rkts

13 ms·

61.
by rkts 18y ago
Ok, but the point is, if you're willing to call people "crazy" because of their political opinions, I doubt that you're as committed to intellectual diversity as you claim to be.
62.
by rkts 18y ago
So, just to be clear: you're saying that anyone who cares more about gay marriage than the government's budget is crazy?
63.
by rkts 18y ago
> you would have to roll your own thunks by passing anonymous functions... all that boilerplate becomes tedious. In many cases you could just define plain functions and have a way to denote what parts of the input should be converted to
64.
by rkts 18y ago
I agree that Lispers sometimes overestimate the usefulness of macros. A lot of supposedly powerful macros can be (and are, in other languages) replaced by plain functions. I ranted about this on the Arc forum recently, but no one seemed t
65.
by rkts 18y ago
This is definitely not going well: "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. 'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not
66.
by rkts 18y ago
x++; public static void main.
67.
by rkts 18y ago
I think that should be (xdef 'cos cos) etc.
68.
by rkts 18y ago
Yes, exactly. Too many people think society should be designed exclusively for them. They don't realize that what's good for them is not necessarily good for the world.
69.
by rkts 18y ago
Can you give a few examples of SML's "many, many restrictions"? The only things I can think of that fit that description are the value restriction and lack of first-class polymorphism, but neither of these should have a serious effect on p
70.
by rkts 18y ago
I don't get what you're saying about "genetic propagation" -- we aren't talking about a previously nonexistent gene spreading to every individual, just a change in the statistical distribution of genes. All that requires is for certain kin
71.
by rkts 18y ago
Is God imaginary? No way! Implying that is the essence of atheism. Giving something a nasty name isn't enough to prove that it's wrong. You have to actually refute it. > Did white people steal the "rule the world" gene? Of course not
72.
by rkts 19y ago
I think we have a false dichotomy here. What we call 'intuition' and 'rigor' are not necessarily opposed. I think the problem with math classes is not any lack or excess of rigor, but that they focus too much on details instead of the gen
73.
by rkts 19y ago
What point am I missing? That we should ignore reality to avoid hurting people? I object to the article's claim that > the roots of many handicaps actually lie in the stereotypes.... women’s performance on spatial and mathematical task
74.
by rkts 19y ago
Stereotypes probably do reinforce themselves somewhat. But this doesn't change my opinion that they are almost always true. Or at least, they are always grounded in fact. They may be exaggerated, outdated or oversimplified, but even so I
75.
by rkts 19y ago
> why I think long multiplication/division became popular? It's easier to grade homework. No, it became popular because it used to be necessary. Math education (at all levels) is designed to teach 'how' rather than 'what' and this made
76.
by rkts 19y ago
Amusingly, the methods she described are almost exactly how I do arithmetic. And when I can't solve a problem mentally I do just grab a calculator. I don't recall using long multiplication or long division since I was in elementary scho
77.
by rkts 19y ago
He's criticized the lack of a generic print function, calling it "a face-smashing insult to usability." http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/when-polymorphism-fails Note that like many of the alleged deficiencies of OCaml, this was a compro
78.
by rkts 19y ago
I love OCaml. It's Lisp + syntax + type safety + speed. Lots of speed. Theoretically, I know that Lisp is a more expressive language, but I always find myself programming in OCaml anyway--perhaps just because the code is easier for me to
79.
by rkts 19y ago
To be clear, this is what ML's variant types are all about. You can easily create a list that contains e.g. both ints and chars: let mylist = [`Int 5; `Char '5'] Technically the elements have the same compile-time type, but the ques
80.
by rkts 19y ago
No, it doesn't. Elements of a Java collection must all be of the same type. The elements may be implicitly coerced to a common supertype, but if you want to get the original types back you have to downcast--which is basically explicit dyn
81.
by rkts 19y ago
If you want fundmantal, intuitive understanding I suggest What is Mathematics? by Courant and Robbins. I got this after pg recommended it in an essay, and it's wonderful.
82.
by rkts 19y ago
An official implementation.
83.
by rkts 19y ago
The word "OOP" is so ill-defined that we can't begin to have a meaningful discussion unless you tell us precisely what you mean by it. In particular, what is an "object" and how is it different from a collection of closures?
84.
by rkts 19y ago
Functional programmers tend to avoid iterators since they aren't referentially transparent. Instead, operations on collections are expressed with higher-order functions that map or fold some function over each element. If you need a first
85.
by rkts 19y ago
Hmm... well, BSD init is easier to use than SysV init. The ports system is also known for its simplicity. The source code is contained in a single CVS tree and the entire OS can be built with a few commands. The man pages and handbook ar
86.
by rkts 19y ago
I don't understand your question. Do you mean you want an aspect of FreeBSD that's easier to use?
87.
by rkts 19y ago
It typically has less to do with performance or stability than with ease of use. While Linux is piling on features, BSD focuses on clean design and quality of code and documentation. Linux is "do it now," BSD is "do it right."
88.
by rkts 19y ago
This story and the mention of MIT's "high suicide rate" remind me of something I've wondered about. Depression and suicide seem to be common among very smart people. Does anyone know why?
89.
by rkts 19y ago
The ISC license seems to fit your style.
90.
by rkts 19y ago
I disagree strongly on the ports collection. I find it more flexible, up-to-date and easy to use than Debian's packages.

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