veddox

45 ms·

391.
by veddox 8y ago
We use Julia in our group and I really like it: the language design is pretty neat and it offers a very good performance. I don't know of any libraries targeted specifically at agent-based modelling, though. (But in the end, as an expe
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by veddox 8y ago
This is interesting. We've been thinking quite a bit about parallelising our model, but haven't managed it yet. The problem is that although our agents are mostly independent of each other, they all depend on the shared state of t
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by veddox 8y ago
I am in a research group that does ecological modelling, so I've heard a fair bit about NetLogo, though I haven't used it myself. I quite like its approach - like you say, it's a very natural way to do agent-based modelling.
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by veddox 8y ago
It isn't for nothing that we often describe programming as "talking" to a computer. Programming is a language, and as the alphabet replaced pictograms in human languages, so characters and words continue to be a useful and ab
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by veddox 8y ago
I don't think anybody here is denying that Google has done a lot of great things, and on the whole they still have a great reputation as a company to work for. However, past good deeds don't excuse current bad deeds. Even if they
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by veddox 8y ago
Like/dislike of a person isn't a binary value. I can think of several people who are very dear to me, yet who have some aspect of their character I find terrible to live or work with. Do I like them? Yes, absolutely. Do I want the
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by veddox 8y ago
Arrogant people are rarely great leaders. I'd posit that Steve Jobs wasn't successful because he was arrogant, but in spite of it. I don't think arrogance is ever to be excused. (Remember, arrogance is not the same as superio
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by veddox 8y ago
I think you're missing the point of what arrogance is. Arrogance is not the same as being right and saying so. Arrogance is thinking you're right (whether you are or not is irrelevant), and saying so in a way that demeans others.
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by veddox 8y ago
Good for you for realizing it! Seriously, that is more than many people ever do. I've struggled with similar issues, and my impression is that arrogance primarily comes from two misjudgments: thinking too highly of myself, or too littl
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by veddox 8y ago
Having said all that - although I believe abandoning copyright would be an unjust thing to do, it may in fact have positive effects on society as a whole. This article was posted here some time back: http://www.spiegel.de/in
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by veddox 8y ago
Well, copyright wasn't introduced for no reason... As you say, I think it's the fair and just thing to do and people justly get upset when others steal the results of their hard work. (Even if you're not removing a physical o
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by veddox 8y ago
> anthropormophizing is a useful metaphorical aid to help people understand Absolutely. So does simplification. Simplifying things to make them understandable to non-experts is an incredibly important skill - ask any teacher (or their st
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by veddox 8y ago
I think the article goes beyond hyperbole, this is approaching the realms of esoteric pseudoscience. The actual phenomenon of intra- and interspecies communications in the plant kingdom is absolutely fascinating - unfortunately, not much ac
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by veddox 8y ago
Yes, and this is even worse: > Haskell points out that throughout literary and musical history there are references to the songs of trees, and the way they speak: whispering pines, falling branches, crackling leaves, the steady hum buzzi
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by veddox 8y ago
Absolutely. I study ecology, and I have to say this article sounds like quite a lot of hogwash to me. Of course, trees do communicate - but obsessively trying to frame mindless chemical ecological processes in such extreme anthropomorphic t
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by veddox 8y ago
Mastodon would skyrocket, although it wouldn't take on everybody. Facebook would probably profit too.
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by veddox 8y ago
Sounds fantastic! Unfortunately, 4 1/2 hrs a week for a whole semester is way more than we have available for most of our courses :-(
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by veddox 8y ago
Oh my goodness! :-( Even worse, I heard a very similar story in a science talk only last week. I wonder how many more of these bugs there are out there?
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by veddox 8y ago
The problem is a) that observation shows that many people don't learn the abstractions after being taught the application (and thus can never teach themselves more applications) and b) that (perhaps) unlike in mathematics, an underst
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by veddox 8y ago
Thank you for this detailed response! I think that is a very thorough and well-thought out concept. > Do not introduce functions yet. For some reason I cannot fathom, even some quite advanced scientists seem to hate functions, to the ben
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by veddox 8y ago
Paul Graham commented on this in an essay, back in 2009: > So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract everyone. But a site aiming at
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Ask HN: Teaching programming in computational biology?
34 points by veddox 8y ago|30 comments
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by veddox 8y ago
PG Wodehouse is great. I first saw the "Jeeves & Wooster" TV series (with Fry and Laurie) and already loved that. Then I read the books, and discovered a whole new layer of humour in Wodehouse's prose language :D I rememb
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by veddox 8y ago
I would actually recommend starting with the New Testament, especially the gospels. Genesis is fascinating, but you need a lot of background to really understand its implications and intentions. The gospels are much more approachable (and r
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by veddox 8y ago
Yes, and it's great to combat mood swings :D I have a fairly extensive and varied poetical library that I regularly go back to for all kinds of reasons. TS Eliot is probably my favourite, you can read him every week for a year without
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by veddox 8y ago
"Anne of Green Gables" and its sequels. I love the simple, every-day stories LM Montgomery writes and her philosophy of life that shines through. The first reminds me of the way I grew up and the second has often inspired me. I al
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by veddox 8y ago
I always enjoyed writing poetry myself, but I only discovered I liked reading it when I read some of the Romantics. Their themes and style resonated with me, so I read more of them and started to get a taste for it. The more I learnt to a
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by veddox 8y ago
Yeah, you chose one of the absolute worst passages for that ;-) I read the Bible every day, a habit that is very important to me. But I don't just "pick specific passages I like", I take a book and read it through sequentiall
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by veddox 8y ago
Pratchett is a very special author! Though not my absolute favourite, he does manage to combine brilliant humour with an incredibly observant social satire and deep, likeable characters. BTW, if you like Pratchett, do you know the Discworld
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by veddox 8y ago
> Pirated editions back then as today increase the popularity of the artists, often more than their agency could do. Could work the other way too, though. Alexander von Humboldt had troubles with one of his books because a pirated transl

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