and despite the general uselessness of French elsewhere in the world (besides France)
Many Africans speak French, due to past French occupation of their countries. As a non-native French speaker, I actually find Africans much easier to understand than any French or Canadian speakers; Africans speak much more slowly.
These countries are not well-represented in IT or the sciences, however.
First, Lisp's syntax and semantics allow the programmer to manipulate code and data using the same structures, functions and parsers. That is huge in its own right, allowing really powerful compile-time macros as well as all sorts of metaprogramming that may be possible, but is not quite as straightforward in other languages. That is but one reason why someone might use a Lisp, as opposed to a language which merely appropriated 85% of Lisp's cool features.
Second, I have absolutely zero sympathy for programmers who can't walk up to a new language and understand most of what's going on within a few minutes, given some reference materials. (And that zero goes double for any language that remotely looks like C or Fortran.) Of course true expertise takes time, but the concepts being expressed in all but the most esoteric corner languages are the same. A programmer who can't comfortably read (most) languages is either no good, or green as grass, or just not trying.
It's actually not quite that simple, in a way that works out in your favor. Flaky RAM does exist, especially at the low end of the price spectrum, and can cause all sorts of weird and hard-to-diagnose problems. For this reason, Applecare won't even talk to you unless you are using official Apple-approved RAM (which is usually Kingston, a fine choice).
This means two things for you:
1. When you're on the phone with Applecare, just say you have Apple RAM installed in your computer (and if it's your cheeseball bargain-bin RAM that's causing the problem, shame on you).
2. If you upgrade the RAM, keep the original DIMM around; in case you ever have to ship the computer back for repairs, you can just swap in the factory part.
I've dealt with Applecare professionally and personally, over about 15 years, and these guidelines have never failed. Guideline #0 is to just keep asking for superiors until you get the answer you like. You have to have really done your homework for this to work (otherwise you're just some prick talking a rash of shit), but it does have the advantage that you can ask the cockblocking little peon on the other end of the phone to "give me someone technical." Total emasculation over POTS lines, gotta love it.
From our point of view -- as technical folk -- the decision would be about selecting "the one that lines up with your ideals on what the development should be like." As informed people on this subject, we can do that.
But I'd prefer the President make the selection based on real world factors over his technical tastes; in your example, he might consider that Linus Torvalds has mobilized and reigned as consensus leader over tens of thousands of hackers for over a decade, and that Bill Gates made his fortune by ramming his company's products down consumer's throats, and use information like that in his decision.
I can see through most of those people. And I want a President who's better at reading people than I am. Personal and political skills are the foundation of a President, and can make up for most other shortcomings.
I'd much rather have a President who surrounds himself with well-informed advisors, than a President who weighs his own opinions on specialized topics more heavily than a specialist's opinion. Leadership is delegation.
EMACS isn't an editor. It's a LISP machine implemented in software that happens to have a text editor program for it.
You make it sound so haphazard! Emacs needed a text-editor; otherwise, how could it be completely self-hosting? Any program that can't bootstrap itself can fuck itself.
It's not the people, it's the voting system. Runoff voting and many other voting systems solve this problem outright. However, in the current system, third party candidates CAN and DO "steal" votes from candidates who have a cat's chance in hell of succeeding. That sucks but until we get off winner-take-all as our voting system, that is reality.
Prediction: The two parties in the US will never risk losing their prominence, so we'll never see the system changed.
It's only called Cretin because Sourceforge wouldn't host a project named Choad. Thus was born Cretin, the CD Ripper, Encoder and Tagger with an Inoffensive Name.
The US has a de facto two-party system. Smaller parties can sometimes elect someone to state government or Congress, but in the Presidential election, all they can really do is steal votes from another candidate.
10.7. How did the first Erlang compiler get written?
(or: how was Erlang bootstrapped?) In Joe's words: " First I designed an abstract machine to execute Erlang. This was called the JAM machine; JAM = Joe's Abstract Machine. "
" Then I wrote a compiler from Erlang to JAM and an emulator to see if the machine worked. Both these were written in prolog. "
" At the same time Mike Williams wrote a C emulator for the JAM. "
" Then I rewrote the erlang-to-jam compiler in Erlang and used the prolog compiler to compile it. The resultant object code was run in the C emulator. Then we threw away prolog. "
So these days, the VM is written in C, and the compiler is written in Erlang.
I stand by my HHOS statement that C is a really nice assembly language. What I meant by that is that C, like asm, gives the programmer a very strong direction of a system, down to the last bit. In my experience, C is best used where asm is also a good choice: when you need raw speed or total control.
And for the record, I cut my teeth on 6502 asm on the Apple II; by now I have created embedded systems using 8088 asm, PIC asm, PIC C, and BASIC (and VHDL if you count FPGA's).
Just a note -- Ericsson developed the Erlang language with telecom-style reliability in mind, and using it they have brought to market products like ATM switches with 99.9999999% uptime (that's nine nines, under 40ms of downtime per year). Telecom isn't just C's domain anymore.
C and C++ are entrenched, but it was never their stability which caused it. Computer languages are theoretical; one valid language is just as 'stable' as another. The real issue of stability lies in the implementation, and that is language-independent.
Anyway, C is going to stick around because it is the most superb assembly language developed by man. C++ will of course stay around as well, but by modern standards it fails as a "high-level" language. The ceiling got a lot higher in the intervening 20 years; other languages reach much higher in a very useful way. I'd be happy to see less C++.
Make a 12" or 13" MacBook Pro. If that happens, then I will buy a new Mac. Otherwise, they can see how many suckers they can sell a $2500 manila of hot air to...
