It's quite something isn't it, how so few people on even slashdot seem to get this. Old habits die hard I guess. Years ago a clever friend of mine clued me into how functional was going to be important.
He was so right and the real solutions to concurrency (note, not parallelism which is easy enough in imperative) are in the world of FP or at least mostly FP.
My personal favourite so far is Clojure which has the most comprehensive and realistic approach to concurrency I've seen yet in a language ready for real world work. The key thing to learn from it is how differently you need to approach your problem to take advantage of a mutli-core world.
Clojure itself may never become a top-5 language but they way it approaches the problem surely will be seen in other future FP langs.
"It is sheer folly to think that an advance race went through all the trouble to cross many, many light-years of intergalactic space just to say "Hi"."
Yeah cause like we'd never go to great lengths just to cross new boundaries.;)
I'm not against nuclear power per-se but every time I read about the economics of it I remain unconvinced.
The only people who estimate figures we could live with are the people who build them. Then the costs of every single real world project blow up. There are, as of yet, no good arguments to believe this will change.
Sadly, we removed the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for people born in Ireland. It now only applies to children born to at least one Irish national.
I don't mean to antagonise the parent, but I have to remark how it's fascinating to watch the parent post go from +5 Insightful to +5 Interesting and all the while I and other posters have provided citations showing that the parent post is, in fact, neither Insightful nor Interesting.
I'd love to see time series graphs of mod points for these posts.
M: I came here for a good argument. A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument. M: An argument isn't just contradiction. A: It can be. M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. A: No it isn't. M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction. A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.' A: Yes it is! M: No it isn't!
"A woman who says she became paralyzed after having her upper spine manipulated is suing the Alberta College and Association of Chiropractors and the provincial government for half a billion dollars."
Most games these days do in fact use all available cores. Game developers have been talking openly for a few years now about how they use lockless data structures in multi-threaded engines.
Human decisions are removed from strategic advertising. Google begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, February 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
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Nice summary. I would add to that the upshot of function is the so called concept of purity. Ie. pure functions, which are usually the default in functional languages. The advantage of which is given a set of inputs to your function you will always get the same result.
Because Clojure's aim as a general purpose language is to help you leverage parallelism with no locks and minimal state. Javascript is for something else entirely.
You might even write Clojure code to emit Javascript.
As a largely happy OSX user I can say it's doesn't just work either.
It does work as I expect or hope more often than my experiences on Windows XP or Ubuntu, but it has plenty of little faults that, in some ways, are less forgivable since they have such a small set of hardware to test for.
Three illustrative examples: 1) Search the apple forums for "tap to click stops working" Apple is more or less silent on this old bug. Does not just work.
2) Try and record whatever sound is playing on your machine in say, Audacity or whatever. There is no "Wave Out Mix" or equivalent by default on OSX. You have to work around it with things like Sound Flower. Does not just work.
3) Try and cut and paste in Finder or merge two directories. Does not just work.
Kill that meme and maybe Apple will try even harder.
1) Invent some plausible sounding but utterly fake treatment. 2) Persuade people to try it. 3) Highlight anecdotal evidence that it works, which you are guaranteed to get due to phenomenon like 'Regression toward the mean' 4) Profit!
Slashdot Mirror
> Earning a degree has nothing to do with class. Anyone can get into college. Can't afford it? Join the military
*shudder*
Try to be born in Europe where it's cheap or free?
A nice example of why GDP is a somewhat poor indicator of life quality
It's quite something isn't it, how so few people on even slashdot seem to get this. Old habits die hard I guess.
Years ago a clever friend of mine clued me into how functional was going to be important.
He was so right and the real solutions to concurrency (note, not parallelism which is easy enough in imperative) are in the world of FP or at least mostly FP.
My personal favourite so far is Clojure which has the most comprehensive and realistic approach to concurrency I've seen yet in a language ready for real world work.
The key thing to learn from it is how differently you need to approach your problem to take advantage of a mutli-core world.
Clojure itself may never become a top-5 language but they way it approaches the problem surely will be seen in other future FP langs.
"It is sheer folly to think that an advance race went through all the trouble to cross many, many light-years of intergalactic space just to say "Hi"."
