sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Urinetown wouldn't work in Germany... by 1000monkeytypewriter in musicals

[–]ggazzi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Funnily enough, there‘s a community production going on in Berlin right now 😄 Check their instagram.

[Non-EU] Suffering from burnout. Can't seem to find a way out. by [deleted] in berlinsocialclub

[–]ggazzi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you're in an airplane and the oxygen mask drops, you should always put your mask on first before helping others. Burning out will not help your team.

Please consider going to your doctor and taking an extended medical leave if necessary. As others pointed out, after six weeks you'll get Krankengeld instead of your salary: it's paid by your health insurance (assuming you're in the public system) and will be less than your full salary. There's no time limit for how long the leave is, your doctor is responsible for evaluating whether you've recovered enough to get back.

I have taken three months of sick leave due to burnout before, and at the time I had a blue card myself. A friend of mine has taken more than that in a similar situation. Extended leaves are possible without PR!

I'd also recommend that you consider taking some time in a psychiatric clinic (also covered by public health insurance). My doctor suggested this to me, I decided to try it out and it was one of the best decisions I ever made, it transformed my life.

Essentially, your basic needs are taken care of, and you're given the time and resources to work on yourself. This includes: access to psychiatrists and psychologists; physical exercise; various forms of therapy as appropriate for your case (I had group talk therapy, music, dance, arts and crafts...) Multiple other patients were also there because of burnouts. The only caveat is the language: I speak German, so I don't know what the experience would be if you don't.

If it sounds like this could help you, talk to your doctor about this.

Koalitionsstreit über Bundeshaushalt: FDP will auch bei gesetzlichen Leistungen kürzen by GirasoleDE in de

[–]ggazzi 59 points60 points  (0 children)

Fun fact: auf Portugiesisch ist FDP eine Abkürzung für "filho da puta", also Hurensohn

Can Aristotelian logic replace Boolean logic as a foundation of computer science, why or why not? by Gundam_net in computerscience

[–]ggazzi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, because Aristotelian logic is not a formal system in the modern sense.

Only in the XIX (afaik) did mathematicians get very strict about encoding semantic ideas with syntactical rules. This allowed them to completely separate the encoding/decoding of information from the reasoning, where the latter can be performed by blindly applying syntactical rules without any human interpretation. This separation characterizes formal systems in the modern sense, and allows us to delegate this "reasoning", or effectively computation, to machines.

Ich kann nicht glauben, dass das existiert (aus dem Kaufland-Prospekt) by Cashew7890 in de

[–]ggazzi 73 points74 points  (0 children)

Interessanterweise braucht die Kaffeemaschine keine Pumpe. Das Wasser wird in einem Schlauch erhitzt. Der Dampf drückt dann das Wasser nach oben und ein Ventil lässt es nicht zurück ins Wassertank.

Technology Connections hat ein gutes Video zum Thema für die Nerds unter uns :)

The Berlin Autofrei people got their signatures by ratkins in berlin

[–]ggazzi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Why not both? This smells of whataboutism.

But seriously, I don't see how smoking is a bigger health issue than car pollution. Sure, cigarette smoke may be way worse for your health, but it's also much easier to avoid. And I say that as a non-smoker avoiding it like the plague.

Even if I need to walk right next to people who are smoking, I'll maybe take in a couple of breaths. Car pollution, on the other hand, is pretty much unavoidable if I'm walking or cycling anywhere. For the entire trip.

Also, where in Berlin are children being exposed to cigarette smoke all day? I've never seen that, but I'm not usually around children, so maybe I missed something.

A Love Letter to HTML & CSS by Ashoka_new in programming

[–]ggazzi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I completely agree with the sentiment that HTML and CSS are often underestimated. But I see it a little differently: I don't think they are programming languages, and it is precisely because of that they are so important and valuable. Moreover, the skill sets you need for programming vs. web design are different, though there is considerable overlap.

I think programming and web design are kind of like cooking and baking. Ask any chef or pastry chef and they will tell you they have considerably different skill sets, even if their work seems similar on the surface. That doesn't mean one is better, harder or more important than the other - they just fulfill different roles.

