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More than anything else, that paragraph is what kept me coming back when I first started learning to program and struggled mightily. I lugged that huge book around in my book bag for months, trying and failing to fully grok one of the earlier chapters, until I found a professor who was willing to help me with it. Ultimately we (the professor and I) were able to do a one semester independent study focusing on the material from SICP.

I used to read and re-read that paragraph. I read it aloud to my parents and to girlfriends, trying to find somebody to share my awe.

I still fantasize about having lisp "all the way down", but I'm not sure what I mean or ought to mean when I am fantasizing. On the one hand, I mean implementing lisp in hardware as fundamentally as possible (don't really know why this would be valuable, but I'm still drawn to it). On the other hand, I mean having lisp be the foundation at the software level (ie., the kernel and the rest of the OS; I can more easily see how this would be valuable).

Can someone here speak to the notion of a lisp machine in the future? Is there any chance this could happen? Would it be valuable? Does anybody else here have this same dream/fantasy/whatever-you-want-to-call-it?

(edited slightly for wording and clarity)

Quantum Battleships? A quantum game? I had not heard about this in spite of multiple trips a little way down the quantum computing rabbit hole. I'm curious, has anyone here played this game? Is it actually played for fun? Does the quantum nature of the game's mechanics actually change the fun-ness of the game? Or any other known game?

Is this the same writer?

>> That's neat.

You make a very good point about public perception. But your opening line seems sarcastic and aggressive. I think that's why your comment is light grey.

And Stefan was a great maintainer. I was sad when I heard he was stepping down, but I can't think of a replacement that would make me happier than John.

Interesting. Do you have an example or a link to an example?

At the end of the article, the author gives several reasons why he won't be teaching Swift to students yet. He includes each of your points. (With the assumption that eventually they will be moot.)

Neat! I purchased and spent a few minutes playing with it and I'm impressed with the general attention to detail. Seems like a solid app.

Tangential criticism: the icon is visually unsatisfying. As in, it is graphically and logically correct, but visually it is like a song with the final note missing. Did you consider using a version with the circle closed? I think I understand the reasoning behind the unclosed circle, but I don't think it is worth the visual dissonance.

> The act of describing what you want the machine to do is interleaved with the machine actually doing what you have described, observing the results, and then changing the description of what you want the machine to do based on those observations. There is no bright line where a program is finished and becomes an artifact unto itself.

Author doesn't mention macros explicitly, but I think the above quote is referring to them implicitly.

> But these are public records that Ancestry has bought the exclusive rights to digitize.

What exclusive rights are you referring to? I'm trying to learn more about Ancestry.com.

Maybe the first one or two challenges could be available online, and requests should be accompanied by the answers to those. Maybe that would reduce the volume somewhat.

There was plenty missing from that Mozilla post, but yeah, that was a big one!

Mozilla won't even summarize what happened. They don't appear any "truer to themselves" now than they did last week.

Didn't move fast enough to engage with people? What does that even mean? What would they have done if they had been true to themselves? As far as I can tell, there still has only been a single action taken: Eich chose to step down.

If HN has already discussed this particular point to death, my apologies, I missed it. But I don't understand how Bitcoin can achieve its apparent aspirations if my tax consequences are different depending on which bitcoins I spend.

After super intelligent AI, what's special about humans?

This prompted me to do some googling and I found this:

http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/

Does anybody here have knowledge about this organization?

My first Mac was a white iBook purchased from Amazon in December, 2002. My then girlfriend was home when the package arrived. She hid it and made me hunt for it when I got home from work. I finally found it in the dryer.

Inside the box was a pearl white slab of plastic. The best part about it was the smell...

I have not experienced boredom since.

Title: "Never create Ruby strings longer than 23 characters"

Conclusion: "Don’t worry! I don’t think you should refactor all your code to be sure you have strings of length 23 or less."

It is a humorous reference to an American sitcom from the 80's called 'Different Strokes'. A lighthearted way of expressing disagreement.

[edit: While I'm at it: the main character 'Arnold' would express disagreement with his brother 'Willis' by saying "What you talkin' 'bout Willis?" something like once per episode. This was a running joke for the sitcom.]

When can we confirm that they missed their window?

(Edit: new window is Thanksgiving day, one minute later than today. Might have to stream this one to the Apple TV for the whole family…)

What do you mean? Is that considered too deep nesting? (I'm not trying to be sarcastic.)

Teens represent the near future. They'll grow up and maybe carry their allegiances forward.

No, he agrees with you. He thinks pretending like it rang and rang without you noticing it could be considered a considerate gesture under certain circumstances.

Carmack is this living legend of programming, hacking, making magic happen with the computer. And yet his writing and the concepts that interest him are often simple and approachable.

How does he manage to look at this pile of hacks with beginner's eyes? Somehow he does, and he sees it for what it is without judging it too harshly or prematurely. I love reading his blog.

You're right - that phrasing is sloppy. I'm sure there's a kick-ass PR team behind this.

But it smells different than normal PR. It actually contains surprises and a conversational tone and it reminds me of Musk himself. Giving an interview, for instance.

This could be me projecting onto it, or maybe Musk really does drive PR more than you'd expect for a company at this stage. Or maybe his team is able to pull this off on their own. Either way it's fun to watch.

Sure. I guess what I mean is I can see his hand in the work. (Or at least I've convinced myself of that.)

Tesla's PR is many things, but it's not safe. It feels plain and unadorned and yet genuinely enthusiastic and precisely bold.

I used to be worried that Musk's hand was too heavy on the tiller. Now I'm just enjoying the show.

Elon Musk clearly writes these things himself. That, or he's got a bunch of other folks like him working at Tesla.

Either way, it's exciting times. It's fun to be inspired by a company. To find something that keeps getting better as it unfolds...

Yeah, this shit's bogus man. It only solves one problem.

FYI, I'm on a 2011 Macbook Air running Safari. It's good enough that I enjoyed the experience. Honestly, I was never absolutely certain that the red line was off. Just suspicious. :)