neilk

297 ms·

2341.
by neilk 19y ago
In Canada, Waterloo is head and shoulders above the rest for almost anything. Ian Goldberg teaches there now, so there's at least one world-class security researcher. I believe there are plenty of startups in the area, but I don't have firs
2342.
by neilk 19y ago
What does Sarbanes-Oxley have to do with locking down parts of the source tree? I worked there a couple of years after you did, and there were a few parts of the source tree that were not public, but that was usually for crypto reasons. Con
2343.
by neilk 19y ago
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html#e-postag...
2344.
by neilk 19y ago
Wow. I had no idea HyperCard was available for the II, but according to Wikipedia, a version existed for the IIgs. Was that it?
2345.
by neilk 19y ago
Ok, your notion of walking a graph is not incorrect, but there's a MUCH simpler way to look at your problem: combinations. You basically have a stream of tokens (x), and some of these tokens (C) are contractible. In other words, they have a
2346.
by neilk 19y ago
I don't know enough Ruby to refactor this, but using continuations to enumerate possibilities seems like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Am I understanding correctly that your goal is just to arrive at the tail call of 'contract_sentenc
2347.
by neilk 19y ago
To me, the idea that they went back to a thirty-year old algorithm is the one credible thing in the whole story. Almost nobody reads old papers in computer science. Somewhere out there in the libraries are the computing equivalents of tran
2348.
by neilk 19y ago
Why is 3D better? I'm not Superman. When I want to go to a local business, I don't fly there. It always amazes me how geeks will ooh and aah over any 3D interface. But the three-dimensional world is extremely inconvenient for conveying mo
2349.
by neilk 19y ago
BREAKING: Y Combinator News is turning into Reddit.
2350.
by neilk 19y ago
Unless we're talking about a patented technology, IMO you shouldn't even consider the initial idea when discussing equity. If I were in a startup, I'd want it to be a total free-for-all where new ideas are valued. Not one where the older id
2351.
by neilk 19y ago
Nice bait. I can't wait to hear what the switch is.
2352.
by neilk 19y ago
I checked out your blog. Someone who blogs about Scala doesn't need schooling from me on CS. ;) I think I see what you're doing now. Ok, to tell you the truth -- this is something I've wondered about recently myself. I happen to know about
2353.
by neilk 19y ago
Response #1: By which you mean, one makes the other possible? In the middle ages, can you imagine the trouble it was to make your own ink, collect and maintain quills of the appropriate type, train oneself to wield the quill skillfully and
2354.
by neilk 19y ago
You know, it is possible to do important things, even important things with computers, and not be cut out for a life in business. Once upon a time, for hackers, it was considered a step down to work in industry. However, it's since been
2355.
by neilk 19y ago
That's an interesting point. But... I'm someone who came from an arts degree and sort of turned myself into a reasonable facsimile of an engineer. I personally regret not having done things the other way round. The problem with arts degrees
2356.
by neilk 19y ago
Unfortunately, he's right. This isn't so much because engineering is great, or the only way to make your mark on the world. The problem is that today's arts faculties just suck. It's possible to graduate knowing things that only matter w
2357.
by neilk 19y ago
He lost me at #1. Technically, there's so many things Rails and Ruby can do that PHP can't. If he means it pragmatically (they're both data/web connect-o-thingies), then he has a point.
2358.
by neilk 19y ago
Wow. This guy just rewrote my exegesis of a Perl one-liner from about seven years ago. He links to the original, but his much more verbose explanation adds little. http://montreal.pm.org/tech/neil_kandalgaonkar.shtml Every now and then so
2359.
"The Big O" - writer muses on the temptations of computer science(ftrain.com)
3 points by neilk 19y ago|0 comments
2360.
by neilk 19y ago
Seconding this. (Except, the old-as-the-hills Red Hat Google desktop is called GRHAT). There are many companies in the Valley that hack up an OS distro for internal use, either on the desktop or in server farms. It's not that big of a deal.
2361.
by neilk 19y ago
The only part I slightly disagree with is number seven, "Don't have multiple people editing the same code". It is best to have clear ownership of the design of a component, and consultation before major changes. But if you design for readab
2362.
by neilk 19y ago
There is a minor gem here; some function called 'tpl_set' which appears to inject values directly into templates that will be called later.
2363.
by neilk 19y ago
Short operators, explicitly local variables, more operators are favored rather than overloading, and a built-in hashtable type? This sounds alarmingly like Perl. ;)
2364.
by neilk 19y ago
Try to find something in their experience that matches the point you're making. Maybe, get them to remember their most favorite class project, or project outside of school. Point out how the best parts of such work might be the freedom, the
2365.
by neilk 20y ago
YC folks: I sure hope you told this crew about password hashing.
2366.
by neilk 20y ago
Could this have any practical application to software testing? If there is any analogy here, perhaps one could transmute a program into something that crashed or failed more immediately if it was buggy. Of course even if that worked, one