ML is a functionnal, statically typed language. Lisp is dynamically typed, which means type is attached to values instead of to variables. The improvments in both cases over C might be that the language offer more support to the programmer. Of course it always depends on the task at hand: you would not program an OS in Lisp or ML, but a lot of other interesting things could reasonably be done in Lisp.
Take for example Web applications: with more powerful languages that allows you to manipulate continuations you can do really impressive stuff. Sometimes I'm laughing when I see how the 'industry' falls behind in term of cutting-edge technology. I know that what I use will be discovered in a few years (probably under some other name), and becomes the Big Thing.
What is sad in computer science is that every now and then something old reappears and is considered the new Big Thing: think Java (which is a dumb OO language), or think XML (which is just a painful syntax for S-expr).
Also, forget about proving correctness for practical software programs. They will always get too big to allow you to prove correctness. But if you really want to be able to prove 'partial' correctness, then yes: Functional Languages will be a *much* better choice than C, since you can abstract state from your tests. But the thing is that sometimes it is very convenient to use side effects, for such mundane tasks as outputing text for example;-)
Purely functional languages might be scorned by some as toys, but they have their use in research. Hybrid languages like Common Lisp are somewhat more practical.
As for hugeness of source code, I see 2 reasons Lisp would help overcome the problem. First, you can write less code that do more (reducing the source volume). Secondly, Lisp allows for interactive development. You don't have to recompile anything if you change your application. Just reload the function you just changed, and there: everything is in place. Some bug? Correct it, resume execution. Want to try something? Try it, look at how your app is responding. The ability to change a program while it is running is really empowering for the programmer.
But anyway, I'm not saying anything new in here, it's just that people wont get it, or that they'll forget. But hey, should I care if my competitors still use half-assed languages and keep hiring 'Java-style' programmers?
'After receiving a letter from four entertainment-based lobbying associations'...
So does that means that the U.S. Propaganda Department have more power than the U.S. Naval Academy ?
Some might be offensed by such thoughts, but it is in some way a reality: America get as much (or more!) power abroad from Hollywood than from their military.
I think India's rationale for going with Bill Gates offering over Richard Stallman's offering is fairly simple to explain: Bill's offering a finished product, no polish necessary, at no cost.
It is not because you/can't/ improve it yourself that it means it is a 'finished, polished' product.
[...] pointing to a bunch of half-written software.
Wow, can you imagine how big Emacs will be once they are done with it?;-)
Ant doesn't garantee that everything necessary will be recompiled, which I thought was why he said it was fine 90% of the time. In that case it was similar to my analogy. Ant _does_ fail x% of the time to do the right thing.
Something that works 90% of the time _really_ _really_ sucks! Imagine your computer not booting 1 time in 10, or your web hosting being down 10% of the time... unacceptable.
Ant is definetely a case of 'Worse Is Better', as opposed to being 'The Right Thing'.
The funniest thing is that mods took you seriously: you got moderated 'insightful' and 'interesting'. I'd say you'd deserve 'funny' or 'troll', but eh...
[...] little changed from 1992! In the computer field this would be considered an ancient text with how fast software is updated and languages change.
Holy shit no. 1992 isn't 'ancient' in any way, only for people with very short memory and attention span. Or for people who thinks XML is a neat new idea. Or for people who thinks Java OO-model is a neat new idea. Or for people who thinks Patterns is the new silver bullet. Or for people who thinks Lisp is dead.
Sorry for that 'I agree' post, but that's just it.
Damn, I agree. I could have written exactly the same thing. Except for Ruby which I don't really know about, but Scheme is just the best thing to enhance a C program and give it the dynamism it lacks.
Secondly, Go WILL, beyond any shadow of a doubt, be brute-forced
You really don't get it.
But anyway, I have to clarify why I was pissed that you got modded to 5. If don't give a shiat about karma or whatever. What piss me off is that/FALSE/ informations get put in the spotlights as truths.
But anyway, it seems the problem is with me, and if I want intelligent, informative and insightful discussions I'd better go elsewhere.
I think I should change my nick from "PissingInTheWind" to "PissedInTheWind".
> But computers are getting faster at an enormous rate.
