dwheeler

8 ms·

61.
by dwheeler 1y ago
In many cases I think the character itself is clearest. Thankfully most tools can handle Unicode today. That's not always unambiguous, so sometimes an annotation may be helpful, and if the spec is freely available you can copy amd past
62.
by dwheeler 1y ago
I'm the author. Ask me anything!
63.
by dwheeler 1y ago
The better solution is to embed, in the PDF, the editable source document. This is easily done by LibreOffice. Embedding it takes very little space in general (because it compresses well), and then you have MUCH better information on what t
64.
by dwheeler 1y ago
HTML was historically an application of SGML, and SGML could do includes. You could define a new "entity", and if you created a "system" entity, you could refer to it later and have it substituted in. <!DOCTYPE
65.
by dwheeler 1y ago
You are re-inventing JSON5, another competitor in this space: https://json5.org/
66.
by dwheeler 1y ago
Only if you try to reproduce the signature. Usually the signature is stored separately. That way, the reproduced work's signature applies to it as well.
67.
by dwheeler 1y ago
That would requiring breaking each of the separate build processes, which is very unlikely. This doesn't counter subverted source code, that's not what reproduciblrle builds are for.
68.
by dwheeler 1y ago
Yes! The attack on SolarWinds Orion was an attack on its build process. A verified reproducible build would have detected the subversion, because the builds would not have matched (unless the attackers managed to detect and break into all t
69.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Per http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/0000.html Stallman's argument at the time was: "a language for extensions should... be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining s
70.
by dwheeler 2y ago
What this solves is the problem that often "what is reviewed" is different from "the source code used to build the software". Verified reproducible builds could have countered the xz utils break, SolarWinds Orion subvers
71.
by dwheeler 2y ago
It's widely agreed that formal verification does not boost software productivity, in the sense that formal verification doesn't speed up development of "software that compiles and runs and we don't care if it's corr
72.
by dwheeler 2y ago
That's version I learned as a kid. You might enjoy this page of mine: The Definitive Four Fours Answer Key https://dwheeler.com/fourfours/
73.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Yes. All real work has difficulties to be overcome. There is a pleasure in learning, overcoming challenges, and solving problems for others.
74.
by dwheeler 2y ago
R is also far more popular than Lisp. According to TIOBE: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ R is #15 (1.06%), Lisp is #26 (0.54%). So the existence of R is evidence that Lisp's syntax is a serious problem. If a
75.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I've written a lot of Lisp in my past. I'm used to reading Lisp. Still hate it. For example, everyone else has figured out that mathematical notation uses infix. Stock Lisp's inability to handle infix notation means most so
76.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I will give my answer, noting that not everyone will agree with me :-). The vast majority of software developers do not put up with Lisp syntax. The vast majority of software developers use a different programming language with a much b
77.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Today AI can generate code. Sometimes it's even correct. AI is a useful aid to software developers, but it requires developers to know what they're doing. We need developers to know more, not less, so they can review AI-generate
78.
by dwheeler 2y ago
The 6502 was a great CPU for its time and price point. I wrote many programs in its assembly language. However, if you're going to work on modern systems, there are too many differences for the 6502 to be a good first assembly langua
79.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I wish more PDFs were generated as hybrid PDFs. These are PDFs that also include their original source material. Then you have a document whose format is fixed, but if you need more semantic information, there it is! LibreOffice makes t
80.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I urge you to watch the video to see the context. Cantrill does not think this is acceptable, never mind celebrated.
81.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I want to say "thank you" for the careful research examining multiple original sources from a variety of viewpoints.
82.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Shouldn't one of the URLs implement a Rick Roll :-) ?
83.
by dwheeler 2y ago
One complication is that in typical English, if you say "All my hats....", you are simultaneously making an existence statement that you have at least one hat... but the usual formal logic "forall" quantifier does NOT
84.
by dwheeler 2y ago
A simpler intro to Mathics is here: https://mathics.org/
85.
by dwheeler 2y ago
> At GopherCon 1993, it was announced that Gopher servers would need to pay for the privilege of using the protocol... Well, that didn’t work out. People were angry and many felt betrayed. They weren’t quiet about any of it either. >
86.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Arabic is still fundamentally phonetic. The article mentions thus is only a Chinese and Japanese problem.
87.
by dwheeler 2y ago
Awesome, I'm always glad to see when someone figures out integration problems and helps the rest of us. I hope he manages to get these fixes into the default Rails confug. I run a Rails app; I switched to Postgres years ago and never l
88.
by dwheeler 2y ago
It appears the cyberpunk universe has arrived, and not in the way I expected. The first thing I did was check if the publication date was April 1. I'm not entirely sure I believe this article. However, if it's satire, it's im
89.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I think there is a plausible argument, believe it or not. See my essay "Why are Humans used as Batteries (a power source) in the Matrix?" https://dwheeler.com/essays/humans-batteries-matrix.html Abstract: &qu
90.
by dwheeler 2y ago
I'm sad you had that experience. I haven't used the forums. I have created some scores, and I thought it was fine. Ymmv.

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