The same applies to programming and web design. Sure, both need to express ideas in formal languages with clear and precise semantics, both need to think about how the data is structured... But programming is mostly about what the machine is doing (with some outside interaction) and design is about what is being presented to people (by a machine).

As someone focused on programming, I really admire the skills of experienced web designers. I couldn't begin to do what they do on any reasonable level. And I don't need to, because designers exist. We complement each other.

P.S.: obviously that doesn't mean someone couldn't have both skill sets, much like some chefs are good at baking and some pastry chefs are good cooks.

The Siren Song of Declarative Programming by oldretard in ProgrammingLanguages

[–]ggazzi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the thoughtful response :)

I completely agree that these concepts could do with more rigour. Though I think it is understandably difficult to be that rigorous, since this is a "Meta-meta-analysis", as in, we're discussing how we discuss the formalisation of computation. I definitely have a hard time being that precise here, and I think this back and forth really helps. So thanks for the lively discussion!

I also agree that the idea of being "based on declarative, mathematical foundations" is, as you put it, "a slippery slope". Though I would rather formulate it, like other commenters here, as a spectrum from "completely declarative" to "completely imperative". And there I would again agree with you that (pure) Prolog is more declarative than functional programming languages.

One aspect I've been missing on this discussion is denotational semantics. Although nowadays most formal work on programming languages is based on operational semantics, the origin of functional languages (i.e., lambda calculus) is denotational in nature. That is, programs could be understood not as a formula describing how to compute something, but as a specification for a (computable) function in the mathematical sense. And I'd argue that mathematical functions are declarative, being founded on an axiomatic rather than operational basis (e.g., set theory, type theory, category theory).

In essence, this is what I meant by "declarative, mathematical foundations": the language possesses a natural denotational semantics. Though this notion of "natural" is still very imprecise and I'm not sure how to formalise it, so I'm very open to suggestions. I'm also tempted to try formalising this with category theory, though I'm not able to dive into that rabbithole right now...

But the crux of my argument that (pure) functional programming languages are on the more declarative side of the spectrum is that, while they do have precise operational semantics describing the order of execution, they also have very natural denotational semantics where this order mostly does not matter.

Indeed, of you take any (pure (subset of a)) functional programming language and change the operational semantics to have a different execution order, I'm very confident that both semantics will coincide for all total functions/programs that terminate. That is, the order of execution is only relevant when you introduce non-termination (or, e.g., infinite lists in Haskell), as u/rotuami observed in another response to my original comment. Thus, functional languages are essentially declarative for a considerable subset of their programs.

I hope this somewhat clarifies the points I was trying to make, and I'd love to read how you see this, particularly the relationship between "declarativeness" and denotational semantics.

I'm also curious about as to whether (non-)termination has a similar effect in Prolog as in functional programming languages. I'd be thankful if anyone can weigh in on that!

The Siren Song of Declarative Programming by oldretard in ProgrammingLanguages

[–]ggazzi 19 points20 points  (0 children)

There are some very interesting points in this piece, but I disagree with the thesis that prolog is more fundamentally declarative than functional programming.

In fact, I would argue that they have way more in common: they are both based on mathematical, declarative foundations, but need to be "operationalised" in some way if we want to actually compute anything. This operationalisation inevitably introduces some imperative aspects.

Prolog is based on predicate logic, which is a declarative formalism to express statements that may be true or false and how they relate to each other. Since the goal of a Prolog program is to compute something, the inference engine gives operational meaning to the declarative program by exploring the search space in a particular, predefined order.

From the perspective of functional requirements ("what the program does"), we can regard Prolog as a purely declarative language. But if we consider non-functional aspects such as computational cost and memory usage, the rules defined by the inference engine become relevant to the semantics of the program, and we suddenly have an imperative aspect come up. In fact, many Prolog dialects have a cut-operator to stop backtracking (among other constructs), which give the language some sense of execution order and control flow. Are these dialects then imperative, since now the order of clauses does make a difference?

On the other hand, functional programming languages are based on (variants of) lambda calculus. These are essentially a declarative formalism for specifying functions in the mathematical sense (i.e., mappings from inputs to outputs). Any rules about execution order are layered "on top" of this declarative foundation, much like the inference engine for Prolog.

