gordonguthrie

20 ms·

1. 151.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   I think the disclaimer about Exceptions being a suitable form of GOTO is a big mistake. When I started using Erlang I was amazed at how error handling and all that 'necessary' gumph just disappeared. In the Erlang world exceptions aren't h
2. 152.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   Yeah it was sweet and easy if you just want to get some text up there.
3. 153.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   You mean helium, I presume.
4. 154.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   and Rockmelt
5. 155.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   You're quite correct. The old 'Latin' script (our uppercase letters) where revived in the renaissance - and were slowly merged with the Hunnish script (our lower case letters) - about the same time as they adopted Arabic numerals (read righ
6. 156.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   12 isn't the key divisor it's 60 - basis of the Babylonian system (hence minutes and seconds, and 360 degrees in a circle) and historically the basis of the 'old money' in the UK (as those of us who can remember it call it): * pound
7. 157.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   Yes, but we all know the investors, the angels, who to approach, who is funding, what you will need to get funded, how to apply to Seedcamp, etc, etc. Funding isn't just about 'ding, dong, gies some money'.
8. 158.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   Lots of people - (more in Edinburgh). There is Entrepreneurial Spark in Glasgow http://www.entrepreneurial-spark.com/ and Rookie Oven of course. Scottish Lean Circle in Edinburgh https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!for
9. 159.▲
   by gordonguthrie 14y ago

   There's lots of startups. A good place to start would be the Scottish Lean Circle https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!forum...
10. 160.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    Well, we had a 100 CEO's at the CEO To CEO @ the Turing Festival in Edinburgh two weeks ago - so I think you are wrong on that.
11. 161.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    I thought the that that the more experience you have, the more important you think OTP is was one of the most interesting things.
12. 162.▲
    Results Of Poll On Maintaining Erlang Systems(ferd.ca)

    2 points by gordonguthrie 14y ago|1 comments
13. 163.▲
    Show HN - Turing Festival

    10 points by gordonguthrie 14y ago|2 comments
14. 164.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    Yup - because the language extensively uses tail call optimisation, inlining and other rewriting in the execution it used to be hard to reconstruct the original state of the code on a run time failure. It is less of a pain than it seems not
15. 165.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    Come back and tell us about it sometime. Turing Festival is going great guns. http://www.turingfestival.com/
16. 166.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    You an APM now then Jenny? Is that what you are upto over in Googlererland?
17. 167.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    > Languages are not inherently OO or FP, but they support OO or FP style programming. I couldn't disagree more. Languages are as they are designed to be. Erlang is FP and Java is OO by design.
18. 168.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    I completely agree with this - and if you look at open source software that shines through. The projects with the better documentation, the thought through engagement process for new developers, the appropriate oversight, good delegation, e
19. 169.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    The only commands I can use in Vi/Vim are the ones I remember from ed, lol. Like burnt in from the 80's.
20. 170.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    > This Cicero guy seems like a very good writer Um, yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
21. 171.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    I'm sorry there is no evidence that a particular language is 'better' than any other. All human languages have very similar every day vocabularies - English happens (now) to have a very large specialist vocabulary (which wasn't available to
22. 172.▲
    by gordonguthrie 14y ago

    > current development tools somewhere a kin to Egyptian heiroglyphics. You can do the basic things like... Ah, no. Heiroglyphics is just somewhere between an alphabet and syllabary - there are 60 odd symbols and they match to sounds lik
23. 173.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    ...and the cost impact of a software developer who doesn't understand the customer and real-world scenarios is enormous. They just sit there are crank our new support calls, new support costs, worse customer experiences, slower growth rates
24. 174.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    I am not saying that all developers should always be on customer support. But all developers should sometimes be on customer support - maybe 1 day a week, maybe more.
25. 175.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    We call that 'moving' and not 'working'. Working is something that generates customer satisfaction. Moving is just anything else. Adding bodies just to run distraction for developers is adding pure waste onto payroll.
26. 176.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    Yup. How do you get to zero defect if you don't? The point is to eliminate support calls by root cause analysis: * is the software borked? * are the doco's borked? * is the user community too poor/uninformed/unsupported to generate the answ
27. 177.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    This discussion starts from the premise that developer time is the most critical thing for which you must optimize your organisation. The most critical thing is usually the customer and optimizing for the customer means doing things differe
28. 178.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    We try and do as much TTD as possible. Specification by test is the best way to drive out corner cases.
29. 179.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    I know what it does, and I want to try and use it, but I found it was incomprehensible.
30. 180.▲
    by gordonguthrie 15y ago

    It doesn't work the second time. It does capture the bug and mark it though. The system is stable and up - it just doesn't work.