oddthink

23 ms·

181.
by oddthink 15y ago
As a side note, does anyone have any good examples of Javascript being used as a scripting language? I keep meaning to learn Javascript, but I don't do any web programming, and it always seems like I'd have to learn a lot of DOM and other b
182.
by oddthink 15y ago
As of the current draft, define-record-type is disjoint. They're "distinct from all existing types" and explicitly mentioned as being disjoint in the notes.
183.
by oddthink 15y ago
Odd how he dislikes both not having a way to create disjoint types and the way provided to create disjoint types (define-record-type).
184.
by oddthink 15y ago
I was thinking exactly this just last week. I started with the C64, making simple demos just for the sheer love of it all, but then I never went anywhere with it. Then things got complicated enough that "fun" just had too much overhead. As
185.
by oddthink 15y ago
I see. It seems more natural for quantum mechanics than for general relativity, though. In GR, the metric is a living, breathing thing, and I don't see how to shoehorn that into GA. Similarly, differential geometry gives you a nice, mechani
186.
by oddthink 15y ago
No, I'm not saying it's preference. I think we agree, actually. By "workflow", I meant the way your particular work tends to split across apps and windows. For me, it's a better default to switch entire applications than windows. There a
187.
by oddthink 15y ago
I prefer the Mac way. I'm stuck using Windows at work, and it's annoying to have to Alt-Tab through the last five Excel (or mail or whatever) documents to get back to the editor. I much prefer to be able to go the application I want, then f
188.
by oddthink 15y ago
What advantage does this have over traditional differential geometry? I scanned through the linked paper briefly, and didn't see much there, other than what seemed like a muddying of the concepts of a one-form and a vector, effectively alwa
189.
by oddthink 15y ago
Does anyone know of a few good examples of using Racket's GUI and drawing/canvas library? I took a look at it a few weeks ago, in the hopes of coming up with a portable way to do simple graphics examples, such as turtles and life and drawin
190.
by oddthink 15y ago
Wow, they finally stopped centering all the text in their online help! Hallelujah!
191.
by oddthink 15y ago
After hearing endless complaints about Blackboard at Hofstra, I was just left wondering what the computer science students at all these schools were doing. This stuff doesn't seem that hard. One undergrad or Master's thesis, maybe a seminar
192.
by oddthink 15y ago
I just wonder what the author thinks "fatuous" means. What on earth is a "fatuous notebook"? I do keep looking for a good netbook-like solution for recreational coding and writing while traveling. If it can run emacs/gcc/X11 as well as a 1
193.
by oddthink 15y ago
Last I checked, horizontal and vertical splitting was ambiguous, but you sound very sure your way is right. Do you have a reference to support your confidence? For example, both emacs and the Java JSplitPane call a "horizontal split" a spli
194.
by oddthink 15y ago
I wonder if walking commutes are qualitatively different. I have about a 25 minute walk to work, technically above average, but I don't find it particularly onerous, except around Christmas as I have to cross 5th avenue. I was a little surp
195.
by oddthink 15y ago
Huh. I've never worked somewhere where people do anything other than grab some food and eat it at their desks. Who has time to actually go out for lunch? One advantage of the open, trading-floor layout is that you can chat with the people a
196.
by oddthink 15y ago
It does seem like something's wrong when http://weather.gov is the best place to get weather (within the US, of course.) I just wish NOAA had an iPhone app!
197.
by oddthink 16y ago
I tried to address the re-entrant/multiple-interpreters issue in my response to jmillikin, so I won't repeat it here. The GC thing is a similar distaste for "magic." I like Lua's solution of just outright forbidding anyone from having a han
198.
by oddthink 16y ago
Yes, that's it exactly. I've grown more and more averse to implicit state. I like that in Lua, all my interactions with the interpreter are mediated by the lua_State. If I want to run two at once, I can. If I want to store a Lua object for
199.
by oddthink 16y ago
I still don't understand Guile. It makes sense as a stand-alone language implementation, but not as an embeddable one. Why isn't it re-entrant? What about multiple interpreters? Why a C-level GC like Boehm, rather than just track your own g
200.
by oddthink 16y ago
Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons!
201.
by oddthink 16y ago
I've never tried the original APL, but J and q are great interactive calculators, due to their terseness and overall structure. For example, if I want to convert a 4-item vector to fractions of the total, I can write: x <- c(1, 3, 2
202.
by oddthink 16y ago
Is there a way to tell it to use different syntax for take/drop for databases (like Sybase) that use the "select top X * from foo" syntax rather than "select * from foo limit X"?
203.
by oddthink 16y ago
Have you noticed that all of the recent press seems to be for vim? It seems like every month there's a new "I switched to vim!" post, but never a similar emacs version, or even a mention of emacs in the switch article. Note: I am not attem
204.
by oddthink 16y ago
There's also the appeal of going back to your lab notebooks after six months and not finding them a smear of graphite. To me, pencils feel the best when writing, but the smudging over time is too annoying.
205.
by oddthink 16y ago
I'm surprised that Racket is beating SBCL. When did that start happening?
206.
by oddthink 16y ago
This is only tangentially related, but try looking up "Iverson brackets" and Knuth's "Two notes on notation". One argument there is that False - True = -1 makes sign(x) = [x > 0] - [x < 0], which is convenient. I don't know of a cas
207.
by oddthink 16y ago
Ah, but a Kindle book doesn't require shelf space or storage. It's not a lump of matter you have ship when moving. You can take a pile when traveling without dislocating a shoulder. Those benefits are real; for me, storage cost overwhelms t