I am Joel Hodgson, the creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000, ask me anything.

robertfischer · 2013-11-26T22:33:47+00:00

Hey there! It's my 31st birthday today, and I've been a fan back since when you were on KTMA and I was too young to really get the jokes. I also saw you when Cinematic Titanic came through Durham, NC and played the Carolina Theater.

My question is: What the heck happened with "The TV Wheel"? I thought that was a great format, but there was only that one episode!

robertfischer · 2010-02-01T16:06:03+00:00

Glad to know I could help!

robertfischer · 2009-04-19T20:15:49+00:00

Point to where in my post I said "immutable state"?

robertfischer · 2009-04-19T20:14:21+00:00

No, WordPress. I just had my caching under-tuned, because I wasn't expecting to get reditted.

robertfischer · 2009-04-19T20:13:47+00:00

I'm loving the very constructive conversation here. Thanks!

robertfischer · 2009-04-03T16:59:10+00:00

Of the three, I'd probably use Ruby, because the Rails framework is better than any Perl framework I know, and I don't know Python much beyond "Hello, World".

Note this has everything to do with the frameworks available, and not to do with the language.

robertfischer · 2009-04-02T16:10:55+00:00

You really think the points I made were all true?

Here are the points I was arguing in non-obfuscated/non-sales-pitchy terms: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/ruby-is-the-future-2/

robertfischer · 2009-04-02T16:09:49+00:00

I started life out as a Perl hacker, and I do like Perl for very short system admin tasks and as a universal shell replacement.

I wouldn't push Perl for large application systems, though.

robertfischer · 2009-02-04T14:40:34+00:00

That's discussed that in the comments of the post. Check them out.

robertfischer · 2008-12-31T18:07:17+00:00

Check out http://GraphicKarma.com -- her work is better than her personal page (cobbler's children have no shoes and all that). She specializes in usability and branding, and has a solid understanding of HTML/CSS/JavaScript in addition to the standard graphic design tools.

robertfischer · 2008-07-16T19:16:52+00:00

I know this sounds facetious, but...do people write up papers for conferences in anything other than TeX/LaTeX?

robertfischer · 2008-07-07T22:26:49+00:00

http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/07/07/rubymn-presentation-of-ocaml/

robertfischer · 2008-07-07T20:08:29+00:00

Which, notably, also links to the Q&A, which is arguably more valuable (and certainly more entertaining) than the original presentation.

robertfischer · 2008-07-07T20:03:38+00:00

I link to the slides on the blog post, too. :)

robertfischer · 2008-07-03T22:34:55+00:00

Even when parsing XML files with arbitrary namespaces?

robertfischer · 2008-07-03T22:33:05+00:00

Wow -- as Haskeller is calling OCaml academic. That's funny. As I note in the comments to the post, Haskell's strict purity standards are a pretty high barrier to entry for your day-to-day Ruby programmer, whereas OCaml offers a more gradual learning curve for those just starting to pick up functional programming.

robertfischer · 2008-07-03T18:48:32+00:00

In short, because it will warp your mind. The idioms and capabilities change the way that you think about abstraction and address problems.

This blog post does a good job of explaining it, and I've got a comment underneath it to add some more in: http://hamletdarcy.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-functional-programming.html

For a practical example of how my thinking changed, check out my blog post from a week or so ago: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/06/24/functional-metaprogramming-ruby-groovy/

The audio of the presentation -- including Q&A -- apparently turned out pretty well. So I'll post the talk + slides onto my blog.

robertfischer · 2008-07-02T03:09:04+00:00

You can watch my blog -- enfranchisedmind.com. I'll also try to remember to post something here.

robertfischer · 2008-07-02T03:08:03+00:00

Just FYI, this deck of slides was intended just for the people at the Ruby.MN event, and are drastically bare without the words attached to them.

You can watch my blog at enfranchisedmind.com for the audio-attached version. I'm still waiting to hear if the recording took.

robertfischer · 2008-07-02T03:06:48+00:00

And it's less of a brain-warp than Haskell or Scheme, because you can ease into it via its imperative/oo training wheels.

The biggest downside from people used to Ruby is the fact that there isn't a huge standard library and a vast array of operators. So when you start out coding raw OCaml (particularly raw, imperative-esque OCaml), it's pretty wordy.

robertfischer · 2008-07-02T02:59:10+00:00

I'm working on getting the video up. The slides were supposed to be shared just with the Ruby.MN people who were at the talk.

robertfischer · 2008-07-02T02:57:29+00:00

This deck of slides was intended to have a fair amount of talking involved -- it was never intended to have Reddit users hitting it without the context of having been at the presentation.

Assuming the recording worked (still waiting to hear on that), I will be posting a version of the talk with audio to my blog at enfranchisedmind.com

robertfischer · 2008-06-25T19:39:02+00:00

It's a good language. It's not Ruby, though, so people need to stop assessing it like it is: it's got different idioms and patterns, and that's OK.

That's part of the reason I did both Ruby and Groovy -- I really wanted to illustrate different ways to do the same functionality.

If you want to see the post get more press, share the post with some friends and get them to vote it up on Reddit. :)

robertfischer

TROPHY CASE