Type-checked non-empty strings
exploring-better-ways.bellroy.com
exploring-better-ways.bellroy.com
Turns out it's some kind of bags and accessories brand!
You won't (write software to) do that without knowing a whole bunch of linear algebra and ODEs.
The fortune-telling part is not what needs the math degree.
The sign that a planet is in, which house, and aspects between the planets are what enables astrological fortune-telling and prediction (the forecasting aspect of astrology is technically known as transits and progressions, this is the "predicting the future" piece).
The bedside manner of the astrologer obviously has an enormous influence. One astrologer will look at a chart and treat it as a fixed "you are this way because of your chart" as if you can't change. A more thoughtful (read: actually good) astrologer will treat the chart as an evolutionary blueprint for growth and change. In many ways astrology is really just a different version of psychology and counseling.
A great book to read if you're open-minded but also don't want a bunch of "woo" is to check The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest. The first chapter of the book is called "Why Bother?" For what it's worth I had my chart read by Steven and it has really helped me in my life.
So? The people who believe astrology readings would believe them even if the maths is wrong.
The readings themselves don't match outcomes anyway, so it's not like the buyers of readings can even tell that the maths was wrong!
This is like accusing someone of not seriously studying the ouija board, or tarot cards.
IOW, it's not an insult, it's a compliment.
> IOW, it's not an insult, it's a compliment.
Neither, just an indication that you're comfortable taking a completely dismissive attitude towards things you haven't actually taken the time to study and understand.
I found a great quote from the blog of someone who looks pretty smart:
The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing. --Socrates
Curiously from a blog post titled "Zen and the art of logging" - so clearly this person is open to mystical mumbo-jumbo? After all, does meditation work? Does zen work? Best not to have a strong opinion until you have "gone and seen for yourself."
But you do you.
I think this is the best part - the only way to know that voodoo is, indeed, voodoo, is to study it.
IOW, what makes you think I am unfamiliar with the various types of voodoo?
Is your mind that tiny that you cannot imagine that someone took a long look into something before dismissing it as voodoo?
But if you are now telling me that you have investigated astrology, and - after careful analysis and intellectual struggle - decided that it has nothing to offer? Then you have my respect. Because you actually did the work of going and investigating and making a judgment off your own conscience. If you've done that homework, then all I can do is say thank you for being a critical thinker.
Obviously, the follow-on is that we have a fundamental disagreement here because I have done the same work and concluded that there is signal with astrology. So I have found that it works for me, and pretty well at that. If the opposite is true for you, it is not right for me to try and coerce you to my point of view.
I was musing on your possible reply and remembered this wonderful video from Dr. Richard Hamming. Given our exchange so far, I think you will enjoy it.
How Do We Know What We Know? (If Indeed, We Know It) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEjt5PerpeY
The average Visual Basic programmer and the world's best mathematician are going to be about equally good at writing the fortune-telling part, but the mathematician will have a much easier time getting the factual part right.
I'll confess I'm a little sad at this attitude but people miss out on good stuff all the time.
EDIT: thought about this one a little more. There are definitely better and worse astrologers out there. The good ones will treat your birth chart and transits/progressions as a template for growth, a map to your life. The bad astrologers will condemn you to your fate because of when you were born. There's an enormous world of difference.
Alright, you're on - post the place you were born, including date and time and I'll cast your chart and tell you what I see. Then you can tell me if you think it's bullshit or not.
Free reading, you have nothing to lose.
Example: Milpitas, CA @ 4:52am January 24 1987
Homies - Silicon Valley is full of people who are into astrology. FFS, this is a community of people whose favorite thing on earth is Burning Man! People who drop acid and do art and experimental living in the desert usually aren't run-of-the-mill "the universe is just a big machine" type thinkers.
Most of the best programmers I know are serious meditators and mindfulness practitioners. There are reasons for this.
Try to open your mind a little.
The "whale" users who account for a disproportionately large percentage of an astrologer's revenue tend to know the factual information surrounding their birth fairly well. An app/astrologer who doesn't get these facts right, even for a handful of clients, will get a bad reputation fairly quickly.
I reckon the same principle would hold in cultural bubbles where reading tea leaves is a customary means of divination. If the client recognizes recognize black tea, but the fortuneteller insists it is rooibos, there won't be much trust in the rest of the prophecy.
Advertising that the horoscope shop uses Haskell is actually a solid business idea. It pre-filters for the sort of dev who will be able to do the math.
My impression (not interested in pseudo sciences so I haven't looked into this hard) was that Astrology froze before Kepler explains how the planets move, and so the model used by astrologers is just wrong and won't actually tell you what was in the sky when you were born for example?
You don't need Newton (who figured out why they do that) but you do need Kepler or your physical data will be wrong surely? It won't matter because this isn't actually a way to divine the future, but it will be wrong AIUI
Modern ascendant calculations are "correct", in the sense that they'll match what you see in the sky. Apps like AstroMatrix work from NASA data.
As you rightly observed, it doesn't make a difference when it comes to foretelling the future. But it does make a difference if your aim is to make money selling it. The big spenders on these applications often care a great deal about getting the particulars just so.
I see what you did there
I added a similar type — “non-empty-string” to a typechecker for PHP, and it’s been adopted widely in the PHP ecosystem. It turns out to be pretty handy, especially when there’s a full type system to support it.
Check out Idris 2. Dependent types can get very hairy to work with, but that language is an absolute playground for inductive type-level verification. And the standard library is like a nice Haskell standard library to me in a lot of ways, although the language itself is (unsurprisingly) not nearly as "production ready" as Haskell.
A type like NonEmptyString is a weak defense against that, as a lazy dev can just pass a single space character or something similar.
https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/utility-types.h...
Edit: nevermind, LLM fooled me.
https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/?#code/C4TwDgpgBAcg9gOwK...
You can do this trick for type-checking emptiness of string literals
https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/?jsx=0#code/C4TwDgpgBAsg...
declare const brand: unique symbol;
type NonEmptyString = string & { readonly [brand]: 'NonEmptyString' };
// the ONLY non-cast way to produce one
export function nonEmptyString(s: string): NonEmptyString | undefined {
return s.length > 0 ? (s as NonEmptyString) : undefined;
}
export type { NonEmptyString };