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Not a snake but still surprising http://erikaishikoro.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-2598.html

Freaked me out a bit first time I saw it

This was meant as a reply to one of the comments, sorry.

If you use Ride (Dyalog multiplatform APL ide) it's actually very easy to input the special characters: press the character on the toolbar or use the shortcuts (backtick ` followed by another char, shortcuts displayed hovering with the mouse on the toolbar).

It's the exponential notation for complex numbers, see for example https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Extras/ComplexPrimer/Forms.a...

Eye trackers are used as well for those who unfortunately cannot move anything but their eyes. That's the case in very bad/late ALS cases. This technology might really be life changing for the very advanced cases of ALS - they often lose the ability to vertically move their eyes, which makes it very very difficult to work with eye trackers.

Really hope they'll make something like this available to the public.

If interested, https://github.com/laynor/mal/tree/dyalog

I have a Dyalog APL implementation since 1 year or more on my fork, but still haven't released it because for reasons related to the input/output handling it cannot pass the self hosting tests :( To make the other tests pass, i wrapped the interpreter in a shell scripts that merges stdout and street, and that did the job for all bit the last step (self hosting). The self hosting interpreter (albeit very slow), appears to be working correctly when used interactively

I had the exact same reaction. It's a very striking resemblance. Don't mean to detract from the project though, not my piece of cake but could be handy

Still common in Italy, one if my favorites! I believe they're quite common in Japan as well.

Reading Go means that I keep having to read idioms (as posted in the article) and parse them back into the actual intent, rather than just reading the intent directly. But I can't even trust that, since the nth rewrite of the idiom might have screwed it up subtly.

This. Also, this idea that simple(r) = easy to read just doesn't hold. Is brainfuck easy to read? It's very simple. Even without being so extreme, we could simplify go replacing loops and structured ifs with "if-gotos". Or remove list enumeration as in range(my list) and only allow using integer indexing. Would that make go easier to read or reason about?

Bad example, booleans in python are integer subclasses since forever... 2 + True = 3. Also, False in [1, 2, 0] evaluated to True. But you're still right saying python is strongly typed.

In scheme, or most other Lisps for that matter, you extend the language by writing a library, as the language extension tools are built-in and quite easy to use (macros). Very few other languages give you that kind of power, and certainly not python.

I remember studying CTSS, ITS, Multics and some other historical OSs and being amazed at how much of the current OS features/design come from the 60s. Then I learned about Lisps and their history, and remember being amazed at how much current languages are grafting from them. The 50s and 60s hold a very special place in my heart wrt technology. The boldness and beauty of the ideas expressed in those years is something we rarely see these days (I feel).

Living in Japan, anecdotal data point, i mostly get served cabbage salads wherever I go

I wouldn't say predominant, but certainly present! But we each represent a different set of connections, as I said, this kind of data is anecdotal ^^ I'd say i eat way more fish here in Japan than back in Sardinia.

Oh, there was some people following the Friday thing, but I've only heard about it during lent and not everyone is following it - it's quite going out of fashion esp with younger generations.

Anecdotal data - as a Sardinia native, we do eat seafood, but to be honest around me at least that's at most a once a week practice. My grandpas, which lived to 96, 98 and 101, didn't eat much fish either. Lots of veggies though. One of my grandfathers died young due to a heart condition. All of them were regularly checking their health and doing regular blood tests. I can confirm we don't see getting tested as being "obsessed with our health" but as a good (and for many, not very pleasurable) practice, part of the "preventing an illness is better than curing it" philosophy. Having cheap/free healthcare also helps.

Lists are mutable in CL

There's at least some speed up when prototyping - think having n functions, and wanting to do some sort of refactoring. You might want to iterate on some refactoring idea, and test it out on the most problematic of those n functions. Dynamic typing gives you the possibility to avoid refactoring the whole codebase (the parts touched by your refactoring, I mean) and test out the refactoring idea on just that function.

Not an English speaker, but the very fact you find it pedantic is making his point, IMO. It means their normalizing the word "war" worked on you - or it may be seen as such. Not judging you though, just my perceptions.

Nobody seems to mention Signal, which does offer sms fallback, at least on Android (don't really know on iOS).

Indeed, I was playing with Dyalog some months ago, and the most painful point was I/O. I have implemented the MAL (make a lisp) interpreter in APL but I cannot seem to make the tests for the self hosting interpreter run correctly because of the way standard error and standard output are treated :-/

Zswap was announced before Mavericks was a thing.