Most systems are moving or have moved to 64 bit time_t, but that doesn't actually help because the compiled timezone data files which they're still using for timezone and DST lookup are still based on 32 bit quantities. At least, that was the case on my Linux Alpha box (until it died this morning. Need PSU)
The workaround we have in SBCL sucks more than slightly, to be honest. What we'll probably do at some point is get the source Olsen data ourselves and parse it into a form that doesn't throw useful information away quite as freely.
Biopace. Some people liked it, others didn't. These days everyone's using clipless pedals anyway, making for much smoother power transmission all the way around and elliptical chainrings yet less sensible.
It seems to be generally the case that any worthwhile OS/language/philosophy/religion/football team will atract these kinds of camp-followers. Think of the Amiga, or Linux, or KDE, or OS/2, or Slashdot, &c. They're not the people actually working on it, just the loud-mouthed minority who flame about it.
I wish it wasn't so.
Fwiw, my experience is that most of the people who say "LISP is the most powerful and elegant programming language in the world" go on to say "it's dead now, and you're inferior because you missed out on it, but you should definitely suffer through some horrendously abstract college course about it anyway because It Will Change The Way You Think(tm)"
Yes, I use Lisp. No, I've no bloody sympathy for this point of view. If it doesn't do anything useful for you, you don't have to use it. For me, it does (my web server and my window manager, for two things), so I do.
Incidentally, do you have a citation for that philg quote? I'm curious, he's usually a lot more level-headed than that
In fact you don't even need to write one, because it already exists. INFIX (catchy name, huh) is available from
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-reposi to ry/ai/lang/lisp/code/syntax/infix/0.html
or if you have Debian, you can get it as part of cCLan (see http://cclan.sf.net/ for details)
Re:Write a type assitant!
on
RMS The Coder
·
· Score: 1
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "domain-aware, learning type assistant" but CL compilers that check types are out there already
The compiler in CMUCL (called Python, but not to be confused with the language of that name), for example, has a very nice type inferencer in it already, and when you set your compilation settings appropriately will even warn you where it hasn't been able to infer things so you know what explicit declarations to add
Linux desperately needs good, detailed, and current documentation for users and developers alike. There need to be some commitments authors make before being granted custody of a document. In particular, there needs to be a commitment to currency.
"Sorry, we won't let you write anything unless you promise to look after it for the next five years". How is this supposed to help? We don't demand a commitment to maintenance from the authors of the programs we use, why is it so different for authors of the documents?
Could you explain how your proposal would actually solve the problem ouf out-of-date documents? All I can see here is a way of labelling them, and it's usually pretty obvious anyway from the `Last modified' date
Actually, it felt better than having to match braces or forgetting semicolons. What I experienced, simply, was having one less thing to worry about. You just indent your code uniformly (which is good practice, anyway).
See, indenting lisp is even easier. You put parens around the blocks and then hit TAB and it indents for you. If it indents in a way you weren't expecting, add and remove brackets until it does.
Wrapping a section of code in a conditional becomes a complete no-brainer
Well, almost anything is Turing complete (including, I believe, sendmail rewrite rules), so that's not a terrifically interesting basis to compare things on.
More interesting? Object-orientated, functional, imperative, reflective, introspective, non-deterministic - all these styles of programming and more are supported, and many were pioneered using Lisp as a prototyping vehicle. Incremental compilation, interactive debugging, native code, the first ANSI standard OO language...
And it's not that slow either. I'll race my CMUCL against your Java any day. In fact, I'll race my CMUCL against your C and expect to see same order of magnitude times for the same problem.
Nor is it especially bloated by today's standards:
26214 dan 5 5 24976 23M 12236 S N 0 0.0 25.0 1:21 lisp 18935 dan 15 5 54096 18M 3944 S N 0 2.3 19.8 14:16 navigator-sm 219 root 8 0 13992 12M 1116 R 0 2.5 13.7 33:34 XF86_SVGA 26107 dan 5 5 10608 9M 2124 S N 0 0.0 10.6 7:47 emacs
One of those top two is a fully-programmable web server (comparable to apache/mod_perl except for the native code aspect) and the other is a glorified help browser with a sockets interface
| I haven't seen a program in elisp that wasn't just meant for extending emacs.
Given that elisp only runs inside emacs, that's trivially true. I haven't seen a program using xlib that wasn't `just meant' for extending the X Window System
In the _interesting_ sense, though, how do you claim that a mail reader, a news reader or a web browser are extensions of a text editor?
I won't address your other comments about Lisp, as they're either flamebait or chronically ill-informed. If anyone else is more interested in learning things than pissing on them (someone mentioned 'hackers'?) could do worse than start at the ALU web pages
I've written to RMS before and he has always flat out ignored me. I asked him for advice on how to
Odd. I've written to RMS before and had timely and helpful answers. I guess YMMHV
If you ever do get an email from RMS, notice how the "king of all hackers" doesn't even understand the simple email courtesy of quoting the the text he is responding to with any kind of dilineating characters.
