ludwig

Vim and Emacs (yes, I'm schizophrenic).

On that note, even insults are better when delivered using words with positive connotations.

Ok, Joel. We get it :-)

I forget where I read this quote, but here it is paraphrased: "Whereas in Physics people stand on the shoulders of giants, in Computer Science people stand on each other's toes."

This. Learning to use modern C++ techniques (RAII, shared_ptr, boost, ...) was especially eye-opening for me.

That's awesome! Now I know what I'll be buying for Xmas :D

Don't forget darcs. I find it useful since they distribute statically linked executables. Installation then becomes a matter of just dropping darcs into a bin directory.

The drawings are almost too cute. More concepts should be explained in this manner!

Fox shenanigans.

I only use that button when I copy/paste a URL using the mouse.

I can't wait until we can grow meat and other organs in "standalone-mode". There wouldn't be any need for slaughter when we reach that level of technology.

That's good to hear. On the author's website, he says the new edition bears the new name "Principes d'implantation de Scheme et Lisp". Looks like it hasn't been translated to English yet, unfortunately. Either way, the older edition looks like it's worth it. Thanks!

Nice. I have most of those books, save for a few. All I have to do now is read them completely :)

How good is "Lisp in Small Pieces"? I might get that one next.

There are two plugins which have helped me enormously when dealing with large projects: bufexplorer and nerdtree. Check them out, seriously.

Well, it's worth a shot. I remember signing up early so if I get any invites, I'll also share. Here's my email just in case:

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=010kmQWkKGsgy5SBuVEvHsqg==...

For an overview of PageRank, you should check out http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html

I see where you're getting at, but I think it's more of an issue of keeping your digital identity intact rather than fragmented over multiple accounts. I can authenticate at a single place, and that server can vouch for me on other sites ("Yeah, he's good to go. He logged in with me. It's him and not some other user."). With some sites you could get away with no login (see 4chan where everyone is anonymous), but for discussion sites that rely on reputation (stackoverflow, reddit, hackernews, etc.) that's not really ideal.

Security-wise, you have the added advantage of not having to manage multiple passwords. You could use a single password for all your sites, but then your password exposure would be too high, since a breach in any of those N websites could potentially capture that one password of yours. With OpenID, those sites wouldn't even be getting my password.

As a user, I typically love encountering sites that are OpenID enabled (stackoverflow, gitorious, ...) since then I can use my livejournal account to login. This way I don't have to manage yet another username/random-password pair.

Very nice. Pre-ordered!

You can also use http://thewe.net/tex/ to type out equations on gmail (as well as in the gmail chat).

Why is the section "What's New in Python 3" the last section?

Only because every time it gets stuck, it "asks" a human.

Woah, you weren't exaggerating.

Oh sweet! Now we just need emacs to render the ascii art when displaying it in a code comment, similar to what the AUCTeX latex-mode does for equations.

It must be nice living in a world with marshmallow rocks.

They probably used the distance-from-lip-edge-to-ear metric.

Indeed. I also liked the link to the Audion story that was in one of the comments. That was quite a sobering read.

Re: Re: @newsycombinator

No, if it's interesting enough (which is most of the time), I'll actually visit the site again. But you're right, I do wish it linked to HN first instead of sending me directly to the article.

Why not do both? Some tidbits of information don't merit an entire blog post, but in aggregate they can be quite useful. I do agree with you regarding the noise level, but followcost.com has helped me a lot when deciding whether to follow someone or not.

Incidentally, @newsycombinator on twitter has been one of my favorites, due to the steady stream of interesting links :-)

Nice POST!