tmcb

9 ms·

61.
by tmcb 3y ago
> OO is not a natural way of programming. That is quite a bold claim. Can we define what is a "natural" way of programming? From my experience you are exposed to one or many programming paradigms and then, when required, you
62.
by tmcb 3y ago
I understand what you mean, but this is not the point I was trying to get across with my original comment. Maybe that's the reason why I haven't touched this subject. Although both languages can be easily embedded, the programm
63.
by tmcb 3y ago
I've done a fair amount of programming in Lua in the past but it still feels different from Tcl. Back in 2010 I would probably compare Lua to (a better) JavaScript due to its prototype-based nature. JavaScript evolved in a different
64.
by tmcb 3y ago
Tcl is a little gem of programming lore, an ugly duckling story where the ducklings are LISPs instead. One of the most mind-blowing things to me as a (perpetual) Tcl noob is that when you look at proc my_function {x} { puts $x
65.
by tmcb 3y ago
Yes. It was poor wording on my part trying to encompass all these situations under a generic description. But these are excellent examples of what I was trying to convey. Thanks.
66.
by tmcb 3y ago
The worst outcome is that individuals may have sensitive information in their medical history that could be poorly received by their social circles if it becomes public. In extreme cases, this could even lead to threats on their life. Consi
67.
by tmcb 5y ago
> Doesn't the inclusion of the digital accuracy checkers then decrease the efficiency, and mean you might as well use a completely digital computer? Not really. Whatever output the analog computer returns can be digitized with no d
68.
by tmcb 5y ago
I have no experience with analog computers at all, but I think those could be less of a problem as of today. You could plug a bunch of digital sensors/controllers/actuators to the analog computing unit to monitor for those, which
69.
A new surgical tool – the IKEA pencil (2010)(sciencedaily.com)
2 points by tmcb 5y ago|0 comments
70.
by tmcb 5y ago
Oh, thank you, I should have paid more attention to the original article as well. As a complete layman on the topic, I am kind of wary of (fully) homomorphic encryption. Not sure if I understand it right, but it seems to me that anybody in
71.
by tmcb 5y ago
Not only that, but if they can generate meaningful targeted advertising from encrypted data, that would be pretty a strong indicator that the encryption method is not strong enough. Ideally, encrypted data must be indistinguishable from ra
72.
by tmcb 6y ago
That seems to do the trick for an individual predefined operator specification. Thanks!
73.
by tmcb 6y ago
Oh, thanks for pointing it out. Honestly, I was more interested in leveraging the type system than on proper dimensional analysis. I could find no mechanism by which Ada allows the programmer to disable the default operation overloads, so
74.
by tmcb 6y ago
I am not an Ada expert, but I came up with this. Please notice that the idea here is not to have the compiler do proper dimensional analysis but simply to avoid the default operator overloading of "*" for the Distance type that a
75.
by tmcb 6y ago
Back when I was a Linux user, I used to do almost the same thing. With regards to the fonts, though, I preferred the URW Nimbus familiy[1], which I found by accident on a pre-installed Debian package. I have also experimented with the GNU F
76.
by tmcb 6y ago
It is really hard for me to reply to that comment. I would say, first, that I need a definition for absolute information, as I have been insisting that information is defined on mutual terms. If we move past that, though, information about
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by tmcb 6y ago
> You seem fundamentally confused about the objects of study of information theory. It is hard to argue against your slightly condescending remark if my comment is not accurate, which is still up to debate. I am sure I could not observe
78.
by tmcb 6y ago
I am delving into speculation here, since I am not familiar with AIT and I don’t know any other definition of algorithmic information besides mutual information as defined by Kolmogorov which, remember, relies on Kolmogorov complexity but i
79.
by tmcb 6y ago
If I could edit the parent comment, I would replace “our brains” by “an observer”, which is common physics parlance. As far as I know, all uses of information-theorical approaches outside of its original scope also involve a scenario where
80.
by tmcb 6y ago
My understanding is that, in order to recognize information, you should at least compare it to the outputs of a source of entropy. It is a common mistake to conflate information and entropy. A bad analogy to mechanics is that the outputs of
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by tmcb 6y ago
Indeed, he was not the first at all. The concept of thermodynamic entropy predates, with a huge margin, its information theoretical counterpart. You make it look like I am saying there is a mystical property of the human brain that backs th
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by tmcb 6y ago
I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fu
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by tmcb 6y ago
The blog entry is quite good, but it seems to suggest that the breakthrough consists in analyzing living organisms through the lenses of information theory. This is not a mistake in itself, but a shallow perspective nonetheless: information
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by tmcb 7y ago
It is an analogy. I will move on to another one. Competent developers, on the other hand, have extreme trust on the judgment of their peers. They know they won't break the production build at will; if they ever do, they will use all in
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by tmcb 7y ago
I usually don’t draw diagrams, but my mind works better with what I usually call “tiny examples”: working code unrelated to the main codebase. Most of the time I have pen and paper with me, but I never do anything fancy with it. The advanta
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by tmcb 7y ago
There is also a big difference between a profession that respects the intelligence of their peers and one where people assume that their peers are ignorant and lack common sense. Surgeons must act fast and be good at multitasking. I bet the
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by tmcb 7y ago
This sarcastic remark is entirely misguided. Broken crap does not generate revenue; working code does. But, oftentimes, no code is as effective as broken code, and takes longer to fix. This is when you should use your judgment. “Break thing
88.
by tmcb 7y ago
Thing is, they do, but not in the ways you would expect. Cadavers on medical schools. Wind tunnel modeling. Computer-aided designs. The main difference to those is that the software industry can indulge on testing its own assets with littl
89.
by tmcb 7y ago
What are the consequences when you try to move fast and not just break things, but fail? - It takes longer to resolve incidents. - You lose customer confidence and sales. - Employees burn out, and you have a high turnover rate.
90.
by tmcb 7y ago
> All too many of our software systems are, architecturally, little more than shantytowns. Investment in tools and infrastructure is too often inadequate. Tools are usually primitive, and infrastructure such as libraries and frameworks,

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