twangist

A really bad name.

And all Russia-based criminals, bots and trolls will be off the global Internet too? Really? Promise?

No. Why would a developer choose to use an editor s/he can't figure out? (rhetorical question, not requiring answers)

paywall

Specific ones, by name or partial name? or, any and all? "Track usage" in what sense? -- count calls? with or without parameters? `log_calls` (specifically the `record_history` decorator) may be the tool you want. (I'm the author of the package.)

On PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/log_calls/

Docs: http://www.pythonhosted.org/log_calls/

Can we add this encyclopedia to itself? It's a small compendium of right-wing ideology and quirky preferences.

The two categories of things considered harmful in "Science": "Economics", and "Global Warming Fearmongering". The Eco section, which quotes Milton Friedman as an imagined authority, has just a few entries -- for Rent Controls, Minimum Wages, Intellectual Property, a couple of others. In Software, a long list of "harmful" things with allegedly less harmful alternatives, all of it personal choice (editors & IDEs, again?) and the stuff of eternal flame wars. Thus, SQL databases are 'harmful', but "plain old hierarchical filesystems" are less so -- and so much more fun to query too; SVG bad, PostScript better (really?!); ... You get the idea.

If you opt for making your declarative language a subset of JSON or YAML, presumably it will be a proper subset, with some further expectations and constraints. It makes total sense to use a custom file extension — say, `.mdl`, "my declarative language", for the sake of discussion. Users will be able to easily find their files written in your language without having to wade through all possible files of the superset format. A `.mdl` file really is its own thing, it's not just a .json or .yml file. It may be the case that a `.mdl` file is a just `.json` or `.yml` file, but the converse will not be true.

The only advantage I can think of that accrues from using the more common extension is editor support: a user's favorite editor may well provide syntax highlighting and checking, auto-indenting, etc. for `.json` or `.yml` files, but not for `.mdl` files out of the box. You might want to develop `.mdl` profiles (sic) for popular editors.

Any decent parser for the 'true' format will accept either a string or a full filename (including extension) and shouldn't expect a fixed file extension.

Regrettably I can't think of a single example right now, but I know I've encountered many programs that use custom file extensions which have turned out to be just some familiar format after all.

That said, it's another question whether either JSON or YAML is a great choice. I agree with your reservations about both. In fact I've had the very same problem in a couple of development projects, one recently. JSON is friendlier than XML, true, but it's not really a language to think in, even declaratively — too much clutter. YAML is certainly versatile enough, but it provides probably more than you need, and it is... yes, obtuse. Of course, it depends on your intended users; I found it was too "programmerly" for mine. I ended up developing a custom parser for a language with more syntactic sugar than YAML, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

Degrading to whom? ;) "Deteriorating".

Fine point: in the case of "negative" (clockwise) rotations, the negative sign applies only to a scalar (an angle), not a vector. Surely even negative money is a real thing too: debt, or anyway debit. (Granted, debt can be less real than a pile of cash: if you're owed you might never be repaid, if you owe you might default. But that's a case of reality not matching theory well :)

In physical applications, relative to a coordinate system negative numbers have perfectly intuitive meanings. A negative spatial coordinate simply indicates a point in one of the quadrants or octants other than the all-positive-coords one. A negative acceleration means something is slowing down.

I see no good purpose served by special-casing "negative" integers, and many needless ensuing headaches.

They're quite as real as nonnegative numbers, which are also abstract things. It's ironic that in your last line you use the terms "real" and "imaginary", in their colloquial meanings, as these have long since been adopted and coopted to denote... the real and complex numbers respectively :) which, some of us contend, are no less real than the integers. Face it: groups abound in physics. A group has a binary operation such that for every element has a (unique) inverse element w.r.t. that operation. When the group is Abelian we write the operation as "+", and then the "additive" inverse of an element x is -x, also an element of the group. It's silly to claim that, for example, rotation through an angle $\theta > 0$ should be considered more "real" than rotation through $-\theta$. One is counterclockwise, the other, clockwise, by the same amount.

You must only read books with very short chapters.

It also states that "SQL" is the top DBMS. Oracle holds 2nd place. No mention of Postgres anywhere. Drivel.

This review proves a very counterintuitive result: It's possible to review a book about the history of infinitesimals without once mentioning either Leibniz or Newton.

If THAT's your favorite pizza in NYC, of all places, ... well, you need to sample the local wares more. Or you have no idea what "pizza" means.

That's really great. Quite smart, too - the Catholic church approach ;) @_random: $99 is too dear for multi-language cross-platform IDEs that rival VS in features and usability? You must think that any amount is too much to pay for high quality development tools. So download their free "Community Editions". (Not to start a flame, at all; I just disagree. I have no affiliation with JetBrains, other than being a happy customer.)

I took the ideas in Matthias' article and tried to make his graphviz extensions even more usable: https://gist.github.com/Twangist/87bed6fad82884814c0c

Widespread hatred? That presupposes even wider-spread recognition. But that doesn't exist. Surely you jest or, more likely, profer clickbait.

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