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On Getting Older in Tech

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Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#431

Post by codygman »

kazinator wrote: post #429
bbcbasic wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am getting at is that OOP languages like C++ have no IO commands built in it is all delegated to libraries. Haskell has no state support built in, it is all delegated to libraries. So: C++ has excellent IO support, but the language doesn't embrace IO at all. Haskell has excellent State support, but the language doesn't embrace State at all.

> Haskell has excellent State support Someone who understands where that support is and how to use it should rewrite atrocities like: https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Assigning_Values_to_an_Array#Ha...

I don't think that's so bad, it's just you are using a function instead of the usual built in indexing operator [0]. Here's something a bit more convenient using Data.Array.Lens[1].

    arr ^. ix 2
vs the original:

    readArray arr 2

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#432

Post by bbcbasic »

tome wrote: post #423
bbcbasic wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell doesn't reject sequencing. f = g . h will require h is evaluated first.

h might not be evaluated at all! Consider h x = factorial x g x = 0 (but I agree that Haskell doesn't reject sequencing).

Yeah the IO monad will, but it isn't generally true of monads. Infant the maybe monad Will cease early on Nothing by design. So it is a brain shift.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#433

Post by 3131s »

latchkey wrote: post #421
3131s wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some pretty sweeping generalizations about the culture after only 1.5 months. I live in a country neighboring Vietnam and there are similar perceptions of the culture here, yet in my experience these ideas are baseless and often ingrained in expats well before ever learning the language or sometimes even before entering the country.

"these ideas" -- which ideas? Yes, there is a ton of racism and generalizations among expats. As soon as I got here, I was added to a few private facebook groups where expats vent steam over the craziness of this country. I'm actually not a fan of it because it is honestly very racist, but I want to know both sides of the story. Much like democrats read republican news. The language is hard and learning is going to t…

You made two generalizations in particular:

The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public

This stereotype also exists about Cambodia, the country I've lived in for 4 years now. I can tell you that it isn't true about either Cambodia or Vietnam, since I've seen plenty of people in both countries get mad and raise their voices in public. The same happens of course back where I'm from in the US, and if I had to guess it happens at about the same frequency but I wouldn't rely on faulty human memory to make that judgment.

Viet are shy and have poor personal communication

This is just a ridiculous thing to say if you've never spoken to these people in their native language. I have actually gone through the arduous process of learning the language in Cambodia, and I can assure you that speaking in a foreign language clumsily and constantly being worried about your inability to express yourself will make you more shy than you are in your native language. And I have to mention that famous park in Saigon where foreigners are literally swarmed by Vietnamese people eager to practice their English... is that shyness? I never talked to so many strangers in my life as the couple of nights that I sat out there.

And actually, please do not think I'm vilifying you or calling you a racist or anything. I can tell from your post that you're a nice person, whereas in both Cambodia and Vietnam there are an outsized number of expats who are just straight-up mean, bitter, and racist. These people unfortunately end up influencing the perceptions that new expats have.

I'm only encouraging you to come in with more of a blank slate, and to not delude yourself into thinking that you can know anything about the culture after 1.5 months. I'll be more willing to hear out generalizations after you've been there for years, learned the language, and traveled all around the country. Have you even been outside Saigon yet? I've been to Saigon, and it's not representative of the rest of Vietnam.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#434

Post by [deleted] »

allenbrunson wrote: post #405
lisper wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why Lisp didn't work for Reddit. But Common Lisp has exceptionally good library coverage today, and with Quicklisp, getting access to it is virtually seamless.

okay, maybe i betrayed my biases there too much, but, i agree with everybody else: if lisp was such a great secret weapon, there would be a hell of a lot more visible success stories by now, other than just pg's original viaweb implementation, and some flight routing software. plenty of other tech has come from up nothing in the last few decades, to wide adoption, and big successes. the fact that lisp hasn't is, in m…

[deleted]

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#435

Post by [deleted] »

allenbrunson wrote: post #403
lisper wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you see as Common Lisp's "major deficiencies"? (Pick your favorite value for Z.) This isn't a challenge, I'm genuinely interested in your answer.

that should be pretty obvious: lack of library support. there is the famous example of the reddit founders, who believed pg's lisp story, and built the first version of their site with it. it went so badly for them that they had to start over again in python. ... but i bet you are going to have a very plausible-sounding reason why it didn't work for them.

