Jonathanks

The example is strange and contrived. I couldn't torture the logic enough to demonstrate how readability breaks down with exceptions. Reading through the comments, I realise that even if the code is unreadable with exceptions, it can be rewritten to be readable. I updated the article to highlight not only readability, but also compositionality. I also tried to draw parallels with Promises (which are also monadic). I tried to target the article to intermediate programmers that may not already know most of the concerns raised in the comments, and I surely can't cover enough space on error handling without writing a book.

Thank you for the comments. I've learned more from reading the comments.

Author here. Thank you for the link to Midori's error model. It's on my reading list for this week.

So we should keep the door open, and not pretend we have already solved errors.

Very much this. Even with errors as values, the approach languages like Go take makes composition difficult. I presented the Kleisli approach instead. That recovers compositionality. OCaml does something I find interesting. It makes exceptions performant by not capturing stack traces by default. But it's still too easy to forget handling the exception.

btw, the article uses Rust, not Go, but anyway...

I actually used TypeScript. The Rust bit was meant to introduce the idea from Rust to TypeScript. It's not new in TypeScript, but it's not popular either. I have updated the article to clarify that.

I agree with you. With OpenAPI you can be more specific about what your API does. You can add examples and refer to the output of an API call (useful if you need to point out relationships). When I have time, I may work on more tooling for OpenAPI. I'm thinking of a way of specifying workflows by connecting APIs in a specification, then deriving tests for that workflow. A way of saying, "always call this operation first, then use the response to call this other operation." Then the tool can test entire workflows automatically.

I used OpenAPI exclusively on my previous job. But it was only me, the back-end developer. My colleagues appreciated the documentation. But when it was time for me to leave, the team moved to Postman. OpenAPI was another DSL to learn, and they didn't consider it worthwhile. Although there are WYSIWYG editors for OpenAPI, they are not as popular as Postman. There's just a lot of inertia in the way of OpenAPI adoption.

Even though I like it, I find the DSL too verbose. A slimmer DSL would be great. Generating the spec from existing code worked sometimes, but it coupled the API design process to the implementation code. I'm not a fan of that.

I think OpenAPI's appeal is in tooling: provide a spec, then you get documentation, API consoles, mock servers, etc. for free. If it's for documentation only, people will continue using Postman. Postman already provides mock servers and consoles, so there you have it. It'll take more tools built on OpenAPI to make it very appealing.

When I gave this book an attempt, I appreciated the author's honesty about the difficulty of the material. I went with Real World Ocaml instead, intending to reattempt SoFP in the future. Today I suggested an addition to a section in Real World OCaml, and the author pointed out that the section was already so dense that adding the extra content would require more explanation. I now appreciate the difficulty in making such a technical material approachable by a less technical audience, and a heads up is appropriate.

Edit: (in light of another reply that mentioned the lambda calculus). The addition to Real World OCaml that I suggested was to call out the implementation of the Y combinator in the section on Memoization. The explanation used the Y combinator to work up to an implementation of memoization, and it was so intuitive that I felt it should be noted, but that won't easily fit into an already dense chapter.

"Dating or not, these are vital in life."

I don't mean to be pedantic, but, without the comma, I read it wrong twice. I agree with you totally. I'm currently looking for a course I can volunteer for outside my day job.

This is amazing. Is it like MapReduce, but for virus replication and transmission?

That's quite like my experience. I started out with Emacs, but I learned Vim along the way and the key bindings are awesome. I use them in other editors, but often they conflict with the editor's defaults, or they're not emulated properly. I don't use Vim exclusively (I couldn't get to customize it, couldn't get to learn vimscript), but the key bindings are great.

I sincerely hope you find something that works. It is a good pursuit. Will it be limited to learning programming only? There are many other skills that will be needed after such crises. One such skill is creative writing to bring the arts back to life (other arts are needed too). Another is story telling, because the story of the events will need to be told, preferably by those who were in the midst of it, not those who wish to write the victims' history (like the colonialists did to Africa).

I am a Nigerian, and I am an studying to take up a career in tech (focusing on software engineering, but I have interests in data science, and education). I see these stories of Nigerian scam artists presented in a stereotypical way that tends to casts a whole nation in that image, and it saddens me.

In 2016, and through the first quarter of 2017, at the peak of the ponzi schemes frenzy that caught Nigeria (did you hear of MMM and the likes?), some friends asked me to create a similar platform for peer-to-peer donations for them. They wanted a matrix scheme with themselves at the top; they'd later take the site down suddenly after making much money; whoever came in last or invested much would be wrecked. I refused taking the job, and some other developer friends declined similar requests. I know some that took such jobs. So there are the dishonest ones, and there are the genuine ones.

While there are scammers raising the country's flag everywhere, I am certain many are not Nigerians. As Chimamanda Adichie said, the problem with stereotypes is not that they are false, but that they are only half the truth.

TheRealmccoy's goal is commendable. Many economies do not have favorably balanced trade with the big nations, so an effective way to learn on mobile will help many persons. But in a crisis where bombs and bullets are flying around, will studying be really important to survival? Will edX be of any help to someone who likely does not have internet access (I'd rather spend on essential goods than pay an ISP that doesn't care about me)? His solution, if he finds one, will be of benefit to the captive economies of the third world, except the crisis-torn economies.

