nonrecursive

I might be biased (I'm the author), but I don't think that emacs-starter-kit prevents you from doing things the normal way. You can still modify your emacs config and include vendor elisp, and ESK doesn't make it more difficult.

And with the tutorial - I have a pretty low opinion of it. I mean, it starts out talking about how to navigate up and down one screen - who cares about that when they're starting to learn a new editor? Who? Emacs already has a reputation for being obscure and difficult, and the tutorial does not help.

This frustration isn't directed at you, of course - I appreciate the comment. In general, though, I think that Emacs instructions would be better if they had a little more empathy for the learner. As a new person, I don't care about hearing all this magical stuff about emacs right off the bat - I can't even make sense of it because I have no context. Just show me how to actually do real work.

Great feedback, thanks! I'll work it in.

The book uses common lisp, so you'll need to know how to read that. Otherwise I think you should be fine. It's not a book about idioms or coding styles, but about thinking in lisp. If the code examples are confusing, it'll be because you're not sure what something means in common lisp or because you're learning new ideas, not because the code is poorly written. So, if you treat it as a book of ideas as opposed to "teach yourself x language in 24 hours", you should be OK :)

Instructions for printing it with lulu: http://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html . I did this about a month ago and the copy I received was great.

I know! It's really bizarre. It's almost like some people have different preferences from you or something. Let's spend more time talking about how people with different preferences are weird and stupid.

Boy I sure hope not. In case there are, let's continue to imply that they're making poor choices. While we're at it, let's also shit on other people's work which we haven't read so that we can make sure that as many people as possible can feel our contempt. Especially when the authors of said work are right here, right in this very thread!

I know! It's really bizarre. It's almost like some people have different preferences from you or something. Let's spend more time talking about how people with different preferences are weird and stupid.

Thanks for the clarification! I think you guys are doing awesome, world-changing work.

I, too, took issue with the letter. It seemed like the author was trying to embarrass Khan Academy, using one issue to imply that you're irresponsible and lazy. I think that his approach is in itself irresponsible and lazy - it would have made more sense for the author to reach out privately to get a better understanding of how your organization operates instead of loudly proclaiming, without merit, that you're squandering trust and resources.

Anyway - just wanted to say that I think most people will find that the article reflects poorly on the author and not on Khan Academy. Keep up the good work!

I can see where you're coming from and I think that your argument would be stronger if you took your own feelings out of it. For example, you say that you find it insulting that they'd ask you to pay for their salary. Well, why should it matter to anyone else that you feel insulted? If that's your reaction then they're probably not talking to you. Besides that - why should anyone care about whether you feel insulted? You also mention that you feel no sympathy for the family argument because of your experiences. In this context, why does that matter? I don't mean this to be dismissive of you personally; I'm just trying to share my minor analysis.

You also say that you're not suggesting they're running a scam but at the same time you compare their outreach to a money grab.

I don't know, perhaps your arguments are very good ones and I am a heartless bastard because they don't sway me. At their root, it seems like you're saying that these guys are proposing something that violates your sense of fairness somehow. I'd be interested in seeing an argument that applies more universally, and not just that you personally find it unfair.

Myself, I think the cool thing about crowdfunding is that it's so open and free. I might personally find it frustrating or unfair that money gets allocated in a way that doesn't match my values, but too bad for me!

I don't understand your objections at all. These guys are making a proposal, which individuals are free to accept or reject as they see fit. Those who accept it know what they're getting themselves into and accept the risk. No one is getting scammed. If these guys want a parachute, that's their prerogative. Just because you wouldn't take the same approach doesn't mean the approach is a bad one.

Oh man, I love this!

I especially loved this: "warrior.feel.empty?". Allova sudden my RubyWarrior's getting all existential!

I think this post is spot on. You don't need to put up with negativity on twitter, and if you're constantly snarky yourself, think about the impact you're having on others. It feels good to have people laugh with you and validate you, but ultimately you're helping to create a culture of aggression that's not healthy for anyone.

Maybe this is a good place to mention that I've just finished re-writing my tiny "positive" social network: http://gratefulplace.com/ . It's meant to be a place for people to lift each other up.

This looks really neat. I'm going to give it a try. One suggestion: put an itunes link on the home page :)

edit: an _obvious_ link, I should say. I kept clicking around without luck until finally I thought to click the "app store" text.

Also, it was completely not obvious to me that I could scroll on the page, and when I did scroll and a menu appeared out of nowhere it freaked me out.

What's weird about it though is that I've never seen these comparisons as belittling other products. They're merely using an easily-understandable point of comparison.

Let me put it another way. Do you think that every conference goer should behave the way Adria did? Whenever a conference goer feels offended, he or she should immediately take photos, publish them on Twitter and on a blog post along with insults like "asshat" and otherwise humiliate the individuals as publicly as possible?

The reason I ask is so I can figure out whether you're debating whether it's OK to publicly shame people in this manner, or whether you're quibbling over the degree of risk you're exposing someone to when you publicly shame them the way Adria did.

I applaud the PyCon organizers for clearly delineating what is acceptable behavior and what is not. I especially applaud them for including public shaming in the "unacceptable" category.

