smarks

18 ms·

1. 151.▲
   by smarks 9y ago

   Coincidentally, I just bought this book the week before last. Definitely an interesting historical perspective. I've only skimmed it a bit, but one thing that struck me was at the time (1969) the metasyntax for specifying the syntax of
2. 152.▲
   by smarks 9y ago

   Usage of "intern" in this sense is much older than Common Lisp. The earliest reference I could find in a few minutes of searching is from 1974, from the MACLISP Reference Manual: http://www.softwarepreservation.org&#x2F
3. 153.▲
   by smarks 9y ago

   Also agree. Plus, if you sign up for the ACM Digital Library, you get online access to a tremendous library of papers, publications, conference proceedings, etc.
4. 154.▲
   by smarks 9y ago

   I was once on a project with a tech lead who was really good at finding bugs by inspection. In the "How to Reproduce" section of bugs he'd file, he'd always simply write "Eyeball the code."
5. 155.▲
   by smarks 10y ago

   Lysator has been around since forever. The English information page [1] says it was founded in 1973. I remember it from the early days of the Internet and possibly even from Usenet days. Among other things it has a large repository of histo
6. 156.▲
   by smarks 10y ago

   I'm curious as to how many people care about nroff/troff style man pages. I work in the group that delivers the Java JDK, and for many years we delivered nroff/troff man pages for the commands such as java, javac, javap, etc.
7. 157.▲
   by smarks 10y ago

   Very sad story. The guy's initials are immortalized in the magic number of the zip file format, the bytes of which are 0x50 0x4b 0x03 0x04 The values 0x50 0x4b are 'P' 'K' in ASCII. Note also that every Jav
8. 158.▲
   by smarks 10y ago

   Thanks for the update. Of course if there are any performance problems, I'm sure the javac team would like to hear about it, as this is something they do pay attention to.
9. 159.▲
   by smarks 10y ago

   A digression on Java compiler performance: > Java's compile times are sorta reasonable but are apparently getting worse. I'm not entirely sure what this is about. Could it have anything to do with JEP 215? [1] There were some s
10. 160.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    Essentially, someone who asks continual questions and who seems unwilling to do any work, research, or to put any effort into learning on their own. Overview is here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19665/t
11. 161.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    No generator. I just took Trump's quote about Saddam Hussein and terrorists and changed a few key words.
12. 162.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    How long until Trump says something like, "He's a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed drug dealers. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights. They didn't talk. They were pushe
13. 163.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    I'd appreciate a link to /hidden as well, as I just spent some time hunting around for one.
14. 164.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    Has it come to the point where your refrigerator has to wear a tinfoil hat?
15. 165.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    And preferably only single malt whiskey that is over 12 years old.
16. 166.▲
    by smarks 10y ago

    This was brilliant. Thanks for (re)posting it. I had never heard of Rota before. I'll have to read more about him. It's a bit sad that he lived for only a couple years after this lecture, dying at the relatively young age of 66. (
17. 167.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Exactly. That's the No True No True Scotsman Fallacy Fallacy.
18. 168.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    +1 for the phrase "information-rich sideband".
19. 169.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    I agree that the title is misleading, but I'd clarify it to "Software development as typically practiced in industry is an anti-pattern." (Maybe it also applies to government; I don't know.) It seems fairly typical in
20. 170.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Too bad. The ads were more interesting than the article. (For example, British Airways' 787 service from SJC to LHR.)
21. 171.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    (WARNING: crusty Sun old-timer memories follow) For those who aren't familiar with this, up until the mid-1990s or so, Sun let individual engineers name their own workstations. In fact many regarded this as a privilege. Each workstatio
22. 172.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    I thought "doober" was Wayne Rosing's machine. (Not that this is of any consequence....) :-)
23. 173.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Very interesting! My question is, does it work in email? At least, it might be worth trying.
24. 174.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Story #3 reminds me of a rule: if your company's name causes spontaneous laughter from multiple people, it's a bad name. This really happened: (at a party, in a group of 6-8 acquaintances) Me: Oh hi Fred, how're you doing? I
25. 175.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Not coincidentally, the NVIDIA Auditorium is in the Huang Engineering Center.
26. 176.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Ok, 37 comments so far and NOT ONE is about the talk itself? Come on, people! I went to the talk and frankly I didn't follow most of it. I also didn't get any connection to trees. But it was interesting to learn that people have s
27. 177.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    The auditorium was about 75% full. Well attended but not packed. About the same as last year IIRC.
28. 178.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Yes, I also found this quite confusing. The way this paper was attributed seems quite sloppy. It mentions previous publication at the "NCSU COE People site" and gives a link, but omits mention that this paper was originally presen
29. 179.▲
    by smarks 11y ago

    Nice article, thanks for posting it. It's ironic that this article mentions the Toyota Production System as an example of a safe and defect-free system. Another article about Toyota was posted on HN today: «Toyotas Unintended Accelerat
30. 180.▲
    by smarks 12y ago

    (Insert quip about queuing theory and unbounded wait times.)