I mentioned that stability is a concern for me. Don't you think Arch Linux feeding packages from upstream might not be ideal for me? That's the reason I highlighted Debian testing instead of Debian unstable.

I've used Slackware before, and it was an easy look into the system; except that package management is a bit stressful on Slackware, and its packages are not so up-to-date.

I'm running a VM with FreeBSD now; how suitable it can be for a laptop, I don't know yet. Battery life matters there too.

Fedora looks good; I already have a Fedora 24 disc, so I might go from there instead of Slackware. openSUSE tumbleweed looks great too. I'll probably try it.

How does openSUSE do compared against Fedora, FreeBSD and Debian (testing) for developers? I'm currently running Ubuntu but the experience is not as smooth as I want: I've had several freezes and kernel panics, even though my laptop is well supported (from Ubuntu 14.04, at least).

I want something that's a bit stable with more recent packages. FreeBSD seems to be semi-rolling release, comparing package versions in the 'current' release with that in the snapshot versions. Debian testing has packages as recent as I can use, but I heard it's less stable than Ubuntu and bad things happen too. I'm considering Fedora, but I prefer rolling release distros to fixed release ones (I don't want Rawhide for stability sake). OpenSUSE has older packages in its repos: PHP < 7.0, gcc < 6, ...

""It is immature or silent for the first several days after formation," Prof Tonegawa said. 'Strong case' The researchers also showed the long- term memory never matured if the connection between the hippocampus and the cortex was blocked. So there is still a link between the two parts of the brain, with the balance of power shifting from the hippocampus to the cortex over time."

I have no good knowledge of neuroscience, so I'll be happy to read other thoughts on this. Personally, it seems to me that this is an evolved technique to direct us to:

act on impulses at the moment of an event, instead of contemplating rational choices that may take too much time to arrive at (thus limiting our chances of survival);

pursue rational choices in calmer times, trusting us to draw on stored memories of similar events to help make better decisions (the purpose of Deja Vu?)

For the link between the hippocampus and the cortex being required to retrieve memories; maybe those memories are useless without the emotional context, and the hippocampus is needed to relive those emotions to have a more accurate recollection of the memories.

It might not make sense (I know almost nothing about neuroscience), but it's a thought.

Now that's funny. Someone just ruined your yogurt-filled snack? ;-)

I subscribed to your blog and your newsletter some months ago, and I must say I like what you do. Although I'm focused on C++ now for some courses I'm taking, I still hope to catch up on Go later, and I think your book will be helpful. Personally, I wouldn't mind a hands-on exploration of a programming language having some pages, and links to good resources, on version control. Learning 'git' in such practical way (as part of a project) seems better to me (Harvard's CS50 now takes that approach too: https://github.com/blog/2322-how-cs50-at-harvard-uses-github...).

The Linux Foundation may have just accepted a Trojan Horse (or rather, a Redmond Horse). I hope it turns out for good for all. I'd love to see better contributions to Linux. If Microsoft can help make Wine better, then the playing field could be level. But it is scary to think that so many years of open source software available on Linux will eventually be available to Windows users without being ported to Windows, and then Linux suffers more. Hopefully it will be good for all.

I used Windows in 2015 (I never used it as my primary OS for more than a year) alongside some Linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Slackware and a few others). I finally settled for Debian, at least for now. Whenever I need to do something with Windows, I just fire up VirtualBox and it's working well so far. I miss games on Windows and I'm not aware of anything comparable (without SteamOS) on Debian.

I read "Internet Book Piracy" recently about this issue and the author, Gini Graham, has valid points and suggestions for reducing piracy; this was one of her suggestions. I have no problem with Elsevier crying wolf when there's none. They had it coming. I'm concerned about the actual cost to authors. We need a new model that puts the authors and their readers as first priorities and facilitates the movement of information, not hoarding it. Publishing companies did that for a while, then they declared themselves custodians of our common knowledge and hoarded it from us. I'm thinking of ways publishing can be made what it should be. Gini Graham has good suggestions that I'd like to see tried out.

Wow! It's great knowing some person have been in the art for so long and have accomplished so much. I've had a laptop computer for about a year now and I've not done anything really good with it. It came with Windows and some programs (Office, Mavis Beacon, a CAD software, etc) installed and I've found my passion for breaking things increase since then. After learning how to type on the keyboard (with the Mavis Beacon software), I got annoyed at the OS pestering me to enter an activation key (it wasn't activated) and I got it activated. I dealt with little inconveniences, tried to fix things that weren't broken (just out of curiosity), broke more things in the process (viruses helped me do this too), crashed my hard disk, got a bad LCD screen, lost precious files and had some other misfortunes (all in less than one year). Now I've found myself in a strange relationship with Linux (so addicted I test distros for fun). I'm thinking of installing Slackware for no valid reason than 'I just like it'. I tried my hands on web development, read some books, did a few pages for fun and soon found myself visiting and leaving languages like a tourist, without knowing anyone well. All in about one year. I tried taking Harvard's CS50 on edX and I couldn't complete because of freshman college work and here I am now, back at web design. I seem to have no skill; just curiosity and impatience. But I'll learn. And for the nostalgia I feel about the things I've broken, I'll build more.

