vinayms

You should consider redesigning the website colors to spare visitors' eyes. I mean, the posted link opens a page with white text on black background, but clicking on the "immutable coffee" link takes to a page with black text on white background. I was viewing in a brightly lit room yet was severely jolted, can only imagine the fate of those viewing in dimly lit room or in the dark.

Chinese is the spoken Lisp.

But the dependence on monsoon balances it out, even makes it lopsided, except may be in some northern parts that rely on snow fed rivers.

This is just alarmist. The bravado shown on TV is surely not taken seriously by the authorities themselves for they know the consequences. So even if the point of impact coincides with the crescendo of tension to the T, sanity will prevail despite it seeming otherwise.

This will go against the grain here on HN. I don't know how anyone can imagine self driving even succeeding in real world, leave alone in the so called third world, unless all vehicles are self driven and operate in a controlled environment. There are some really important things pending, like accurate NLP and computer vision, but no, we need something shiny and useless. I think some smart computer scientists are getting rich by carrot sticking some gullible billionaire investors. Good for them. I hope some of the really useful stuff piggy back on this rather lofty endeavor.

Simply because writing is the best form of communication of ideas after speech, and using speech to program is just silly, not to mention cumbersome and not productive. Writing, since its invention, has become inseparable from humans and its quite understandable that it is extended to instruct computers, with the compiler as the, well, interpreter.

As for the mechanism you talk about, that's basically declarative style and a lot of platforms (for the lack of better word) do this, mainly in business logic and scientific applications. The most famous example is Excel. However, this style works like a charm only when the set of possible actions is predetermined, and is not conducive to creating new actions, which is why every single platform has some kind of scripting. And scripting is editing text. So there you go.

> Yet it was a simple mechanical invention. It would seem to require no brilliant inventive insight, and certainly no scientific background.

That's a seriously weak premise. A bicycle is more than a metal rod with wheels; it needs a good steering mechanism and driving mechanism, not to mention ergonomic seating mechanism. Humans have certainly had a lot of things in their blind spot which makes us wonder why it took so long, but bicycle isn't one of them. Eraser-butt-pencil, may be. Bicycle, certainly not.

Also, the sheer number of crazy models that happened in its evolution is a testament to the fact that a bicycle is anything but intuitive. Remember, it was an age where mechanical devices was a rage. It was sort of like the AI-ML of that era. There was a lot of activity by people of varying levels of expertise - from tinkerers to people who knew what they were doing to people who thought they knew what they were doing. Despite this it took that long.

So its absurd to start off with the said premise.

Points like material and manufacturing process are red herring IMO. This argument is backwards. What needed to be made was a prototype. The things mentioned would follow naturally. No one had to invent a "professional grade" machine at the word go. An example from software: HLL were not invented first and then OS were written in it, but OS were written first, and in the process people realized HLL would be more productive, and OS were rewritten in them.

The conclusion about cultural and economic factors also seems unconvincing. The only plausible reason could be the clout of horse carriage mafia or something like that which influenced the powers that be and stifled rival technologies.

Can someone explain why its fair or acceptable to force Google to make its index public, the one it built with its own time and money, instead of having some open source initiative building another index from scratch?

I think the correct way to go about this is to just encourage people to plant trees suitable and native to their (people's) environment. And let it scale. Better, also tell them not to fell trees left right and center.

In the exuberance of ecological conservation and all that, we must not overlook and override what nature would have done. For instance, one shouldn't plant a water sucking tree where it wouldn't naturally occur, and damage the balance.

In life? No.

At work? Yes. How did I handle it? I quit.

Sounds promising. Will have to check out some time.

> Programmers don't change their ways when new features get added.

The good ones do.

> This is why most of the times, you just start using a totally new language, that way you buy into a totally new set of programmers, practices and community.

What happens when that new language reaches a stage where it needs new features?

I think new languages are unnecessary unless they comprehensively solve the problems of the existing ones, and don't create new ones of their own. I have always felt that creating brand new languages is more of a personal taste driven rebellion against the language one uses. When they find that its too cumbersome for their taste, or the clique in committee refuses reforms etc, those who can will go ahead and create, some evangelize successfully (I feel this is the case because I have created a few half baked languages over the years to challenge C++ lol).

Until we program in natural language, I don't see why we must even bother with this. Its fun but useless. For programming as it is today, its just a bunch of English words that we have to learn. We can always comment and document in out native languages if need be. I say this as an Indian, so obviously not English native speaker. (To preempt the "colonial benefit of English" retort, I would say I would say the same thing had USSR won the cold war and everything had to programmed in Russian in Cyrillic. We just had to learn a few words even then, assuming Soviet tech hadn't made NL based programming a reality.)

