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5:24:55
beach
I am doubtful about the universal goodness of WYSIWYG. I think that has to be moderated some. But I agree that the Web is a mess as it is.
5:32:29
epony
I'm thinking how come Intel and Motorola didn't know about byte code interpreters for high level languages in hardware?
5:34:18
pjb
They knew about it of course. But they were making MICRO processors, as in µ-processors.
5:34:58
beach
epony: I don't know the details. What I do know is that there is a tendency to think about companies as homogeneous entities with lots of wisdom. In fact, they consist of people with conflicting goals and varying ideas and knowledge. It could very well be that some people knew about it, and others in the company made decisions against it.
5:44:10
epony
ironically the browser icon was a navigator's wheel (as in a wooden ship) and not as in a cart / car
5:45:19
beach
epony: Interesting you should mention that. I have long thought that the steering wheel of a car is an anachronism and should be gotten rid of immediately.
5:47:17
epony
I think the mishaps of modern 90ies to today choices are intentionally crippling the potential into consumer devices like a 1 button radio clock, where a press of the button incurs a bill sound and counts towards an expense meter.
5:48:22
epony
at least for most computer users, not counting into this academic environments which sadly are becoming more consumer seats
5:55:11
pjb
beach: one button instead of two on a device means it costs 0.10 € less, which means, over 100,000,000 devices a bonus for the CEO of 10,000,000 €.
6:00:56
pjb
because the line refering to 1-button radio clock was too long and I misidentified the author. Sorry.
6:33:13
pjb
The think is that either you know what dynamic variables are used by the macros, which means you have the sources of those macros, so why don't you just modify them? Or you don't and therefore you won't be able to bind what's relevant, do you?
6:34:19
pjb
shka_: also, if you would bind variables such as the cl:*print-…* variables, then it means there are bugs in those macros…
6:58:45
shka_
pjb: well, won't work, but just because i want to control read time, and not macroexpand time
7:32:10
smokeink
http://simplifience.com/intro/names.html The trouble with names. "Quantum physics is treated like a branch of dark magic"
8:11:01
jackdaniel
for instance: haskell has static typing and common lisp has dynamic typing (both have strong typing). whichever you prefer depends on number of factors:
8:11:39
jackdaniel
problem at hand, your own experience, understanding of these concepts (or lack of this understanding, than you will probably stick to what you know) etc
8:12:22
jackdaniel
same goes for object oriented programming: in smalltalk the main actor is the object, while in common lisp it is the function
8:12:58
jackdaniel
both approaches are perfectly valid and prove to be a good abstraction for programming
8:13:51
jackdaniel
but you may despise oop and none of these approaches convince you, you want less syntetic abstraction - then you may prefer forth
8:14:19
jackdaniel
divagations like that may take whole day long, so I'll stop at these few examples
8:34:49
pjb
republican_devil: check http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Rosetta_Code for a comparison of programming languages.
8:42:24
jackdaniel
I could risk an opinion, that so called "brainfuck" languages are useless hence worse than others
8:43:41
loke
Not all estoeric languages are useless. Unlambda is good for learning about the SKI combinators. Brainfuck is a toy, and quite fun. Others are not even useful for that. :-)
8:44:59
jack_rabbit
That's back to the argument over languages. Probably rather than trying to objectively judge languages, it's better to view them subjectively (which I think was jackdaniel's point)
8:45:52
jack_rabbit
There are a few factors that go into deciding what the best language is for a particular project. It's hard to compare languages on their own without these constraints.
8:50:48
flip214
there are different dimensions along which languages can be positioned. amount of syntax, extensibility, broadth of library ecosystem, etc.
8:51:52
flip214
for a quick and dirty text extraction I still like to use perl; but I wouldn't use it for anything that'll become more than 200 lines long.
9:10:39
aeth
brainfuck's use isn't that it's a fun toy, it's that it's one of the easiest to implement languages that's still "useful"
9:12:36
aeth
a lot of other esolangs are malicious on purpose (as parodies) and so are entirely useless for engineering. INTERCAL and Malbolge.
9:20:26
aeth
flip214 raises a good point about the length of a program. I wouldn't want to use bash for a program that's much more than a dozen lines, but for a bash program that's just a few lines, the equivalent in any other language is probably going to be hundreds. Structure can get in the way sometimes.
9:21:52
aeth
A simple shell script sort of thing in CL is probably a 50 line overhead, and that's *after* including UIOP.
9:23:14
flip214
but I wouldn't call /bin/sort for sorting a list in a 3kLOC C, Perl, or Lisp program.
9:23:27
holycow
that is a very good point. we just worked on a medium scale email migration project and i wondered if the dozen bash scrts could be done in other langages in such small code snippets
9:24:16
jack_rabbit
These are all constraints and considerations that lead one to an appropriate language choice, I think.
10:25:02
hlavaty
i find it strange, that puri is required by so many famous packages http://quickdocs.org/puri/ and this doesnt work. am i missing something?
12:11:07
cuso4
I want to define a scalar product with the following syntax (a . b), as it is often written on paper in the physics world.
12:15:59
cuso4
Also I know it would be much easier to write something like (. a b). But at the same time I thought it would be a fun excercise to make the notation (a . b).
12:24:25
jmercouris
also the difference between wirting (. a b) and (a . b) will not be significantly more challenging
12:25:15
flip214
jmercouris: that's a big difference. (¸ a b) needs nothing, (a ¸ b) at least an enclosing macro (or read-macro etc.)
12:26:15
cuso4
But anyway, I am looking more for what I sould google for to find examples of similar things
12:30:19
jmercouris
pointing you to specific concepts could help you solve this problem, but I think you should just learn about the language, and you'll figure out how to solve this problem relatively quickly
12:36:56
minion
cuso4: direct your attention towards pcl: pcl-book: "Practical Common Lisp", an introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, available at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and in dead-tree form from Apress (as of 11 April 2005).
12:37:46
cuso4
I know of that book, but I have an hour till I have to get back to studying and thought this would be a small and fun project.
12:40:24
jackdaniel
I think that you won't grok macros over the week (especially with this attitude), but I wish you that I'm mistaken
12:42:59
cuso4
Oh, I didn't mean that it is a bad book and that I am not planning to read it. It is just that I have exams this week.
12:43:36
jackdaniel
I'm not suggesting you say that, just noticing that you don't have time / you are reluctant to look in the literature
12:45:04
jackdaniel
add above statements and you end up with lack of the subject understanding on your exam
12:48:51
bnntt
Just wondering if anyone can recommend a good book for learning common lisp? I'm a CS student and want to learn it in my spare time
12:49:23
minion
bnntt: look at pcl: pcl-book: "Practical Common Lisp", an introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, available at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and in dead-tree form from Apress (as of 11 April 2005).
13:02:20
pjb
cuso4: (. a b) is not valid syntax. You would have to write (\. a b) or (|.| a b) ; once you escape the symbol named ".", you can also use it in infix position of you would like: (a \. b).
13:03:27
pjb
cuso4: alternatively, you can define a reader macro, for example, $ that would parse a LaTeX expression. $ a \cdot b $ --> (cdot a b)