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centipede

11 karma · joined August 9, 2007

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centipede··on Did you ever wish you had a mentor to guide you?
Thanks. I know that will be tough.

I am not primarily interested in finding a market for this idea. Foremost I am looking for a mentor. (Or even a mentee - if someone believes she can learn a thing from me.)

centipede··on I have a great idea for a webapp, but hardly any programming knowledge. What should i do?
Yes. Programming languages are only starting to get more declarative.
centipede··on Ask news.YC: For the lisp experts - tell me how you learned the language.
There was a book by Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame) which has a nice introduction. Perhaps the book was called Metamagicum.
centipede··on Why do some people like difficult programming languages such as C++ and Haskell? Here's my theory...
Haskell is mathematical sound. At least it tries to be.
centipede··on The man with the Y Combinator tattoo
May you live in interesting times?
centipede··on The man with the Y Combinator tattoo
Maxwell can get invalidated. Math can't.
centipede··on This would never convince a real manager, would it?
Parts of it read like a lisper's gospel praising macros.

Quote:

Consider another typical case, the need to fill in a template with data from a record. This might be to create a customer statement or invoice to be mailed, an HTML form to be displayed, or some other such form. Replacing specific character locations on the template by character data from the record can do this. Where the "_" represents the characters to be replaced, code something like the following does the job.

into =: (# i.@#)@:=&'_'@:] }"1

That was the code needed when the original article was written. Now an even shorter equivalent is:

into =: I.@:=&'_'@:]}"1

This is simpler than before and incidentally, it is also faster and requires less space.

With a thing called "Record" containing an ASCII version of the record data with the same number of characters, as there are "_" positions on the character template called "Form". The phrase:

Record into Form

Then yields the desired result of a filled in form.

centipede··on Java-based Startups, do they exist?
Those other languages that run on the JVM are not based on Java. They do not add another layer. They run on the same layer as Java.

They may be slower than Java nonetheless - because the JVM is designed for running Java.

centipede··on Is envy a good thing?
Somebody gives you money for something you do. It's the same basic formula for startups and employees. Your definiton can not tell them apart.

BTW: That's only a theoretical counter-argument to a theoretical argument. I understand that in reality startups are vastly different from being employed.

centipede··on Is Scheme as good as Common Lisp?
That should possible with a higher-order-function (and a lambda), too.
centipede··on The #1 Secret to Coasting Through College
"As a final note, coasting may not be the best choice in overly demanding classes or those where grading is based on objective measures, such as multiple-choice or mathematics."

I study math. Our grades are not very objective. But maybe that's because we only have oral examination and we do not have to do much arithmetic.