jfarmer

25 ms·

151.
by jfarmer 11y ago
The pattern in the Ulam spiral is independent of the base we choose. They're just labels at regular intervals along a particular path. The fact that 3 is located at that particular point in the spiral is because its the third natural
152.
by jfarmer 11y ago
And possibly an indirect comment about CS Lewis, a friend and fellow "fantasy" author whose work was much more overtly allegorical.
153.
by jfarmer 11y ago
> Liberated implies that today's computers are limited in what they can do, which I disagree with. His argument is that it's programming languages (and programmers) that need to be liberated from the von Neumann style, not comp
154.
by jfarmer 11y ago
To be honest, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. It feels like you're over-interpreting the title because the author uses much more precise language in the article. From the first paragraph, where he explains the
155.
by jfarmer 11y ago
As with most things in mathematics, the varying perspectives on an object and the relationship between those perspectives are more important than what an object is per se , to the point where the idea of what an object "is" per
156.
by jfarmer 11y ago
Disclaimer: I co-founded Dev Bootcamp and still spend my time in this "space." I assume @Kalium is talking less about technical expertise and more about signaling, like a VC who invests in a company but then won't invest in a
157.
by jfarmer 11y ago
More than being an intro to Julia fractals, I think this post is a great introduction to complex numbers and functions of the complex plane[1]. The way this is presented is very similar to how most math-folk I know picture these concepts in
158.
by jfarmer 11y ago
And unless an engineer is psychic, this usually results in better, more robust products. Bonus! :D
159.
by jfarmer 11y ago
I might be misunderstanding your point about arity-related errors, but every function in JavaScript is variadic, i.e., you can pass any number of arguments to any function and JavaScript will happily call it. Excess arguments vanish into
160.
by jfarmer 11y ago
Ok, thanks for clearing that up.
161.
by jfarmer 11y ago
I gave two examples that applied to me. It doesn't take much imagination to relate them to the original story.
162.
by jfarmer 11y ago
A reaction or reflex can be sexist (or racist or classist) even if the person having that reaction is filled with all the best intentions and happy thoughts in the world. It doesn't mean the person with that reflex is a bad or terribl
163.
by jfarmer 11y ago
HN is a terrible place for "any useful dialogue" on this subject to begin with, so in this instance I'm more interested in calling a spade a spade than laying out my thinking for other folks to "Well, actually..." m
164.
by jfarmer 11y ago
> It only sees that I tried to "mansplain away" why she was misgendered as the male in the picture rather than pitching in my $0.02 as to why the mistake was a genuine mistake and not explicitly or implicitly sexist. I read you
165.
by jfarmer 11y ago
The first several languages I learned treated 0 as falsey and I can't really recall it tripping me up when I learned a language (Ruby) where that's not the case. I suppose always thought of 0-as-false as an unfortunate consequence
166.
by jfarmer 11y ago
Although it might make sense to define the modulus operator in that way, it doesn't really make sense to define remainders that way: what is the remainder of n/n?
167.
by jfarmer 11y ago
You should disable auto smart-quotes on whatever publishing platform you're using. It's changing puts 'My name is George and my age is 31' into puts ‘My name is George and my age is 31’ I noticed becau
168.
by jfarmer 11y ago
And more than that, I'd say. People who are truly brilliant in one area can often get away with being absolutely, irredeemably stupid in another because nothing in their environment ever forces them to deal with their stupidity. A b
169.
by jfarmer 11y ago
This is not true in my experience. It's just as likely that someone's "intelligence" in one area gives them a false sense of their ability to understand other areas. They'll jump into some unrelated or semi-relate
170.
by jfarmer 11y ago
The g rand p arent comment, as opposed to the parent comment or the original post.
171.
by jfarmer 11y ago
As a counterpoint to this, I like this essay: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II ( http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#13848... ). Regarding the level design of Super Metroid vs. other Metroid games, the
172.
by jfarmer 12y ago
You'll have to trust me when I say that what I'm about to write isn't personal. I have no idea what was going on in your head or heart when you wrote it and don't want to invent a story about your motivations. :) > T
173.
by jfarmer 12y ago
That quickly fails due to the nature of floating point arithmetic.
174.
by jfarmer 12y ago
The word "involution" finds more use in analysis and algebra, where self-inverses have more interesting (often geometric) properties. The only interesting property I can think of in the context of discrete mathematics would be th
175.
by jfarmer 12y ago
Indeed!
176.
by jfarmer 12y ago
If you're curious, the math-y term for an operation that is its own inverse is involution . I don't know that I've ever heard the word in a programming context, but there it is! :)
177.
by jfarmer 12y ago
For a given problem, there's often some natural monoidal structure underneath the hood even if the operations aren't explicitly part of the type signature. For example, it's "natural" for the sum of an empty list to
178.
by jfarmer 12y ago
Other "every day" monoids: - (Array, concat, []) - (Floating point numbers, min, +Infinity) - (Floating point numbers, max, -Infinity) - (Boolean, AND, true) - (Boolean, OR, false) - (Subsets of set S, un
179.
by jfarmer 12y ago
> I realize that Amazon is not in Silicon Valley Yep. In fact, it's in an entirely different state. > if it is true that white collar workers in Silicon Valley have to sign contracts like this It's not. Here, this might he
180.
by jfarmer 12y ago
There's evidence that babies acquire phonemes when "taught" in-person differently than via video: http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius... (this topic starts at about 7m08s)

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