pyrhho

Bah! I was hoping to download the source (from here: http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html) and check out his algorithm, but he requires you to email him with his project. If anyone knows how the algorithm works, or where it is described in detail, I'd love to read that!

Absolutely amazing stuff!

... I believe you are thinking of the Swiss.

I believe that is more to do with baggage handler's unions and worker regulation. Though they certainly exaggerate it to make a profit.

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As a warning, a lot of the controls seemed pretty broken on the iPhone. The auto-complete field totally screwed up Safari (couldn't de-select it), and the sliders were impossible to drag.

I've done several smaller projects in it (command-line tools, one-off programs, etc), and I've been building a small web app in it (as a learning exercise). I'm planning to post my results, and a brief tutorial when I get it finished. Curious if anyone (company or otherwise) has been doing anything bigger...

I agree with your main point, but I would probably consider being shot with an AK-47 to be a pretty "once-in-a-lifetime catastrophic event".

Y'all had better watch out for my awesome new Socially Curated Vegan Recommendation Engine: saladdiction!

Edit: I want someone to build this... I registered the domain to avoid squatters, so if you want to be the one to build it get in touch with me.

&1

If you want a bit higher-level package web.go is interesting: http://www.getwebgo.com/

(I was going to say it is excellent, but I haven't actually had a chance to build anything in it yet)

Though they apparently are radioactive! :)

For those curious on where those calculations are (like I was), some of them are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295822

I'm curious what the opinion of people here is as far as how much F-U-Money is "enough". Obviously it probably depends on your goals, but is there a reliable way of calculating the amount needed?

> It's possible that one guy could be responsible for a large percentage of swearing for a given language.

Sorry, Ruby!

Conspicuously missing is the brilliant new Proc.curry method!

For those that don't know currying is a method that returns another Proc with one fewer argument, so you can do: multiply = Proc.new { |x, y| x * y } multiply_by_five = multiply.curry(5) multiply_by_five.call(3) # => 15

> the tools for C++ coding suck. Hard.

?? What's wrong with vim? (or emacs, or your flavour of choice)

You should read "What Technology Wants" by Kevin Kelly.

He investigates these sorts of things, talking about how it is now impossible to be separate from civilization (even the Amish are dependent upon civilization at large to support their lifestyle). And he starts to talk about how we can cope with that, and engage with it on our own terms, in a constructive manner.

> The only drawback I see is that it requires your attention, unlike say typing. But that might after all be a good thing.

I don't see how being distracting can be an advantage for an information entry system. It seems like it would just distract you from the content of the message. Care to elaborate? (I'm curious)

Edit: The other major drawback is that it limits your expression. Suppose for example that I want to write the word "Rhinocephant" (it's half rhinoceros, half elephant, and 100% imaginary). But if I want to type that with Dasher, it will be extremely difficult (because it is not in their language model). On the keyboard (or pen) the hardest part is deciding how to spell it. (Unless I'm wrong about typing imaginary words?)

Just because there are problems does not necessarily mean that (as a whole) it is being run poorly.

Fair enough, but classifying something as "unproductive" just because you don't enjoy doing it seems a bit... incorrect.

I'm curious as to whether developing automated testing and deployment stuff would count as doing testing and deploying, or as developing exciting new stuff.

> (ii) testing, deployment and all that is minimal.

Since when did testing and deploying become "unproductive work"? If getting reliable, tested code in front of customers is not your job, what is?

Yeah, I kept finding myself trying to use 'hjkl' like arrow keys, then when I went into insert mode I would have to move my hand back (and lose my train of thought). Basically, 'jkl;' feels more intuitive to me. Hardcore vim users will probably be aghast at remapping something as basic as cursor movement and say that I should "learn to do it right". But it makes more sense to me, and I haven't found it to be any less efficient.

If your middle and ring fingers are not strong enough to push the buttons, you need a better keyboard.

In all seriousness, though, I personally don't like having to reach with my index finger to move left. I tend to think of 'jkl;' as being a more efficient set of arrow-keys. (Where, with the arrow keys, your index finger goes left, ring-finger goes right, and middle finger goes up-down).

If you can hack it with 'hjkl' more power to you, but I found it extremely annoying to have to 'reset' my hand position every time I wanted to type text in insert mode.

'jkl;' for the win! 'hjkl' always seemed awkward and never made sense to me. 'hjkl' is supposed to be convenient so that you never need to move your right hand to navigate the file, but you don't type with your fingers on 'hjkl', you type with them on 'jkl;'. I remapped my vim to 'jkl;' and am loving it. (Though it is a bit of a pain for less, and other vim-keyed applications).

For those interested, you can remap to use 'jkl;' with:

  " Navigate with jkl; instead of hjkl
  noremap ; l
  noremap l k
  noremap k j
  noremap j h

Edit: Being a bit nicer to vim's authors...

It apparently also doesn't surpass a website which lets people throw sheep at each other.

True, it could have. But it didn't until the organizational and persuasive ability of a small group of people could out-do the FBI, CIA, etc..

That being said, there is a lot more behind 9/11, and increasing power of individuals relative to super-powers is just one factor.

The increasing power of motivated and intelligent individuals is a major force, which I feel the author missed. In modern times (particularly in the last 10 years) it has become easier and easier for the motivated and intelligent individual to wield ever-increasing amounts of power. Today, and even more-so in coming years, a few motivated people can wield power which would rival the super-powers of a few decades ago. SpaceX for example with their recent launch is on par with the early NASA progress.

I hate to reference wikileaks in yet another thread, but 20 years ago it would have been unimaginable that a small group of people could set themselves to rival[1] a super-power and be so effective at it. A similar argument could be made about Al-Qaeda, Anonymous, and many other organizations.

Further Reading: Vernor Vinge touches briefly on this trend and some of its implications in Rainbow's End.

Edit: [1] 'rival' may have been the wrong word. 'baffle'?

> Plus Go has easy concurrency via message passing, which is nice to have these days.

Indeed. I voted Go because learning it made writing concurrent software FUN! (As it should be)

Link is broken for me. Relevant wikipedia page for those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit