On a serious note, perl5 has some actual technical advantages
over python (and most other languages), e.g. it's unicode support
is excellent. Perl regular expressions can search for characters
based on unicode properties, e.g./\p{Greek}/ matches a character
Unicode considers Greek.
A good programming editor has the ability to make 'whitespace' characters visible somehow.
Sure, but then they all also have good features to track opening
and closing braces (and those are actually turned-on by default,
there's no somehow like the elisp code I use to make tab
characters red).
I'm more sympathetic to the argument that with Python you have to
be careful with moving blocks around because you need to adjust
indentation when you change logical levels.
If we actually were to settle this argument, it would take some
social scientists studying frequency and impact of programmer's errors.
Every version control system I've ever looked at considers whitespace to be significant, so we have the same problem in every language - if not during development, then while merging code.
True, but the fact that our diffs are broken is not actually a
good reason to break everything else in the same way.
To learn more how computers actually work? To learn more how YOU mind actually works?
Yup. All us programmers are acutely aware of the need to
understand cognitive science. That's why langauage wars are a
thing of the past: we just wait for the social scientists to
verify the claims (faster dev, lower maintenance, etc), and go
with what they say.
... at least one language that follws or emphasizes a differen paradigm than your main language you are like a musician who can only play one instrument.
But what about a mind that can only recite a single slogan?
(John Coltrane totally sucked: he never played anything but sax.)
Can't imagine what you're talking about. By any reasonable
standard, perl5 is doing okay, and in any case progress hardly
stopped because of the perl6 project (rather there was an
infusion of new blood in the core dev team). Perl6 was
effectively developed in parallel with perl5 development.
And if perl5 doesn't seem like the only game in town any more,
that has a lot more to do with a backlash from the CS snobs than
the perl6 project.
Perl6 may yet triumph. Yeah, there's fewer cpan libraries, but
there's a lot less need for them: a lot of common needs have been
moved into the core language.
(And before you "do one thing and do it well" types get started,
you need to focus on the fact that no one really does that,
including unix, and sometimes the monolithic strategy wins.)
I went with R, myself. While it's not entirely buzzword-
compliant: it's oriented toward keeping the data-set in memory
and so is not "Big Data" in vanila configuration, but there are
people working on ways around that, and anyway memory gets bigger
all the time.
Programmers will get bored and jump on some other fad. They
need an exuse to re-write the standard libraries every few years,
because they've got no ideas but they like to feel like they're
doing something.
I mean-- in today's multiprocessor big dada cloudy future one
must choose a language that optimizes the resource
functionality-functionalism tradeoff to reduce downtime and
maintenance costs while maximizing stock market confusion and
venture capital infusion.
Now, the question you need to be asking yourself is what
precisely is the operational difference between a far-right Trump
supporter and a highly-principled defender from the left who is
Deeply Concerned that the alphabet soup may be framing the right
guy for once?
Another way of putting the question would be: what is the
purpose of high-minded principles that don't actually do anything
to make the world a better place?
But the purity of your ethical standards certainly is
impressive, I can even see it shining through my insanity layer.
God damn. And I was sure that whistle-blower denialism was an infallible indicator. I should've waited for you to shout "traitor" and insist she was really an agent planted by them.
No, the seller might be losing something, but maybe they aren't really: it's not that easy to say.
E.g. I've bought DVDs to give as gifts because I saw the material for free first. (For that matter, I buy disks sometimes to support the businesses selling them, or just because I like having disks kicking around, but skip all that for now.)
Book publishers don't go around complaining about how those damn public libraries are putting them out of business, and cassette taping was not really the death of the music industry, and if sales are down for music it might be because Internet, or it might be because people don't give a shit about music right now (a theory that would explain a lot about the music out there).
By the way, sales of vinyl LPs and books-on-paper are evidently doing pretty well just now. The world sure is complicated.
It's worth thinking about the accuracy of the claims. There've been examples of internet Great Sensations that were essentially companies lying about how much traffic they were getting (e.g. second life).
