The Whiteboard

12:55 AM

@MichaelT Ah good point, I very nearly didn't answer the question because it's totally one of those "We didn't write the code, how should we know" sorts of things, but I figured there's no harm in mentioning the likelihoods every programmer thinks when they see it

@MichaelT and a migration of a down-voted question yesterday made me pop 201 too before the day officially rolled over

1:15 AM

@Ampt comment flags don't count towards mod's flag counts (but they do count towards a users) so they're basically work for mods that they don't get rewarded for.

Dang, lost 60 rep to the arrogant programmers removal, oh well it was a crap question.

1:37 AM

If I see one more person conflating CPS and JavaScript I'll sprout a unicorn horn and bash my own skull in with it

Node.JS DID NOT INVENT CPS also JavaScript IS NOT NODE.JS

user20683

@JimmyHoffa you okay?

@WorldEngineer Grand, but as someone who both enjoys JavaScript as a language and has worked hard to understand some of these underlying concepts a little deeper, the average quality of JavaScript related questions and answers makes me subconciously carve things...like voodoo dolls and weeping children

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the vast majority of trained knowledgeable engineers are not in the JavaScript space, so the "I read a tutorial, I'm a programmer!" effect is terribly multiplied. There's plenty of that for C# too; but it's at least balanced out by the countless Robert Harvey's out there

user20683

@JimmyHoffa well I'm trying to carve my way into that space

@WorldEngineer you know what CPS is yeah?

user20683

Continuation Passing Style if I had to wager a guess

1:51 AM

Tail meet donkey

And you know what it is ?

user20683

it's where you have a set of functions and you basically run down the chain, passing return to return to return all the way back up

user20683

they have to be single argument functions

user20683

curried

user20683

more or less

var callSomeIO = function(continueOnThankyou) {
  //do some shit, like IO
  continueOnThankyou();
}

user20683

1:53 AM

ah

user20683

how is that mind blowing?

It's simpler than that, CPS is just higher order functions, that require you to tell them what happens when they're done

exactly!

It's not, and it's annoying to use because you have to call a function, and pass a parameter to it that's a function that takes a parameter that's a function that takes a parameter that's a function

user20683

ohhhh I'm calling a function...from within a function... that was a parameter...ohhhhh

user20683

it's the Java

user20683

it's rotted their brains

1:54 AM

haha

user20683

:p

user20683

I actually don't loathe Java in the slightest

user20683

beyond just being a tad verbose

Yeah, that's basically my take as well

user20683

also I realized what PHP is

user20683

1:55 AM

it's to web dev as Matlab is to SciComp

either way, everyone who picks up JavaScript anymore has this sense that CPS is like a part of javascript, that just is how JavaScript works because they're all picking up Node.JS (which is all CPS which annoys the crap out of me because many languages before them solve asynchrony without CPS already)

and when I say node.JS is all CPS, I just mean; it's a library that's CPS. it provides a large IO library that allows you to hand in continuations (just like .NET 1.1 back in 2001, or every FP language for decades before, but oh wait, JavaScript invented CPS)

user20683

Just like C# invented MVC

user20683

or Objective-C

Heh yeah

user20683

whichever

user20683

1:57 AM

I was reading GoF

user20683

it's in there

user20683

it dates back to at least Smalltalk

Yeah, it was invented back in PARC, there's some neat papers online from back in the day from when the fella who actually put it together there was doing the initial research on it, his original papers presenting it etc

user20683

@JimmyHoffa

user20683

journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt-scheme

2:00 AM

Cool reading, makes you realize how unbelievably far ahead of everyone those PARC guys were

user20683

Another rant on what JS isn't

@WorldEngineer I'll have to read that closely; I'm a strong believer that it's a LISP...

(scheme, same difference)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa I think he's arguing that we should use JS as JS and not as some other something

@WorldEngineer Using JS as JS is what caused the internet of the 90's, why don't we just use "html as html" while we're at it, what is all this templating garbage??

> Usually, touching Scheme or Smalltalk inflicts an incurable disease whose primary symptom is involuntary sneering and derisive snorting in the presence of any other language. Somehow, Crockford managed to fight off his infection, tear into JavaScript, and gaze deep into the abyss at its center.

That's pretty awesome

(Where do you always find all these interesting blog posts? I only ever seem to get this stuff from other people... only occasionally I find a good blogger who I'll follow like atwood/spolsky/yegge/james iry)

Also, it's a bit ballsy to clearly know crockford proper, and still proclaim he was wrong when he said JavaScript is a Scheme...

user20683

much of it I find by digging through the backlog of Hacker News

user20683

2:08 AM

Sometimes SO posts or other things

> And, honestly, almost no one knows enough Scheme to tell if it’s true or not anyway.

user20683

yeah

user20683

(opinion yeah)

user20683

mod_function:: opinion -> canon -> law

I'll admit to this, but what I do know tells me honestly; feature-for-feature the difference is bloody small. Granted no macros, which are damn cool, but otherwise I have a hard time spotting the difference in featureset

user20683

2:12 AM

@JimmyHoffa what's the learning curve on emacs?

