ken

85 ms·

841.
by ken 7y ago
In a higher-level language, I tend to have a "cat" which is generic-by-default. In a functional language, functions tend to have no side effects. What exactly is the purpose of specialization here, or mutation? Arguments like th
842.
by ken 7y ago
Do you mean the first question literally? My salary has never been well correlated with my productivity. Figuratively, in the sense of "if Lisp allows you to be so concise, why aren't your programs small?", I can report th
843.
by ken 7y ago
> For example, dynamically typed languages like Python (or Ruby, Lisp, etc.) are easy and pleasant to write. They avoid the difficulty of convincing a compiler that you’ve written your code correctly, but they’re harder for a new team me
844.
by ken 7y ago
A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrab
845.
by ken 7y ago
Liskov is one of the more famous people in the history of computing, which is right in HN's wheelhouse. I don't know who half the people are who are mentioned on the HN front page. On the one hand, I'd like it if every perso
846.
by ken 7y ago
I agree with the first part -- which is why I don't like low-level languages like C. I can't count the number of times I've encountered old C code that uses pointers and bytes and arrays, and I discover a bug, and on furthe
847.
by ken 7y ago
> Your wife drives an Audi that can't do better than 0-60 in 6.5 seconds? Not too surprising. According to [1], the A3 and A4 mostly have 0-60 times worse than 6.5s. You've got to get up to the recent A6's to beat that.
848.
by ken 7y ago
The why not use a word that doesn’t imply “go at an unsustainable pace”? There are plenty of good ones to choose from.
849.
by ken 7y ago
Even as homogeneous as the set of HN readers tends to be, we can't agree on anything. The idea that there is a singular "key that unlocks everything" in life is downright bizarre. You probably wouldn't copy her diet
850.
by ken 7y ago
I personally have no problem with the hybridization of sync/async communication. That's where everything is headed. People send emails and sometimes expect them to be delivered and/or read immediately. OTOH, people send me
851.
by ken 7y ago
It only states that it's "colored a dark sandy brown from hundreds of years of pollution and weathering". Maybe I'm being too literal, but I don't interpret this to mean that weathering and pollution are the only
852.
by ken 7y ago
The bowline has other advantages. It's also much faster to tie than a figure-8 follow-through, for example. I imagine it takes less rope, too. We use the bowline (without backup) in industry. I've never heard of anyone having a
853.
by ken 7y ago
4th paragraph of the article: > The principal advantage of the monorail cited by Shilovsky is the suppression of hunting oscillation, a speed limitation encountered by conventional railways at the time. Also, sharper turns are possible c
854.
by ken 7y ago
> CPR/Choking/First Aid course is probably close to an hour. What can you teach in only an hour? I work with some people who teach basic first aid, and the shortest course any of them does is 4.5 hours.
855.
by ken 7y ago
Two interlocked bowlines will get you this.
856.
by ken 7y ago
Learn to tie the basic knots. 3 to 5 knots will cover 95% of the situations you'll ever encounter. They're easy to learn. When someone tosses you a rope, you have no excuse for not knowing what to do with it.
857.
by ken 7y ago
As they say, the only way to know you'll never need something is to learn it. I'm not older than you and I've had to solder several times at work.
858.
by ken 7y ago
I was at a company that tried "sentiment analysis" 10 or 15 years ago. It was impossible to get right. The results were useless. It's funny how nothing seems to have changed. There's always some executive who's
859.
by ken 7y ago
The numerical tower is one of the features of Lisp that the Algol descendants have not yet stolen, and I don’t know why not. “Efficiency” is tough to believe given all the other inefficient yet nice features that have been universally adopt
860.
by ken 7y ago
I understand the "problem" from the hardware perspective, but I still don't accept their "basic answer" as reasonable. > It’s not stupid, just different. Over the past 50 years, my computer has adapted to how hum
861.
by ken 7y ago
> Theoretically, the brain can What “theory” is this? Because I’ve tried it (not by choice) in practice, many times, over the decades, and never found it to work at all . I’m genuinely curious why people think it could ever work, when
862.
by ken 7y ago
I’ve never understood how some people believe that the problem of too much noise could be solved by adding more noise. There’s too much light in my eyes, and dark glasses are uncomfortable. Well, have you tried shining another light at you
863.
by ken 7y ago
Are you suggesting a megacorp is more likely to offer private offices?
864.
by ken 7y ago
I recently called tech support for a lighting console from the mid-1990's. They were perfectly willing to have me bring it in for service. Just peek into the electrical closet in any building you're in. They don't tear out
865.
by ken 7y ago
Or as Frank Vertosick pointed out in his book, mother nature wants life in general to continue, but doesn't give a shit whether any one individual lives or not. Man-made structures do have some redundancy, but in general we don'
866.
by ken 7y ago
> When computers design things, they look very different. Yes, because the computer assumes they're not going to change. The "tensile structure" looks cool now, but throw it in the back of a truck for 3 months and see if
867.
by ken 7y ago
You mean UI issues with Firefox, compared to Safari? Gosh, where to start? - Standard keyboard shortcuts for text editing still don't work. That alone is a dealbreaker for me. - The toolbar(s) don't look or work like standard to
868.
by ken 7y ago
But Chrome is still #1 on the Mac, too. Most Mac users do download a third-party browser and use that rather than the built-in one. Just not Firefox.
869.
by ken 7y ago
Yes, Firefox on the Mac is absolutely a less-than-great product, to put it mildly. That's why I called its UI "lousy".
870.
by ken 7y ago
That's a convenient excuse on iOS, but Firefox is doing poorly on macOS, too, where no such restriction exists. According to the first statistics I found, Firefox is only about half as popular on the Mac as it in on Windows -- and it&

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