More interesting I think is the idea that the intelligent few are stuck with a lowest-common denominator trash internet... is that really true? What are we to make of the 30% or so that have taken the trouble to install an ad-blocker? It would seem that quite a few people don't just swill up anything that's put in front of them.
"There are some really good [evidence-based] guidelines out there" on how to design user-friendly buildings, says Ruth Dalton, who studies both architecture and cognitive science at Northumbria University in Newcastle. "A lot of architects choose to ignore them. Why is that?"
I know, let's ask our friendly javascript programmers and web
designers.
The benefits of light alcohol consumption, as well as the
risks associated with not drinking at all, might not be as
great as previously thought, according to researchers who
examined the drinking habits of middle-aged adults.
Many people believe a glass of wine with dinner will help
them live longer and healthier -- but the scientific evidence
is shaky at best, according to a new research analysis.
Moderate to binge drinking significantly reduces the
structural integrity of the adult brain. The new research
indicates that daily drinking decreases nerve cell
development in the hippocampus part of the brain -- necessary
for some type of learning and memory -- by 40 percent.
And another interesting subject is "confirmation bias":
See! I was right
people are reluctant to change their minds, even when facts don't
match what they believe...
Once people reach a conclusion, they aren't likely to change
their minds, even when new information shows their initial
belief is likely wrong...
At least with Snowden you can argue there was significant public benefit to the disclosure.
You sure can, not that it stops some folks from sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "TRAITORTRAITORTRAITOR".
But with this? It's just one more thing for the media to speculate about which doesn't really mean much to any of us personally.
Personally, I've found it ridiculously difficult to get people to
take the issues with electronic voting machines seriously. They
tend to go for some version of "But it can't happen here" and
"Conspiracy theory!" and skip away. If you work hard you can get
them to say "well okay, we should probably improve that some
time", then they go away and forget about until the next election
is almost here.
Any thing raises awareness of these issues is fine by me...
(And you know... this is the first argument I've heard that could
push people in the direction of dumping Pence as well as Trump.
Just, as they say, saying.)
Soon the only people you'll be allowed to hire without being acused of discrimination is anyone who is exactly 32.54 years old.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our conservative friends for volunteering to wear flashing lights and a sign stating "I am a conservative idiot.". It makes it much easier to identify who is worth talking to.
I'm 54 and can still crank out a productive 36 hour work day (yes, seriously) at crunch time, but that's me; I've always been able to stay up and be productive for long, long periods of time - showering and eating to get refreshed.
Let me guess: you don't drink.
A lot of what we've traditionally thought of as "the natural effects of age" were really the natural effects of lots of booze.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to look for a pasture of your own, eh? (Just kidding.)
When I'm in charge of a project, I set things up so that code check-ins need to pass a style-check-- this doesn't have to be done by the compiler.
On a serious note, perl5 has some actual technical advantages over python (and most other languages), e.g. it's unicode support is excellent. Perl regular expressions can search for characters based on unicode properties, e.g. /\p{Greek}/ matches a character
Unicode considers Greek.
Sure, but then they all also have good features to track opening and closing braces (and those are actually turned-on by default, there's no somehow like the elisp code I use to make tab characters red).
I'm more sympathetic to the argument that with Python you have to be careful with moving blocks around because you need to adjust indentation when you change logical levels.
If we actually were to settle this argument, it would take some social scientists studying frequency and impact of programmer's errors.
True, but the fact that our diffs are broken is not actually a good reason to break everything else in the same way.
How do you know?
That's a serious question.
CS geeks keep acting like they've got some lock on The Truth, but if they've got anything to back that up, I haven't seen it yet.
You libertarians need to wake up and look at the way the world actually works.
The Democratic Party needs to understand the lessons of the British elections.
The Boston Redsox are going to screw-up again this year.
angel'o'sphere wrote:
Yup. All us programmers are acutely aware of the need to understand cognitive science. That's why langauage wars are a thing of the past: we just wait for the social scientists to verify the claims (faster dev, lower maintenance, etc), and go with what they say.
But what about a mind that can only recite a single slogan?
(John Coltrane totally sucked: he never played anything but sax.)
