rkts

9 ms·

31.
by rkts 18y ago
I was thinking of posting a question very similar to this one, though the details of my situation are pretty different. See, I've been alone for most of my life. Alone in the sense that I've only ever had two or three real friends, and I o
32.
by rkts 18y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Haskell is only used for writing toy programs. I meant that Haskell people gravitate toward problems that are functional in nature. Many such programs are useful, though rarely in isolation. If you're wo
33.
by rkts 18y ago
You keep saying that, but I've never heard a justification for it that wasn't totally Kool-Aid flavored. I'm all for safety in the sense of catching errors at compile time, provided they can be caught with minimal help from the programmer
34.
by rkts 18y ago
Haskell has two useful features that are missing from the languages you mentioned: 1. Strong static typing 2. Pattern matching (1) tends to make development go faster (in my experience) by catching your mistakes early and locating them more
35.
by rkts 18y ago
Summary: author defines a "self" as something with a fixed, consistent set of desires; observes that people have changing, inconsistent sets of desires; concludes that people are made of "many different selves." What an insight.
36.
by rkts 18y ago
So that explains why conservatives have higher birth rates, live in low crime areas, oppose abortion and favor traditional family structures! Wait...
37.
by rkts 18y ago
cf. Hume, 1757 "In proportion as any man's course of life is governed by accident, we always find, that he encreases in superstition; as may particularly be observed of gamesters and sailors, who, though, of all mankind, the least capable o
38.
by rkts 18y ago
How would you do this in Haskell? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222189
39.
by rkts 18y ago
The Mac dialog has a lot of text, yes, but it requires less reading to be understood, which, empirically, is what seems to matter most. If you watch people use your software, one thing you notice right away is that many of them don't read A
40.
by rkts 18y ago
The problem is that users typically read as little as is necessary to figure out what to do next--and very often, not even that much. Since the Windows dialog must be read entirely to be understood, it's more likely to be misinterpreted.
41.
by rkts 18y ago
Looks like yet another journalist who doesn't understand correlation vs. causation.
42.
by rkts 18y ago
Someone ought to write a script that scans every submission for the words "startup," "Paul Graham," and "Y Combinator" and posts some variation of "Not Hacker News!!!!!" whenever it doesn't find them. At least it would save you all some ef
43.
by rkts 18y ago
Arc: (let (foo bar) nil ...)
44.
by rkts 18y ago
You don't have to program directly in an AST to do metaprogramming. It's a trade-off: some people feel it's important to make metaprogramming as easy as possible, while others feel it's more important to have readable syntax. Every Lisp di
45.
by rkts 18y ago
The earlier versions were better, before esr fucked up the sections on politics and personality. Here's the first version in which that appendix appeared; search for "this profile". http://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-2.3.1.dos.txt
46.
by rkts 18y ago
> it's mainly devoted to proving that African-Americans have lower IQs because of inferior genetics No, it isn't.
47.
by rkts 18y ago
If we were talking about purely functional languages, then I would agree. But Lisp isn't purely functional; it has assignment and loops and arrays and all the rest. You can program in the subset of Lisp that allows the same "mental model"
48.
by rkts 18y ago
C is more difficult than Lisp or OCaml, but it's extremely popular.
49.
by rkts 18y ago
I wonder if personality has something to do with it. My guess is that language snobs are INTP, whereas Blub programmers are more INTJ. From the descriptions at http://www.personalitypage.com/portraits.html : "INTPs value knowledge above
50.
by rkts 18y ago
I agree with this to some extent, but I think the author goes too far. The purpose of math education is not to make theoretical mathematicians. Only a small number of students in math classes will become mathematicians, and the rest are a
51.
by rkts 18y ago
> the conclusions we come to about the world around us are the largest factor Also known as "the blank slate theory." Or mostly-blank, if you want to be pedantic.
52.
by rkts 18y ago
The funny thing about that quote is that it defeats itself.
53.
by rkts 18y ago
Technically true, but sophist's experience is consistent with scientific findings. Sibling studies have repeatedly shown that genes do account for a significant amount of variation in behavior. While environment plays a role as well, the
54.
by rkts 18y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death "The historical level of maternal deaths is probably around 1 in 100 births." However: "Mortality rates reached horrible proportions in maternity institutions in the 1800s, sometimes climbing to
55.
by rkts 18y ago
It's also too inefficient to belong anywhere in the vicinity of working code. Beautiful, elegant, useless. Maybe that should be the Haskell motto.
56.
by rkts 18y ago
I agree. As with "OOP," the term "functional programming" is too broad to be the subject of a meaningful discussion about language design. It's better to break the term down into its sub-concepts, which are often independent of each other
57.
by rkts 18y ago
I'm not sure what your point is, but I think you're attacking a straw man. I didn't say that all people conform to the expectations of their peer group in all ways at all times. That statement is trivial to disprove.
58.
by rkts 18y ago
Geeks do not conform as much to the norms of society at large, but they do conform within their own groups. Conformity is a universal human trait. Also, I don't see what your ad hominems contribute to this discussion.
59.
by rkts 18y ago
Isaac Newton was highly religious and he was smarter than any Digg user. In fact, most smart people in Newton's time were religious. Atheism in those days was associated with poor uneducated people, the same way racism is today. Doesn't
60.
by rkts 18y ago
Do you have any data to support that claim? The conservatives I know oppose gay marriage because they consider it immoral, not because of some abstract stuff about the democratic process.

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