[deleted]

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#436

Post by svetlyak40wt »

lukego wrote: post #430
lukego wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a data point: I founded a Lisp startup together with a bunch of experienced Lisp hacker buddies from the SBCL community. Sadly and reluctantly, we found Lisp awkward and ended up rewriting everything in C, and then never looked back. These days I am developing such software with LuaJIT and that is working much better for me than either C or Lisp. One thing I learned along the way is that many tales of Lisp heroi…

(Funny feeling of being a Lisp hacker searching for catharsis in the Hacker News comments section... :-))

Don't search, go do something cool,what all people will talk about!

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#437

Post by Schwolop »

epalmer wrote: post #236
FroshKiller wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you don't have to be a certain age to learn that lesson and put it in practice.

Absolutely right. In my job I find that my seniority gives me time to think more however. It depends on your circumstance and the work culture and boss relationship. I report to the CIO and he has little need to know details. He cares about long term progress and the big picture. He could care less about how we get there as long as we are taking care of people and doing it honestly.

Totally tongue in cheek, but you're never too old to learn that you should have written "He couldn't care less about how we get there..."

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#438

Post by jodrellblank »

BrendanEich wrote: post #416
jodrellblank wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also doubt it. But LISP dates back to 1958. JavaScript is from 1995. "I chose the language which exists" doesn't apply to the people in 1994 who could have had /thirty-five years/ of LISP experience (potentially) and yet still chose to write another language, in another language. And when Brendan Eich was in college around 1981, the tutors there could have had /twenty years/ of LISP experience, but weren't there to…

I agree that claims for Blub (for any value of "Blub") are too often over-hyped. But don't make stuff up in the course of justifying your reasonable point against hype. I met John McCarthy in 1977. In college, a professor (Ruth Davis, I think; SCU EECS department) brought in someone who taught Friedman's "The Little LISPer". By the time I got to Netscape, I had read SICP. I knew enough about LISP to be dangerous. But…

But don't make stuff up in the course of justifying your reasonable point against hype

Where's the fun in that? ;) No, but really - I apologize for claiming there wasn't enough general LISP enthusiasm around when you were at college to affect you, and for not actually looking into the history of JS before making statements about how/why it happened.

JS design being partly a pre-made business decision - that's something I really should have known by now.

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#439

Post by tajen »

collinmanderson wrote: post #388
myth_drannon wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even jQuery which is one of the most famous open source projects will be forgotten in 10 years or even less.

jQuery is _still_ in html5 boilerplate, which I consider to be a good simple starting point for content-based websites. https://html5boilerplate.com/

But it seems jQuery won't be in HTML 9 Boilerstrap, so I don't know how long it will live: http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com

Re: On Getting Older in Tech

#440

Post by latchkey »

3131s wrote: post #433
latchkey wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"these ideas" -- which ideas? Yes, there is a ton of racism and generalizations among expats. As soon as I got here, I was added to a few private facebook groups where expats vent steam over the craziness of this country. I'm actually not a fan of it because it is honestly very racist, but I want to know both sides of the story. Much like democrats read republican news. The language is hard and learning is going to t…

You made two generalizations in particular: The culture here is to never raise your voice or get mad in public This stereotype also exists about Cambodia, the country I've lived in for 4 years now. I can tell you that it isn't true about either Cambodia or Vietnam, since I've seen plenty of people in both countries get mad and raise their voices in public. The same happens of course back where I'm from in the US, and…

I feel like you're making generalizations about me without knowing the full story. You've taken what I've said out of context and quoted and commented it based on your own experiences.

I've been here longer than 1.5 months from multiple trips here. I've also been to Cambodia. I'm not pretending to know everything about the culture. I've travelled to other cities than Saigon. I drive a motorbike as well as or better than locals. I'm working here daily at a company full of (wonderful) Vietnamese. I'm not an idiot and can form my own opinions. I'm not an English teacher (which is another unfortunate stereotype in itself). I'm not bitter or mean or racist. I know about that park. I'm working on learning the language.

I still stand by what I said.

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