zenhack

28 ms·

211.
by zenhack 9y ago
First, going straight to "How do I understand Monads?" is not a good idea. I remeber when this article showed up on the web, and I remember wishing it had been written before I started learning Haskell: https://byorge
212.
by zenhack 9y ago
I do most of my work on a laptop with 4GiB of memory (manufactured in 2009). Probably the last time I did anything dev related that meaningfully stressed the machine was when I decided to give android studio a shot. Just sitting there, with
213.
by zenhack 9y ago
Also, if you really want to write code that's agnostic to whether you're working directly on the DB object or a transaction, you can just declare that interface yourself; it's not like in java where the implementing class has
214.
by zenhack 9y ago
While I agree with your point about the keyboard, I'm not actually sure that's what EWD was on about. He famously thought people should be learning to program without actually using a computer. My reading of the letter is that t
215.
by zenhack 9y ago
That doesn't do quite the same thing; the original example gets rid of the Maybe, defaulting to 0.
216.
by zenhack 9y ago
Rice's theorem is a bit more direct here: C is Turing complete, some C programs derefernce null pointers, and some don't. Therefore, the question of whether a an arbitrary C program derefernces a null pointer is in general undecid
217.
by zenhack 9y ago
Or just: fn (Just q) (Just z) = q + z fn _ _ = 0
218.
by zenhack 9y ago
Fair.
219.
by zenhack 9y ago
> Not really. Did you actually read the memo? The sentence immediately following your quote: > (e: Yes, I've read it several times for those who question it)
220.
by zenhack 9y ago
(Queue semi-weekly flamewar re: modifying history) It would be nice to see the foss vcs monoculture shaken up a bit. There are lots of neat tools out there (fossil is pretty cool), but having an established workflow and a ton of users is
221.
by zenhack 9y ago
It isn't just that ATS is understaffed. I gave up trying to contribute because I got tired of getting active pushback on basic style issues that I would expect CS undergrads to have figured out by the end of their first semester. Case
222.
by zenhack 9y ago
ATS compiles down to C, so I suspect they're just leaning on C's implicit coercions. Yeah, it's a bad example.
223.
by zenhack 9y ago
Executive summary: ATS has a much more powerful type system, but from a human factors standpoint suffers from death by 1000 papercuts. Rust is much more usable as a tool, but very intentionally only pulls ideas from established research, an
224.
by zenhack 9y ago
> I know self hosting is actually better but it is also work ... Worth pointing out: they have a sandstorm version, which changes the amount of justification need rather a lot.
225.
by zenhack 9y ago
I'm generally skeptical of gradual/optional typing. The reason is this: It's really, really hard to design a good type system after the fact. There are some pretty compelling theoretical reasons for this (Rice's theorem)
226.
by zenhack 9y ago
I think this is pretty insightful. You won't find this kind of post about shells on my blog, despite being much worse for building "real software." Stuff like autotools is an exception, and I think it kinda enforces the point
227.
by zenhack 9y ago
> In functional programming EVERY function is a single expression, including the main itself. In fact, in functional programming, your Entire program is just a single expression. This is a technicality. There's basically always a me
228.
by zenhack 9y ago
Yeah, I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the level of discourse; when I saw this was on the front page I was like "Oh god somebody linked /that/ post."
229.
by zenhack 9y ago
> WRT private class members, I can understand why this might be frustrating for library writers. But it's just so damned useful to be able to reach into a library and get functionality the library's writer didn't think I&#