101–110 of 281 posts
That description sounds like http://MaidSafe.net , which is rapidly approaching launch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excellent question! One, as we know from Church-Turing equivalence, lambda and infinitely many other models of computing have the same expressive power. That doesn't mean they have the same practical utility, though. Lambda in its Lisp incarnation is actually a rather poor substrate for something like a Lisp machine, I think, because it doesn't layer very well. You can define quite a simple Lisp model, but when you w…
Can you, for example, spell out what you mean by "you really want your data model to be acyclic and not require GC"? What is cyclic about the "data model" in e.g. Go or Lua?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had me going in the Nock spec until "We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right."
To be fair, that's also pretty close to exit code semantics on most POSIX systems, where 0 is success and non-zero is failure...
Conversely, here it's just because "it's different". I feel that this is a bit if a shame - some of the other parts of the project appear quite interesting, but making fundamental decisions in downright wrong ways just to mess with expectations comes across as silly to say the least. Why deliberately increase the learning barrier and drive people away?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A painting is a form of language, but can a painting be said? I suppose if you use a very broad definition of language, that might be true, but in the sense of natural languages, paintings are not generally a form of language. They may be a form of symbolic expression, but that doesn't make them a language.
A programming language is not a natural language. The quote refers to Hoon specifically.
Code on Github: https://github.com/urbit/urbit This seems crazy ambitious on its own, and add to it that it's public domain. Very curious where this will be headed.
Could you please explain what being "public domain" adds to it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely understand your reaction, but, believe me or not, I remember myself wondering as a child why it is opposite. That time it seemed to me completely intuitive and natural that 1 should be "false" and 0 — "true". However, years later I was introduced to boolean algebra, where 1 should be true and 0 — false, if we want multiplication to be "and" and addition "or". And it feels right, because intersection of t…
Why is set intersection intuitively multiplication? My expectation is that a set multiplication would give me a new set consisting of all pairs consisting of a single element from each set.
edit: I should add that I'm not claiming "you can't build measure theoretic probability from this formulation of booleans" is a strike against the project. Just addressing the math question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in your opinion nothing is ever too ambitious? Or is it just that no one should every be allowed to utter the words "too ambitious?"
No, some projects can be too ambitious, including even recklessly or dangerously ambitious. But I'd rather hear that judgement from someone with a reputation for appropriate, successful ambitiousness, and with some supporting reasoning. The grandparent comment comes from a pseudonym linked to no evaluable projects. It offers a costless, totally-generic pooh-poohing of a real project as "too ambitious". But that proje…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please explain what being "public domain" adds to it?
It enables use (personal and especially corporate) with as little licensing fretting as possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so easy about driving a car? Over 30,000 people die per year in the United States due to automobile accidents. And that's after requiring every driver get a license, and teaching basic driving skills as part of our high school system. Driving a car isn't all that easy, and we're terrible at it. There's a reason that Google is inventing self-driving cars, not personal airplanes. And the amount of possible simpl…
Is it common these days to have a drivers ed class in high school? My city's (pop ~1/2mm) high schools didn't, circa 2003ish.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suggest the car / airplane analogy was already strained before we got here. Driving a car is easy, as evinced by the large numbers of people that are capable of it. Whether driving a car successfully (ie. without dying) is easy is obviously a matter for debate. With 0.000015% failing in this severe way, it might be argued that driving a car and dying is not particularly common, and could (no disrespect to the peopl…
"Anyway, perhaps we are all missing the underlying point - an overly complicated solution (to an otherwise straightforward problem) has been the received wisdom for decades, and a re-think from fundamentals is almost definitely worth the effort." I don't know that the solution is overly complicated or that the problem is straightforward. Think of every human being as their own little Y Combinator startup -- everybody…
You used the phrase 'most people' three times there to describe a quite likely common user type for off-the-shelf consumables. I am quietly confident the guys working on this are not targeting 'most people'. Or if they are, they are quite candid about it not being ready for them yet.