I am self taught in C++. I learnt it when I realized my BE FORTRAN wasn't going to enable creating GUI simulation. I did have a few hiccups like any beginner but soon it was alright, so have no idea what it is like to be formally taught in class.

As for Lisp and ML, being Indian, I had no access to these, even in CS section of the library, as you might understand. Many years ago I tried learning Scheme by/after watching the lecture series. I even have the book SICP. It is fun and elegant, refreshingly so, no doubt, but only till a point. I found once we venture into necessity for conditionals & data mutation, its unbearably cumbersome - I can deal with spaghetti C code but not this - may be I am conditioned by exclusive C++ usage. I tend to think those who stick to Scheme like languages and solve real world problems do it for bravado and cry when no one is looking lol.

As for design pattern, I don't see it being exclusive to OO. Its just a bunch of ideas to build software. One would have it for assembler as well if it was used for mass production (I wonder how it was in early days when it was exclusively assembler). Its certainly poorly used and abused, agreed.

> C++ was originally "C, with Classes", so OOP was the whole point of C++ existing in the first place

This is like describing a middle aged man based on what he did in middle school. Things evolve. C++ has. Almost to a fault where one can legitimately call it a mutation.

No. OOP is just one aspect, but the most popular one.

> OOP encourages adding layers of abstraction, indirection, and generic stuff [...]

Generics/templates and indirection are not OOP. Procedural style encourages them as well. You can see that in C++ itself.

The main problem with these kinds of exposition topics is that the steps involved are quite dense. By that I mean something like density of real numbers; between any two real numbers there are any number of real numbers. Then, the writer just chooses to expand on those steps that they are comfortable with, or the ones that get more eyeballs. I mean, why not explain how signal travels across various media like air, underwater cables, to and from satellite etc?

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying this is useless. I am just saying that if one chooses to give a 30k feet perspective, they had better stay there and not bounce between 40K and 10K.

I actually love this ongoing cat and mouse game. I don't follow the events in this field keenly so I don't know if it exists, but the challenge is to find antidote to this concoction, created by mad scientists just for sake of science, that will be weaponized anytime now.

The biggest problem I have with sleeping on floor is that I have to literally walk on the mattress or blanket in order to lie down or get up, which is just so icky to me.

If that is strange you'd find it stranger to know that I am Indian and sleeping on floor is both tradition and sometimes compulsion due to poverty (though I was never poor). I was fine with it all these years and don't know what changed recently.

There are two kinds of generalists - those who think they are and those who actually are.

The distinguishing feature of the latter is that they are polymaths in the making, a journeyman polymath if you will. They have sufficient depth in multiple fields and produce works that demand attention, whatever that might be. The former, on the other hand, is just a bits and pieces guy living in delusion who doesn't know anything beyond elementary knowledge in his "fields of expertise".

To use a cricketing analogy, since 'tis the season, people like Richards, Tendulkar and Kallis are true alrounders (generalists) whereas people like Robin Singh, Madan Lal and Andy Bichel are just bits and pieces guys who are useful on that odd day when specialists and generalists are having a bad day.

This is a series more for engineers who want to delve into the depths of "computer science" that takes them to the magical world of mathematics. That way, its not worth if you are looking for direct real world application, like the CLRS or Sedgeick books provide.

That said, I think its worth having this for the humbling experience it provides. This experience is very much needed for every engineer, and specifically software engineers, because after a while of reapplying same old tropes to churn out solutions to problems, there creeps a feeling that we are at the top of our game, and "experts", when in reality most of us are only "experts" in a specific insipid framework or technology which are as permanent as the latest fashion trends. This series of books makes us feel worthless and keenly introspect. It makes us see that there is a vast array of knowledge that we severely lack. It builds personality and keeps us grounded. It separates true musicians from college band guitarists who shred the neck to cheering crowds.

I have Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1 Volume 4A and it makes me cry every time I peruse it.

You do realize that JEEP is still basically JavaScript and one doesn't need to learn yet another language and its tooling?

> Concept: Once the essential government costs are budgeted, the remaining portion will be allocated by voters based on their share of tax contribution.

This would make the rich influence policy in yet another way, albeit a bit more openly than usual.

I wonder how many of the posters here pontificating on various methods/products are women, and how many men have actually discussed this topic in depth (no pun) with females they know personally. As a man, I think men must stop being opinionated wrt two specific matters about women - menstruation and childbirth - as its impossible for us to imagine/simulate the real ordeal.

You misunderstood me. I am completely against TS. I was talking about creating a remarkable product with my framework.

I am a recent arrival to the JavaScript country and I was taken aback by the prevalent practice that one has to use other languages like TypeScript to develop JavaScript applications because the later is inadequate. I personally don't like having to learn yet another language and all the tooling around that. Aren't we already swamped enough? I am also amazed how JS standards won't address the core issues that make people need to use other languages.

