PieSquared

Nah. Advocating dishonesty is okay. It's a legit point of view, if you don't like it, say so. He wasn't being dishonest, after all, only advocating it.

Also, it's ironic that your comment was downvoted.

Augh! I'm seeing this more and more. This was a fine comment. It was not a troll; it was not rude. I personally don't agree with it, but voting is not for agreement or disagreement. That's what responses are for. Don't downvote comments which aren't trollish or otherwise rude just because you disagree with them.

(Background: this comment was downvoted. I've seen this happen at least 5 times in the past two days, it annoyed me, I commented.)

An interesting comment from the article: "From the genius, to the anxiety, through the social awkwardness, Esther Reed is a classic case of Asperger's Syndrome! Anyone who has lived with family members who have this condition, as I have, should be able to instantly recognize it. The clues are all there. Her father was a "shy and reclusive man" who had his family living out in the woods isolated from society. There is the source of her autistic spectrum disorder; she probably inherited it from him. She is not amoral as one person previously commented, but rather, as Esther admitted, she didn't realize her actions would hurt others. Again, this is classic Asperger's -- the inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, the lack of empathy, the self-centered egotism resulting from an inability to generate a theory of mind, i.e. see things from someone else's point of view or understand how what you might do or say would affect the other person. Esther had personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle by confronting and facing her family and expressing her feelings to them and if necessary, just openly leaving to start over, i.e. without running away in the way that she did -- making her paper existence vanish -- and without snapping and acting as she did. People with Asperger's try to hold it together but often snap and act out. In children, it is tantrums. As an adult, Reed snapped and impulsively grabbed a co-worker's purse -- not the act of a genius criminal, since obviously the suspicion would fall on co-workers. She could not handle pressure and personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle without Esther's extreme behavior. Even as a child, she had a hyperresponsivity to stress as described by her teacher which was echoed in her adult life when she became completely dysfunctional when stressed at Columbia and on the run. Ironically, her defense attorney was right, but apparently he didn't have a clue as to the correct diagnosis."

>It is infeasible from a monetary perspective (development costs) and a practical standpoint to have interesting, custom-built content to fill years of gameplay.

Huh. Autogenerated MMORPG content seems... remotely plausible. Or at least, some of it could be autogenerated. The terrain, at least, and names. Maybe some of the quests. I haven't seen anyone trying this though, I guess it's hard to make autogenerated content pleasant.

Around here we have an extension. "Those who can, do. Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, administrate. Those who can't administrate, teach gym. "

It's a phrase true mostly in the public school system. Doesn't hold so much for universities or other educational institutions.

I go to a public school (and one of the best ones in the country (the US)). Even here, that statement is so close to true in some cases I don't know whether to laugh or cry... It's even worse IMHO with middle schools, because that's the time period when a lot of kids internally decide 'oh I'm going to be solely a sports person' vs 'wow! math and electronics and physics are so cool.'

What gets me is that in our school, in one of the best schools in the country, there's so much idiocy - I can't even imagine the levels of stupidity and prison-like institution present elsewhere. (Funny anecdote: at one point last year, the school staff started putting up bars, expandable bars, in the hallways to prevent people from leaving the cafeteria during lunch. There was quite literally no way to get out and go anywhere, without bumping up against an angry security guard.)

You make a good distinction, I agree (between government and country).

Also, I think he doesn't deserve that downvote. He contributed his own thoughts, which were in no way rude or trollish, and seemed more or less educated. They also sparked a bit of interesting discussion. Anyway, my upvote balanced it out. ;)

You're criticizing US past, mostly. That's key: it's the past. No one is criticizing foot binding here. If you want to provide examples of the US being immoral, make them current.

Now, I have no doubt there are dozens of examples. On the other hand, at least US laws allow the rest of the world to know about these examples when they happen.

And yes, if China is 100 years behind, it may be a significant. Is there any reason that the suppression present should be endured? The more pressure is put on China and other countries that devalue human rights, the sooner they'll have to change.

Personally, I would love to see more indignation at the United States as well. Some of the stuff going on with this country is just plain unacceptable for a first world country.