Can't imagine what you're talking about. By any reasonable standard, perl5 is doing okay, and in any case progress hardly stopped because of the perl6 project (rather there was an infusion of new blood in the core dev team). Perl6 was effectively developed in parallel with perl5 development.
And if perl5 doesn't seem like the only game in town any more, that has a lot more to do with a backlash from the CS snobs than the perl6 project.
Perl6 may yet triumph. Yeah, there's fewer cpan libraries, but there's a lot less need for them: a lot of common needs have been moved into the core language.
(And before you "do one thing and do it well" types get started, you need to focus on the fact that no one really does that, including unix, and sometimes the monolithic strategy wins.)
I went with R, myself. While it's not entirely buzzword- compliant: it's oriented toward keeping the data-set in memory and so is not "Big Data" in vanila configuration, but there are people working on ways around that, and anyway memory gets bigger all the time.
Programmers will get bored and jump on some other fad. They need an exuse to re-write the standard libraries every few years, because they've got no ideas but they like to feel like they're doing something.
I mean-- in today's multiprocessor big dada cloudy future one must choose a language that optimizes the resource functionality-functionalism tradeoff to reduce downtime and maintenance costs while maximizing stock market confusion and venture capital infusion.
Now, the question you need to be asking yourself is what precisely is the operational difference between a far-right Trump supporter and a highly-principled defender from the left who is Deeply Concerned that the alphabet soup may be framing the right guy for once?
Another way of putting the question would be: what is the purpose of high-minded principles that don't actually do anything to make the world a better place?
But the purity of your ethical standards certainly is impressive, I can even see it shining through my insanity layer.
God damn. And I was sure that whistle-blower denialism was an infallible indicator. I should've waited for you to shout "traitor" and insist she was really an agent planted by them.
Admittedly, a good bet.
Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) wrote:
No, the seller might be losing something, but maybe they aren't really: it's not that easy to say. E.g. I've bought DVDs to give as gifts because I saw the material for free first. (For that matter, I buy disks sometimes to support the businesses selling them, or just because I like having disks kicking around, but skip all that for now.)
Book publishers don't go around complaining about how those damn public libraries are putting them out of business, and cassette taping was not really the death of the music industry, and if sales are down for music it might be because Internet, or it might be because people don't give a shit about music right now (a theory that would explain a lot about the music out there).
By the way, sales of vinyl LPs and books-on-paper are evidently doing pretty well just now. The world sure is complicated.
See that thing up there, going over your head? I wonder what it could be?
That site, thenextweb.com evidently requires a facebook login in order to comment.
It's worth thinking about the accuracy of the claims. There've been examples of internet Great Sensations that were essentially companies lying about how much traffic they were getting (e.g. second life).
More interesting I think is the idea that the intelligent few are stuck with a lowest-common denominator trash internet... is that really true? What are we to make of the 30% or so that have taken the trouble to install an ad-blocker? It would seem that quite a few people don't just swill up anything that's put in front of them.
More and more, I come to appreciate these flashing lights that conservadroids wear to make identification either.
I know, let's ask our friendly javascript programmers and web designers.
Linus Torvalds.
Health benefits of moderate drinking may be overstated, study finds
Is moderate drinking really good for you? Jury's still out
Moderate drinking decreases number of new brain cells
And another interesting subject is "confirmation bias":
See! I was right
You sure can, not that it stops some folks from sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "TRAITORTRAITORTRAITOR".
Personally, I've found it ridiculously difficult to get people to take the issues with electronic voting machines seriously. They tend to go for some version of "But it can't happen here" and "Conspiracy theory!" and skip away. If you work hard you can get them to say "well okay, we should probably improve that some time", then they go away and forget about until the next election is almost here.
Any thing raises awareness of these issues is fine by me...
(And you know... this is the first argument I've heard that could push people in the direction of dumping Pence as well as Trump. Just, as they say, saying.)
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our conservative friends for volunteering to wear flashing lights and a sign stating "I am a conservative idiot.". It makes it much easier to identify who is worth talking to.
Let me guess: you don't drink.
A lot of what we've traditionally thought of as "the natural effects of age" were really the natural effects of lots of booze.