@WorldEngineer Less significant than it had seemed the countless times I accidentally opened it or was forced to edit something through emacs

It appears f_c$ing alien, and it tries to make you get used to all sorts of just bizarre shit, but I use xemacs and have no problems. It has modes for all varieties of languages so it handles the tabbing for you automatically which is nice, it has a way of super easily modifying the window layout so you have files on the right and left or top and bottom or combinations there of. Most languages have a way of compiling/executing the code you have in you buffer

user20683

I tried Vim a few times, never found it usable.

Honestly, I memorized like 3 hot key combinations to get going and had no problems after that, from then on I just picked up a few more sparsely as they became relevant, as time progresses (damn I just realized started learning haskell over 2 years ago...that's just sad considering how poorly I've done on it) you'll get more hot-keys and it'll become gooder

@WorldEngineer Ah, vi(m) is super easy. I love it as a general text editor but I can't see it as an IDE, but @MichaelT could surely tell you how great it is for that

user20683

given that I use Gedit and IDLE at the moment

user20683

it's kind of "whatever" for me

2:21 AM

it's important to know vi basic commands for when you're SSHing into machines

user20683

@JimmyHoffa true

just knowing the basic i/a escape d dd :w :q :wq! is all you need

user20683

yeah

user20683

that much I know

Then you're fine in my book, again @MichaelT could probably tell you how it's a great IDE (I've known many people who love VI for development, but I can't think of one I met in real life who was into emacs; likely one of the LISPers I used to work with was I guess)

user20683

2:24 AM

I'm largely ambivalent toward most of the computing holy wars

for emacs, the trick and slight annoyance is that each language has a few specific hotkeys for it where I kind of wish the ones I learned for haskell were the same for all the others

@WorldEngineer VI vs emacs hasn't been a holy war for a long long time, they joined up as pals when they realized both of them are not even used anymore

(probably 10-15 years ago)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa bear in mind that my father was a Systems Admin for SGI 15 years ago.

user20683

:)

heh fair enough

Learn EMACS though, you can always fall back on it in any language, I use it for everything outside of visual studio (if I'm meddling with a script or what not etc) so it's actually been useful at work. All you really need to learn is basically how to cut (C-w)/copy(m-w)/paste(C-y)/delete(C-k)/save(C-x,C-s) and then beyond that the specific hotkeys to the language you're playing in like in Haskell execute-in-a-window-below-the-code(C-c,C-l) oh and moving windows next(C-x,right arrow)/previous

and how to recognize what all this C-bla m-bla stuff means (C-bla is ctrl+key, c-bla,c-bla is ctrl+key then ctrl+key, or C-bla,blabla is ctrl+key then "blabla" without ctrl, m- just means alt instead of ctrl)

small hand full of hot keys, and they get ingrained really quick (took me like a night of haskelling to get used to them)

user20683

yeah

user20683

2:35 AM

@JimmyHoffa I realized that I could easily do a Blackjack or Baccarat or stripped down Poker app for my GUI presentation

with xemacs I move the cursor using arrows, ctrl+arrows, home/end and mouse just like normal, though all tutorials go on and on about how you should use the homerow keys to move. Perhaps I'll get there some day, but without them I still find emacs way helpful

user20683

@JimmyHoffa given that I don't plan to use a keypunch anytime soon...I think I'll use arrows

@WorldEngineer that would work great.

user20683

Baccarat is good because it effectively requires no AI

user20683

another option would be do very basic network play

user20683

2:42 AM

@JimmyHoffa I have this insane idea for an April Fool's thing next year

user20683

but I've got to flesh it out fully before I can complete it.

user20683

oh well, back burner for the time being anway

user20683

@JimmyHoffa what in your mind in terms of a definite set of characteristics makes a language "Hipster"?

2:54 AM

@WorldEngineer That's all just in joke, as much as there is a "hipster" culture out there, and there may be a vin diagram with languages, it's totally irrelevant. I've worked with and currently work with hipsters, I find them as easy if not easier to work with than many others (they at least tend to like considering newer ideas, which is more than can be said for anyone @psr is dealing with) and more over, there's really no overlap between them and languages that effects a language.

If you looked at languages based on the cultures that surround them, you'd try really hard to un-know javascript

user20683

I live in the "hipster" part of Atlanta for the most part.

user20683

that being said, I did see a guy with a plaid shirt, skinny jeans, vans (or similar), black rimmed squarish glasses, a trucker cap, a black mustache and stubble at the grocery store today...

what-the-F?? @WorldEngineer I just looked a little further on that blog post and the guy claims 9 traits of scheme that JS only lines up with 3 of? Bull. Totall bollocks. JS lines up with all but 2-3 of them

user20683

I'm curious as to what his agenda is.

one of them is questionable just because tail-call-optimization is an implementation detail; I don't know if any JS implementations do it. But admitably it's not homoiconic and doesn't have macros, outside of that and potentially TCO, it's got everything he lists

user20683

3:01 AM

beyond just whinging about JS

it is lexically scoped (he says it's not, though he rightly puts lexical scopes up there at the top of his scheme list of what makes scheme what it is) but how can he possibly say JS is not lexically scoped??

