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On the other hand, the burden of proof is on the library writer who creates the typeclass instance, not on the end user - possible largely thanks to purity - whereas programmers ma…

It could be related to StackOverflow displaying "Hot Network Questions" in a sidebar, some of which are from the aviation StackExchange, combined with the usual phenomenon of upvot…

Julia seems nice, but the fact that the developers don't care about TCO is annoying and vaguely reminiscent of Python. If this were added, not only would many algorithms become mor…

It's being fixed. http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1rpte3/explanation_...

They're not similar at all. FoCS is mostly about introductory programming and data structures (with a tiny bit about automata). Sipser's book is about computation and complexity - …

Actually, Scheme is more accessible than ever before. If installing MIT Scheme and Edwin/Emacs is too difficult, now there's Racket-SICP, which allows you to program with DrRacket,…

For one thing, you generate as few as possible by aggressively fusing away intermediate lists (at least if your language is pure). Also, the garbage collector will often move lists…

The point is you're supposed to use truly random word combinations since those are at least memorable. $ wc -l /usr/share/dict/words 119095 $ python -c 'print(119095 ** 4)' 2011750…

DARPA is trying it: http://www.crash-safe.org/node/9

For imperative languages, the most popular approach to formal proof is to add partial correctness annotations in an axiomatic semantics such as Hoare logic. I've heard that Microso…

I think Vidarh's point is that the US has a long history of manipulating and overthrowing democratically elected governments, a practice certainly made easier when the CIA or NSA h…

Something like http://scratch.mit.edu/ ?

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Unison?

I was involved in marking a standardized test for high school students and one question involved inventing a story on an (unspecified) election. What shocked me the most, aside fro…

Google didn't exactly invent the self-driving car - they basically bought the Stanford team and some people from CMU and elsewhere.

It's funny you mention these two books in the same comment, since I always assumed Landau was one of the targets of Sussman and Wisdom's comment, "It is surprisingly easy to get th…

The soon-to-be-released GHC 7.8 (Haskell) can defer type errors until runtime to allow you run your program even if part of it is broken, and you can also add "holes" in place of a…

> I'd concentrate first on building internally consistent mental models. I strongly agree -- and the Lisp/REPL combination is extremely helpful. Specifically, I believe a Scheme-ba…

A number of relevant disclosures are listed at http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/ . I don't know how one could argue that, e.g., releasing cables showing the Afghanistan…

Roughly speaking, CPUs are highly optimized for sequential execution, with long pipelines, high power consumption, and complex implementations of arithmetic/logic instructions (I'm…

Yet Google still has a reputation for very selective hiring ... is that because most of the hiring decision isn't interview-related (degree/GPA/projects/resume)? Or is it that, whi…

The idea of a nation-state considering itself bound by the GPL is absurd. Only users can keep themselves safe -- developers can't.

Until recently, Haskell didn't have an equivalent to Erlang's built-in support for distributed computing, but the new Cloud Haskell library ( http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Clo…

Unfortunately, it's only the first 95 pages.