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BMarkmann

236 karma · joined November 29, 2009

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BMarkmann··on k on pdp11
If you mean "free" as in open-source/free, there is J, which has its own builtin database. I'm assuming it's similar to k/kdb, but that's just a guess.

Learning an APL variant... not a free lunch. Takes a while and commitment to grasp.

BMarkmann··on Engineer's New No-Code Programming Language Uses Visual Diagrams
The article and linked blog posts fall to explain how this differs, is more powerful than, or solves problems not already solved by actual, functioning, industrial-grade tools, both commercial and OSS. Am I missing something fundamental?

The VCPU concept and synchronization control seemed interesting at first, but after trying to glean what he's getting at I don't see anything that isn't described in petri nets or bpmn notationally or possible using many of the existing low-/no-code platforms that are all the rage in the enterprise-ishy world.

Also looking like the diagrams were made with MS Paint made me throw up in my mouth a little thinking about having to actually work with as a daily thing... ick.

It's a great idea, too be sure. I'm just not sold on why this particular one-man effort would be of more interest than alternatives. Maybe if you've been noodling on this since the eighties and billion dollar companies have actually already run way past you with actual working software, it could be time to move to the next thing.

Or who knows, given the lack of detail, maybe I just got trolled by some nitwit using chatgpt. If that's the case, well played getting me to swipe type this on my phone.

BMarkmann··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2019)
Counterpoint Consulting | Washington, DC Metro Area (Vienna, VA) | c20g.com

Counterpoint's Mission is to create software solutions which enable our clients to automate their business, turbocharge their workforce, engage their customers, and ensure compliance.

https://www.counterpointconsulting.com/careers

https://www.counterpointconsulting.com/life-at-counterpoint

Currently hiring for:

Associate Software Consultant

Software Consultant

Checkout position descriptions and qualifications:

https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/...

BMarkmann··on Racket v7.2
Yes, I totally agree it comes down to YMMV. Everyone's learning style is different -- some like dense documentation, some like book-style progressive walkthroughs. I certainly didn't learn CL by reading the HyperSpec, for instance... :-)
BMarkmann··on Racket v7.2
Please don't what, have an opinion?

I read SICP as an experienced programmer and I didn't find it impractical at all; in fact, it kickstarted my interest in other lisps.

I read Realm of Racket as an experienced programmer (after knowing Common Lisp and Clojure well) and it was entertaining and, yes, a gradual introduction to Racket.

I'm sorry if you disagree, but was answering the question that was given with a couple thoughts that might be beneficial. I'm glad you feel confident enough in your interpretation of what was being asked and the OP's personal background and motivation to flame someone else without, I don't know, answering the question.

EDIT: I see you did answer him below, but my general response is still valid.

EDIT 2: Your response makes more sense given context. Sorry I got internet angry a little too quickly.

BMarkmann··on Racket v7.2
Seems like the most common answer to this might be SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs -- you'll find course videos pretty easily from Google; the ones from the authors are really great). Note that it's based on Scheme, which is a ancestor of Racket, but Racket has a language pack that papers over the differences and works with the code from the book. Official course website: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html

You might, as a novice coming to Racket, find "Realm of Racket" to be more approachable as an intro: http://www.realmofracket.com/

BMarkmann··on Ask HN: My 10 year old wants to develop games. Which platform is the best?
My son is learning using Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and it's pretty well tuned-in to the way he thinks. Haven't put any "code" in front of him yet, but he can make some pretty neat games very rapidly using Scratch. Might be worth a look.
BMarkmann··on Predicting Variable Types in Dynamically Typed Programming Languages
Probably still relevant given how SBCL's user guide says (in the only section that includes mention of type inferencing):

"FIXME: The material in the CMUCL manual about getting good performance from the compiler should be reviewed, reformatted in Texinfo, lightly edited for SBCL, and substituted into this manual. In the meantime, the original CMUCL manual is still 95+% correct for the SBCL version of the Python compiler."

BMarkmann··on Jepsen: Dgraph 1.0.2
You forgot step zero, which is "find terrible example code on SO and copy it"... then 3 goes back to step 0.
BMarkmann··on Jepsen: Dgraph 1.0.2
I honestly don't know that there are any posts I get more excited about on HN than Jepsen analyses. The number of landmines distributed systems create and the ability to suss them out in such detail / depth is really incredible. Kudos.
BMarkmann··on Ask HN: How do you handle long-running workflows at your company?
Check out the BPM tools others have mentioned (Activiti, Camunda, etc...)
BMarkmann··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2017)
Counterpoint Consulting

Vienna, VA (Washington DC Area)

http://www.c20g.com/careers.html

Associate Software Consultant

As a Consultant at Counterpoint, you will:

- Work with customers to identify, model, and automate complex business processes using commercial and open source software

- Work directly with our customers to translate business needs into technical solutions

- Design and develop custom business software solutions

- Work independently or cooperatively within software development teams

- Provide follow-up support and training to our customers

- Participate in internal software development projects

- Travel: Must be willing to travel to customer sites across North America (primarily in the D.C. metro area)

Desired Skills and Experience/Required Qualifications

We are looking for intelligent, professional, and driven individuals who possess:

- BA/BS from an accredited university

- Demonstrated record of excellence inside and outside of the classroom

- Software development experience or interest in a career in technology

Preferred Qualifications

- BA/BS specifically in computer science or engineering

- Knowledge of Web Development Technologies and Libraries (Angular 2+, Backbone, Marionette, HTML, JS, CSS, jQuery)

- Knowledge of Relational Databases & SQL

- Software development experience (Java, Java Web Frameworks and / or .NET)

- BPM development experience with Alfresco, Appian, OpenText, Pegasystems, or other commercial or open source BPM or low code application development platforms

BMarkmann··on Golden Rules of Financial Safety (1999)
Just for context, this is from Harry Browne, who was famously (and perhaps not entirely fairly) labeled as a "gold bug" throughout his career. He was something of a hero figure among those who subscribe to Austrian economic theory, and actually the candidate for the US Libertarian party for president several cycles back.

Off-topic (?) from that article, I'd be interested to hear what he would have made of the current cryptocurrency craze, given his views on gold, inflation, and portfolio stability.

BMarkmann··on KSQL: Open Source Streaming SQL for Apache Kafka
I understand the underlying architecture is fundamentally different, but the end result seems kind of akin to some of the "complex event processing" (CEP) tools out there like Esper (ie. feeding incoming data into established queries instead of executing queries against at-rest data). Would this fit similar sorts of use cases / fit into the CEP market?
BMarkmann··on Things We Learned Building a Complex React App
Correct URL: https://www.madetech.com/blog/things-we-learned-building-a-c...
BMarkmann··on Drivetribe’s Modern Take on CQRS with Apache Flink
"This is fairly straightforward; professional software developers of all levels usually have some experience building and scaling stateless APIs."

I would question this, in fact suggest the complete opposite. Given that they say they're a team of Scala developers, I think there is definitely some selection bias going on -- in some subset of the wider population of developers that might be the case, but certainly not globally.

BMarkmann··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2017)
Counterpoint Consulting | www.c20g.com

Location: Vienna, VA (near Washington, DC)

Counterpoint creates sustainable competitive advantage for our clients through business and workforce automation solutions. We create software which lets machines deal with administrivia while enabling people to focus on the parts of their work that matter most. We are looking to hire new software developers and consultants who are passionate about technology, who relish the opportunity to work in a dynamic, small company culture and who have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

  -- Associate Consultant -- Experience Level: 0-3 yrs

  JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: Work directly with our customers to translate business needs into technical solutions Analyze business problems Work independently or cooperatively within software development teams

  REQUIREMENTS: 
  * Demonstrated record of excellence inside and outside of the classroom 
  * Software development experience or interest in pursuing a career in technology

  -- (Senior) Consultant -- Experience Level: 3-6 yrs

  NON-TECHNICAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: 
  * Work directly with our customers to translate business needs into technical solutions 
  * Analyze business problems 
  * Work independently or cooperatively within software development teams

  TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS: 
  * Java, Java Web Frameworks and / or .NET professional development experience 
  * Web Development Technologies and Libraries (HTML, JS, CSS, jQuery) 
  * Relational Databases & SQL 
  * BPM development experience (esp. Appian, Cordys, Metastorm, Activiti)
BMarkmann··on Show HN: LogRocket – Record and Replay for Redux Apps
This does look cool, and definitely illustrates the awesomeness of using redux / immutable state store. What is the pricing of the service like, though? I'd prefer to see that without having to register...
BMarkmann··on Ask HN: Most overhyped technology of 2016?
Except for the landing and reusing part, no? (Yes, they recaptured and reused the Shuttle's SRBs, but it's a different scale and the economics are very different.)
BMarkmann··on Welcome to the CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository (1994)
Does this content actually still exist somewhere? There are some references IPs / DNS names that no longer exist.
BMarkmann··on APL Tutorial
Made the case for what? In another paper, he wrote:

Since J is now free, and uses only ASCII characters, the requirements set forth in my A Personal View of APL have been fully met.

http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/autobio.htm

BMarkmann··on What ever happened to Wordstar?
Emacs kill ring?