I second this. I sometimes notice people talking to me and repeating the same thing 3, 4 times, just with different words. Please! It gets on my nerves a bit. Say it once, I'll ask if I don't understand. If you need me to understand, and want assurance that I have, repeat it twice and feel free to ask 'Got it?'

If it's the same article, why shouldn't it be the same comment?

I've heard this dozens of times, and I know every time that it's crazy.

But I haven't really managed to figure out what part of this 'rumor' is actually true.

Do you mind explaining where this idea comes from, and whether it's remotely right, or what?

An anecdote about noninvasive surgery and such.

My mother had a similar injury. She blew out ligaments on her right knee in 2002, and then one her left leg in 2008. Look at one leg, you see a big scar from the top of the knee to the bottom. Look at the other, you see pretty much nothing. (Also, it's great. You can endure that type of trauma twice, and still be participating in intense sports such as alpine skiing and such.)

If you included guitar tabs and perhaps allowed users to upload custom tabs (so that people can improve on publicly available ones), it'd be absolutely great. I'd use it on a weekly basis at least, if not daily.

You have a point; your basic statement is something I agree with. However, it depends on what variant of Lisp. Common Lisp, it's true, does have a lot of remnants from the past which make it ugly. (After all, why should I have to say 'aref' when it would be so much nicer just to say [] for array references...)

However, other Lisps exist. Take a look at Scheme or Clojure. Scheme is prettier, and Clojure more practical.

(On a side note: these different variants of Lisp certainly don't help create one "Lisp community".)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Common Lisp provides the ability to declare types of variables, and do type-checking on it. This allows you to make CL type-safe if you want to. It also allows a major speed up.

The real problem I see with Lisp is that it lacks a vibrant community like Ruby and Python has, and is in some cases quite ugly. (Why, why use names like 'progn'? Why not the shorter, clearer 'do'? etc.) Clojure addresses that, but I get the feeling that Clojure is just an addon to Java and that you must use the Java lib in order to use Clojure; the integration between them seems to be to be a bit ugly, if easy to use.

However, due to the size of the JVM base, Clojure is very good for production code - but strikes me as lacking the hack-hack quality you can get with CL. And only has one implementation. Aurgh! If only they didn't standardize CL. (Except, then it wouldn't exist at all right now, I bet.)

The reason this syntax scares you is simple: it's different.

At the very root, Python syntax is nearly identical to Java, C, etc.

The syntax of Haskell, OCaml, etc, is a deviation from that of Python, Java, etc, but not an incredibly significant one. Perhaps you may find that the syntax of these languages scares you but you think you could probably learn it after a bit of mind-wrangling.

Lisp, on the other hand, is old. It was developed over 10 years before even C came to being! So the syntax is completely different, and requires you to actually learn it instead of just assuming that your knowledge of other programming languages will pull you through.

In summary, it's not a fault in you. It's just that you are used to C-derived and influenced syntaxes, but not to Lisp; and the syntax of Lisp is different enough that you need to actually learn it.

Here's a crash course:

  (f a b c) is the same as f(a,b,c).
  '(a b c) is kind of like ["a", "b", "c"].
  '(1 2 3) is just like [1,2,3]
  (defun x (a b c ...) ...) defines a function x(a,b,c).
  (+ 1 2 3) is just like +(1,2,3) = 1 + 2 + 3
  (setf x 5) is just like x = 5
  '(a b ,c) is just like ["a", "b", c]
  if L is equal to '(1 2 3), then
    `(10 20 ,@L) is like [10, 20, 1, 2, 3]

Now, to be honest, I just showed you nearly 100% of the 'syntax' Lisp has. The rest is already understanding the language (knowing how to def. functions, how to do loops, etc).

By the way, what you might find interesting is that I once showed this to a friend of mine who knew nothing about programming. I showed him how to write a basic program in Java (with a few subroutines and a loop), then how to do it in Lisp. He exclaimed, "Argh! If I can do it like this, then why do I need all those fancy weird words like public and void and what not and braces and... eugh!"

Sorry for that longish post, I hope you found it at least a bit informative. ;)

$$$?

On the other hand, when I say something remotely intelligent, I can get serious responses from people literally twice my age and ten times more experienced than I am. And they don't ask me for age or experience (unless it's relevant), they just take what I say at face value for the content.

Learn.

