eeperson

As far as I can tell, Haskell does box everything: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.1/html/users_guide/primi...

On Debian (KDE 4.10) it does this by default. So, there must be a way to do it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that configuration is. Maybe if you open it with your keyboard 'alt+f1'?

I guess I wasn't clear in my previous question. I know you can build a blocking interface our of a non-blocking one. My question was how you go the other way. How do you create a non-blocking interface of of a blocking one. The parent post seemed to imply that Erlang was able to do this. As far as I can tell this can't actually be done. If you have a blocking call you still have to block an OS thread somewhere.

If this can't be done, then that brings me back to my previous point. It seems like the important thing is that you have non-blocking IO and not that you have an M:N threading model in the runtime. If you have non-blocking IO then it seems like you could easily implement an M:N threading model as a library without making it awkward to interact with.

Is there some assumption I'm making that doesn't make sense?

How do run blocking code in a way that doesn't block an OS thread? Is there some abstraction that allows this that I'm missing?

Aren't blocking operations also a problem if M:N threads are baked in to the runtime? If all of the idomatic APIs are using non-blocking IO then would there still be a problem?

If you have 1:1 threads in a language, can't you implement M:N threading as a library? Looking at projects like Akka[1] makes me think this is the case. Is there reason this can't be done that I am missing? Why would you want M:N threads baked in to the runtime?

[1] http://akka.io/

Servlet container restarts don't have to have a huge overhead for development (not sure about using a full j2ee container). If you use SBT[1] plus the the xsbt-web-plugin[2] then restarts are just as fast as they are for node projects.

Disclaimer - I contribute to the xsbt-web-plugin

[1] http://www.scala-sbt.org/ [2] https://github.com/JamesEarlDouglas/xsbt-web-plugin

Yes, you can't combine libraries compiled for 2.10 and 2.8. No one disputes this. Yes, this is a problem. How much will vary from project to project.

However, while you may think that binary compatibility is 'laughable', to imply that there have been no improvements in this area is disingenuous. The presence of this compatibility contradicts the claims you made in the article.

You also gloss over source compatibility. Which, again, contradicts the claims you made in the article.

I would argue that Groovy and Clojure require just as much conversion (I have no idea about Kotlin). Scala and Clojure both require conversion if you want to use idiomatic data structures. I think Groovy is actually worse about this because you get secret implicit conversion to add meta classes and null objects. I've run in to a bunch of difficult to track down bugs where Groovy has forgotten to do these conversions.

From the article:

> This self-limiting process means that Scala will never truly die out; at any point, there are still more people who are new to Scala than people who have been burnt by it, so there’s always a fresh supply of people willing to believe that it can’t happen to them. The same is true of smokers, of course.

If that's not inflammatory for the sake of it I don't know what is.

> And no, 2.10.x and 2.10.y being compatible isn't something to crow about; it should have been the default.

The moving of the of the goalposts isn't helping your case that your not being inflammatory for the sake of it.

Few people are going to state that Scala doesn't have any problems. However, if you want to raise issues about the language, at least argue fairly and don't insult the users and developers of said language in the process.

That isn't intended to be a Scala successor. That is intended to be integrated in future versions of Scala.

Why do you think that those doing research inside Typesafe are steering the language in a direction that is user hostile? From what I have seen the effort appears to be more focused on simplifying the language in order to make it easier to use: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/data-types-issues

Scala kind of follows semantic versioning. If the first 2 numbers are the same then they are binary compatible (at least starting with version 2.9.0). So version 2.9.1 is compatible with 2.9.3. Otherwise they are still source compatible, aside from deprecations, they just need to be recompiled (at least starting with 2.8.0).

This article is actually filled with a bunch of mis-information about Scala version compatiblity. For example, the author states:

> There has never been a Scala release where it’s been possible to compile and run an older library with a newer version of a program.

This is not true at all. There are multiple libraries that support several binary incompatible versions of Scala from the same codebase. Also, as mentioned previously, there are multiple releases of Scala that are binary compatible with each other.

I'm not sure I understand why this is a problem. SBT, leiningen, maven and pretty much every other build tool on the JVM supports publishing source jars. I think SBT even does it by default. Nearly all of the open source projects I have worked with on the JVM publish their source jars (Grails used to not but even they do now).

Are you running in to a lot of projects that don't publish their sources?

Also, SBT can use use other SBT projects in github repos as depedencies: http://alvinalexander.com/scala/using-github-projects-scala-...

The syntax got much nicer in SBT 0.13: http://www.scala-sbt.org/0.13.0/docs/Community/ChangeSummary...

Why do you want this?

Wouldn't a thread still have to block somewhere? How would you call the synchronous code without blocking on any threads?

