I've been using Go for 2 years now. It's been a lot of fun. It certainly brought fun back into programming for me. Very happy to see the 1.0 release hitting the public. Congratulations to the Go team and contributors for a job very well done!
1,405 karma · joined November 17, 2010
Additionally, this app does not work when viewing HN through a secure connection. This is a deal breaker for me unfortunately.
For this particular species of insect however, having the last 24 remaining individuals of the entire species (presumably) be dependent on a single small shrubbery makes me think the effort put into this rescue was more than warranted.
Specially considering their extinction was (indirectly) our fault and a mistake that could have been prevented with better education and oversight on who and what was brought along during our travels. Had their extinction been an entirely natural process, I might have agreed that their rescue would not have been such a high priority.
Of course there is the question of us disturbing ecological balance somewhere is natural or not. We are after all natural beings ourselves. Whether we are intelligent or not and have the capacity to reason about our actions is irrelevant in a strictly biological sense. But this discussion opens up a whole different can of worms.
edit: Fixed some grammar.
Originally I was very much in favour of finding the 'One language to rule them all'. Being able to do everything with a single language seemed like a no-brainer. But what all these years of try-outs have taught me is that such a language simply does not exist. And I will go one step further to state that they shouldn't exist.
The problem with every single language which tries to be good at everything, is that it inevitably ends up being mediocre at best and a major clusterf*ck at worst (I am looking at you, c++). Yes, it may be able to solve every problem out there, but not at significant cost to the programmer and development cycle. Inordinate amounts of complexity make the whole business of writing a useful application nothing short of a nightmare. A nightmare that you just do not have to put up with.
Lately I have come to realize that the quest for that one language has been a monumental waste of time. I have since settled on a DSL strategy. Pick a problem and then find a language/toolset that is uniquely suited to solve that problem in the most efficient way possible. Not only does this make the development cycle less painful, it teaches you a great deal about the problem domain your are facing, without having to deal with all the superfluous nonsense that a general-purpose language would impose upon you.
By adhering to this strategy, the obvious side effect is that there is no such thing as a favourite programming language. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For the time being, my focus lies on Go. Not because I think it's the best thing that ever happened to the world, but because it solves /my problems/ elegantly and (almost) painlessly. This doesn't mean I will be using it for everything though. I would not even consider using it for something UX/UI related. For the simple reason that it is definitely not the ideal tool for this job. Just like I won't consider using Javascript to build servers and other distributed systems.
Use the right tool for the right job.
Edit: When it comes to DSLs, I would even add this: If you can't find a suitable toolset/language for your problem, consider creating your own.
My use of English is limited to daily-use for the most part. Apart from IT terminology, I rarely encounter field-specific words. Nor do I read literature.
They are just suggestions. You are in no way obligated to add any single one of them.
I find myself wondering why some people think it does mean that. The author is by no means the only one I have seen this happen to. Some of my own facebook 'friends' behave similarly. I never understood this behaviour.
I would very much like to experience this new dome. Unfortunately I live on the other side of the planet.
Anyway, job well done to the team behind this! The more one can do to inspire people to invest more time and study in space travel and science, all the better! $14 mln. seems like a small price to pay to achieve that goal.
The original article is in Dutch, so I translated it into English a while ago: http://site.jteeuwen.nl/misc/copy_is_my_right.html
And to top it all off, they then proceed to sue [3] the pants off of anyone trying to do the same.
[1]: http://www.geek.com/articles/games/zynga-ceo-to-employees-st... [2]: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zynga-is-just-like-micros... [3]: http://www.google.nl/search?q=zynga+lawsuits
I am extremely poor at having face to face conversations. Mostly because any kind of body language completely escapes me. This has caused numerous situations of miss-communication and generally makes any kind of meaningful interaction with a human being unreliable at best.
Having access to an aid like this will certainly help improve matters for me and anyone trying to have a conversation with me.
Letting the teacher do it instead can have its benefits. Certainly when it comes to teaching a customized or niche curriculum that simply isn't available on a place like khanacademy.org.
However, I do think that having videos recorded by people who excel at that kind of stuff (like Salman himself) also makes a lot of sense. A good voice and a clear way of explaining potentially difficult subjects can not easily be done by everyone.
One would say that a teacher should be able to do it, but talking to a computer screen is a lot different than talking to a classroom. And from my own experiences I know for a fact that not nearly all of them have the charm and capacity to convey a subject in an understandable and inspiring manner.
Improving education is always a very laudable goal. And even though I see the value of having many parties to chose from, I think in this case a lot more can be achieved by reducing fragmentation of the available tools and sources and having potentially major players join forces.
It's mostly just "Yes, math is cool! You can do so much with it!". This is what my teachers always kept telling me, but it never registered because it was presented in a very abstract and meaningless way.
What would have convinced me was concrete applications. Something as simple as defining and understanding the algorithms required to make a simple Pong game work. That would have inspired me.
edit: I should probably note that my brain is not exactly wired 'right'. So that may have some mitigating consequences.