Viewing profile — DougMerritt

Although its core is low level, PostScript is a pretty good language by some metrics; it's often been claimed to be a (supposedly accidental) dialect of Forth with some powerful fe…

Years ago, somewhere I read that children have a genetically-based urge to avoid bitter flavors, since they may signal natural poisons, whereas adults can judge better, so the urge…

> we shouldn't judge coffee based on months-old pre-ground grocery store roasts. Next you'll be claiming that we shouldn't judge sushi based on months-old grocery store sushi.

> I am now just going to go through the (single file) of code and just fix it myself. That's front page news, in this era.

It's a humorous reference to a (in-)famous serious post by Stallman, see https://www.gnu.org/gnu/incorrect-quotation.en.html

1. It says it is $8/month, which is not mentioned on the github page, so I had been thinking it was free in addition to being AGPL-3.0; it links to https://snapify.it/ which is whe…

This appears to be mercifully shorter and less intimidating than the must-have bible, "Curtis Roads. The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press, Cambs, MA, 1996". It says it was origin…

I think he should fix that, but meanwhile see: https://almightylisp.com/book/essentials

It's not uncommon to have a regression test for compilers that are written in their own language (e.g. some C compilers): compile each new version with itself, then use that to com…

That's an excellent question, but the answer would depend on goals and the evaluation system used. It seems to me that CEOs have a different opinion than anyone who cares instead a…

SO is the website Stack Overflow.

Life mimics art.

Yep; this has frustrated me for two decades.

For the languages that we westerners regard as having very exotic grammars -- not like Chinese, which is comparatively straightforward, but like the aboriginal languages of Austral…

And it's not even a full moon.

You're arguing with people talking about how things are currently by talking about how things could be or should be and how people should change how things are. That can be a great…

Why aren't they satisfied with merely pondering strats made in US vs Mexico vs Japan vs Indonesia? Careful reviews of quality versus price (which of course varied over time) always…

Since the topic arose, FWIW, here in the U.S. it's common to have one power socket in a room (e.g. living room, bedroom) controlled by wall switch, and multiple other power outlets…

> It's a wild twist of fate that programming languages were intended to make programming friendly to humans, and now humans don't want to read them at all. Those are two different …

...which needs more to explain it, such as (if true): "the diversity originating in Africa did not migrate out of Africa, and the gene lines that did leave Africa did not develop a…

Very true, but of course you're talking about a different era much further up the tree.

What lead to this?

"Let rich kids party and hook up for 4 years, and then hand them a well-paying career." It's been done, of course (by their parents in those cases).