preordained

I'm not the person you were originally responding to, but I know Python is popular in data science and such where there would be a lot more tied up in pure computation/number crunching.

Free at last! Free at last! Free to...wait a minute...

They knew we were already doomed, so they didn't bother. On the other hand, maybe some benevolent aliens will see it as the distress signal it is...

How about an new kind of hardware-enhanced IDE that stooge slaps the programmer if he even thinks about doing something like making a test that depends on stacktrace line numbers (just saw this...uyyy)

What if I just <whack>...okay, maybe I'll try something else.

This is the dumbest thing in the universe (in context of a Clojure discussion) that I keep seeing parroted over and over. So you have to type "recur <args>" instead of the actual function name + <args> for the exact same effect. If you can get over that aesthetic "sin" then you have your TCO in effect. I don't even find it mildly inconvenient...and even prefer the "shortcut" syntax vs explicitly repeating my function name.

Not every set of operations you need to synchronize can be squished into a collection operation (add, get, etc.). If all you need to do is make sure things can get and add stuff to a queue or list concurrently, well yah, that's definitely a good place to be. Can also just shove it all off on your DB

Yah, I'm just gonna go to my boss and say "more monies plz" or I'm going to go scour the market and try to trade up. I suppose if I just look at the number and ignore everything else the latter might be doable...but I do want a personal fit and some kind of stability. I suppose if I'm willing to pack my bags and start over every year or so I can keep this going and mitigate the effect of working places I hate for the sake of a big number.

Oh yah, and I have no high profile github stuff, nor am I a whiteboard wizard. I guess I should just "git gud" though, which I'm sure is a negligible stress investment with a guaranteed pay off?

/s Truly, I'm not allergic to the subject, but the cavalier attitude kills me sometimes. So much "What's the problem, peasants?"

This from the crowd that can barely stand a framework for 6 months before the luster wears off...but no, we can never ever cut ties with our 1995 Netscape roots.

We can/should/must just rewrite all the OS in Rust though, says someone nearly every day...and this is no problem in HN logic...

It never should have escaped the browser. It's brought the suck to everything now...

$5000 a month could be a single employee's wage. Just pretend you have a new hire named "Heroku" who is generating immense value for you. If you are a one or two man shop, sure...but if you find yourself spending inordinate amounts of man hours toying with infrastructure, I think you'd need to ask what you are really saving.

For me, I can't let go of my JVM. Clojure is good though.

That's...a very apt example.

Yah, let's all park our bags and move to some little Nordic utopia! Problems are for suckers

codingbat.com, the Python exercises. They have all the background information needed in nearby links (e.g. I have an exercise with strings how do I use those), and build experience nice and easy

Dune

I thought this was going to be about how our shoestring, bubblegum, and tape made cloud applications become self aware and kill themselves out of shame and disgust...

The hubris in some of these comments is staggering. No, you wouldn't have more cleanly (and successfully) written this in $BETTER_LANGUAGE, even with your super power of perfect hindsight.

For me, the siren call of Python was the supposed "elegance" (executable pseudo code!). But then you have these horrible non-composing list comprehensions (compared to say Ruby where the chain just flows from left to right instead of getting more and more nested), and that god awful "self" and "__init__" cruft. It just seems like a poorly designed (and/or evolved?) language.

It'd be nice if something else would carry the torch for nice AI library wrapper language...that alone is the only thing that can tempt me touch it.

I guess I might ask what this stance is founded on? The JVM is just a binary that runs byte code. It's stable and runs well pretty much everywhere. If you insist the JVM has cooties, you could use Docker and abstract it away, it might be an ideal way to use it anyways depending on your work.

The JVM /= Oracle JVM by the way. There is OpenJDK

EDIT: Also I think recent Java releases have gotten into making self contained binaries (which just means they package the JVM...it's in there, it might jump out and bite you!). But, as long as you are careful what you are shipping, packing up a JVM has always been an option

You can only split your energy so many ways before you become ineffective or only marginally effective at your goals. You're only human, you only have so much in the tank. As a husband/father I can only put about 2-3 things on my plate outside work/family. Working out, one side project/practice, maybe something else small. It took me a long time to stop fighting myself on this, but I feel like the reduction in stress has already paid off whatever I feel I've lost by missing out on this, that, or the other thing. If I want to fit something else in, I deliberately drop something else cold for a while--I don't balance them all.

Agree with what others have said about deadlines, I use that in tandem with the recognition about limited energy above. If I have tough hill to climb...nasty bug, difficult thing to write...I'll deliberately lay back and do really light work for the first part of the day, but I'll tell myself from 2 til quitting time or whatever I feel I can muster, I'm going to go all out. And then at quitting time, I quit. I find that I operate way more effectively this way than making myself "live" with a pain in the ass task from the beginning of the day to the end (or the end of it). Sometimes it won't take long in reality, but I could end up fighting it all day, and I find being motivated for a brief "charge" puts me in a much more effective frame of mind.

Anecdotally...I'd say "hell no". I programmed in Haskell before Clojure, and starting out I was never like "this is dynamic Hasell!!" or something. The standard library never gave me Haskell vibes whatsoever. Functional programming? Sure. I don't think anyone has the market cornered on "map" or "filter".

Or lack of great IDE...the best type system seems a waste without a right-click refactor option to show for it. I'm not going to chase compilation errors file by file...

Yes, and the robots will be programmed with the world's premier language--JavaScript! We're a little undermanned right now, so we'll outsource it to some of those top flight offshore programmers. What a time to be alive

I really like Advent of Code: http://adventofcode.com

The problems aren't restricted to mathy things (project Euler) or really super specific algorithm or optimization problems. They are more open ended, where often times much of the problem is figuring out what kind of problem you're dealing with.

The weird story arcs for each year are fun, too.

More hit or miss, but also https://programmingpraxis.com

This is my take. I think this goes on at all levels. I know I definitely take some roundabout paths at work from time to time to avoid people with big egos because it's just a roadblock and a time suck. Ideally, we could work together and be more efficient, but some people just don't want to play nice or fair and there are only so many hours in the day.

I think this is one of the best things about Clojure and similar "hosted" languages...leveraging preexisting huge ecosystems. You really do (as much as one could reasonably expect) get to have your cake and eat it too.

Sometimes I wonder if these framework astronauts have ever done a little Java Swing or VB GUI or the like. A user interface is not the greatest problem of our time...it's not supposed to be this hard...

Foreign buyer has to sell for significantly higher to profit..or just squat on it...not so great for local people looking for a house...

God bless Zachtronics. One of the very few who scratch that special itch with their games, and man are they good at it.

I don't know. It's not my experience that whether kicked off by novices or experts or anything in between, that the initial architecture will ever be done so well as to make maintenance and quality some kind of breeze when reality (users) sets in. Only if your problem space is so well known or tidy that it can basically be codified by an expert (which leaves like compilers, and a few other things).

I don't disagree that you don't want a bunch of greenhorns laying out the foundations for some big, long-term project. But, I just don't think it is ever realistic to avoid warts, and shortcomings, etc. and things that will "frustrate" developers because they would have built it perfect if only they had been there (accompanied by their hindsight...) but now they have to touch legacy code--icky!

That's my .02, but I think we as developers can often be prima donnas this way. It can't all be blue ocean and greenfield (i.e. fun). Dealing with and minimizing the shortcomings of software that has hardened and can't just be completely reimagined is--and will always be--part of the job.