BugBrother

Let me give you an example from my experience.

I wrote an elegant parser definition library, used for parsing specialized output of ... never mind.

It had hierarchic specifications (regular expressions etc) of parsing states, along with anonymous functions which stored away parsed data and sent the parser among different states.

New juniors could after a few hours use this to quickly parse complex text documents.

I cursed a lot while trying to port this to Python. :-( A dozen named sub-ten lines functions specified by names and referenced inside a parser structure? Just didn't work.

Edit: The point is, there are use cases where real lambdas are useful (except from map etc). It is just weird to argue otherwise.

If you check the research on the subject of development speed, it suggests a given programmer generates around a certain number of pages of code in any language he/she is proficient in. And if the programmer learns another language, they will write about the same number of pages when they get proficient. (Apply NaCl. I assume the real statement is that a given programmer generates a given amount of complexity in a work day.) [This paragraph of background was not needed, you seem aware of this point.]

You can, simplified, see Lisp as the grandfathers of the scripting languages. (But with parse trees as syntax, efficient compiler decades ago and so on.)

The point with the scripting languages is that development speed is so much quicker than e.g. C, for many cases. Lots of less code is needed. Personally, I went to scripting languages from C originally because of that the sheer productivity is so fun. I would have gone Lisp if there were jobs.

Try small volumes to start?

You might have some allergy or food intolerance to a common ingredient. Then directed selection of your gut biome won't help.

(I love Thai food myself, but it is a bit dangerous to even go into restaurant, since I'm really allergic to nuts and peanuts. I can't even be in the same room as peanuts.)

As a European which don't follow the subject of US police, my TV habits are not crime dramas, I just have to ask:

WTF are police going to do with grenade launchers?! (Do they have 155 mm artillery too? :-) )

Are those for tear gas? I just don't believe even US gangs are doing Taliban style insurrections or Intifadas?

(Being Swedish with our really open borders for refugees from the Middle East, I should just wait a few years and find out why police need heavy weaponry? :-) :-( )

Edit: Other commenters seem to say (a) These really aren't needed by police, (b) there are lots of surplus weapons from Iraq/Afghanistan. Why aren't those extra weapons just sold/donated to countries which need them? Like most neighbors of Russia, they ought to be starting with big defense investments right now (except for the complete crazies, see Swedish politicians.)

Not really relevant to anything, but I could never get why so few of the Finnish bands got so little international traction compared to Swedish bands. There are lots of good musicians, even without importing from St Petersburg, not only in hard rock and metal.

(I remember walking into a Finnish pub the first time and checking the jukebox. Half of the selection were good hard rock and metal; do the same in Sweden and it will be mostly slimy pop produced as a business.)

So "Hungarian notation" is a language joke too?! Damn, so many years and I never made the connection.

>> "Socialism" is now very different from Stalin's view of it

Didn't released documents after 1989 show that most of the West European communist parties took orders directly from Moscow/Stalin?

IIRC, it was a big shock that the reason the Italian communist party was so reasonable after WW II was because it was orders from Moscow. (Stalin wanted to split Europe in two.)

I remember that the Swedish communist party used to be staunch Stalinists until Moscow told them he was wrong. Is that where the different view of Socialism came from? :-)

(The Swedish communists (SKP/VPK/V) claim to have stopped taking orders in the 1960s and have been critics of Soviet since 1989.)

Let me add a couple of points re calling Gaza a concentration camp:

1. Gaza has among the highest population growths on the planet. Anyone implying organized murder is ... well, to not be impolite I also have to say: "is an offense to anyone who experienced any real [concentration camp]".

2. The borders were quite open to Israel, until the murders of Israeli civilians really started. It was common that people commuted to work in Israel and Israelis drove the car over to Gaza to have it fixed. Some problems are self generated.

Uh, from the article:

>>barely one in 20 of the population under the age of 15

>>[the population] more than halved again, to below 10,000

So 10K/20 == 500.

I assume this is posted and up voted now because of the similarities to Putin?

Anyway, let me recommend "Down and out in Paris and London". It taught me more about the human condition, and why you want to stamp out poverty and let everyone to be able to have a humane life, than most any book I ever read.

Also, imho after learning a bit about Eastern Europe after 1945, I put "Animal farm" along "1984". It is a master piece.

Edit: 'adventured', I really hope you are correct. The problem with your argument is that we see Hitler with hindsight now; he was a joke in the beginning too.

Interesting, you know more than me but afaik it is correct. Both in facts and arguably in moral.

Since you brought up Rome in discussing payback for warfare, you could also ask "Cui bono" here -- "who benefits?"

A war is potentially just like a gold rush, the people getting rich are the ones selling the tools to dig or make war.

Just look at my native Sweden, we managed to stay out of a few wars and shamelessly sold high quality steel to the countries fighting. It made Sweden go from the bottom to the top in Europe.

What this implies about lobbying and how wars starts I'll leave to the imagination.

(I might also add that IS has declared war on the democratic world. So trying to stop their expansion is arguably self defence.)

How about if we put it like this?

When a democracy has a war with a dictatorship it is similar to when the police defends civilians from violence.

