Viewing profile — archena

But there's a key difference between language and writing: while writing is taught formally, language is learnt by imitation. If that's how we've evolved to use language, I don't s…

It would need the ability to coin plausible replacement words too, like 'firststuffs'.

Not to nit-pick, but Chinese has as much grammar as any other language. The idea that Chinese "lacks grammar" needs to die. It seems to stem from the very eurocentric view that gra…

What do "implict" and "explicit" languages even mean? Chinese uses a different grammar, so in that sense it puts ideas into words differently, but the idea that Chinese is somehow …

Much of this article focuses on the writing system, but it's possible to learn to converse in a language without being literate in it. It's a fallacy to say that Chinese is "hard" …

That and tail-call optimisation :)

I'd include combinatorics under 'useful' too - although the basics are usually covered in statistics courses. Odd that the list mentions differential equations but not basic calcul…

Why do you think SQL doesn't qualify? it's certainly not the only example of declarative programming, and maybe not the most interesting, but it is one which most developers have c…

I've encountered a lot of c++ programmers who seem to dislike a lot of c++; even refusing to use the STL. Perhaps it's because c++ and Python have different cultural backgrounds: a…

I like these. Another generator version: def fbgen(text, divisor): while True: for i in range(1, divisor): yield "" yield text def derrangedBuzz(max): fizzer = fbgen("Fizz", 3) buz…