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What programming languages are used late at night?

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Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#211
post #173
post #72

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I also don't use SO that much, I never have. Maybe I google a few things once in a while and sometimes I stumble upon a StackOverflow page, but never to actually solve errors. It's usually to get a bit more insight out of curiosity. Professionally, I work at Google and internally we have an extensive corpus of knowledge for various problems and programming patterns that really are tied to in-house technologies that d…

> I look at the logs, look at the code... This bears repeating. READ \ clap\ THE \ clap\ FUCK- \ clap\ -ING \ clap\ LOGS. READ \ clap\ THE \ clap\ FUCK- \ clap\ -ING \ clap\ CODE. I'm amazed at the devs who just scroll up in the logs to the first error they see, then copy-paste that into google or SO.

I don't know if it's the team I work with or a problem in general, but a lot of my time these days I spend on getting annoyed with developers who just keep reporting "it's not working". Hardly any effort in looking at logs/stacktraces and then mapping it back to the code - all of which they have access to. When asked for more details about the issue, I almost always get answers like "here's the place where we have the log files, can you look into it and tell me what's wrong".

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#212
post #144

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Naively, there's nothing forcing these developers to chase that leak into the night, rather than into the next work-day. But I do wonder whether some languages have debugging problems that require "keeping more state" to solve them than others, such that the developers doing debugging in those languages would rather forge ahead and finish, than drop it and pick it back up the next day. That'd be an interesting thing…

There's definitely the overhead in re-loading where you were yesterday, although sometimes that's handy - "sleeping on it" does work. I find (in any work, not just the rare C work) that when I get into a juicy problem I just don't want to stop. It's nothing to do with the task switching / reload cost, it's that I'm interested in what I'm doing. So I think you're right that it's about what kind of developers a languag…

"Some people who paint are workers, others are craftsmen, others are artists. All use paint."

That sounds so profound. Did you just make that up, or is it a old paint industry koan?

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#213
post #65

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Learning Haskell has been made much easier with Haskell Book[1]. Unlike LYAH, it actually has a ton of exercises and in-depth explanations so you understand the why behind things as you make progress. That said, it requires discipline to read through. [1] http://haskellbook.com/

The big problem I've had with Haskell is that even after gaining a pretty good understanding of the language (including monads and such) I still can't fathom how to do anything real with it. Exercises are great and all, but once I try to go past exercises, I start getting lost in layers of monad transformers, and I struggle to figure out the "right" way to do anything. It just feels like there are all these layers of…

I got some insight into what's great about Haskell by reading James Clark's "An algorithm for RELAX NG validation":

http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/derivative.html

This document describes an algorithm for validating an XML document against a RELAX NG schema. This algorithm is based on the idea of what's called a derivative (sometimes called a residual). It is not the only possible algorithm for RELAX NG validation. This document does not describe any algorithms for transforming a RELAX NG schema into simplified form, nor for determining whether a RELAX NG schema is correct.

We use Haskell to describe the algorithm. Do not worry if you don't know Haskell; we use only a tiny subset which should be easily understandable.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#214
post #36

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Whoah! The big news for me is that there is a programmer who rarely uses SO. I use it constantly. Can you say more about: 1. What your programming set up is. 2. What you do when there is an issue? I didn't know there was a reasonable alternative. I do the Google -> SO a lot. The only time Google brings up a different page is if the question is REALLY basic like how to use a function. Edit: added this postscript: I ha…

Same here it's a odd to see someone who doesn't use it, they must have A. sufficient time to read books on the language B. have it remembered C. possibly work with a language that doesn't evolve much. Now that I think about it why isn't there canonical questions/answers from most voted SO questions? Sure top ranked questions and answers usually are very well explained, but I think there could be more done in the way…

I agree. I really don't like SO becuase of those reasons.

I would prefer a generic Developer/Sys Admin wiki. I'd host one myself, but I don't think I can afford that kind of bandwidth/storage at the moment.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#215
post #61

I find it interesting how during the daytime hours, most languages are in the Microsoft camp...

Because most people are forced to use Microsoft technologies at work. But in their own time they would rather use other technologies.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#216

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Bonsoir, allow me to introduce Servant. http://haskell-servant.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html Servant allows you to write a type that describes a server/API, and automatically derives a specification for it. You can then write handlers for the different API endpoints, and it will only compile if every endpoint is correctly handled. That includes content types, status codes, and so on, everything is verified, and…

Looks fantastic. But let me ask for more :-) > This is equivalent to an API that defines these three endpoints: It would be cool to use the text that follows this as the spec; i.e. write a converter from this description to Haskell. > GET /position/:x/:y/ returns a Position object as JSON

I'm itching to write a bash script for this now.

Or, you know, a quasiquoter (which is sort of like a Haskell macro thing, although Template Haskell is closer to that).

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#217
post #207

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This is very true, and it has happened to me. Luckily I dont write anything critical in bash, there are usually better suited people for that. I am just a big crybaby without compiler :(

Out of curiosity, what do you currently dislike about the shell, if anything? I'm not setting up a "you hate the shell" statement here - hashing out gripes and dislikes can sometimes be a great way to jump straight into the middle of an iterative positive feedback loop of learning. (Or at least I think so, anyway. I think that if I did that myself it would identify the (sometimes not intuitive) blocks and glitches I…

I think it's mostly that I need to write it so little, that I never get to become proficient "enough" with it. There is little motivation to invest hours to learn it properly, because a) I get to write bash scripts so little that b) I would forgot half by next time I use it.

I think I'm basically stuck on the worst part of learning curve. Btw I use console for pretty much everything from git shell to vim. But when I have to run-in-parallel/fork two processes, pipe X from some to third one that has to repeatedly do curls to some service and check http response, there are 10 things I need to google, starting from: -how to fork process, how to pipe process, how to IF in bash, how do LOOP in bash, etc. Worst thing is, I've googled this 10 times before, but never remember the syntax etc.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and Facebook are also using Haskell in production.

I know about FB (Haxl, spam filtering etc) but what exactly is MS using Haskell "in production" for?

https://github.com/Microsoft/bond

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#219
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning Haskell has been made much easier with Haskell Book[1]. Unlike LYAH, it actually has a ton of exercises and in-depth explanations so you understand the why behind things as you make progress. That said, it requires discipline to read through. [1] http://haskellbook.com/

The big problem I've had with Haskell is that even after gaining a pretty good understanding of the language (including monads and such) I still can't fathom how to do anything real with it. Exercises are great and all, but once I try to go past exercises, I start getting lost in layers of monad transformers, and I struggle to figure out the "right" way to do anything. It just feels like there are all these layers of…

Fwiw I have been writing production Haskell for years, am comfortable with Category Theory etc, and most of my code is still in "records and pure functions (that act on records)" style.

You don't have to use the most esoteric constructs the language offers, or get into the weeds of how lenses work (just a random example of a seemingly 'esoteric' library) or language extensions to write code that does something useful.

That said, a project centred Haskell book would be nice to have.

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