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ki...

It takes a while to get used to it, but once you understand it / use it in anger, it becomes tough to live without.

BMarkmann··on MLton with Realtime GC and Threading Features
I know ocaml has a lot of proponents in industry (jane street probably the most vocal, but I've seen it many other places, as well). Most of the SML/MLTon references I come across seem to be in an academic and research context. Is anyone out there using it for "real world" application development? What sorts of niches would it serve well?
BMarkmann··on APL compiler targeting a typed array intermediate language
Oh wow, hard numbers, thanks! That's very impressive, but strangely misleading in the graph towards the bottom that appears to clock TAIL->Futhark->OpenCL and Futhark->OpenCL exactly the same in more than half the cases (if you look at the raw numbers if appears that the second approach blows the first away in most).
BMarkmann··on APL compiler targeting a typed array intermediate language
An interesting project was kicked around here / proggit the other day, using apltail as the middle of a pipeline transforming APL code into optimized GPU code (Futhark), instead of targeting C. It is a pretty good display of ML's suitability for this sort of task.

I've always been impressed (amazed?) at the performance APL and its descendants get in an interpreted environment -- I'd be interested to see performance comparisons between the output of apl-to-apltail-to-C / apl-to-apltail-to-futhark and an APL interpreter.

BMarkmann··on New Common Lisp website
I guess the point I was trying to make wasn't that cliki in particular has any shortcomings, but that more hands on any particular open source effort tend to yield more fruit that those hands spread across as many independent efforts.

The CL community in general has some amazingly prolific contributors, though perhaps fewer in number than other languages enjoy. One thing I've always noticed, though, is that the resources out there lack the "glue" to tie everything together. Cliki is definitely one resource that does that, Quicklisp and its doc page (https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/UNOFFICIAL/docs/) is another. Here's something of a motivating example... I wanted to mess around with building a multi-threaded server the other day. I went to Cliki, found usocket and bordeaux-threads, from their descriptions it sounded like they would be a reasonable starting point to build on. The API documentation and tests in their repository for both projects left me scratching my head... Then I started searching for applications that used them and between Cliki and Googling didn't find many great examples. Then I said, well, let's step back and see how Hunchentoot handles its networking layer. Turns out it uses -- wait for it -- usocket and bordeaux-threads.

Maybe it would be helpful to link from the "recommended libraries" (and other topic pages) to projects that use each library? I don't really have any concrete advice, I just feel like one of the things the CL resources out there lack is some layer that ties everything together. Cliki is a great starting point, but it might benefit from more hands.

That's certainly not (not by a long shot) the only place where the scattered CL resources out there could benefit from volunteers. There are untold numbers of things like (https://common-lisp.net/project/common-lisp-beginner/) this floating around that more hands would help.

Sometimes the answer isn't, hey, let me make my own site -- maybe step back and consider whether your efforts could benefit the community more if you lent your time to something that already exists. Just a thought.

BMarkmann··on New Common Lisp website
I love common lisp. That being said, i feel like this effort might be better spent contributing to modernizing and cleaning up / updating the existing community sites like cliki.net.
BMarkmann··on LFGo – Lisp-Flavoured Go
...and half of those are comments, no? (ie. the ones starting with a ';')
BMarkmann··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2016)
Counterpoint Consulting | www.c20g.com

Location: Vienna, VA (near Washington, DC)

Counterpoint creates sustainable competitive advantage for our clients through business and workforce automation solutions. We create software which lets machines deal with administrivia while enabling people to focus on the parts of their work that matter most.

We are looking to hire new software developers and consultants who are passionate about technology, who relish the opportunity to work in a dynamic, small company culture and who have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.

-- Associate Consultant -- Experience Level: 0-3 yrs

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: Work directly with our customers to translate business needs into technical solutions Analyze business problems Work independently or cooperatively within software development teams

REQUIREMENTS: * Demonstrated record of excellence inside and outside of the classroom * Software development experience or interest in pursuing a career in technology

-- (Senior) Consultant -- Experience Level: 3-6 yrs

NON-TECHNICAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES: * Work directly with our customers to translate business needs into technical solutions * Analyze business problems * Work independently or cooperatively within software development teams

TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS: * Java, Java Web Frameworks and / or .NET professional development experience * Web Development Technologies and Libraries (HTML, JS, CSS, jQuery) * Relational Databases & SQL * BPM development experience (esp. Appian, Cordys, Metastorm, Activiti)

BMarkmann··on Jheronimus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights – Interactive
I know this doesn't add much, but... that is awesome.

It would be cool to have this with a lot of other artwork, but I can't imagine a better subject than TGoED as a teaser.

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