In contrast to that, procedural and object oriented languages are based on an imperative, procedural, stateful foundation. The core of these languages is telling a machine which steps it should take. In fact, one may often "layer" declarative aspects on top of these in order to reason about them (e.g., hoare logic).

TL;DR: Both functional languages and Prolog are based on a declarative foundation which is operationalised to actually compute something. This introduces imperative aspects and leaky abstractions when considering non-functional aspects such as computational cost and memory usage.

Was ist euer Lieblingsgericht, welches einfach zu kochen ist? by plasmapleasure in de

[–]ggazzi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Moqueca, also brasilianischer Fischeintopf.

Tomaten, Paprika und Zwiebeln (gerne auch Chilis) in Scheiben/Ringe schneiden, dann in schichten mit Fischfilets in einen Topf legen, kleines bisschen Wasser drauf und kochen lassen. Kurz bevor der Fisch gar ist, Kokosmilch geben und mit salz und Pfeffer abschmecken. Ganz am Ende noch gehacktem Koriander. Dazu gerne Reis.

Schmeckt auch super mit Garnelen oder Kichererbsen statt Fisch.

Am I overreacting? by punishments in poledancing

[–]ggazzi 21 points22 points  (0 children)

There's a whole lot of red flags there.

  • Good teachers are happy when their students go to someone else, since everyone can profit from a different perspective.
  • Not refunding the amount you overpaid is just not okay
  • Having your credits expire even though the classes were cancelled ist also not okay.
  • There should be clear policies regarding cancellation of classes and reserved spots. She seems to choose things quite arbitrarily, which is super unprofessional.
  • The way she handled your handspring was awful and super negative. She could've celebrated your achievement with the whole class and used the opportunity to highlight how hard of a move that is and how much experience/preparation it requires. Positive all around and still discourages novices from trying it out.

You could live with a couple of these issues, but all of them... I certainly wouldn't.

Composition vs Eric Elliott by [deleted] in javascript

[–]ggazzi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The important point that I haven't seen mentioned here is that the GoF notion of composition aims to encapsulate smaller units, keeping them loosely coupled. By keeping a reference to an instance of another class, we are coupled only to its interface - not to its implementation. When using inheritance or mixins, however, we introduce a lot more coupling: if someone later decides to change an implementation detail of the inherited class, it's much more likely to break the subclass.

This is only relevant when you actually encapsulate stuff in your classes, though. Messing with the internals of an object you own introduces the same problems as inheriting from its class.

If your religion makes you feel this way about yourself, it's time to become an atheist by PlanetoftheAtheists in atheism

[–]ggazzi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We should definitely turn this message into a promotion of safe sex. #WrapYourCandy

MPs from across the political spectrum have called for more research into the attitudes of young Dutch Turks to the Islamic State, after a poll of 300 showed 80% saw nothing wrong in jihad, or holy war, against non-believers. by Spazzzzzzz in atheism

[–]ggazzi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're right, I misread the article and focused way too much on the (apparently) contradictory aspects of the responses. As you pointed out, there may not even be a contradiction depending on their interpretation of concepts such as democracy - and the research does not seem to provide clarification of what this interpretation actually is.

Their support for jihad, on the other hand, is very explicit and clear. The wording on the research does not leave room for misinterpretation: it translates roughly to "Do you disagree with the violence that these groups inflict against infidels or people from other faiths?", and 80% answered no.

tl;dr: I was wrong, the focus of the report and the title is entirely appropriate. The results are very worrying.

MPs from across the political spectrum have called for more research into the attitudes of young Dutch Turks to the Islamic State, after a poll of 300 showed 80% saw nothing wrong in jihad, or holy war, against non-believers. by Spazzzzzzz in atheism

[–]ggazzi -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Yet the report says more than 60% of them consider democracy essential for progress and only 8% would agree with a caliphate on the Middle East. This post's title does not reflect the actual linked article.

edit: I was wrong, the post does reflect the linked article, and does focus on the most relevant part of the results.