's con
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by dougk16 14y ago
One more step: Master programmer realizes that they're still a Novice programmer - repeats the cycle.
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by dougk16 14y ago
I do think this is the immediate future, especially as we utilize typed languages that compile to JS in order to create more complex applications than are feasible with JS alone. I also think that there will be a swing back to an almost c
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by dougk16 14y ago
> I think we can safely say it is most certainly all within the brain. Occam's razor says you're probably right, but personally I'm holding out the slim hope that there's something much cooler going on, call it primitive telepathy or wh
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by dougk16 14y ago
Interesting point, but a counterpoint is that an AI for such purposes could either be deterministic (if it was running on local machines), or it could be a single highly creative and nondeterministic AI running "in the cloud" so to speak. T
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by dougk16 14y ago
It could if there were some level of AI behind it.
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by dougk16 14y ago
Well, we start to split hairs here, although my over the top "Hello computer!" skewed what I was getting at. If NLProgramming gains ground, there will likely be some level of AI behind it, but not necessarily a "true" AI. And it's not what
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by dougk16 14y ago
I'm obviously oversimplifying, and an AI-driven English->asm compiler comparable to my godlike programming abilities is at the far, far end of the technology gradient from now to Lieutenant Data, but it doesn't seem far fetched to have
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by dougk16 14y ago
I think you're missing the practical use cases of natural language programming, at least those in the next decade or so. "Hello Computer! I need an inverse square root function. It should take a float as a parameter and..." - Not practical
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by dougk16 14y ago
I'm totally in agreement as far as the current state of NLP and AI goes, but all bets may be off as these fields mature. For example, I have a client that gives me a very detailed specification for a simple iPhone app in a few English parag
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by dougk16 14y ago
But the fine print seems to say that they would stop you in principle, that is, if they knew about it and had enough resources to actually care. I'm not saying that they would...it's the principle itself that rubs me the wrong way. As a p
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by dougk16 14y ago
The thing that surprised me when I recently renewed my password was reading some fine print that said you can't even legally leave the U.S without a passport. Like I'm a prisoner here unless I have that piece of paper. I can understand re
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by dougk16 14y ago
If you're going the marriage route, it's not that bad. My wife and I did it without a lawyer despite every source out there telling you that you're crazy to do that (probably written by lawyers). Don't get me wrong, the process is a horribl
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by dougk16 14y ago
This is just a purely academic response to your question, but if you took me straight out of high school, and just dropped me into an apprenticeship-type situation in any medical field, I'm pretty confident I could come out just as competen
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by dougk16 14y ago
Totally. I did this with the Diablo games et al. to aid in learning Polish, and it was very effective, even though language learning was probably as far from Blizzard's mind as you can get. The problem is that you need the really high pro
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by dougk16 14y ago
I can't decide whether I should googleably post the name of the Uni, partly because, despite the negativity in my comment, I had a blast there. The campus was beautiful and staff and professors were very knowledgeable and helpful. I learn
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by dougk16 14y ago
Not sure if you've read this, but it might help a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata#Full_text Specifically: "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser pe
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by dougk16 14y ago
This was how it was in my 4 comp sci classes when I did a semester abroad in Australia in 2003. Attendance was also completely optional, so lots of beach time was put in. Then when it was time for the exam, they put us all in a room toget
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by dougk16 14y ago
If you're doing almost anything related to software, it's a no brainer. The only real value to college in this case is meeting similar-minded people and having a piece of paper that "proves" you know a bunch of stuff. If you do well, it al
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by dougk16 14y ago
Heh, true, I should have said "true rap fans" and not true rap fans.
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by dougk16 14y ago
Without "knowing" rap, and only listening to _The Heist_, he seems to border more on a satirical Weird Al type of line, rather than being someone that true rap fans would necessarily enjoy. Regardless, it had a good message, delivered in a
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by dougk16 14y ago
Apology from one of the tweeters: http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html
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by dougk16 14y ago
Obviously this is taken to a fun extreme, but it reminds me of a good practice: error pages should be treated as yet another way to engage with your visitor. Too many times I see people relying on the ugly default error pages provided by a
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by dougk16 14y ago
Last summer I was searching for a quiet place to work outside the house, and was really racking my brain. I finally thought hey, library! But wait, do they still have those things? Of course they do, so I thought great, that place will be

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