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Here's the text editor they're talking about: http://www.kparc.com/edit.k The code is, well, not the easiest to understand.
Here is the four line version: http://www.kparc.com/$/edit.k (lines beginning with / are comments)
There seems to be this strange idea going around that if we just get the right tool, everything else is going to change forever. I see this a lot with people trying to create IDEs that let non-programmers create programs without really knowing how to code.
But the thing is, most people just don't have anything worth coding. The problem isn't that the tools don't exist. They do, even if they aren't perfect. It's that making something that matters isn't an easy thing to do. And no tool can change that.
> “It is a lot easier to find your errors in four lines of code than in four hundred.” Looking at his code on http://www.kparc.com/edit.k I'd like to disagree with that statement
If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.
Here's the text editor they're talking about: http://www.kparc.com/edit.k The code is, well, not the easiest to understand.
That's an understatement. If we are allowed code like this, I can write an editor in ONE line of JavaScript. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an understatement. If we are allowed code like this, I can write an editor in ONE line of JavaScript. :)
Note that his lines are Can you write this editor in one line of less than 6000 chars of javascript (without a "textarea")?
This is gibberish. It fails at the one task of a programming language: to translate something a human can understand into something a computer can understand, with as little confusion as possible.
> “It is a lot easier to find your errors in four lines of code than in four hundred.” Looking at his code on http://www.kparc.com/edit.k I'd like to disagree with that statement
If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.
I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one hazy year under my belt, but I can speak to Arabic.
Because Arabic has lots of syntax realized at the morpholgical level, you can encode a whole sentence (subject (with declension inherent and gender variable, verb conjugated (to passive/active, past/present/future, standard/subjunctive) and direct object (declension inherent and gender variable) all in one word as we know the in English.
أضربه (A-dr-b-u; a (I) dr-b (hit) u (him/it): I hit him (present tense)
And that is a super simple example. I have seen much more compicated setences in one word, and even better in two or three. So, I hypothesized Arabic is very, very dense. I think and Russian and others could be considered similar.
However, with this level of density (maybe we argue "compression" from a CS perspective) I noticed books and their translation were routinely about the same length in pages. Never identical mind you, but never something crazy like 50 pages more (I am guessing; it has been a long time since I made such an experiment and would have trouble agreeing with someone on what is significant).
Now, one could hypothesize a shitload about what this means, but computation is realized as the same "stuff" (machine code instructions) in programming languages, where no parallel exists in human language for mapping human language to computaion, as far as I know from my between minor and major courseload in linguistics, specifically computational linguistics. If someone can contradict me, I would LOVE to read about measured cognition and language constructs.
No shit. I used to work as a quant, and while I was an okay quant and mediocre trader at best, I survived for three years in the industry because of my kdb+ proficiency: the firm I was at spent a couple of million dollars on kdb+ only to find out that most people could not wrap their heads around kdb+ let alone debug it effectively.
My (former) colleagues were definitely smart people. In many ways, they were way smarter than myself. But I somehow could get a much better handle of kdb+'s idiosyncrasies, and my ability to stare at dense k/q code (usually no more than a dozen lines) and figure out what's wrong with it earned me the reputation as the "q guy" - and some level of job security.
The firm eventually phased out kdb+ completely after my boss and I left (the two proponents of kdb+).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.
That is a fun experiment. I studied linguistics in college, and I do not think anyone ever discussed textual density of different languages with the "same" content (the latter part would be its own terrifying chestnut; if you have not studied machine translation and semantic eval and good luck ever confirming such a statement). I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one…
Iverson received a turing award[1] for his work on this subject.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I posted four lines of Chinese or Sanskrit, it's likely that native English speakers would disagree that they had much meaning either. However, this doesn't mean that those lines are inherently devoid of meaning or difficult to parse.
That is a fun experiment. I studied linguistics in college, and I do not think anyone ever discussed textual density of different languages with the "same" content (the latter part would be its own terrifying chestnut; if you have not studied machine translation and semantic eval and good luck ever confirming such a statement). I studied Arabic a lot, and Chinese about a year. I cannot speak to Chinese with only one…