pauldirac137

6 ms·

1.
by pauldirac137 4mo ago
Marshall was a panelist on the ArrayCast podcast ( https://www.arraycast.com/ ) which discusses all things relating to array languages. He's sadly missed :(
2.
by pauldirac137 3y ago
The author says: "If you have a reason to think that OCaml is the best choice for a new project please let me know your use case, I’m genuinely curious." I think it's overwhelmingly the best language for writing an interpret
3.
by pauldirac137 5y ago
Nano is OK, I guess, but it's a bit bloated. Now ed(1) -- that's an editor!
4.
by pauldirac137 6y ago
J is not closed source and hasn't been for a while. https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource
5.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Can you be more specific? Show us the code that isn't working.
6.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
I would hesitate to call polymorphic variants "part of the OO infrastructure". They are really orthogonal to OO, but they do make OO less necessary. Ironically, OCaml has a really nice OO system but it's rarely used because
7.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
You're right, but ST is also implemented using unsafePerformIO. The larger point is that you don't need to dress up a type signature with ST or IO just to use imperative code internally which can't leak out to the user level
8.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Well, maybe "writing a compiler"? or "building a multimillion-dollar Wall Street financial services firm"? :-) In fact, I love and use both Haskell and Ocaml, and I view the two languages as cousins. Both are functiona
9.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
This is exactly the problem that modular implicits will solve. See http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01895.pdf
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by pauldirac137 10y ago
Correct. Multicore _may_ come in 4.04 if we're lucky. No ETA for modular implicits AFAICT, but I really want them ASAP; they will be a game-changer.
11.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
If you've been away from Ocaml for a while, this would be a great time to check out what's changed. A package manager, a new optimizer, and we'll soon have modular implicits (think Haskell-style type classes, but better) and
12.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Harper is nowhere near as bad, fortunately. No F-bombs, for one thing. Harper is opinionated, curmudgeonly and sometimes arguably unfair, but he always backs up his opinions with reasoned arguments. Even when you don't like the way
13.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Yeah, when reading Harper it's best to skip over the opinion parts and just read the technical content (which is fortunately plentiful). I always feel as if he's jealous of Haskell's success.
14.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Modules are strictly more powerful than Haskell type classes (at least, more powerful than naive type classes; there are so many extensions that I'm not sure that is still the case). Modular implicits are described here: http:/&
15.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Agree with everything you said, and I'd also add polymorphic variants. I too am a Haskeller now writing mostly Ocaml. I view the two languages as cousins. Both have great features the other doesn't. Both are worth learning and
16.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
F# is nice but it doesn't have the Ocaml module/functor system, which is a huge loss in expressiveness. It does have seamless .NET interoperability, which is a big win in some cases. YMMV. Both are good languages.
17.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
I completely disagree. I'm a typoholic to the core. For the last five years I've mostly been programming in Haskell, but lately I've come back to Ocaml and I have to say it's improved massively and continues to do so.
18.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
All the minor syntax issues in Ocaml are just that, minor. After a week of coding in Ocaml you won't even notice them. The operator underloading is the most annoying, but with modular implicits on the way that will probably go away.
19.
by pauldirac137 10y ago
Named parameters in Ocaml are not a syntax extension. http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/lablexamples.html...
20.
by pauldirac137 11y ago
You thought right. Ocaml is an impure functional language.
21.
by pauldirac137 12y ago
Abelson and Sussman's _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp
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by pauldirac137 13y ago
Bester is one of my favorite SF writers, and it's almost criminal how few people know about his work. In addition to The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination (the latter my all-time favorite SF novel), he also wrote probably th
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by pauldirac137 14y ago
Cannot upvote enough.
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by pauldirac137 14y ago
I would have told them that I had no idea what that was, but then told them what the "Liskov Substitution Principle" (named after Barbara Liskov of MIT) was. I mean seriously, if a company can't spell, do you want to work there? :-)
25.
by pauldirac137 14y ago
Better not tell this to Mitt Romney.
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by pauldirac137 15y ago
Excellent stuff! Thanks, Eli! OP: It's Barzilay, not Barzila.
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by pauldirac137 16y ago
Note also that this is "Hacker News", so a computer science orientation shouldn't be surprising.
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by pauldirac137 16y ago
This post is talking about monads in the context of programming languages (specifically the Haskell programming language), NOT in the context of philosophy. The programming-monad concept in turn is derived from the concept of monad in cate
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by pauldirac137 16y ago
Maybe Gilad Bracha's opinions on monads might not matter. This post/rant would be more persuasive if one got the impression that the author knows more about what he's talking about. One crucial aspect of monads Bracha ignores is that monad
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by pauldirac137 16y ago
This is an interesting read. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of learning new and unfamiliar languages (note that "new" rarely means "unfamiliar" since most languages just rehash old concepts). When you have a completely different toolkit

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