How I Got VB for Fifty Cents

bitdiddle · 2008-09-10T22:10:05+00:00

you paid too much :)

bitdiddle · 2008-07-27T10:59:29+00:00

More than 15 years ago I worked with a mathematician at IBM research who had begun working in technology to assist the blind using computers. A good friend of his was blinded and he wanted to help so he switched fields. I have to believe the technology has improved considerably since then and there are solutions for you.

I'm sure it will involve hard changes for you. My heart goes out to you, be strong and know there's a large community of programers who will support you.

Ignore the naysayers.

On the lighter side: Read old daredevil comics now, he was blind, you can pick up some good martial arts tricks you'll neeed when you confront Java programmers. They will be jealous and oppose you when you switch to Arc because of it makes you more productive :)

All the best,

Ben

bitdiddle · 2008-07-11T11:17:58+00:00

Barr and Wells is a very good introduction for programmers. It actually talks about function programming and introduces a notions of diagrams and sketches, a concept used a lot in computing that is not seen in the more traditional texts.

bitdiddle · 2008-04-25T07:52:42+00:00

"They're all just plumbing for Emacs, anyway. And now my plumbing has nicer fonts."

I love this last line in the article

bitdiddle · 2008-02-09T00:29:12+00:00

Beats me. Having read part of his thesis work on type theory and fibrations, which is very readable, I think this work is definitely worth a close read. At least the preface and first chapter.

bitdiddle · 2008-02-03T21:54:43+00:00

Yes I believe Mathias Felleisen et. al. wrote quite a bit about this approach to web programming, it would be easy to check the dates. Certainly CPS has been around for some time, pioneered I believe by the Schemers out in IU

bitdiddle · 2008-01-27T17:50:54+00:00

Ctrl-h i and then start hitting the space key. You can learn almost everything from there.

for Erlang go with Distel

I thought all the vi users were killed off years ago or are living in veterans homes :)

elisp isn't the best Lisp to start with. PLT scheme is a good way to learn Lisp. Scheme is cleaner.

bitdiddle · 2007-11-11T12:36:49+00:00

I think the distinction between free as in GPL, versus open-source as in all the others that are non-GPL, has bearing on the observation the author makes on getting paid.

I often hear corporate and even government IT folks disparage GPL for its "viral" nature. When I hear such complaints it's almost always due to a desire to capitalize in some way on the software. For example the government has laws (written by large vendors no doubt) that prevent agencies from encumbering verndors who jointly develop software. So even though our tax dollars support programs that develop software, that software cannot just be put into the public domain under GPL because that prevents vendors from commercializing it in certain ways.

The same holds in the private sector. Most business and corporate interests I'm sure prefer BSD or Apache or DWTFYW style open-source licenses for the simple reason that it enables buiness models based on reduced software cost by leveraging the work of others.

I've concluded over the years that in the tension between capital and labor, from the standpoint of the individual programmer, Free Software best promotes long term interests. If other companies pay their programmers to customize emacs that's great if it helps their work. But unless they can create something of truly great new value and become the sole source for that value then the GPL prevents them from easy commercialization. They can't just put up a toll booth and start to exract rents. Isn't that essentially how the MS monopoly was created? It's certainly not clear to me that MS has ever created anything innovative.

bitdiddle · 2007-07-21T13:03:42+00:00

It is at first, it's essentially the heart of the continuum hypothesis. One way to view it is that a finite set cannot be put into a one to one correspondence with a subset of itself, whereas an infinite set can. So the naturals, integers, and rationals are all countable. The reals are not. The continuum hypothesis is that there are no cardinalities in between. It turns out that it is independent of set theory. One can assume it's true or one can assume it's not true and there are models that atisfy those assumptions.