Yup, it's the Montgomery Blair High School Magnet Program - it's in Silver Spring, Maryland. The funding cuts are kind of hurting it, but it's a very good education, especially if you put your own effort into it too.

(Are you, perhaps, somehow associated with this or another magnet program in the MD area?)

YES!

That's really all I can say. I agree with this so much. (Wow, I'm articulate!) I just wish it were easier to do.

Personal story: I'm in high school right now. Many of the courses I'm taking are very... high-school-y. Low on content and high on busy-work and hand-waving. Some, though, I find are actually well taught; namely, my Statistics course and my Multivariable Calculus/DiffEq course. The teacher for the Stat course posted all the homework he plans to assign (all out of the book) online; while the teacher for Multivariable hasn't done that, he assigns the same homework every year, so I managed to get his homework from previous students. Currently, I'm done with my statistics course and 3/4 through the multivariable course, where both of them should be full-year courses. It just feels amazing to be learning at my own pace - the class speed in high school (and, I guess, college, and perhaps life) is catering to the lowest denominator. I know that I, and many of my classmates, could easily double or in some cases triple that speed.

Living near the University of Maryland and NIST and etc, there really are a bunch of opportunities to work with professors and researchers in high school - it's really quite great. I hope (slash think, but knock on wood) that I'm going to be able to work with either another math professor or a theoretical physicist over the summer. :)

Combinatorics isn't, but... coloring grids of squares?

Not that I really have anything against abstract mathematics. It's still very cool, but it's just not going to get me very excited - or at least this exact branch of it, I guess.

I know the professor who writes this blog, Bill Gasarch. I was thinking of interning with him (at our high school, we do an internship + report about it in our senior year), but then decided against it because the math is a bit too abstract and unapplicable to (as Gasarch would put it) make me "properly enthused". He seems like a great guy. Anyway, while I haven't read the entire thing, I would suggest reading the book he has online - it's quite interesting, and it goes into more detail about colorings and such, so anyone who likes this post will find the book interesting as well.

This might be the best advice I've heard in a while:

"Grab something hard, confusing, foreign, etc... Master it. Then move on... Don't wait for other people to teach you things. Learn stuff on your own now. Maintain the expectation that you only know 10% of what you need to know."

I feel like I should print this out and post it on my wall. Thanks, disspy.

I have two initial responses.

First of all, this is pretty cool. It really turns email into something more than it is in other areas, and seems like it would be a step forward for Turkey...

...on the other hand, I kind of like the anonymity of email. I'm not sure I'd like government issued email addresses, either.

So, really, I'm not sure how good or bad this is. Interesting, at the very least.

Ergh! Sure, some of these things are true, but some just reek of a stubborn refusal to do things the way the language intends for them to be done.

Note how instead of saying, "Ocaml doesn't have with-open-file or unwind-protect", he says, "Here's how you have to do with-open-file and unwind-protect in Ocaml". No! You do not go around trying to turn other languages into Lisp if you want to code in Lisp. If you want to code in Lisp, you code in Lisp.

Similarly, he just dismisses the syntax as "pretty much unreadable". Bollocks. The language syntax is fine. Sure, it's different from what most people are used to, unless said people have used SML or Haskell. But it's a decent synatx - yes, with it's own quirks and problems - which is most certainly not "unreadable".

"No Polymorphism; Cannot add an int to a float - need an explicit cast" - what he means to say is that it's a very strong-typed language. If you use the "O" part of "Ocaml" (Objective Caml", polymorphism exists and works.

Now, a lot of his points are valid, like the one about the standard library. But in general, I feel that he really discredits himself by his persistence in writing Lisp code in Ocaml. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

(Disclaimer: I've used Ocaml, but not to any grand extend. Maybe 10,000 lines of code written in it. Paradigm-wise, I'd have to say I might prefer Lisp, although I find that CL is slightly annoying often times.)

Oh, Gods, TvTropes. The only thing more addictive and time consuming than Wikipedia browsing.

Hey! Interesting to see you here. :)

You came to my school recently, I believe. I talked to you about the Starcraft AI internship, and such? (Unless that was someone else from Webs.com. I'm afraid I forgot your names!)

Small world.

And why do electrons not want to share orbitals?