So I created an experimental framework for myself, called JEEP. Its an OOP framework that enhances JavaScript by bringing features from C++. I shared with the community here by posting a Show but unfortunately it didn't succeed in capturing people's interest. I have more to say on this but defer it to later when the time is appropriate. I know and hope once I release a remarkable product created with JEEP, it will automatically garner attention. It was anyway intended to serve only me, which it is doing, and anything greater was always a bonus, so I am cool with whatever happens.

When I see engineers in their late 40s, 50s etc being harsh on algorithm interviews, I often wonder is it because they failed to keep up with changing times and are now playing victims. I mean, IT industry is nothing like what it was in the 70s and 80s when these people started out. Back then, it was still rather nascent and almost all business problems could be solved by gluing together existing tools (I was born in the 80s so I am only speculating based on what I have read). May be that's how it is even now. They were all essentially glue engineers doing some type of CRUD job. For them, the more tools they knew the better they were at their jobs. It is a bit amusing how this glue job is usually oversold as 'architecting' or 'system design'.

However, times have changed. Since late 1990s, the industry has become a lot more aggressive. While the CRUD shops exist, there are more and more companies who produce products that need engineering from ground up. Some of these are truly innovative but many simply reinvent solutions. The kind of funding these new age companies with NIH syndrome get allows them to afford quite a bit of reinventing of the wheel, a wheel that suits their purpose specifically. In this scenario, one needs to know fundamentals of CS, so having interviews of this nature is justified. The candidate must be aware of the sort of company they have applied to and know what to expect. There is no point ranting after they fail.

That said, I do have my objections to these sort of interviews. I am in my mid thirties and what I do is 50-50 in terms of over all architecture and low level details. I am currently looking for a change and every time I see ds-algo mentioned in the job description I feel disappointed.

Firstly, the cargo cult interviewing is quite enraging. I mean, just because a mega corp with NIH syndrome does tough algo-ds interviews because they arguably need it, the CRUD shops following suite is ridiculous. They are glue job companies with CRUD jobs that need glue job engineers whose need to know CS fundamentals will be limited to reading the label on the libraries they use, if they advertise the ds and algo they use in their implementation.

Secondly, even if its a NIH mega corp, I dislike how the interviews automatically filter out experienced good engineers. The sort of questions asked can only be answered by three kinds of people - recent graduates, those who have written ds-algo libraries at their job before, or those who study them just for the interview. I feel the third kind is a sham as its worse form of rote learning without applied knowledge. People like me who possess a lot of knowledge through real world experience on a lot of things and can build a lot of things from scratch, basically generalists, but can't write code to balance a binary tree on whiteboard in 5 minutes feel almost discriminated. Why can't where be a middle ground where we discuss the solution strictly qualitatively without having to answer it as if it were a college exam? I think this is how it ought to be for mid career engineers.

I have had my share of both kind of interviews that has left me extremely disappointed. I have realized that people like me are best suited to work at medium sized product companies whose name not many have heard of. I used to work at one such and had tremendous success, and I am exclusively looking for such now.

For me, laziness is a symptom of burnout, and burnout indicates that I have been over indulging in my work, which, to me, happens only when I am really into it. So, over the years, whenever I encounter an interesting idea to pursue, instead of going at it with everything I have got all day long, I have learnt to force myself to take breaks. I have found that, just like the Judgement Day, I can't stop the burnout but only delay it. Burnouts typically lasts for many weeks, and if its severe I experience general ennui, which is the worst kind. During normal burnouts I engage in my other interests and allow the mind to recover at its own pace.

I never had depression in the medical sense, only a few days of feeling that I am worthless after failures. Oddly, I like this feeling. It keeps me grounded.

First check if its one of these things. (a) Did you always want to start a company, and has the success of acqui-hire made you feel accomplished and thus burnt out motivation to code? (b) Is this your first experience with customers and are you smitten by the novelty of it?

I ask this because I had something relatable but wrt education. For three years, aged 16 to 18, I was deep into science and maths as I wanted to get into mechanical engineering at a good college, and these subjects were the key. I did quite well in the entrance exam and achieved what I aspired for. I was excited and did really well the first semester. Then, per chance, I visited the city library, for the first time, and saw a big hall full of books of all kinds on liberal arts topics. Having been immersed in STEM topics for so long, I was instantly taken in by its charm. I had never seen anything like that before and I indulged in it full time. I lost all interest in my engineering for the next few years, and my grades took a nose dive, but I did come to my senses and recover eventually. After I joined the software industry I had occasional flings of this kind with other topics but my past experience made me more prudent in dealing with them. I take that as a great life lesson.