mgreenbe

13 ms·

31.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Proof-carrying code is a fine idea, but the proofs for JS programs get into subtle security ideas, confidentiality and integrity being the big two. Information-flow type systems can address this, but I'm not sure I would call them producti
32.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
This is great. Computation exists outside of computers, and this seems like a great approach to highlight that idea. I only read http://csunplugged.com/~csunplug/programming-languages-0 , but it gives a pretty good summary of the basic i
33.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Agreed. The mainstream parties today are so overloaded that I suspect noone fits their stereotypes completely. The amount of finger-pointing and name-calling attributable to this sort of misconception is unfathomable, and I think it's one
34.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I wasn't thinking of callbacks, but rather of the generic plumbing for, e.g., GUI elements that contain other GUI elements. And I never suggested it was necessary, only useful: it's nice to have Button be a type, but it's also nice to have
35.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Why ask this question about Java in particular? I think the real question is whether inheritance is useful in nominal type systems with objects and interfaces. And I think the real answer is yes. Inheritance is very nice in the API for GU
36.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Matlab does have a lot of great features like ... clean syntax Are we talking about the same Matlab? The one where you get one function per file? Can someone in the know add more detail, i.e., is any of this due to proprietary algo
37.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Is there something in the setting described not resolved by (the dictionary-passing implementation of) typeclasses? The modeling problem described seems more like the problem of modeling "top levels" in general than generic functions in pa
38.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
MVC never made a great deal of sense to me, in that I've never really seen a system that entirely embodies what's described. Nevertheless, programming Javascript is tough because it's easy to confuse the DOM---the view---with the client-si
39.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Seriously. Anonymous functions without a sane lexical system is asking for trouble, though marking closure variables will mitigate the problems a little. I agree that PHP's house is on fire, but PHP has such a big house that I'm not sure i
40.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Having slowly switched to a (nearly) completely DIY diet over the past six years, I've lost about 25 or 30 pounds, though I have a small frame (5'10") and was never particularly heavy to begin with (170lb or so down to 145lb). Food you mak
41.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Of course programming languages involve trade-offs. Concrete syntax trade-offs abound, but more important are semantic trade-offs. Many are of the form feature vs. performance. Dispatch? Memory safety? Laziness? Otherss are more compl
42.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
It is an object lesson in concrete syntax design. This result probably won't be of interest to Perl hackers for precisely that reason.
43.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I didn't mean to snipe: the "funny" I'm using is in a "cite original sources" mode, which has little/nothing to do with the non-academic world. :)
44.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Recursive subroutines that concatenate/sum to a global variable or a carry-along output variable Wow...I didn't see this in the article. That is downright boneheaded. Is accumulator-passing style forbidden for a reason? It's a
45.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
First, I don't buy the post's statistics. 65% of the subjects administered every shock in the experiment. But when we believe that someone knows more than us about a subject, they can get us to do what they want most of the time
46.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
When someone points out in a comment that this could be seen as verbal nitpicking, he responds well: ...the issue arises because there are the people who understand and use the terms interchangeably, relying on other readers to be
47.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
It's not clogged from the machine's perspective, but the user's. The problem is cleanly maintaining a computer with a registry that's gone through hundreds of OS updates and driver/application installs and uninstalls.
48.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I'm happy to see you agree, but---to play devil's advocate against my own belief/desire---consider the following Mad Lib: An online reference crosslinking lay and expert knowledge would be an excellent resource, is technically achievable, a
49.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
IANAL, but I totally agree---algorithmic law is a frightful prospect indeed, not to mention totally untrue to our legal tradition. The second point the article makes is a good one, though. Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw are useful tools, but they
50.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
It's funny to see Haskell and TDD mentioned without QuickCheck http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Introduction_to_QuickChec... . But, yes: referential transparency and functional (rather than sequential) composition make for a different re
51.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
This is one of my favorite optimizations. It is excellent argument in favor of purity restrictions, too. I didn't know there was a way to instrument the compiler---neat!
52.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Absolutely. My early programming courses all had code-writing on the written exams, all in Scheme. (I think Scheme is particularly well-suited to paper, though, because of its minimal syntax and its "general recursion for everything" appr
53.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
A little bit of a tease: Unfortunately, the right way to deal with the ego dilemma is tricky and complex and deserves an entire post of it’s own. It really involves revamping your entire belief structure into something deeply p
54.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I agree heartily. Native speakers who are willing to correct you---and not default to some better, common language---are the best resource possible. I've been in a few immersion programs, and they're all okay. The best I've seen was ulpa
55.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Already been posted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578632
56.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I think his point is more subtle than that. Informal paper math doesn't always neatly line up with formal, computer-processed math---such as numerical processing or theorem proving. This disconnect can be extremely frustrating: I want t
57.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
It's standard procedure in academia---in CS, at the very least---to notify the people you're correcting in advance. This ensures that they (a) know about the problem, (b) are aware of your efforts and can comment directly to you, and (c) c
58.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Take it up with Dijkstra. I learned QBasic at around the same age, as well, and I don't feel impaired either---though Scheme certainly changed things at around age 14. I'm sure he was talking about Other People.
59.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
I'm surprised to see that it doesn't mention's Dijkstra's aphorism: It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated b
60.
by mgreenbe 17y ago
Wait...you're telling me techne and episteme aren't the same? And that it's hard to reconcile craft and science using the tools of science alone? Whatever will we do ? As a fun aside, Connell's misunderstanding of the Church-Turing thesi

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