(So this don't get into a shouting match: Check "democratic peace theory". I am aware of that the police can misuse their position. A democracy often also do cynical realpolitik when it isn't its voters that gets harmed.)

Edit: You might want to do the distinction of a junta that do a general draft, so there are soldiers for the dictator which didn't volunteer. It isn't an easy solution, but citizens in a country can theoretically overthrow their dictator. Hopefully with more help than the Syrians got from Obama.

Edit 2: I assume that you don't think it is immoral to sell weapons to police. If you are that pacifist, then I think you should move to some place without police to protect you... I hear they have good weather in inner Somalia and southern Yemen. Both are traditional clan societies without police.

Edit 3: Ah, you have a 60s style of police racial violence discussion in the USA right now. I get the down votes.

I'll expand on my "Edit:"

I had lowered productivity a couple of periods from undetected health problems (allergy troubles and a bacterial infection).

I have been both a high producer and a problem producer. And I have surprised bosses in both good/bad ways, and they have changed their opinions about me.

The main personal difference was self confidence ("I burn out easy these days? :-( More exercise/relaxation don't help?! I am old?! :-(". Afterwards, my reaction was/is "So I was physically sick, I am not a complete luser that turn everything I touch to shit.")

The only difference in "dedication" was a later natural effect -- of burnout from working like an animal to get productivity when it was failing.

And the lesson I have learned is compassion; the cynical failures that are a depressing pain on us others might not be stupid or sociopaths. I am happy for the insight, it made me less of an asshole, but it was probably not worth the high cost.

Edit: To make this into a point, I do believe in the "Pygmalion effect" and I have seen it in action. But it is far from the whole story. There are probably also many other effects than bosses' behaviour and those I know personally which influence workers.

>> Organizations want 3 things from people: subordinacy, dedication, and strategy (working on the right things).

Uh, where did "able to do good work" go??

Edit: "Dedication" and "productivity"/"capability" are different concepts. Trust me on this, I had an undetected bacterial infection for a while that lowered my capabilities seriously.

To be fair -- I am certainly not the only one that opened that page scared of seeing my own name. :-)

>> It’s a great time in the history of computing to be writing an article about bad APIs (which is another way of saying it’s a terrible time to actually have to program for a living).

It is hard to make good APIs. And for complex subjects it is probably impossible without iterating.

But you would think the guys that did the 2nd generation of VMS were smarter and more experienced than me? But OK, there weren't much event driven programming in VMS, I assume.

My vote for worst API I ever read:

I remember reading the "Inside Macintosh" (pre Mac OS X) about simple file IO and it took me multiple readings to realize that you just set some of the parameters to get all the different functionality... (The rewrite of the Inside books were really good.)

<Cough> You shocked me so much that I read the article! :-)

(I follow the subject by browsing news now and then at http://talk-polywell.org/ which really is about the small fusion projects. That place should have more details then at Wired.)

Use 'μ' for micro, 'm' is for milli.

Well, there are practical experience of new jobs created despite automation since at least the luddites.

Compatriots?

If you mean the Swedes, they should be OK (except for the grief they create themselves). Sweden is probably not on Putin's top 10 list... :-) :-(

Or do you mean Emacs/Perl/JavaScript guys? :-)

Good to see that you can take facts pipy -- and thanks xi for doing better than I did in discussing.

I -- and probably most people -- have been in the situation where we lost contact with reality, because we have read too much spin, even if the subjects are serious problems.

It is not easy. Good luck pipy. (And good luck to Russia and Ukraine -- they both deserve a break after the last century.)

It is easy to promise that for people which don't "argue" by dismissing Wikipedia, BBC etc -- because they have posted a youtube link somewhere where they interpret what someone said as different.

That is arguably ruder.

[Edit: pipy changed opinion because of arguments in another place when he wrote crazy stuff. He is not a troll, just upset. I stand corrected.]

Those would probably have existed by now, without the terror.

As I've read about it:

People were commuting from both the West Bank and Gaza into Israel to work, before the terrorism got too bad.

People in Israel used to go with their cars to have them fixed in Gaza. And so on.

After the Intifadas stopped all that, Israel had a depression. And had to start to get more work force from somewhere where they weren't taught with their mothers milk to hate Jews.

A bad loss for everyone. (And insane from the outside viewpoint, where these cultures look quite similar.)

The term is "Swenglish". I am losing control. My Swedish use as much US/English idioms as my English use Swedish idioms. :-(

tunnelbana == tunnel + path/track

tunnelbanevagn == subway car.

>>Strange that there has been no reporting of this "riot" from last week

Literally 10 seconds with Google:

http://www.dn.se/sthlm/200-i-rinkebyupplopp-polis-skadad-av-...

(The publication date is "2014-07-24 08:31". ~ A week ago.)

What... against whom?

OK, I don't expect rationality from racists or anti racists (but then, in Sweden "anti racist" seems to be a code word for antisemite. No, sadly not joking.)

But... I can't off the top of my head name a culture that has never used spears and javelins.

Edit: First, spears is an universal farmer's weapon most everywhere. Second, thanks guard-of-terra: It is a shame -- considering all the English I have consumed for decades (both professionally and in literature etc) -- that I don't even seem to know the basic racist insults. :-)

The real problem is that this is how criminals can create a "no go" area for the police.