Getting twice the speed every 18 months is nothing when dealing with exponiential growth problems.
In ten years, it may be possible to have a Go program that plays at a 9Dan level, through brute force.
You have `geek' in your name and have no fuckin clue about mathematics? Brute forcing Go is about as efficient than brute forcing a [insert a lot of bits] long crypto key.
Look: you have a 19x19 grid, do you have even remotely an idea about how many game possibilities that makes? Go simply/can not/ and/will never/ be brute-forced (barring radical breakthrough in technology, like quantic stuff).
Any significant progress can only be done through better algorithms and more 'intelligent' decision making.
Please read a bit about the subject, so you won't make a fool of yourself if you talk about it to someone who has a clue. And getting '5, informative' isn't a validation whatsoever of what you think you know.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think there are any magic bullets.
Exactly! As there is no magic bullets in painting art, there is no silver bullets in software development.
Have a look at Donald Knuth's speach when he received his turing award. He talk about how programming is more art than science.
With their 'software engineering', all people are trying to do is push programming from Art to Science.
Hi Ace,
;-)
ML is a functionnal, statically typed language. Lisp is dynamically typed, which means type is attached to values instead of to variables. The improvments in both cases over C might be that the language offer more support to the programmer. Of course it always depends on the task at hand: you would not program an OS in Lisp or ML, but a lot of other interesting things could reasonably be done in Lisp.
Take for example Web applications: with more powerful languages that allows you to manipulate continuations you can do really impressive stuff. Sometimes I'm laughing when I see how the 'industry' falls behind in term of cutting-edge technology. I know that what I use will be discovered in a few years (probably under some other name), and becomes the Big Thing.
What is sad in computer science is that every now and then something old reappears and is considered the new Big Thing: think Java (which is a dumb OO language), or think XML (which is just a painful syntax for S-expr).
Also, forget about proving correctness for practical software programs. They will always get too big to allow you to prove correctness. But if you really want to be able to prove 'partial' correctness, then yes: Functional Languages will be a *much* better choice than C, since you can abstract state from your tests. But the thing is that sometimes it is very convenient to use side effects, for such mundane tasks as outputing text for example
Purely functional languages might be scorned by some as toys, but they have their use in research. Hybrid languages like Common Lisp are somewhat more practical.
As for hugeness of source code, I see 2 reasons Lisp would help overcome the problem. First, you can write less code that do more (reducing the source volume). Secondly, Lisp allows for interactive development. You don't have to recompile anything if you change your application. Just reload the function you just changed, and there: everything is in place. Some bug? Correct it, resume execution. Want to try something? Try it, look at how your app is responding. The ability to change a program while it is running is really empowering for the programmer.
But anyway, I'm not saying anything new in here, it's just that people wont get it, or that they'll forget. But hey, should I care if my competitors still use half-assed languages and keep hiring 'Java-style' programmers?
'After receiving a letter from four entertainment-based lobbying associations'...
So does that means that the U.S. Propaganda Department have more power than the U.S. Naval Academy ?
Some might be offensed by such thoughts, but it is in some way a reality: America get as much (or more!) power abroad from Hollywood than from their military.
I think India's rationale for going with Bill Gates offering over Richard Stallman's offering is fairly simple to explain: Bill's offering a finished product, no polish necessary, at no cost.
/can't/ improve it yourself that it means it is a 'finished, polished' product.
;-)
It is not because you
[...] pointing to a bunch of half-written software.
Wow, can you imagine how big Emacs will be once they are done with it?
Ant doesn't garantee that everything necessary will be recompiled, which I thought was why he said it was fine 90% of the time. In that case it was similar to my analogy. Ant _does_ fail x% of the time to do the right thing.
Something that works 90% of the time _really_ _really_ sucks! Imagine your computer not booting 1 time in 10, or your web hosting being down 10% of the time... unacceptable.
Ant is definetely a case of 'Worse Is Better', as opposed to being 'The Right Thing'.
Hahaha, nice one.
The funniest thing is that mods took you seriously: you got moderated 'insightful' and 'interesting'. I'd say you'd deserve 'funny' or 'troll', but eh...
