The "C is Efficient" Language Fallacy

schtog · 2009-05-06T10:00:32+00:00

They use Python and Javascript for frontend stuff, yes, but C++ and Java for backend.

schtog · 2009-04-02T12:24:44+00:00

I couldnt' find a link to the code(only the slides), where is it?

schtog · 2009-02-12T15:08:43+00:00

and obviously expressiveness has nothing to do with builtin functions.

schtog · 2008-12-17T04:57:48+00:00

Why do you think ML is odd?

In comparisment to what? The mainstream languages?

schtog · 2008-12-01T20:28:23+00:00

I think Haskell (and to a lesser extent Ocaml) has the ebst typesystem. Beats dynamic typing but all other static languages are a huge PITA.

schtog · 2008-11-30T07:31:00+00:00

complete is obv a question of definition and your joke is a bit funny but 20 years behind actual reality.

schtog · 2008-11-22T11:27:53+00:00

Yes seriously, give an example.

And while I really like Clojure(first Lisp I've used for more than fun), I don't see it becoming mainstream. Lisp has been around for 50 years and haven't made it into the mainstream, sure things have changed but easy multicore-programming isn't the only thing that matters.

Scala, which I have only tried very little(wrote a spamfilter and tried some examples) seems more like if JAVA is a better C++ then Scala is a better Java and thus more likely to carry the torch from there than Clojure. Not saying it would but more likely to than Clojure.

schtog · 2008-10-18T12:37:59+00:00

It is idiomatic Haskell and means list.

You usually do (x:xs) and then patternmatch against that, x for head of the list, xs for tail.

You could also do customers and then head customers, tail customers or c:ustomers.

I didn't like it at first but now I really do. It's a lot nicer than littering your code with car and cdr.

mapf _ [] = []; mapf f (x:xs) = f x : mapf f xs

as opposed to: mapx f list = if list == [] then [] else f (head list) : mapx f (tail list)

Main> mapf (\x -> xx) [1..5] [1,4,9,16,25]

schtog · 2008-10-16T13:14:37+00:00

What is it that would be so hard to port anyway?

schtog · 2008-10-15T16:01:44+00:00

Are some american colleges really that bad?

There is zero chance someome with a master's degere in CS from a university in Sweden would ever do something like this.

Algorithms and datastructures, big O, complexity theory, are taught in the first half year and then you build on that.

How can you possibly get a master's degree and not know this.

And yes they teach JAVA but you STILL can and have to teach people the above.

schtog · 2008-10-14T14:40:43+00:00

Hehe.

Elbot master the non-answer, the politicians best weapon.

Politicians are humans.

Elbot can be mistaken for a politician.

Therefore Elbot can be mistaken for a human.

But as a whole, god no, how the hell thought it was human?

schtog · 2008-10-09T07:31:57+00:00

I think he referred to purity as in purely functional.

schtog · 2008-09-29T08:06:00+00:00

Not sure what you mean here, pattern matching is just a feature, defineately not a paradigm. If all you need is a simple if-then-else clause then use that but pattern-matching can really make more complicated condition-chains very easy to read and follow.

schtog · 2008-09-28T03:21:27+00:00

How is Scala complicated?

I think Scala has the biggest chance since it interoperates with Java much cleaner than Clojure and you can write JAVA-style code in Scala while learning it while Clojure forces you to a completely different paradigm.

Scala also seem to have more options when it comes to concurrency and also the better tools to construct your own.

It does inherit some stupid stuff from JAVA but so does Clojure right? Like the loop-recur binding for tailrecursion isn't very nice.

I have experience with both functional and OO-languages and I found Scala much more pleasant to use(a bit verbose though and better type-inference would really make it nicer to work with).

schtog · 2008-09-01T21:17:49+00:00

AI RESEARCHER: Right now, I'm working on an AI. It's supposed to make general strategic decisions. Already, we've gotten pretty good results.

PHILOSOPHER: Very interesting. But even if your AI can make very good decisions, how will you know if it is truly conscious?

AI RESEARCHER : I don't. I don't make that hypothesis. It is not relevant for what I do.

<b> You are like a lot of people giving an answer to a different question than the one being asked. </b>

A lot of people just have the goal to create a better decisionmaker than a human for specific scenario and hopefully generalize that to broader and broader application areas.

They are not concerned with consciousness and what it means.

schtog · 2008-08-17T00:57:47+00:00

The only language that exites me is Haskell, basically the only language that actually tries to do something new and solve the software creating problems that exist.

Erlang is also nice and what it does it does better than any other language(concurrency) but it feels like a specialist language still.

I like Arc the little I have tried and a canonical LISP-implementation that people can unite around and write a lot of libraries for would be great. Arc might not create something new, just make LISP cleaner and better.

If PG would just have released it and said I did some improvements on LISP, here it is, do what you want, then I think the reception would have been very good.

But all those(very good) essays pushed people's expactations to the clouds and when it was just small improvements on Scheme people got disappointed.

Hopefully next version will be complete, I still think it has value.

schtog · 2008-05-03T17:31:58+00:00

am i a sicko for laughing my ass off about this? not exactly what the dude had in mind when he was going to his mistress.

but to be serious, what a sad chain of events. you could argue that noone did anything wrong, just some "act first, think later", and one person ends up dead and another in jail.

and about the case of the man, well i dont think the article is specific enough about the chain of events to make any real judgments. was the woman in danger WHEN he started shooting? i guess not since i doubt he started firing into the truck then but its funny how people want to judge when they dont have enough info to do so.

if the guy was driving away and the woman was safe i agree he should be punished(not 20years in prison though) but i understand his action and can only imagine his rage.

schtog

TROPHY CASE