ezyang

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211.
by ezyang 16y ago
You use the same model as SSH: give a big warning with klaxons "Warning, this site's SSL certificate has changed, it is possible that you are being actively attacked" and then force the user to dig into an text file and manually remove the
212.
by ezyang 16y ago
One thing I've seen done here is copy paste the method into a new name (usually with a leading underscore) and then make the appropriate changes. It's not hooked up to the rest of the system (but that wouldn't have worked anyway), and you c
213.
by ezyang 16y ago
There are two points to be made here: 1. With a static type system, you can make the key change at the data type declaration level, and then chase down the compiler type errors to figure out all the place you need to change it. You need to
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by ezyang 16y ago
This is a good point: people don't care about correctness sometimes! Fortunately, you can get part of the way there by stubbing out complaining segments of the code with 'undefined', which only bug out if they are run.
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by ezyang 16y ago
Automated proof tools are already causing a headache for mathematicians. The four color theorem was proved by breaking the problem down into 1,936 cases, and then proved each of the individually. This story has a happy ending: the result i
216.
by ezyang 16y ago
I'm a computer scientist currently taking the History and Philosophy of Science course at Cambridge (an interesting combination that is one of the perks of being an exchange student) and wholeheartedly endorse this. Logic, with its philosop
217.
by ezyang 16y ago
This can still have an important effect. > Most of the cables that have come to light so far have not provided new information. It was no great secret that Libya had probably put pressure on the UK over the Megrahi release, that the US
218.
by ezyang 16y ago
Yes! In fact, the usual way to define bottom in a programming language with a fixpoint operator is 'fix id'. It's not appropriate to call NIL/NULL bottom, because it is a real value and we can always do computation on it (if var == NIL). Be
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by ezyang 16y ago
That certainly strikes me as a good idea, although one difficulty is that there needs to be filesystem support first, which as far as I can tell there is not at the moment.
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What Medieval Medicine and Computer Engineering have in common(blog.ezyang.com)
46 points by ezyang 16y ago|30 comments
221.
by ezyang 16y ago
It's most of the way there, but not quite. For example, one frequently wants to do a hybrid approach to mutability where construction of the data structure is destructive, but then further manipulation is persistent. ST-backed arrays will g
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by ezyang 16y ago
Slight bit of pedantry (not to detract from the overall content of your post): dec (n + 1) is not a view pattern, it's an n+k pattern, and Haskellers have mostly decided that they were a bad idea. However, you've gotten the point of real v
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by ezyang 16y ago
Couldn’t have said it any better. Thanks for the perspective!
224.
Don’t Repeat Yourself is context dependent(blog.ezyang.com)
2 points by ezyang 16y ago|0 comments
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Purpose of proof: semi-formal methods(blog.ezyang.com)
4 points by ezyang 16y ago|2 comments
226.
by ezyang 16y ago
The story I've always heard about this is that as you grow older, your immune system becomes less active in defending your teeth, and so you have to correspondingly brush more often to maintain teeth health. So if you're brushing the same a
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by ezyang 16y ago
I suspect that if people knew how to cook vegetables properly, consumption would increase dramatically. Ask your vegan friends for some recipes.
228.
by ezyang 16y ago
Which books? I didn't learn to drive a car by reading books: I paid for lessons. I wouldn't learn brain surgery by reading books, I'd go to medical school. A rephrasing of this question: what level of financial literacy can a person reasona
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by ezyang 16y ago
Say that I am financially illiterate. How do I fix this?
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by ezyang 16y ago
I have lost my patience with the programming subreddit. Find a better target audience.
231.
by ezyang 16y ago
As part of a bet between friends, I began blogging at the beginning of this year. (The bet was: write a blog post a week, and if you don't, you have to pony up money for a shared food/beer pool.) I aimed for something a little more ambiti
232.
Graphs not grids: How caches are corrupting young algorithms designers(blog.ezyang.com)
16 points by ezyang 16y ago|0 comments
233.
by ezyang 16y ago
Good point, but I think you’re thinking too much about the single client case. Consider if you have an application that serves multiple clients at the same time: the side effect of the view model is no longer “update a screen” or “play a so
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by ezyang 16y ago
When I do software engineering, I use architectural principles to make decisions for me. I don’t have to decide where the HTML rendering code will go because the Model-View principle has made it clear. Furthermore, I get annoyed when the ar
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Static Analysis for everyday (not-PhD) man(blog.ezyang.com)
4 points by ezyang 16y ago|0 comments
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by ezyang 16y ago
"Hosted by" as in "lives on the 18. . .* network", sure.
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by ezyang 16y ago
Interesting! I always thought the table metaphor really appealed to a "pencil and paper" mentality, which would be all about computing "more and more pieces of the table" until it was full.
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by ezyang 16y ago
I had a friend describe it to me as a class of algorithms that involve "filling a table." Not 100% correct, and certainly not catchy, but it's definitely help guide my understanding of the practice.
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by ezyang 17y ago
Lots of comments, so I'm going to remark on one thing in particular: functional programming really makes static typing shine: the types make putting functions together like legos; really obvious when you're very clearly doing it wrong, wher
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Being an expert considered harmful(blog.ezyang.com)
3 points by ezyang 17y ago|0 comments

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