The rest of their code is there to protect conference goers. The sections discussing harassment are there for a reason - harassment is a real problem at these events.

Similarly, conference goers should be protected from the threat of being publicized as a less-than-human creature on the Internet. There's been some discussion of the reaction to Adria and Jesse. There could just as likely have been a strong, dangerous reaction to the men who made the comments. Saying "these guys are a threat to women" on the Internet could actually put them in danger, and no one should expect to be put in that situation by attending PyCon.

She had many options. She could have gotten out of her seat and found a staff member to talk to. She could have sent an email. She could have called one of the numbers listed in the pycon code of conduct.

Instead, she posted a photo of some men on the Internet in order to publicly humiliate them. Are you advocating that people act this way whenever they get offended at a conference?

Can we add maxlength="80" to the "title" field for new submissions? It's annoying to have to guess at how much I need to edit my title to make it fit

I disagree with the parent's comment. It is useful to know your age. In the real world, I would not usually interact with a 14-year-old in the same way that I would interact with, for example, a 20-year-old. I think the context you provide helps others to tailor their feedback.

That being said: nice job! Why do you like creating games?

I really believe that expressing gratitude every day has a positive effect, so much so that I made a clojure-based site, http://gratefulplace.com/ (and wrote about the code at http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/dissecting-g...).

For the past year I've spent a few minutes every morning thinking about what I'm grateful for and it's had a big positive influence on my life. I'm definitely happier.

That's something I wasn't 100% sure about. When "incidental complexity" was discussed in the talk, I thought it was pretty much the same as "accidental complexity" in the way that Fred Brooks means it in No Silver Bullet. So I used "accidental complexity" and linked to the wikipedia article to hopefully provide some useful info.

Thanks - I really appreciate the feedback. In my mind, I had meant "Hickeysian" in a tongue-in-cheek way, and I had considered jokingly mentioning that the post was a kind of hagiography. Now I really see how this could appear to someone else, and I have to admit this realization has made me shudder a little myself. This will definitely help my writing.

As for cataloging his unique viewpoint - hopefully as I progress I'll do a better job. I think that some of his later talks like "The value of values" and the one on place may be more uniquely his.

Author here. Thanks for pointing out that Rich Hickey didn't invent any of this stuff, and for the SICP reference.

The reason why I wrote the article as I did - as a Clojure hipster - was that I thought two things were important:

1) Getting people exposed to Rich Hickey's exceptional talks. Even if the ideas he talks about aren't new, he explains them in a way that's very easy for me to understand, and I think his speaking style is enjoyable. For my purposes, I don't really care about the attribution of ideas as long as those ideas get out. My thinking is that I'll have more success with this approach than by saying, "Dude, you should check out SICP Chapter 3. Then rock the lambda papers. And here are 100 other pages of great stuff, too."

2) Providing a lightweight reference to newbies like myself. I understand that more experienced programmers might find all this old hat, but hopefully others might find the presentation valuable.

Now, if you'll excuse me I need to go light some incense and place it in front of my Rich Hickey shrine :)

Whoops! Thanks!

This looks cool, and the message is something I can get behind. Only, what is the purpose of the site?

I'm asking honestly. Is there a product somewhere? A mailing list? A forum? What am I supposed to do?

Thanks for the feedback! The favoriting bug should be fixed now.

For twitter integration, right now I have it so that if you use someone's twitter name, a tweet gets sent to them. Beyond that, not sure what I should do :)

And thanks for the encouragement! Haha yeah, "the angry place" would be fun to make :D

I would love any feedback!

This is the Clojure site which I wrote about here: http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/dissecting-g...

The code is on github here: https://github.com/flyingmachine/gratefulplace

You know, I actually can't think of any. I just ended up writing things the way I did because I anticipated I would want the full request map, but that assumption hasn't born out. Passing params might be a good way to go. I need to go back and change this!

Thank you! And thank you for making such great libraries available.

For #1, I definitely started by not passing the full request map but I ended up finding it cumbersome. On the other hand, my code doesn't really need the full request map. I'll have another go at it and see how I can improve things - thanks for the guidance. It feels like a process of over-contraction, then over-expansion. Hopefully I'll find a happy medium.

For #2 - thank you! I was trying to work toward something like but couldn't quite get there, so this is great.

I don't think he was ever blaming the people he's connected to on Facebook. He never indicated that the people were even directing their posts at him.

I actually think it was a mature thing for him to do. He noticed that one of his behaviors - going online and looking at Facebook - had a negative effect on him, so he decided not to engage in the behavior as much.

When you say, "If a person feels guilt, anger, envy etc. when others tell them their opinion, they will feel so regardless of the medium on which the message was delivered." - this may be true. But. Facebook (and twitter and other social networks) allow people to broadcast their opinions in a way that wasn't usual for most people before. Most people are more likely to be reserved or show some tact about expressing their opinions when they're engaged in conversation than they are when broadcasting online.

edit: sorry - Swizec didn't say he the author was blaming people. I got his comment mixed up with another one. In any case, I didn't think he was blaming social media insofar as he's taking responsibility by changing his behavior.