wallscratch

What’s awkward about lambda in python?

So as a phd student I’ve learned the thing about reading research papers is that yes, it takes ages to read your first 2-3 major papers in a field, but after that, you’ve probably picked up a lot of the vocabulary and basic ideas, and you’ll be surprised at how little content many additional papers have once you’re actually steeped in the lingo.

> My biggest gripe is that Leetcode is systematically favoring candidates who have months of free time to […]

Wouldn’t this be true of almost any other selective interview process?

I like how python’s indentation scheme makes code look nearer, but I find it scary in the following case:

for i in range(0, m):

    for j in range(0, n):

        doInner()

    doOuter()

A single tab here in the 4th line produces syntactically correct but logically incorrect code. I find this scary.

I guess it would be easy to just write your own preprocessor that requires curly braces everywhere and removes them for the python interpreter, but eh.

As a current PhD student in computational neuroscience, I think most of the academics I interact with tend to drastically overestimate the value of their “data science” skills to real jobs, and underestimate the value of software skills beyond prototyping.

Every time I try to use a “it’s the opposite of what you think” mental shorthand, I get used to the wrong-seeming (but correct) way it is, and then I start mentally flipping it back to the actually incorrect version.

What features of clojure do you feel make you more productive?

I’m primarily a python user, but I spent time writing code in Ocaml to understand the potential benefits, but… (I would love to have my mind changed)… it feels like many of the features people touted about Ocaml have already made their way into python…?

1. Immutability / referential transparency seem more like nice-to-haves for a codebase, rather than the real reason people tout FP…?

2. Sum/product types and pattern matching are being added soon to python

3. Mypy is starting to gradually enable python typing, although I assume it’s still a work in progress

4. Python allows us to use map/reduce, and to pass functions around as arguments…?

I want to understand the potential benefits of FP more, but my experience with Ocaml hasn’t shown me great improvements yet. Open to having my mind changed.

What do you like about K&R so much? I was excited to dive into it during the C systems programming class I took in school, and it was fine, but I didn’t understand the hype. And I loved learning C / usually care about things like this.

To be fair, he acknowledges 3D can be good for video games / 3D CAD, he’s just saying that 3D is superfluous for most information-processing tasks.

Sipser’s theory of computation book is one of the best examples of technical exposition I’ve ever seen.

So my dream is that eventually mypy (the optional python static typing module) will be extended so that python becomes a gradually typed language — able to detect if an entire program has valid static typing, and if so, use a much higher-performance python compiler to skip over the python object system to increase code speed by 10x.

This would make python both a viable choice for rapid prototyping, as well as easy to convert to much higher performance code (just by handling some typing conflicts), and potentially making python a mega-language used even more pervasively.

Check the art of problem solving contest books, or project euler. I honestly think the best way to build logical reasoning skills is through real math or cs challenges, rather than some artificially constructed logical reasoning tasks.

I’d be curious to hear some examples.

Can anyone help me understand why transitioning to kernel mode is architecture-dependent? I’m not clear on why the linux system call kernel entry code in arch/x86/entry/common.c has to be in assembly, instead of C.

I assume apple does this intentionally :)

I feel like at this point common usage has moved so far away from this that it’s almost not worth trying to reel it back in.

Is there a reason github can’t just have a setting to prevent you from pushing secrets in the first place? Is it really that processing heavy?

Why can inlining functions cause disasters? Just instruction cache misses, or other things as well?

I think he deserves a lot of credit for actually evolving his views over a half-century and doing his best to balance political realities with the democratic agenda.

Yeah, but maybe this is an argument for treating the food animals, rather than ridiculousness of standards for science animals.

As someone who didn’t study anywhere near as much math or cs in college as I’d have liked, and had to spend a lot of time asking questions on Stack.* sites, I’ve had an extremely positive experience.

The only even mildly negative experience I’ve had was once a high-level user pattern-matched one of my questions to a much simpler already-answered question and closed it along with a dismissive comment, but as soon as I commented highlighting the discrepancy he apologized and answered my question.

Os noob here, what’s less expressive / insecure about PIDs or file descriptors?

Do you have a sense of about how many hours the project takes to complete? (Ballpark appreciated)

Are there exercises / recommended programming assignments for the book? I didn’t see any when I was just skimming. Thanks.

> I found that for embedded C++ to be successful, you need to have some good (excellent sometimes was harmful, but that's a different topic)

Why were excellent C++ skills sometimes harmful?