jpr

69 ms·

1. 331.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   Being super competitive isn't any good if you aren't competent to do anything that produces actual value .
2. 332.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   Remember, this is the same facebook that showed your private chat to others. Mentioning security in the same sentence implies that it is a joke.
3. 333.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   I may be naive, but how is that any different from a traditional homepage?
4. 334.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   I have found that while I mostly understand C++ as a language and respect it for what it tries to accomplish, the development environments are absolutely atrocious in many ways, and I spend more time fighting them than writing code. This
5. 335.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   Couple of questions: 1. Can the macros execute code while expanding? 2. Is there any way to use gensyms? 3. In Common Lisp, the add-macro would probably use quasiquote and unquote, like this: (defmacro add (x y) `(+ ,x ,y)) Is th
6. 336.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   2011 will be the year of the Linux on the desktop.
7. 337.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   Is it just me or is Blippy really the multi-apex of everything that is wrong with web2.0, consumerism and what-not? I hadn't even heard about it before, and now I wish I didn't know.
8. 338.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   I find that with a good, type-aware compiler such as SBCL, Common Lisp hits a really sweet spot on the typing issue. It catches a crapload of mistakes at compile time that would be runtime errors in Python (the language, incidentally the SB
9. 339.▲
   by jpr 16y ago

   If you don't know how to write a pattern matching library in Lisp, you don't really know Lisp and should probably refrain from spreading misinformation about it.
10. 340.▲
    by jpr 16y ago

    To me, that sounds more like an argument against software that requires serial numbers to work, rather than for splattering stickers on laptops.
11. 341.▲
    by jpr 16y ago

    You do realize that testing can only show the existence of bugs, not their absence or the correctness of the program?
12. 342.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    There probably aren't. I don't know if tells more about the projects or the state of software in general. I'd bet on the latter.
13. 343.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Python seems to be the best argument against misunderstood pseudo-OO since C++ and Java. "While 3A is shorter, I think it is much less clear then 3B, 3C or 3D, the class examples. I think of a closure in terms of an outer function that need
14. 344.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Or maybe don't: http://arthurdevany.com/articles/20091028
15. 345.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Also, reference counting can't handle cyclic structures gracefully. Just say no to it.
16. 346.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Rather strange rant. I hope it was trying to be funny, but if so, it failed miserably. Anyway, what I find interesting is that Java really is very slow in one thing: startup time. My completely unscientific test concluded that a hello wor
17. 347.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Wrong on both accounts.
18. 348.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    It is easy to criticize something without providing an alternative.
19. 349.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Why wait? http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux....
20. 350.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    > I do know that if there was a silver-bullet language that was 100% "secure", everyone would be using it. This is completely false. Almost nobody in the software industry cares about safety. This can be proven trivially just by compari
21. 351.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    I think it's time someone lifted mainstream programming languages from the world of control-structures that some guys in the sixties thought were enough. I cringe every time I see C/C++/Java/C#/etc. code that would benefit hugely from more
22. 352.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Ruby is known as the slowest and memoryhungriest language in common use today, is there any reason why people should know how it achieves that? How does this advance the state of the art?
23. 353.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    I'll stop bashing languages as soon as they stop being insultingly bad. For many languages that would mean death. I'm okay with that.
24. 354.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    I think newbie should first learn multiple different languages. Say, C, a Lisp-dialect, one statically typed functional language like Haskell or ML, a scripting language like, a current mainstream language like Java or C#, a shell language,
25. 355.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Equality and comparisons in presence of subclassing etc. are not the business of a sane man. I think it is impossible to write an .equals() in java that satisfies all the relevant laws people usually assume from it.
26. 356.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Neither was yours.
27. 357.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    Well, polymorphic lists are one thing that are somewhat awkward. Other thing is that a small change in some part of program (say introducing an additional parameter, or having to use IO or state) can require massive changes in rest of the p
28. 358.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    That would be funny if it wasn't so insulting for modern VB. Python is the oldschool BASIC for science.
29. 359.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    So, you are saying that a woman weighing 100 pounds with 20% bodyfat will burn the same amount of calories as a male weighing 200 pounds with 10% bodyfat? Do you realize how little sense that makes?
30. 360.▲
    by jpr 17y ago

    I think Common Lisp standard requires implementations to have both interpreter and compiler, but allows some freedom how to do it. Some implementations compile to byte code (I think CLISP does this), and some compile to native code on the f