How does the Quasar know when it should defer execution of something that might block? Does the user declare this in some fashion? In the article, it looks like this is done with try-with-resource blocks.

If a hypothesis doesn't contradict the known facts, how do you determine if it is warranted?

You only require evidence if you expect others to believe the same thing. I'm not arguing that anyone should believe in any religion. I'm arguing that a scientist can hold religious beliefs without conflict.

> the scientific body of knowledge, both theoretical and experimental, shows no evidence and no sign of a creator outside of humans projecting their own desires.

This seems like it would strongly depend on who you ask. I'm not even sure how you would come up with a criteria for this (although maybe that is just limitations in my own imagination).

It sounds like we are talking past each other slightly. It sounds like you are trying to produce the probability that a proof is found that P=NP in a given year. However, I'm asking for the probability that ultimately P=NP. What would you average that over? What would your input data be?

I understand that people work up all sorts of heuristics for their daily lives, but that doesn't constitute scientific proof. There still just heuristics.

> Because the testable claims are all that's left, since everything else has long since been proven to be false

How can testable claims be all that's left. If it's testable then it can be proven or disproven. Did you mean untestable?

>It is a made up number. So what? It's not made up out of thin air though.

Wait what?

Yes you can assign a probability to everything, it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but you can do it. I hope that is not how you prove all of your math problems.

I'm sorry I must not have been clear in my previous post. I did not mean that you personally were moving the goalposts. I meant that your hypothetical person who believed in garage dragons was moving the goalposts. I was trying to argue that your analogy was a straw man argument.

Also, your argument that 'religion has moved the goalposts' Would be an example of an association fallacy: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

Bayesian probability still requires data as an input or your result is meaningless. If you start with a made up value and update it with more made up values, you still have a made up value. You still haven't offered any explanation for how you were able to come up with a 1% probability that P=NP.

Your example still isn't the same as mine. Mine didn't involve goal post moving. For your example to be the same, you would have to start off with a dragon whose presence is not detectable in any way. What's the difference between an empty garage and one with an undetectable dragon in it? Absolutely nothing. I'm not saying you should believe in the dragon, I'm saying that determining the presence of the dragon is not done scientifically.

That doesn't make sense. Once you have clear evidence of something, it is no longer a hypothesis. You can start with any hypothesis you want. Of course if you expect something to be treated as scientific fact you need clear evidence. Until you get clear evidence, it is a matter of philosophy, and you can fill it with anything that doesn't contradict the known facts.

That is a gross misunderstanding of both uncertainty and science. Uncertainty is based on measurements made. The 1% you came up with is an entirely made up number. Also, science is explicitly not about assumptions. It is requires testable predictions. The complexity of the solutions does not matter. Otherwise we would still be using Newtonian mechanics for everything.

The problem with your dragon example is that it is testable. This moves it in to the realm of science.

I understand that statistics are an important tool in 'proving' things scientifically. The problem is, you're making a philosophical argument against religion not a scientific one. Probabilistic solutions don't sense for philosophical questions. For example, what is the probability that P=NP?

The lesswrong article you linked to does not disprove religion. You certainly can disprove dogmatic ideas that have surrounded various religions, but that is not the same thing as disproving religion.

For example, what if I said I believed that the universe was created by a conscious creator? This is clearly a religious statement, but as far as I can tell there is no way this statement can be addressed scientifically.

I agree that for many people belief in a particular religion can bring in a bunch of associated dogma that is at odds with science. My point is that it doesn't have to. Dismissing all religions just because some people do feel that way is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not every christian is a young earth creationist.

Wait, how does probability factor in to this. What is meaning of a 30% valid argument in this context? If you can't prove something, it doesn't mean that the answer is probabilistic.

I'm not interested in if any particular religion makes sense or doesn't make sense to you. My point is that the the debate over different religions is at its core a philosophical argument not a scientific one. A point you confirmed by making a philosophical argument against religion rather than a scientific one.

I feel like you are conflating two thing, religious belief and disbelief of scientific results. There is no reason that these need to be tied together. Of course science conflicts with the latter, but it says nothing about the former. Things that are not provable one way or the other are philosophy not science.

You seem to imply the religious belief is inherently contradicted by evidence. What evidence do you feel contradicts all religions?

For example, if a have a religion that only contains a single belief, that the universe is created by a conscious being. How do you produce evidence that contradicts that? I would argue that you can't because science can't address that. It is a purely philosophical question.

I agree completely with your first two paragraphs. I'll even buy the first sentence of your last paragraph. However, I fail to see why religion inherently conflicts with science. It is in no way clear that the scientific method can be applied to everything. Religion, or one of many other arbitrary philosophies, can fill in the parts that science does not cover.

If you start with the hypothesis that the universe was constructed by a conscious creator, how do you address that scientifically? As far as I can tell, the answer is, you can't.