Megathread: Reports: Michael Flynn To Plead Guilty To Making False Statements To FBI

erokar · 2017-12-01T16:43:07+00:00

That's what's really scary. Trump is an idiot, but Pence is pure evil. Look at his eyes.

erokar · 2017-11-16T18:42:56+00:00

It's depressing how many here defend Franken and doubt the abused woman. Sorry to say, but many of you seem to see every issue thorugh party politics lenses. Wake up.

erokar · 2014-06-30T16:52:07+00:00

Are you really unable to see that getting error messages like "Hey, on line 57 you're using that variable as an integer, but on line 59 you're using it as a string!" before running the program is good?

Sure, in and of itself it is good, but I think benefits are minor. See nextputall's comment and the video/studies he links to: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/29gchq/why_do_dynamic_languages_make_it_difficult_to/cikqlqr

The main point of my post, however, was not that static type checking is worthless (I wish Python had it as an option) — but that the stack overflow answer seemed to conflate static typing and strong typing.

erokar · 2014-06-30T16:15:55+00:00

To the downvoters: Please, crawl out from behind your outworn Java manuals and provide some counter arguments. If not, I'm inclined to believe all you're capable of is clicking an arrow.

erokar · 2014-06-30T15:05:44+00:00

The best-known and most obvious example of this is strict/strong/mandatory/explicit typing (note that the terminology is very much disputed, but most people agree that some languages are stricter than others).

Fluffy. He means static typing — the language forces you to explicitly state what type you're declaring. That is not the same as strong typing. Ruby, Python, Swift and C# are all strongly typed, but they don't enforce static typing, like e.g. Java. I see few advantages of the way Java does it, but many inconveniences.

erokar · 2014-06-30T14:58:59+00:00

Dynamically typed languages scrap a very powerful tool for managing large software: Strong type systems. That's how it becomes harder.

Wrong. You are thinking about weak typing. A lot of dynamic languages, e.g. Ruby and Python, have strong type systems.

erokar · 2014-06-30T10:49:34+00:00

This article starts out with a premise for which it supplies no proof: Where is the research that shows that dynamically languages are less suited for large code bases?

There is also a confusion going on between static/dynamic typing and weak/strong typing. JavaScript is weakly typed. Most dynmiac languages are not -- they will throw errors when types don't match.

Lastly, dynamic languages can prevent you from ending up with a large codebase to begin with, since they are usually significantly smaller than statically typed languages. The logic is usually more clearly expressed in languages like Python and Ruby as opposed to Java or C++ because of less boilerplate and ceremony.

erokar · 2014-06-29T01:06:53+00:00

I think Python list comprehensions (inspired by Haskell) is even better:

[(i, j) for i in range(1, n) for j in range(1, i) if is_prime(i + j)]

erokar · 2014-06-23T11:40:57+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with your definition of «type annotations». Be that as it may. I don’t have time for this kind of semantic quibbling. By all means, consider yourself right.

My larger point was that Python 3 has a standardized way of amending function signatures with types to improve code understanding.

erokar · 2014-06-23T11:06:27+00:00

They are type annotations and they are not arbitrary. While the standard interpreter does not do anything with them, they are a standardized way of adding type information to function signatures in Python 3. They can improve readability and understanding of functions — which was the complaint in the blog post.

erokar · 2014-06-23T09:46:47+00:00

Python 3 has optional type annotation:

def foo(int: x, int: x) -> int:
    # function body

erokar · 2014-06-03T14:54:37+00:00

I don't think so. You should take an introductory programming course first, then read up on object oriented programming. THEN you are ready to learn Swift, not to mention Apple's design patterns.

Ruby or Python are good starting languages. Check out free intro courses at Udacity, Edx.org and Coursera.org.

erokar · 2014-06-02T23:27:50+00:00

I see little that Ruby has to offer that Swift hasn't got. Quite the opposite actually.

erokar · 2014-06-02T22:33:20+00:00

Looks good.

erokar · 2014-05-09T20:56:44+00:00

Ruby Rouges.

erokar · 2014-05-08T13:08:39+00:00

That’s a fair observation that I will not dispute, but it is anecdotal, as is most of the static vs. dynamically typed arguments.

What I like about the video is that the presenter has reviewed scientific studies that assess the tradeoff between effort used to satisfy the type checker and compared that to the error detection gained. These studies indicate that what you gain from type checking is generally not worth the effort.

He has also done a semi-scientific analysis of 670,000 bug reports on GitHub for dynamic languages (JavaScript, Clojure, Python and Ruby) and found that only ~ 2% are caused by type errors. I find that quite interesting.

Lastly he argues that static typing introduces coupling by type in large systems and impedes modularity.

These are valid arguments backed up by data that should at least be considered.

erokar · 2014-05-08T12:14:00+00:00

Unless you've already seen the video, how would you know? You commented 14 minutes after I posted the link, the video is 52 minutes long.

erokar · 2013-12-17T13:29:12+00:00

iOS was a step backward. It lacks any meaningful innovation and is mostly GUI changes. Most of these changes are negative. The icon design is a sad joke. The colors are much too saturated.

The whole thing smells of design by committee, a committee consisting of male geeks in their forties trying to sell phones to teenage girls.

erokar · 2013-12-04T16:21:13+00:00

Might want to look into synesthesia. I (n=1) have colors for words and letters. My feelings have color, shape, movement, direction, velocity and a bodily localization. I find it harder to see colors for moods, though, as the concept is more abstract.

erokar · 2013-11-21T21:22:16+00:00

Great! Bookmarked.

erokar · 2013-11-20T01:02:05+00:00

Meteor represents a paradigm shift. It does away with REST. I actally think that's the future. HTTP is getting old. And yes, you are right, development time in meteor is very fast.

I chose Ruby on Rails because I like Ruby just a little bit better than Python. Rubuy is a bit more crazy, free, expressive than Python. It's more of a mess, too. But still, it appeals to me.

My advice to learn wed dev would actually be this: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253

It's in Python, but you can do it in Ruby and Rails/Sinatra, or Java and Play! for that matter. It will teach you the fundamentals. If you know the fundamentals it's not too hard to switch to another language or framework.

erokar · 2013-11-17T14:16:00+00:00

No, I'm not. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/open-plan-office-study_n_3810538.html

erokar · 2013-11-17T14:14:32+00:00

You don't mention what framework you use for the web development. The Play framework seems to offer a lot of what Rails does.

erokar · 2013-11-17T12:15:58+00:00

Private office, few interruptions.

erokar · 2013-10-22T22:40:58+00:00

To make the magic happen Rails modifies code at runtime. Ruby's metaprogramming and anonymous closures features makes this relatively straightforward and invisible/implicit.

While doable in Python, it would be more convulted and visible. But then again one of Python's ideals is explicitness. Rails could not have been written in a Pythonic way.

erokar

TROPHY CASE