Oh and the distaste for mutation, he's got JS there; it's too imperative and assignment based to claim any distaste for that

anywho, I'm going to go pour another rum and coke and enjoy the Skyrim I got on super sale on steam the other day while watching whose line is it anyway with the wife (that's still on tv! what??)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Relaunch

user20683

also that saves me the question of what you do when you're not coding.

6:44 AM

@gnat Research, huh, so, what do you want me to talk about? Do you want me to turn this question into a book about my 10 years study of programming languages? Maybe you want to know about the language I implemented? Maybe you want a summary of Haskell, JavaScript, Python, Shell, C, C++ and so on, all of which don't have this feature? Or what do you want? Seriously? I don't even have patience for that kind of questioning anymore. My question is perfectly fine the way it is. Someone always complains. Regardless of the question, the votes, que answers. Not good enough. Someone always does it. — Dokkat 12 mins ago

is there a canned comment / close reason / meta discussion to address is there a kind questions?

Q: Strongly separate duplicates from "the rest" in close votes review queue

10:22 AM

►

serves me right to suffer - SO CV reviewer blues

13

Update: I wish I could downvote decline justification twice. "You can already filter down by close reason." Oh really, Do you see many reviewers using filter? Do you see Steward badges awarded for Close Votes as frequently as these would be to obtain with appropriately filtered review queue? H...

feature-request status-declined review vote-to-close exact-duplicates

> Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind decline with a reasonable explanation. But this one... it just doesn't fly...

►

10:40 AM

hi

since this: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/205333/… i'm posting it here, but dont know if correct. how do i make new line into chat using Enter button ? because it will send message. ....

Beginning Scala (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

@Rapier ping @JimmyHoffa - Haskell sucks :)

@Rapier you mentioned Scala - even if you won't plan using it, consider at least reading this book,

Jul 15 at 23:50, by gnat

David Pollak

Apress

The open source Scala language is a Java-based dynamic scripting, functional programming language. Moreover, this highly scalable scripting language lends itself well to building cloud-based/deliverable Software as a Service (SaaS) online applications. Written by Lift Scala web framework founder and lead Dave Pollak, Beginning Scala takes a down-to-earth approach to teaching Scala that leads you through simple examples that can be combined to build complex, scalable systems and applications. This book introduces you to the Scala programming language and then guides you through Scala constructs and libraries that allow small and large teams to assemble small components into high-performance, scalable systems. You will learn why Scala is becoming the language of choice for Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter as well as enterprises such as Seimens and SAP. What you’ll learn Get running with the Scala programming language for functional Java, Java-based, and cloud-based/deliverable applications development, and more. Understand the basic syntax and mechanisms for writing Scala programs. Discover the techniques for and advantages of using immutable data structures. Create functional programming techniques for defining and managing concurrency. Use a complex type system and traits to define object-oriented programs. Work with Scala constructs and libraries that allow teams of any size to assemble small components into high-performance, scalable system…

As you mentioned that you're pure beginner, it could be helpful to look at things from a perspective of a guy like author of this book:

> I’ve written commercial code in 6502 assembler, BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Objective-C, Java, C#, Visual Basic, Smalltalk, Ruby, JavaScript, and Scala...

11:10 AM

"What a Chief Software Architect looks for in a job applicant..." okie dokie, there we go,

@user96307 well another skill that prospective Chief Software Architect could look for is consistency in analyzing topics at hand. Say, they can suggest you to start with the statement like "Why is there an interview tag but all interview questions will get closed anyway?" and see how would you proceed discussing this statement — gnat 2 mins ago

@gnat i dont know how works this chat exactly, but i dont see a name of book in that 2 line description or dont know what did u mean exactly

11:27 AM

@Rapier name is Beginning Scala author David Pollak

12:07 PM

@Rapier here is a screen shot of what I thought you will see in chat, 4 messages total: i.stack.imgur.com/fAwFm.png - did you saw it differently?

12:46 PM

i see it same as in screen. but i was thinking there is some hidden clicks, which would expand the text

@Rapier Well there are no hidden clicks to expand, but large font words "Beginning Scala (Expert's Voice in Open Source)" are actually a link that would bring you to site (Amazon), from where that piece was collapsed. This is so called "onebox" feature of SE chat, explained eg here: meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/onebox/info

...and at Amazon page, in turn, there you need to click "Show more" under book description to see the full description (Amazon collapses it by default)