That is the first step to ghettos controlled by criminals. So Sweden seems to go the way of Brazil's favelas. Note that Brazil is going the other way, finally. :-(

I got a surreal feeling when reading about the police reaction. When I lived in Stockholm a decade ago, I called in a few times.

The worst case was in the subway, when a big black guy talked incoherently in bad Swedish and started to beat on the windows with a crowbar.

I shrugged, walked to the next wagon and called the police. I gave up when I realised they weren't interested in hearing which subway line I was on and what time, so they could meet up with it.

At least they answered that time...

The point is, not long after some crazy person killed a few people with a baseball bat or something outside a subway station. I always wondered if it was the same person. (I didn't see any pictures in the newspapers, which implies an immigrant, like the crowbar guy.)

It doesn't matter if it was the same person, a bunch of violent crazy and/or drugged people will destroy others' lives as long as they are outside.

(As I understand, the Finnish police otoh is well respected and trusted. I don't really know about Denmark/Finland.)

So Wikipedia, BBC and most of the world (which didn't acknowledge the election) are disproved by a Youtube video you have linked to somewhere...?

Well, that is almost as good a source as when you linked to a blogger. :-)

(So if I link to the criticism on Wikipedia of the Crimean election, you "disprove" that with another Youtube link? :-) )

[Thanks for another good laugh.]

>>No, it didn't, and I have already explained why in previous posts. The words about May polls come from respected sociologist and author of The Guardian.

So prove your conspiracy theory that shows Wikipedia, BBC et al wrong and the votes really were 96+%(!).

Post exact links and quotes that show the May poll was correct.

>>It occurs to me that you Sir are not trying to be objective at all.

1. You use bloggers as references while shrugging at serious references.

2. A single minute's check on wikipedia showed that your claims about the May vote is garbage.

Why should anyone takes you seriously after that?!

(I am a bit disappointed that you ignored this subject and didn't explain the conspiracies and lies about your Glorious Leader?)

-----

About Syrian chemical weapons:

Of course there weren't much physical proofs remaining, the Assad government shelled the target area a lot, to remove them...

The rebel side didn't have the type of artillery used, no one overheard any communications from them about this -- and the rebels didn't use that artillery on their enemy afterwards.

But if the rebels seems so unlikely, maybe it wasn't the Assads either but a third party. Elves? :-)

[I am repeating myself and my references here.]

(And bombing the Assads: Because of internal politics, Obama has left hundreds of thousands of Syrians to be killed by Russian weapons. It is an outrage.)

This was not a waste of time after all, since I have seldom seen so hand picked sources.

You refuse to accept anything official from USA, and then quote conspiracy theories from a blogger!! :-)

About your claims about the Syrian chemical weapons attack:

The overheard communications (by Israelis and Americans) are lies, of course. And it is just more lies that the Syrian government shelled the attacked areas after the chemical attack to destroy the evidence!

Shameless liars about your Glorious Leader, those Westerners. :-) Uh, no... they hate Assad too! :-)

To be realistic, if there are state budget's involved, you can get any number of statements from individuals. Robert Parry might want to retire, who knows?

Here is a good source, with high credibility, about the second use of chemical weapons -- HRW (I assume the rebels had helicopters they used only for that bombing, then hid? :-) ):

http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/13/syria-strong-evidence-gov...

And about the most well known attack:

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/10/syria-government-likely-c...

It is easy to find similar from Amnesty and others.

(But HRW is just another part of the Western conspiracy against Rus.. Syria, only independent bloggers are dependable of course. Oh, wait...)

----------------

But the Syria claims was nothing.

A few minutes with Wikipedia made my day when I checked your claim that the referendum in May was dependable.

>>No, I am not, because I have provided quote about May polls, not February or March ones.

From my previous comment -- the opinions were totally different just ONE month earlier.

The relevant wikipedia page on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_status_referendum,_2014...

Money quote:

These results could not be independently verified.[29][63]

<My stomach hurts from laughing.>

I am certain you have read some blogger than knows better than the liars at BBC and PewResearch. :-)

Then we have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donetsk_status_referendum,_2014...

group of pro-Russian separatists in possession of a 100,000 ballots already marked with a 'yes' vote for the referendum were captured

A campaign of intimidation, beatings, and hostage taking has forced many pro-Ukrainian activists and known opponents of secession to Russia to flee the region, leaving the referendum to take place without any dissent or opposing voices

And so on... More obvious lies!! :-)

So you claim a referendum whose result can't be verified [and after hunting of the opposition members!] is trustworthy and showed that all the opinions had totally changed in one month and resulted in a popular uprising... (No Russian military this time. Honest!)

Thanks for a good laugh. (My poor stomach. :-( )

Let me guess -- Wikipedia and its sources are just lies, you KNOW that the May vote was dependable because there is some blogger that support this, here too? You saw that on Putin's own media?

(I removed quotes about the previous poll faked by Putin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_status_referendum,_2014 since that is just more democratic lies about your Glorious Leader? :-) )