BellsOnSunday

hace 15 díasdiscuss

I thought this was going to be https://web.archive.org/web/20120106121645/http://wiki.alu.o.... Brings back memories of following comp.lang.lisp, not least as a sort of soap opera. Lots of characters and drama, as well as programming wizardry.

BellsOnSunday

el mes pasadodiscuss

Apart from the bit about killing people, for the most part.

BellsOnSunday

hace 7 mesesdiscuss

Who says that's the advice "in England"? I'm in England and it isn't my advice.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

Recently like in the last hundred years?

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

More likely but not certain. People who rely on this rhetorically tend to ignore it isn't a slam dunk.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

There is the Simple Haskell initiative, which encourages what you're talking about, but no flag or pragma that says "this project uses simple Haskell". Obviously, simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. Fancy type features do have their use cases where they make types more expressive, the code safer and even simpler, so long as you've internalised how they work.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

In the UK the Consumer's Association and Which? fulfil the same role, and has been going since the 1950s. Before the internet the magazine was a part of everyday life for many - if my parents were going to buy something like a new washing machine my mother would go to the library and find the relevant issue. Online you can see some of their reviews but I think you need to subscribe to get all the (very rigorous) detail. The CA is a charity and has a sort of NGO status, able to issue a "super-complaint" if some industry is not working for consumers. I suppose I'm a lot less careful with money than my parents were, I never use it.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

I've just finished Pamuk's novel A Strangeness in my Mind, where the protagonist is a street vendor of the traditional Turkish beverage boza. Boza is a mildly alcoholic fermented barley drink considered ok for Muslims to drink. The gradual disappearance of boza sellers in the street is an index of the changes in Istanbul and Turkish society in the late 20th century, really enjoyable book. From what I've read I can imagine it's an acquired taste.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

There are university leagues for every kind of sport in the UK. Most of the people involved take it very seriously but it's still just a form of recreation and doesn't attract crowds and money. I've never spoken with anyone who admires or envies the US system. If it came up in conversation I suppose most would find it utterly bizarre and likely to corrupt the purpose of a university, as I do.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

Given what he did to the British economy in the shortest tenure of any chancellor, it's easy to believe he doesn't know what day it is.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

Whoever worked out how to light a fire must have been very popular for a while, and then rapidly lost ground to the person who gave it a name.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

Most of those words weren't coined by him, his writing was just the earliest source that the dictionary makers could find. He didn't invent the word 'elbow', for instance.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

Same way that Shakespeare "invented" the word "elbow" and thousands of others.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

In the 19th C it was a word in the West Country dialect Thomas Hardy knew well, and appears in Jude the Obscure to describe the pig's member that is thrown at Jude. Apart from this description, it gets called "that part of the pig which is thrown away" and other euphemisms, so I suppose Hardy must have thought pizzle was already obscure enough not to get him into trouble.

BellsOnSunday

hace 3 añosdiscuss

    C-h f butterfly

BellsOnSunday

hace 4 añosdiscuss

Yep. That's me. I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this situation...

BellsOnSunday

hace 9 añosdiscuss

What's the little book of his about a man and a woman trapped on an island where they geekily explain things to each other? I might be misremembering the setting...started it once but it was pretty cheesy.

BellsOnSunday

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I think the tobacco industry has been no slouch in the marketing department, but the real difference is that there's no way to use tobacco that is safe and beneficial for you.

BellsOnSunday

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Yep, I was going to comment that if you write your own compiler you'll find plenty of bugs, which is the same point.

BellsOnSunday

hace 10 añosdiscuss

I know I won't be thanked for pointing out non-technical infelecities in the writing, and I'm not a grammar nazi or anything but... "There was a lot of excellent Haskell writing this year. One can’t possible enumerate all of them..." A lot of excellent writing is a singular noun, then it refers to "them", plural. Exactly the same mistake made in the next paragraph.

I don't want to be picky but if you're writing something public, learn how to use your language right.

comments