nickmain

Other than the sharing/social aspect how much has been added on top of the underlying jsUML2 library ?

I ask because jsUML2 looks interesting and I am wondering how usable it is out of the box. (I need statecharts which umlbin doesn't yet support).

Thanks for the pointer.

This note in the documentation for that egg looks worrisome [1]: "IMPORTANT: This only works when the code will be run on exactly the same platform as the Scheme compiler ran on. Cross-compilation and compiling to C and compiling that on the target platform is not supported. (You will get an error message when you try to do it anyway)"

Does this mean that cross-compiling for iOS would preclude using this bignum egg ?

[1] http://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/4/numbers#compiled-code

From the Chicken documentation [1] it appears that it does not include bignums in the core but as a separate package that requires GMP [2] to be installed. Since GMP is LGPL licensed this might cause an issue if you are sensitive to such things.

Gambit includes bignum support without external dependencies.

[1] http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Deviations%20from%20the%20stan...

[2] http://gmplib.org/

(I use Gambit but not Chicken)

I was thinking more of propagating the read state of the feeds.

Maybe just a script that can run occasionally and dump the new items as a single HTML page (plus another file with state info) into Dropbox.

Are there any RSS aggregators that leverage Dropbox, GDrive/GDocs or Skydrive for cross-device synchronization ?

Would Dropbox be a viable way to propagate an aggregated feed across devices ?

(Just thinking out loud)

If the analogy is the medical profession then most software engineers are nurses or EMTs or ambulance drivers, not doctors.

If we want to teach the next generation to code we should make sure that the "programming languages" we use work well on a touch screen with no keyboard or mouse.

That is, probably not text-based.

Maybe we should be talking less about forming "tribes" and more about how to make programming accessible to anyone who needs to solve real problems using computers.

Are you referring to the fact that the furthest galaxies are actually receding from us at faster than the speed of light (due to the expansion of space itself) ?

Words fail.

Even a 3 second interruption can have consequences: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-a-3-...

The Haxe macro system is also pretty powerful.

As well as consuming Haxe AST fragments, macros can have compiler-managed dependencies on external files. We have an Omnigraffle parser that can run within the macro environment and do some simple code generation from diagrams.

Via http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/01/RegEx101

The user has to accept the endorsement - it is not automatically displayed.

"Smiling" and "Comedic Timing" are two of the predefined skill tags that I find useful.

Some of the plugins I would need (e.g. Haxe support) require the premium version.

Are you trying to replicate Geogebra or Desmos ?

Yes - but such a system would be optional and small/open-source developers wouldn't be afraid to innovate.

That was my point - an individual practitioner is like any one of those roles I mentioned. The problem is that we are all lumped together under the nebulous term "programmer" - and that leads to unnecessary antagonism.

Programming is like building a house - except that no one talks about themselves as being a "house builder".

There are carpenters, electricians, HVAC contractors, general contractors, landscape architects, plumbers, cabinet fitters, tiling contractors, painters, carpet installers, roofers, architects, etc.

Each one takes a pride in their own craft and together they build house with (hopefully) the minimum of squabbling and turf wars.

One day the process of solving problems using computers will be like that, right now we are in the dark ages.

The license means nothing unless you're copying Gruber's code.

Gruber doesn't have a trademark on the name "Markdown".

Does it address any of the issues presented in the article ?

MIND is a non-profit and a neuroscience research institute, with the mission of improving Math education.

With all the hype around computer-based instruction, a big part of that goal has to be the ability to measure and demonstrate positive results on a large scale. With limited resources, the focus is on deploying the program direct to schools and providing the teacher training and support to make sure that the kids get the most benefit from it.

To get an idea of what ST Math (mentioned in the article) is all about, this TEDx presentation is probably the best intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLje8QRrwg

Disclaimer: I'm a developer at MIND Research.

Do those terms cost money ?

I was excited to use MPS in the runtime of an open-source compiler, but if users of the compiler had to pay in order to use it for closed-source apps then that would be a big turn-off.

Looks like a viral license that would prevent this being used in any closed-source applications: http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/master/license.txt

Humans are a force of Nature, not a force apart from Nature.

There are already at least 2 implementations of PHP on the JVM:

http://quercus.caucho.com/ http://www.projectzero.org/php/