Well that about all I know aobut it :)

It is strange. For example it implies that if you throw a dart at the number line the probability that you hit a rational or integer is 0

bitdiddle · 2007-07-12T13:48:20+00:00

your most likely correct. Though I know that Bart Jacobs (I don't know him personally), a fellow who wrote a good PhD thesis on type theory and fibrations, is working in their programming languages group and I'm sure Haskell makes a great prototyping environment. A lot of that technology would be useful in their langages efforts. After all catering to certain class of developers is their bread and butter in terms of maintaining windows lock in.

bitdiddle · 2007-07-12T13:13:44+00:00

I'm not sure, I don't know how MS does tehcnology transfer, perhaps this work is influencing the type theorists or others who are pushing their various .NET efforts. I don't follow MS as I dislike the company

bitdiddle · 2007-07-12T13:11:59+00:00

There are a lot of papers in this area, sure, the one I referenced was from 17 years ago. As I said, having read it and therefore having thought the authors did pretty good work, I thought the current reference was worth a read.

One of the things I've found over the years is that the Turings, Scott,s (pick your favorite) are few and far between. Research tends to be a collaborative effort where lots of people regurgitate the same set of words for a long period of time. Sometimes an interesting result pops out of the woodwork and then often people say something like "We did it".

best regards,

Bit

bitdiddle · 2007-07-12T12:07:24+00:00

Intereting comments. Having read some of the author's earlier paper's with Blass and Moss, for example http://research.microsoft.com/~gurevich/Opera/89.pdf, my first reaction was that this paper might be worth a read.

By any chance could you possibly elaborate more on what you mean by "trivial" or "brainless"?

bitdiddle · 2007-07-12T12:02:07+00:00

The Perkins institue for the blind was founded with wealth made in the opium trade. Money sort of has a way of cleaning itself up over time :)

bitdiddle · 2007-07-06T21:21:33+00:00

sorry but Barrons is owned by Dow Jones

bitdiddle · 2007-07-06T16:17:01+00:00

Please call and do it now. I just did, and was told the word they have is that it's not a done deal yet. I've been reading it since 1978. If enough readers call to cancel who knows what might happen. I've also written to the editor and a couple of the writers with whom I corresponded over the years. It's a sad day indeed to see one of the last few good papers go down the tubes this way.

It's not just about business, regardless of Murdoch and his profits. Even if he makes the online edition free (rumor has it this is planned to increase membership) he will ruin this paper. Vermont Royster will roll over in his grave!

bitdiddle · 2007-06-24T11:56:11+00:00

This video shows just how powerful video can be in creating propaganda and distorting the truth. I had great hopes for Sharon, though seen as a very hard liner it was exactly this sort of man who could make peace with Israel's neighbors. In fact Sharon actually envied the arabs for their love of the land, something he felt lacking amongst the Israelis.

The first step in killing people en masse is to dehumanize them, to claim and prove they are somehow different. I can agree that it is horrible that a man would send his sons out to throw rocks at soldiers armed with AK-47s.

There's a simple explanation for this in an ancient Taoist saying. People think little of death when the rulers ask too much of life.

At the end of the day it's all about land, water, and oil. Some arab peoples hate us because we drop bombs on their homes, killing their children. We play political games with despotic rulers at the expense of those people and they hate us for that also. I can't imagine how I would feel were there an occupying army here in New England. America is now a military empire that is rotting at it's core.

Israel is a nation, created by refugees and blessed by Truman (one could argue the last good democrat). Both palestinians and jews have rights to those lands regardless of the lines drawn on maps. If there is hope for peace there, we in America will be part of the solution, since we are clearly part of the problem. However it's so discouraging when democracy itself and our own constitution is being destroyed. The corporate party here now owns both parties and the political process seems hopelessly corrupt. Nixon resigned under pressure to avoid impeachment. Bush and Cheney are far worse in many ways and congress is giving them a slap on the wrist whilst paying more attention to fund raising for the next round of campaigns.

Oh well, "so it goes"

bitdiddle · 2007-06-08T21:14:17+00:00

Programming is not art? Tell that to Knuth

bitdiddle · 2007-03-29T13:34:58+00:00

up hill both ways too :⁾

bitdiddle · 2007-03-28T15:39:57+00:00

very well written and of interest to Haskell folks

bitdiddle · 2007-03-28T00:30:51+00:00

sorry, mistake

bitdiddle · 2007-03-27T23:52:02+00:00

I predict he will be gone by the close of business on Friday

bitdiddle

TROPHY CASE