You have trolled, you have won, have a nice day!
anyone got something similar for Linux?
[...] little changed from 1992! In the computer field this would be considered an ancient text with how fast software is updated and languages change.
Holy shit no. 1992 isn't 'ancient' in any way, only for people with very short memory and attention span. Or for people who thinks XML is a neat new idea. Or for people who thinks Java OO-model is a neat new idea. Or for people who thinks Patterns is the new silver bullet. Or for people who thinks Lisp is dead.
Hope you get the idea.
...(sorry lynx users!)
Sorry about what? Why should they care wether you keep them in your log or not?
I sense this paper is no different.
I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
And you know they did their homework--they cite Larry Wall's Postmodern Perl talk.
Ugh... that was far from being the best thing (or even one of the best things) Larry ever wrote.
The ideas are interesting by themselves, linking to other's work isn't much a validation in itself.
Sorry for that 'I agree' post, but that's just it.
Damn, I agree. I could have written exactly the same thing. Except for Ruby which I don't really know about, but Scheme is just the best thing to enhance a C program and give it the dynamism it lacks.
> Is faults seeem to overshadow its many features.
Well, that sounds like pretty gratuitous judgement to me. Would you please care to enumerate 'Is faults'[sic] ?
X might not be perfect, but it does the job. We can't allways break things so they get better easily.
Propose a better solution, implement it, make an easy migration path, become rich and popular and get all the chicks. (That's the Profit!!! part)
Actually getting twice the speed every 18 months IS exponential growth.
I think you are right.
I would have thought that exponential growth would have meant that P_{t+1} = P_{t}^2,
but it seems P_{t+1} = P_{t}*2 is exponential growth too.
Secondly, Go WILL, beyond any shadow of a doubt, be brute-forced
/FALSE/ informations get put in the spotlights as truths.
You really don't get it.
But anyway, I have to clarify why I was pissed that you got modded to 5. If don't give a shiat about karma or
whatever. What piss me off is that
But anyway, it seems the problem is with me, and if I want intelligent, informative and insightful discussions
I'd better go elsewhere.
I think I should change my nick from "PissingInTheWind" to "PissedInTheWind".
5, informative?
/can not/ and /will never/ be brute-forced (barring radical breakthrough in technology, like quantic stuff).
Please.
> But computers are getting faster at an enormous rate.
Getting twice the speed every 18 months is nothing when dealing with exponiential growth problems.
In ten years, it may be possible to have a Go program that plays at a 9Dan level, through brute force.
You have `geek' in your name and have no fuckin clue about mathematics?
Brute forcing Go is about as efficient than brute forcing a [insert a lot of bits] long crypto key.
Look: you have a 19x19 grid, do you have even remotely an idea about how many game possibilities that makes?
Go simply
Any significant progress can only be done through better algorithms and more 'intelligent' decision making.
Please read a bit about the subject, so you won't make a fool of yourself if you talk about it to someone who has a clue. And getting '5, informative' isn't a validation whatsoever of what you think you know.
Didn't the U.S. military did something similar in revealing officialy the F-117
shortly before attacking Irak the first time?
Comment about joining terrorist: 5, funny.
Comment about joining the CIA: 5, interesting.
Since both do about the same activities, I'd take that as a sign that moderators are once again on crack.
>> Of course, he has every right to piss
>> in the wind as much as he likes.
> It's quite obvious that he bathes that way.
I do too, so what's wrong with that?
Then, who cares about a patent on something that doesn't work and isn't secure?
Crypto security and validation comes from peer review. Don't lose your time.
by eating the yummy, healthy brain of a living.
See here.
Mmmm... braaaaiiinnnss...
at 10Mb/s our body could transmit it's own DNA in 1 hour and 41 minutes.
9 months is a long time compared to that...
Having an opinion about Microsoft's products without having ever used one of them would be pretty stupid.
So yes, I think you can assume a lot of people here have used MS Office.
BTW, Word is great, Excel is great too, Access is a joke, Outlook is hilarious and Clippy asking you stupid questions is a fuckin pain in the ass.
Oh. . ., wait, I'm the netwerk admin.
Funny typo, I read that as 'wait, I'm the netwreck admin'...