Um, nope. I have mail from him using ' ' (four spaces) as an indent. Which may not be the "industry-standard" angle bracket, but hey - at least it isn't supercite
Slashdot Mirror
Most systems are moving or have moved to 64 bit time_t, but that doesn't actually help because the compiled timezone data files which they're still using for timezone and DST lookup are still based on 32 bit quantities. At least, that was the case on my Linux Alpha box (until it died this morning. Need PSU)
The workaround we have in SBCL sucks more than slightly, to be honest. What we'll probably do at some point is get the source Olsen data ourselves and parse it into a form that doesn't throw useful information away quite as freely.
Biopace. Some people liked it, others didn't. These days everyone's using clipless pedals anyway, making for much smoother power transmission all the way around and elliptical chainrings yet less sensible.
It seems to be generally the case that any worthwhile OS/language/philosophy/religion/football team will atract these kinds of camp-followers. Think of the Amiga, or Linux, or KDE, or OS/2, or Slashdot, &c. They're not the people actually working on it, just the loud-mouthed minority who flame about it.
I wish it wasn't so.
Fwiw, my experience is that most of the people who say "LISP is the most powerful and elegant programming language in the world" go on to say "it's dead now, and you're inferior because you missed out on it, but you should definitely suffer through some horrendously abstract college course about it anyway because It Will Change The Way You Think(tm)"
Yes, I use Lisp. No, I've no bloody sympathy for this point of view. If it doesn't do anything useful for you, you don't have to use it. For me, it does (my web server and my window manager, for two things), so I do.
Incidentally, do you have a citation for that philg quote? I'm curious, he's usually a lot more level-headed than that
In fact you don't even need to write one, because it already exists. INFIX (catchy name, huh) is available from
i to ry/ai/lang/lisp/code/syntax/infix/0.html
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repos
or if you have Debian, you can get it as part of cCLan (see http://cclan.sf.net/ for details)
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "domain-aware, learning type assistant" but CL compilers that check types are out there already
The compiler in CMUCL (called Python, but not to be confused with the language of that name), for example, has a very nice type inferencer in it already, and when you set your compilation settings appropriately will even warn you where it hasn't been able to infer things so you know what explicit declarations to add
See the appropriate bit of the CMUCL User Manual
(with-gratuitous-plug
> (The site happens to be down now btw... foo.)
I think it moved. Try http://scwm.mit.edu instead
-dan
Linux desperately needs good, detailed, and current documentation for users and developers alike. There need to be some commitments authors make before being granted custody of a document. In particular, there needs to be a commitment to currency.
"Sorry, we won't let you write anything unless you promise to look after it for the next five years". How is this supposed to help? We don't demand a commitment to maintenance from the authors of the programs we use, why is it so different for authors of the documents?
Could you explain how your proposal would actually solve the problem ouf out-of-date documents? All I can see here is a way of labelling them, and it's usually pretty obvious anyway from the `Last modified' date
Actually, it felt better than having to match braces or forgetting semicolons. What I experienced, simply, was having one less thing to worry about. You just indent your code uniformly (which is good practice, anyway).
See, indenting lisp is even easier. You put parens around the blocks and then hit TAB and it indents for you. If it indents in a way you weren't expecting, add and remove brackets until it does.
Wrapping a section of code in a conditional becomes a complete no-brainer
Well, almost anything is Turing complete (including, I believe, sendmail rewrite rules), so that's not a terrifically interesting basis to compare things on.
More interesting? Object-orientated, functional, imperative, reflective, introspective, non-deterministic - all these styles of programming and more are supported, and many were pioneered using Lisp as a prototyping vehicle. Incremental compilation, interactive debugging, native code, the first ANSI standard OO language ...
And it's not that slow either. I'll race my CMUCL against your Java any day. In fact, I'll race my CMUCL against your C and expect to see same order of magnitude times for the same problem.
Nor is it especially bloated by today's standards:
26214 dan 5 5 24976 23M 12236 S N 0 0.0 25.0 1:21 lisp
18935 dan 15 5 54096 18M 3944 S N 0 2.3 19.8 14:16 navigator-sm
219 root 8 0 13992 12M 1116 R 0 2.5 13.7 33:34 XF86_SVGA
26107 dan 5 5 10608 9M 2124 S N 0 0.0 10.6 7:47 emacs
One of those top two is a fully-programmable web server (comparable to apache/mod_perl except for the native code aspect) and the other is a glorified help browser with a sockets interface
I'll stop ranting now.
-dan
Given that elisp only runs inside emacs, that's trivially true. I haven't seen a program using xlib that wasn't `just meant' for extending the X Window System
In the _interesting_ sense, though, how do you claim that a mail reader, a news reader or a web browser are extensions of a text editor?
I won't address your other comments about Lisp, as they're either flamebait or chronically ill-informed. If anyone else is more interested in learning things than pissing on them (someone mentioned 'hackers'?) could do worse than start at the ALU web pages
-dan
>I have never trusted anyone who tried to make something illegal just because they considered it immoral.
Really? I quite like the idea of murder being illegal.
-dan
Odd. I've written to RMS before and had timely and helpful answers. I guess YMMHV
Um, nope. I have mail from him using ' ' (four spaces) as an indent. Which may not be the "industry-standard" angle bracket, but hey - at least it isn't supercite
-dan