Yeah cause like we'd never go to great lengths just to cross new boundaries. ;)
"It is only expensive because of the NIMBY crowd and the ear of government that they have."
This isn't true. Construction costs are by far the greatest costs. See this actually quite good summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants#Capital_costs
I'm not against nuclear power per-se but every time I read about the economics of it I remain unconvinced.
The only people who estimate figures we could live with are the people who build them. Then the costs of every single real world project blow up. There are, as of yet, no good arguments to believe this will change.
My personal favourite being Clojure
http://clojure.org/
It has excellent Java interop.
Sadly, we removed the constitutional guarantee of citizenship for people born in Ireland. It now only applies to children born to at least one Irish national.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland
I don't mean to antagonise the parent, but I have to remark how it's fascinating to watch the parent post go from +5 Insightful to +5 Interesting and all the while I and other posters have provided citations showing that the parent post is, in fact, neither Insightful nor Interesting.
I'd love to see time series graphs of mod points for these posts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_by_country
Country Total network length (km) and Average speed of fastest scheduled train
China 6552 km and 313 km/h ;)
Japan 2459 km and 256 km/h
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
Blurring often isn't enough to remove the information.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/how_to_recover.html
Maybe it's making things worse
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/06/13/chiro-lawsuit.html
"A woman who says she became paralyzed after having her upper spine manipulated is suing the Alberta College and Association of Chiropractors and the provincial government for half a billion dollars."
Most games these days do in fact use all available cores.
Game developers have been talking openly for a few years now about how they use lockless data structures in multi-threaded engines.
Human decisions are removed from strategic advertising. Google begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, February 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Electricians From $30 / H
Compare Quotes From Electricians
+1000 Electricians Ready To Quote
Need Electrical Supplies?
Unbeatable Prices. Leading Brands.
Same-Day Dispatch. Trade And Retail
Your Licensed Electrician
Call now 1300 679 274
For your $50 Discount
Nice summary. I would add to that the upshot of function is the so called concept of purity. Ie. pure functions, which are usually the default in functional languages. The advantage of which is given a set of inputs to your function you will always get the same result.
Here's a good recent article http://muckandbrass.com/web/display/~cemerick/2009/12/30/All+my+methods+take+316+arguments%2C+and+I+like+it+that+way
For search engine friendliness its best to call it by it's full name, GNU Screen.
Nicely put though.
I guess Zappa is to Duchamp, as Feynman was to Planck.
I hate it when it's phrased like that.
Here's a report comparing the total life-cycle carbon footprint of all major methods of electricity generation.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf
Wind is second lowest but basically the same as Nuclear, the lowest.
Because Clojure's aim as a general purpose language is to help you leverage parallelism with no locks and minimal state.
Javascript is for something else entirely.
You might even write Clojure code to emit Javascript.
As a largely happy OSX user I can say it's doesn't just work either.
It does work as I expect or hope more often than my experiences on Windows XP or Ubuntu, but it has plenty of little faults that, in some ways, are less forgivable since they have such a small set of hardware to test for.
Three illustrative examples:
1) Search the apple forums for "tap to click stops working"
Apple is more or less silent on this old bug. Does not just work.
2) Try and record whatever sound is playing on your machine in say, Audacity or whatever.
There is no "Wave Out Mix" or equivalent by default on OSX. You have to work around it with things like Sound Flower. Does not just work.
3) Try and cut and paste in Finder or merge two directories.
Does not just work.
Kill that meme and maybe Apple will try even harder.
Plus they occasionally used the slogan "Wang 'R' Us"
I'm not joking.
You idiot, it's Noo Yoik where moist stuff is. No disrespect.*
*sorry
Here's a few I took on my way to work...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesswift/sets/72157622435317234/
1) Invent some plausible sounding but utterly fake treatment.
2) Persuade people to try it.
3) Highlight anecdotal evidence that it works, which you are guaranteed to get due to phenomenon like 'Regression toward the mean'
4) Profit!
Finally a provably viable step 3.
This appears to be an excellent use of crowd sourcing by Google to get the whole world modeled in 3d.