gruseom

85 ms·

751.
by gruseom 13y ago
This is a great little interview with Steve Russell, of whom Norvig wrote, "So the first Lisp interpreter was the result of a programmer ignoring his boss's advice." (PAIP p. 777) Too bad it isn't longer.
752.
Computer's Screen Inspired First Video Game, 'Space War'(npr.org)
1 points by gruseom 13y ago|1 comments
753.
by gruseom 13y ago
Because it's bad both for science and for the public interest to keep this data secret. Also, many of the studies that have been suppressed do not "find that a drug works as expected". Nobody's saying that journals have
754.
Breaking the Seal on Drug Research(nytimes.com)
46 points by gruseom 13y ago|10 comments
755.
by gruseom 13y ago
The interview I cited didn't say where, explicitly; what he said was that arrangements had been made by the State Department and it was the White House holding things back. I'd like to know the answer to your question too, but I&#
756.
by gruseom 13y ago
But there was never a chance, with the Congresses Obama was handed with, that the prison would be completely shut down. You've added a critical word there with "completely". Congress blocked Obama from bringing Guantanamo i
757.
by gruseom 13y ago
Interlisp was the so-called "west coast" Lisp that emphasized an interactive programming environment and in retrospect looks more like a hybrid between Smalltalk and Lisp than modern Lisp implementations. It was developed at PARC
758.
The Interlisp Programming Environment (1981) [pdf](ics.uci.edu)
58 points by gruseom 13y ago|10 comments
759.
by gruseom 13y ago
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/courses/670Fall04/GreatWo... http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html
760.
by gruseom 13y ago
Somehow you ended up at AskHN instead of Ask Jeeves. Did you bother to search for this before asking HN? Please don't treat other people this way on HN. It's mean, and it corrodes the site for all of us.
761.
As More Attend College, Majors Become More Career-Focused(fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com)
2 points by gruseom 13y ago|0 comments
762.
by gruseom 13y ago
This does not match my experience. I write macros to make my code shorter when I notice a repeating pattern. To see what the macros do, I use macroexpand. Is debugging a problem? Well, I understand the macroexpansions so I can read them whe
763.
by gruseom 13y ago
"Don't write a macro when you could write a function instead" has been standard advice since decades before Clojure. "Macros make things horribly complicated" is nonsense, or no skilled programmer would use them. An
764.
by gruseom 13y ago
I do like old words, especially when they fit a particular concept in just the right way. But wow, your comments are really insinuating. "There's just something telling". "People who purposefully". "The lack of
765.
by gruseom 13y ago
But your comment already takes for granted that there's no purpose in studying literature other than a career in academia (presumably because education is only about careers to begin with). I'd say the battle for the things worth
766.
by gruseom 13y ago
No, it doesn't just mean anti-intellectual. It's specifically about culture, and has always included the inability to appreciate (or hostility toward) the values conveyed by art and literature. You don't get to change what wo
767.
by gruseom 13y ago
Does it mean fifty different things, though? I'd say its definition is pretty precise. I didn't realize that anyone still used the word, let alone that there was a category, "the kind of person who says 'philistine'
768.
by gruseom 13y ago
There's just something telling about a person who calls others Philistines Others? I'm talking about an attitude. (I even checked http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/philistine to make sure I had the wor
769.
by gruseom 13y ago
I agree. Education means bringing out that which is within. Training means to pull something along. The one has no particular end state in view, the other is about ensuring specific behaviors or, if you want to be cynical, producing followe
770.
by gruseom 13y ago
It's sad that the classical education is no more, but it's also true that the humanities rotted from within. Because carrying on the traditions of arts and letters was no longer considered valuable, the disciplines rushed to gut t
771.
by gruseom 13y ago
One detail from that interview that didn't get much attention: when those guys went through official channels inside NSA and brought their allegations of wrongdoing to the Inspector General, the Inspector General recommended criminal p
772.
by gruseom 13y ago
If you find the original, I'd like to see the citation. One has, I think, to be careful about applying this insight to other people. It's best in the first person.
773.
by gruseom 13y ago
Thanks. That does seem related. I wonder if it was an isolated insight or if he went into this theme in depth.
774.
by gruseom 13y ago
I'm normally biased against self-help blog posts, and even more when they quote other self-help blog posts, but this is brilliant: “Most people spend nearly all their energy trying not to change. This is what the philosopher [sic] Wil
775.
by gruseom 13y ago
Well that's a new one (to me)—I wonder if anyone else does it for that reason.
776.
by gruseom 13y ago
"In the last few years, it’s become more common for angel investors to ask for a board seat" Is that really the case? It contradicts what I've heard.
777.
by gruseom 13y ago
Not only is they the obvious alternative, it's always been perfectly good English and has been traced back to long before generic he was introduced—by Latinists who wanted to make English more proper in I forget which century. Now
778.
by gruseom 13y ago
So if it didn't start because of public transport, why did it, and what is it about?
779.
by gruseom 13y ago
It does seem like the mechanisms people have come up with for this so far are counterproductive. But the underlying problem seems to me a real one, and a hard one: how can you tell whether someone will be good to work with? The only way to
780.
by gruseom 13y ago
Holy shit! What a great comment. I love how serious inquiry into language almost always reveals that the "Rules" are wrong.

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