There are similar accounts in that book and it all seemed not-so-extraordinary until I got to the accounts of maps that described features of Antarctica. Whether it's true or a hoax, the human mind is amazing. The book contains accounts of evidence of tides of human civilization: planned cities in Pakistan, well-developed waste management systems, advanced ship building and navigation (for the time they lived), possible advances in weapons and warfare, including nuclear weapons (evidence in an Indian desert and writings describing a nuclear explosion), writings describing space travel and some other marvels of the ancient world.

I'm not very knowledgeable in history but I find this interesting: In his book, "We Are Not The First (Riddles of Ancient Science)", Andrew Tomas argued for a possible knowledge of the existence of other continents, particularly North America, by the ancients. He writes: "Plato must have been cognizant of the great size of our globe, and of other continents, because he said in Phaedo that the Mediterranean people occupied 'only a small portion of the earth'. 'Besides the world we inhabit, there may be one or more other worlds peopled by beings different from ourselves,' wrote Strabo (1st century BC). He even mentioned that if the parallel of Athens were extended westward---across the Atlantic, these other races might live there in the temperate zone, clearly alluding to North America. ... Did the scholars of antiquity know about America? Seneca (1st century), the tragedian, confirms this supposition by his famous verse in the Medea: There shall come a time When the bands of Ocean Shall be loosened, And the vast Earth shall be laid open, Another Tiphys shall disclose new worlds, And lands shall be seen beyond Thules.

New lands 'beyond Thules', or Iceland, could be nothing but Greenland and North America."

That's inspiring. So, before the Vikings, the New World wasn't an impossibility. It was in fact as old as any other point on Earth.

I read Nicole Taylor's "Schooled on Fat - What Teens Tell Us About Gender, Body-image and Obesity" recently and I think it has some themes related to this feeling of helplessness. Just as the teens surveyed knew junk food was bad but couldn't resist it, we know spending too much time on these distractions is bad but we end up doing it. Interestingly, peer influence and social acceptability seem to be involved in this too, as it was in her study. We have to get 'social' so we don't appear to be odd and 'not modern'. And the media has been a major actor in strengthening and spreading these beliefs.

That proverb seems to have many origins and variants, including religious roots. But is idleness really the problem? One can choose to occupy one's mind with better things and even suppress negative inclinations.

That's quite true. I now see where the problem comes from. I did not apply the right words to convey my intended message. You can blame me for that. The topic is about raising creative children and I actually intended to criticize imposing ideals and ambitions on children, or forcing them to a religion or cultural practice that is just preferred by the parents but not generally true or acceptable. For example, I have severally witnessed parents coercing their children to take up a career in a particular field without regard to the children's strengths and weaknesses, just because the said fields are appealing to the parents. Some I've seen even threatened to discontinue the children's upkeep should they dissent. I have also seen parents become alienated from their children due to religious differences: the child prefers to make his life more about his service to society through his career but his parents want him to be more religious and devout. Sometimes the parents go against any form of reasoning that conflicts with the tenets of their religion. Such cases are the intended targets of my original comment and the quote I added. Sorry for the confusion.

The statement doesn't mean you have no guardianship of your children. You do but not an ownership of their future. The next statement, "They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself", explains that, and so does the rest of the quote. I realize we have almost taken the quote out of its context. It talks about the children's future - their dreams and aspirations.

The vast majority of Muslims are good people due to good parenting. I guess the good parents 'did not force' the deranged radical elements of the surrounding culture on the children. Most victims of such sick cultures acquire it helplessly: some parent figure forced it on them in the guise of something - maybe tradition, maybe religion.

That's true. Much of their behaviors also seem to come pre-written on their minds. Stephen Pinker talks about it in his book "The Blank Slate - a Modern Denial of Human Nature". Most of parents' efforts seem to leave little impression on the child's nature in the long run. Even the forcefully imparted moral values are held not as innate nature but as second nature which can either break under societal pressure or throw the child into confusion.

I agree "that's just life". And many parents who think you're doing it wrong believe they're doing it right - by trying to make their parents achieve the dreams they left unfulfilled. That's narcissism. I do not imply that one should leave the child without values but that one should let the child pick up these values in a more natural, guided learning, not in a coerced acceptance of unwritten standards. Let the parents be present to guide them in picking up the right values without forcing anything on them. Let them know the reason why something is more acceptable; don't tell them it's just acceptable and must be followed. Life and human behavior is dynamic so the right way varies with individuals.

My comment was not a blanket generalization the word "Most..." tells. I do not imply that one should leave the child without values but that one should let the child pick up these values in a more natural, guided learning, not in a coerced acceptance of unwritten standards. Let the parents be present to guide them in picking up the right values without forcing anything on them. Let them know the reason why something is more acceptable; don't tell them it's just acceptable and must be followed.