Kudos to the Awesome Lists
I’ve a wariness for programming-languages/etc. which are hyped by the mainstream programmer community. – Computers suck, programming languages suck; the best code is no code, etc.; & much of the “hey this is cool” often comes from folk without the experience to say with authority that something is cool.
(This post argues that the ‘elites’ are the one who [...]
Why Use Functional Programming Features?
I was asked in an interview “what advantages are there to coding in a functional style?”.
I’d use ‘functional’ a bit more loosely than “everything pure, monads, etc.”; I’m happy with modern language idioms like pattern matching.
– I’d say the best reason is it makes explicit dangerous things which are implicit in procedural, blub language code.
Elm, Rust, and Learning a Language
Elm and Rust are two programming languages I’m excited about (in the sense of, “wow it’d be cool to use these”). Elm is a Haskell-inspired language for client-side web development; with a philosophical emphasis at making Functional Programming usable/accessible. – In a talk from March, “Let’s be mainstream”, Evan Czaplicki compares JavaScript (easy to write, hard to maintain) to ML [...]
Review of The Righteous Mind
I’ve been a big fan of Jonathan Haidt since seeing his 2013 Boyarsky Lecture, in which he explains his Moral Foundations Theory. – It’s compelling as showing how conservatives can hold morality differently than the social-justice crowd holds it. I finally got around to reading the actual book, rather than just picking up tidbits from various articles, podcasts and videos.
White New Zealand
“What if your entire life was a lie?” was one question a friend asked me on a vlog of his. It strikes me as a cheap, getting to know you type question; & I apparently didn’t much bother to talk much on the video. (It was late at night). “Falisifiability” - being able to check whether something is wrong - [...]
Zootopia and its Edge Cases
Last weekend I went and saw Zootopia.
Today a mate of mine bantered with me about the movie. Which is a push enough to get me to jot down some thoughts. Spoilers follow.
But I don’t think there’s much to spoil. I’d heard only good things about Zootopia going in, and how amazing it was. After seeing Inside [...]
ANZAC Day and Uncomfortable Truths
“Ethics is advertising” presents a fascinating model: people signal in all kinds of ways various things about them. Ethical attitudes can be used as a signal for distinguishing social class. – I think the model is compelling, (at least in the presented context, Buddhism in the West), though the term can be overused, to try and reduce an opponents belief [...]
Yes, The Wire is Good
“The Wire” is a TV show even Urban Dictionary approves of.
I’ve just finished going through the first two seasons: it’s good, it’s satisfying. It’s narrated/plotted with high intensity, and a largely concurrent set of subplots.
The interactions in the story largely build networks of ‘political’ tensions (e.g. a boss wants to advance his career, his subordinates want [...]
Every Ill in this World the Fault of my Other
There’s a particular failure mode I’ve been noticing more, recently:
“Everything bad is the fault of {my other}”. – e.g. the stereotypical rabid feminist blames everything on the partriarchy.
I’ve noticed it in quite polarized circles. e.g. Here’s an utterly fascinating video of Larry Elder discussing racial issues on The Rubin Report.
– As an aside, my [...]
Inclusive Conferences Upsets People for Being Inclusive
I’ve a huge amount of respect for Alice Maz, who tweeted out: lambdaconf refused to bow to the outrage mob and rescind an invitation offered to a programmer under a blind submission process. so the outraged turned on the sponsors, seeking to kill the conference entirely simply because they objected to one speaker’s writings. we of http://status451.com put together the [...]