theclay

This is the future of education. Stanford is just the tip of the iceberg.

As a practical matter, this would require the enforcement agency to publish the correct price for every asset regulated.

Publishing a formula for this calculation wouldn't be good enough, because then you would be required to value things based on the formula and that leads you back to...accounting.

This is exactly what I want to know. What were the numbers?

Wow! Here today, gone tomorrow. Good call Kyro!

All that talk of "doubling the size of its customer service staff" sounds good, but it doesn't mention numbers. Did they go from 1 to 2? 100 to 200?

When they say they will be "creating a "Trust and Safety" department, they again don't mention actual numbers.

What are the figures?

I'm sorry, but this doesn't address what I said.

I know the lisp community stands behind Edi Weitz and I respect him, but compared to Python's "Batteries Included" or Perl's standard regular expression library, your solution is problematic. Consider: Weitz's library is just one of five possible regular expression libraries listed on Cliki! Why did you choose his? Weitz's library isn't even the top choice! Are the others broken? Unreliable? Do I have to try them all?

Now, I realize such simple questions as these may not be "breaking new ground in programming theory," but a lot us just want a turn-key solution that works everywhere; the sort that sysadmins use everyday to keep companies humming and the internet buzzing.

That's the definition of "practical" that I'm hung up on.

If I want to do command line text processing with pipes--and many do--how does lisp help me more than Awk? Awk is brilliant in its problem space; it's fairly standardized; it's guaranteed to be everywhere. Choosing Awk or Perl or Python is practical--not being a slave to fashion (trapped in the popularity contest you allude to)

I think you know this, and I think you know just how practical Python/Perl/Awk/Ruby are, which is why you subtly changed your argument from "practical" without qualification to "managing huge and complex problems" by the end of your response, even though the parent specifically includes hobby programming in his classification of "practical" problems.

I think it's cool that you've done "web, database, scripting, 3D game programming, etc" in lisp and can even think in lisp. And I admire your willingness to battle past CL's 1000+ page spec and then the sea of competing libraries to find the one you like and are willing to debug yourself if something is broken.

But that doesn't invalidate all the other tools--it just means there can be more than one way to do it.

Since you are hung up on "objective analysis," what objective evidence do you have that this claim is true?

In any case, here is an objective problem: Common Lisp does not include a standard for regular expressions.

That isn't anecdotal and it isn't misplaced blame and it isn't an unnamed idiosyncrasy. It's a failure within the CL standard to include one of the most powerful tools around for text processing--a tool that pretty much every dynamic language includes.

I've tried using lisp before for text processing and found it brutal--practically impossible--compared to other dynamic languages. That isn't due to popularity, it's because python and perl and awk have built-in facilities for manipulating the hell out of text that sit right on the surface, were easy to find, and work well. Despite having lots of functions for chars and strings, common lisp never felt anywhere as easy for those tasks.

If I'm wrong, then I will look forward to being educated, but I honestly believe that practical limits have everything to do with why people don't turn to CL for scripting.

Thoughts?

I can't tell if this is serious or not. Either way, it seems like we all benefit from devices that make doctors more effective.

I think you should decide what you hope to accomplish. However, on a window's machine, there is small basic: http://smallbasic.com/

It's windows, it's powerful, it's simple, and it's highly visual.

The first edition of the OED took about 70 years (starting in the mid 1800's) if I recall. Newer editions are still being edited.

It doesn't have to be direct conflict.

The margins for survival are very slim. Out-competing through more effective hunting and gathering would make a huge difference.

If only you could outsource this job to India...

This isn't just a problem with online communities either. True communities are a mess.

Climate Science isn't a science. For science to be science, you have to control for variables.

When you can't--like with climate studies--you rely on intuition instead. That's a social science.

Check out Mint Linux. It's built on top of Ubuntu but much better.

If it wasn't for Mint Linux standing on top of Ubuntu standing on top of Debian with Debian's apt-get repository, I probably would have switched to Mac.

Interestingly, most of my favorite desktop apps are written in C++ (Chrome, Firefox, OpenOffice, Lyx, Kivio, CodeBlocks, Inkscape, etc...).

Anyone, else notice a similar pattern?

Not to mention the fact that most times, it's easier to go through the line with a check-out person running the register. Not only do they do the work, but the self check-out lines at grocery stores often aren't set up for buying a lot of items.

If you have more than five things, it's typically easier just to let the check-out person do it for you.

Hopefully this will also clue in some developers to cool projects that they can contribute to.

Accelerated C++ by Koenig and Moo

So then what's your take on coding in Ada compared to other languages?

I couldn't agree more. The last time I went to the movies, it felt like such a rip off that I vowed never to return. Questions: 1) How long are advertisements anymore? It felt like 15+ minutes. 2) Is there no cell phone etiquette at all?

I doubt people will argue that these features are useful, but they do increase Python's overall complexity by adding to the sum total one must learn to grok python.

There's a danger here: add too many "simplifications" and you get something complex.

(though list comprehensions really are awesome!)

Strange as it sounds, lots of incoming freshman have never had to figure out anything before. Their "education" has consisted of nothing but regurgitating standardized lessons for standardized tests.

These students need some time to learn how to think. That doesn't mean they can't, just that they don't know how yet.

Thank you.

This is the kind of response I was hoping to see. I'm not qualified to comment at all on Clojure, but I was interested to see what people thought who were part of this community.

I wish more people would address these points. If Clojure really is fine the way it is then argue that point positively rather than chip away at Strawman arguments, which, at best, were only tangential.

Finally, I'm not so sure about the public-private point you are making. There's a reason we protect free (public) speech: being publicly criticized is much harder to ignore than private requests.

This rant has become front page material on Hacker News. That's pressure. If there really is dissatisfaction amongst the Clojure community, this won't be the last time we'll be reading about this particular exchange.

I see a lot of people bashing Yegge, bashing Tiobe, praising Clojure, and praising Rich Hickey. All of that is strawman bullshit though as far as I can tell.

Virtually no one seems to be addressing what I think is Yegge's core point: neglect.

Is it true that there is a considerable body of extant patches/libraries/fixes out there that are being neglected so that a sizable portion of Clojure's user base is feeling neglected.

If so, then Yegge has a valid point. If not, then argue why he is wrong about neglect.

Why would Google buy Sun? Google doesn't make hardware and Sun gave Java away for free. Google still gets to poach the best of Sun's programmers so what's in it for them?

Recursion is harder in some languages than others (e.g. python--a commonly recommended beginner language--where recursion is deliberately broken)

Just imagine how it feels to teach in such environments.

So basically, all Mac has to do is never fall behind in any way to the rest of the world. I think back to the days of my Apple IIGS.

It was awesome. It showed the way. And then the clones destroyed it.

Apples and Oranges. Open heart surgery is not most--notice I say most--programming jobs. Nor do most software bugs carry the same sorts of penalties as screw-ups in major surgery.

This is why programmers aren't sued and surgeons are.

There is a huge niche in programming languages for non-professional/semi-professional programmers without computer science degrees. This niche is currently unfilled. Basic used to do the job. Python used to, and still wants to, but it keeps moving up the ladder in complexity.

Lua looks most competitive in this regard, I think. One main data structure, fast execution, room to grow without feature creep.