pacala

103 ms·

961.
by pacala 14y ago
Yet another anecdote from yet another polyglot. This came up today in a review: > Java statement sequences are a monad, with a weird fold notation, for (blah : blahs) { ... }. I can live with weird notations ;)
962.
by pacala 14y ago
The Linux devices out there were all lacking a good GUI layer. From the perspective of a consumer they were primitive, ugly and barely functional.
963.
by pacala 14y ago
The value of refactoring IDEs is that they give you a cheap way to reorganize your designs as the code evolves. I see no data based evidence of your coding being faster than IDE coding. In my experience of comparing me with myself, I am an
964.
by pacala 14y ago
The split-brain of HN: 1. We dream of the tools Bret Victor is teasing us with. 2. We code in heavily customized emacs / vi. 3. We bash IDEs. I'm not sure what the point of the article is. We should not develop tools to aid large scale prog
965.
by pacala 14y ago
elimination of labor != post scarcity We are physical beings with physical needs. We can't live on thin air, we need a basic input of energy and matter to survive. But our society is organized around private property. When you are born, you
966.
by pacala 14y ago
Life. There are still parts that are tedious, and frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing anything important), and annoying.
967.
by pacala 14y ago
Programming is about fast thinking, good organization, good prioritization, continuous learning, continuous automatization, sharing and yes, good writing. The actual coding is a side-show.
968.
by pacala 14y ago
> The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. [...] Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounte
969.
by pacala 14y ago
Java + lambdas
970.
by pacala 14y ago
Exactly! There are several levels of learning. At the master level one does his job using muscle memory. Graphics help at the early levels, but to be proficient one needs to master the domain. At that level graphics are slowing down the pro
971.
by pacala 14y ago
> We don't want to encourage the conflation of errors and exceptions that occur in languages such as Java. I'm not getting this argument: checked exception == error runtime exception == panic
972.
by pacala 14y ago
The comparison is still shallow. It is regrettable that most programming languages don't support named parameters, but it's fairly trivial to imagine a language and api: DrawEllipse(x=50, y=25, width=32, height=5) No real-time rendering and
973.
by pacala 14y ago
> Default methods provide a more object-oriented solution for this problem: people.sort(comparing(Person::getLastName)); Yay function pointers.
974.
by pacala 14y ago
That is awful for anyone attempting to re-implement your API. It is totally unclear what field combinations are valid, and in time the situation is only going to get worse.
975.
by pacala 14y ago
If my return value is an Exception, I handle it in a catch block.
976.
by pacala 14y ago
The argument used to be how "Go got exceptions right". Now, it appears that the argument is about how to save a trivial amount of work for the CPU, when it's unclear whether this is a bottleneck, or whether the JIT can optimize away the two
977.
by pacala 14y ago
Sure, and you've got to check the boolean if you care. Which is almost the same as the (gasp) Java code: // don't care value = map.get(key); do bleh // care if (map.containsKey(key)) { do blah } else {
978.
by pacala 14y ago
Uhm, then don't code in Go?
979.
by pacala 14y ago
I fail to see how this is any better or worse than Java checked exceptions. You've got an error, you return an alternate value, which is handled by a different part of the code. Here is a different syntax to semantically write the exact sam
980.
by pacala 14y ago
You did the right calculations. Often the XX% increase is barely sufficient to cover the mortgage / rent differential for a hypothetic move close to the new workplace.
981.
by pacala 14y ago
History is littered by people that pompously proclaimed that X is impossible to achieve since XXX attempts have been made that failed. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Incorrect_predictions http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/neverwrk.htm
982.
by pacala 14y ago
Sure. Given enough resources anyone can copy anyone. But then Facebook will be playing catch-up and Google will become the de-facto leader. In a space where the winner takes all, you don't want to be the one that plays catch-up. Disclaimer:
983.
by pacala 14y ago
But how can advertisers target their ads to your special interests if they don't know everything about you? Advertisers are just as essential to your well being as the doctor is, if not even more. </preemptive sarcasm>
984.
by pacala 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem
985.
by pacala 14y ago
In the bigger picture of the species, death and birth are what prevents stagnation and enables the next generation tackle new challenges. We are imperfect copying machines, both at biological and intelectual level. Stop the renewal cycle an
986.
by pacala 14y ago
Thanks guys. Not a moment too soon. Humbly quoting the motivation: > What is wrong with other social services? Centralized Social Service Providers limit what you can share and who you can share with. They only allow users to interact w
987.
by pacala 14y ago
Agile A play in 3 sprints Characters A: rockstar developer B: developer C: intern ===== Sprint 1 ====== A: To a certain extent B: agile tries to narrow A: the scope of a sprint A: in order to ship more rapidly B: For people that have a gran
988.
by pacala 14y ago
The thing that doesn't work for me in Agile: being treated like a baby and spoon fed little bits of work with little room for responsibility, initiative, creativity and a personal touch. Agile is great if you are a mediocre manager and you
989.
by pacala 14y ago
I already did: > There is a function "each" that applies to arrays. "Each", for each element in the array, binds "elem" to the element value, then executes the body of the code block. The code applies "each" to array "arr" and executes
990.
by pacala 14y ago
"OP" here. The troll characterization it earned by throwing things like "Mixins vs. Multiple Inheritance" in the list of prerequisites necessary to understand the .each example, plus the strong "indoctrination" rant that precedes. One could

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