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and despite the general uselessness of French elsewhere in the world (besides France)
Many Africans speak French, due to past French occupation of their countries. As a non-native French speaker, I actually find Africans much easier to understand than any French or Canadian speakers; Africans speak much more slowly.
These countries are not well-represented in IT or the sciences, however.
I have two points to make.
First, Lisp's syntax and semantics allow the programmer to manipulate code and data using the same structures, functions and parsers. That is huge in its own right, allowing really powerful compile-time macros as well as all sorts of metaprogramming that may be possible, but is not quite as straightforward in other languages. That is but one reason why someone might use a Lisp, as opposed to a language which merely appropriated 85% of Lisp's cool features.
Second, I have absolutely zero sympathy for programmers who can't walk up to a new language and understand most of what's going on within a few minutes, given some reference materials. (And that zero goes double for any language that remotely looks like C or Fortran.) Of course true expertise takes time, but the concepts being expressed in all but the most esoteric corner languages are the same. A programmer who can't comfortably read (most) languages is either no good, or green as grass, or just not trying.
It's actually not quite that simple, in a way that works out in your favor. Flaky RAM does exist, especially at the low end of the price spectrum, and can cause all sorts of weird and hard-to-diagnose problems. For this reason, Applecare won't even talk to you unless you are using official Apple-approved RAM (which is usually Kingston, a fine choice).
This means two things for you:
1. When you're on the phone with Applecare, just say you have Apple RAM installed in your computer (and if it's your cheeseball bargain-bin RAM that's causing the problem, shame on you).
2. If you upgrade the RAM, keep the original DIMM around; in case you ever have to ship the computer back for repairs, you can just swap in the factory part.
I've dealt with Applecare professionally and personally, over about 15 years, and these guidelines have never failed. Guideline #0 is to just keep asking for superiors until you get the answer you like. You have to have really done your homework for this to work (otherwise you're just some prick talking a rash of shit), but it does have the advantage that you can ask the cockblocking little peon on the other end of the phone to "give me someone technical." Total emasculation over POTS lines, gotta love it.
But they're really gonna rev up performance once they move to 4-cornered time cubes.
From our point of view -- as technical folk -- the decision would be about selecting "the one that lines up with your ideals on what the development should be like." As informed people on this subject, we can do that.
But I'd prefer the President make the selection based on real world factors over his technical tastes; in your example, he might consider that Linus Torvalds has mobilized and reigned as consensus leader over tens of thousands of hackers for over a decade, and that Bill Gates made his fortune by ramming his company's products down consumer's throats, and use information like that in his decision.
I can see through most of those people. And I want a President who's better at reading people than I am. Personal and political skills are the foundation of a President, and can make up for most other shortcomings.
Sorry, I should have said "well-informed advisors who deserve to live."
But at that point it's more about reading people than knowing the subject material. Having a strong ethical foundation will also factor in.
I'd much rather have a President who surrounds himself with well-informed advisors, than a President who weighs his own opinions on specialized topics more heavily than a specialist's opinion. Leadership is delegation.
EMACS isn't an editor. It's a LISP machine implemented in software that happens to have a text editor program for it.
You make it sound so haphazard! Emacs needed a text-editor; otherwise, how could it be completely self-hosting? Any program that can't bootstrap itself can fuck itself.
It's not the people, it's the voting system. Runoff voting and many other voting systems solve this problem outright. However, in the current system, third party candidates CAN and DO "steal" votes from candidates who have a cat's chance in hell of succeeding. That sucks but until we get off winner-take-all as our voting system, that is reality.
Prediction: The two parties in the US will never risk losing their prominence, so we'll never see the system changed.
It's only called Cretin because Sourceforge wouldn't host a project named Choad. Thus was born Cretin, the CD Ripper, Encoder and Tagger with an Inoffensive Name.
Thanks for promptly settling the SCM dispute! Now I'd love to hear your ideas on which text editor is the best.
A singularly worthless comment.
The US has a de facto two-party system. Smaller parties can sometimes elect someone to state government or Congress, but in the Presidential election, all they can really do is steal votes from another candidate.
The windsock is pretty tough to beat.
The Bible is just one of the oldest legends that had a distro.
Of course not. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't hire any lower than a Master's degree.
That's why I still print out web pages on greenbar before reading them.
Because really, multithreading doesn't have to be hard
So these days, the VM is written in C, and the compiler is written in Erlang.
I stand by my HHOS statement that C is a really nice assembly language. What I meant by that is that C, like asm, gives the programmer a very strong direction of a system, down to the last bit. In my experience, C is best used where asm is also a good choice: when you need raw speed or total control.
And for the record, I cut my teeth on 6502 asm on the Apple II; by now I have created embedded systems using 8088 asm, PIC asm, PIC C, and BASIC (and VHDL if you count FPGA's).
Just a note -- Ericsson developed the Erlang language with telecom-style reliability in mind, and using it they have brought to market products like ATM switches with 99.9999999% uptime (that's nine nines, under 40ms of downtime per year). Telecom isn't just C's domain anymore.
C and C++ are entrenched, but it was never their stability which caused it. Computer languages are theoretical; one valid language is just as 'stable' as another. The real issue of stability lies in the implementation, and that is language-independent.
Anyway, C is going to stick around because it is the most superb assembly language developed by man. C++ will of course stay around as well, but by modern standards it fails as a "high-level" language. The ceiling got a lot higher in the intervening 20 years; other languages reach much higher in a very useful way. I'd be happy to see less C++.
Make a 12" or 13" MacBook Pro. If that happens, then I will buy a new Mac. Otherwise, they can see how many suckers they can sell a $2500 manila of hot air to...