gdp

47 ms·

181.
by gdp 17y ago
> PHP, Ruby, Python, Scala and even Java are under active development so you will have to make choices about which version you are going to stick to for the time being. Java probably shouldn't be included in that list. The language i
182.
by gdp 17y ago
But people do write GCC-dependent code. In fact, they will even write GCC version dependent code, to the tune of "this will not compile correctly with GCC 4.x.x, you will need to use 2.95.26.2.3.5.1" And given that the complaint was sp
183.
by gdp 17y ago
You use a language with no particular specification and no particular set purpose, and are surprised that it changes between point releases? I guess he's never used PHP then. Languages divide reasonably cleanly into those that have no publ
184.
by gdp 17y ago
That's fine, you can keep writing Javascript. The article is about how we choose to do general-purpose computing on the browser platform. Javascript is a natural fit for a large number of applications - it just doesn't make sense to end u
185.
by gdp 17y ago
HN provides again! Why read past the first paragraph when you can reply straight away! You did see that the second half of the article was dedicated to reasonably concrete strategies that would be an improvement over the status quo, right?
186.
by gdp 17y ago
> I was looking at the YCombinator graduates and realized that in order to get accepted you had to have went to a very good college. Is this written doctrine, or just an observation? University-ism is one of those things that really b
187.
Worrying trends in programming languages: Javascript(plsadventures.blogspot.com)
5 points by gdp 17y ago|10 comments
188.
by gdp 17y ago
It brings a whole new danger to the idea of a "disk crash" though, don't you think?
189.
by gdp 17y ago
"belie" can also just mean "to be in contradiction with". Which I assume was the definition being used. As in, "the simplicity of the changelog is in contradiction with the actual complexity of the project".
190.
by gdp 17y ago
Has anyone noticed that SML/MLton is gone from the newest round of benchmarks? It used to do quite nicely on the concurrency benchmarks, IIRC.
191.
by gdp 17y ago
Right. I disagree, but I'm going to stop contributing to this thread. Apparently you get down-modded for speaking ill of the dead.
192.
A prototype static analysis tool for observable effects(plsadventures.blogspot.com)
1 points by gdp 17y ago|0 comments
193.
by gdp 17y ago
So what? I understand that it's considered a "big thing" by people who spend a considerable amount of energy cultivating an online persona, but I have trouble believing this is actually as big of a deal as it is being made out to be. I ca
194.
by gdp 17y ago
> No, people are saying that a remarkably unique artist/hacker is a creative visionary, which he is. That's very subjective. And I was claiming to be an outsider to the Ruby community , which this entire thread appears to be centred
195.
by gdp 17y ago
Which seems to provide a possibly workable model for automated systems of other kinds.
196.
by gdp 17y ago
But it is eulogizing someone who isn't dead! After 1 day of inactivity! I feel very inspired by the works of Salman Rushdie. He hasn't published anything for a few days - should we eulogize him on HN too? I'm not over simplifying the man
197.
by gdp 17y ago
But the tone of this entire thread is suggesting that somebody who wrote a bit of Ruby code is some sort of creative visionary! He may be a very talented programmer, but let's keep things in proportion. This idea that someone can be a big
198.
by gdp 17y ago
You think? I can't say I really engage with either community, but purely as an outsider, it appears that anybody who has written any software in Ruby and published it ends up with a minor cult of celebrity, with legions of worshippers bein
199.
by gdp 17y ago
But that ignores the idea that somebody designs and builds an autonomous machine. If an airplane autopilot sends a plane full of people into a mountain due to a defect in the software, who is liable?
200.
by gdp 17y ago
Software defects kill people on an infrequent but fairly regular basis. Legal precedent and licensing agreements suggest that this is the software user's fault, not the manufacturer's. So I assume we'll carry on with this preposterous stat
201.
by gdp 17y ago
Is it just me, or does the Ruby community go in for cults of personality considerably more than others?
202.
by gdp 17y ago
Oh, I just read the comment you're referring to, and I think you've completely misinterpreted the commenter. The use of "program text" is used in a fairly precise way to mean "the tokens unconsumed up to this point in the execution", which
203.
by gdp 17y ago
Sure, the generation of a parse tree is unambiguous, but the traversal order of that tree is not statically determinable. I'm not even saying there is anything wrong with this, I'm just arguing that the way you have described the "compila
204.
by gdp 17y ago
Perhaps, but there is no "cunningness" in 11 neurons. They linked their fitness function to the light being on. Of course successive generations were going to use the light less because the entire experiment appears to have been designed
205.
by gdp 17y ago
From Withrow (1990), on ADA: Module LoC | Error Rate per 1k LoC 63 | 1.5 100 | 1.4 158 | 0.9 251 | 0.5 398 | 1.1 630 | 1.9 1000 | 1.3 >1000 | 1.
206.
by gdp 17y ago
Oh, that would be a very strange interpretation of interpretation. I'm not sure what you mean by "reparsing code at runtime". Given that there isn't really a "compile time" in a perl-like setting, when are you proposing the parsing happen
207.
by gdp 17y ago
Right, so doesn't that example go back to my original assertion that error rates differ between languages in reasonably intuitive ways?
208.
by gdp 17y ago
I don't think that's been true for a long time. It might be true of a given language , but I would almost guarantee that the language being used would make a much larger difference to the number of bugs than something as trivial as code l
209.
by gdp 17y ago
That's probably a better metric, but I still think it's making a statement about some causal relationship between size and quality, which I think is complete bunk. I can solve a problem in 1 line of buggy code. You have to write 1000 line
210.
by gdp 17y ago
Nah, it's worth having the discussion. Companies spend billions of dollars on software. I would argue that they waste most of that money because of software defects and inefficiency. There are language-based solutions that go a long way

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