/dev/chat - 2018-03-05

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2:21 AM

Does this cover history from all three stream sources (stdin, stdout and stderr)?

199

Q: How to clear bash history completely?

I want to clear all before command from history of my server. I use history -c it seems all things are cleared but when I ssh to the server,all commands are still there. How can I clear them permanently?

It seems to me that, yes, it is.

2:36 AM

@user9303970 Is that the right link? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with any of those.

2:56 AM

Yes it is. I though this command clears such history: cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history && history -c && exit.

@user9303970 What is "such history" to you?

3:20 AM

a copy of commands I wrote and output I got (including errors).

@MichaelHomer

1 hour later…

4:39 AM

is there any way to change unity interface totally ? like i want to add some applications link in my panel.?

I was wrong @MichaelHomer. The command I pasted seem to clean only stdin history, not stdout or stderr data (these disappeared only by the exit).

I do desire to delete stdout and stderr history as well.

1 hour later…

5:59 AM

There two users who doesn't stop to downvote any question I publish and I know who these two users are. Is there anything to do about this @terdon ? This is clearly done in purpose after ill relations these two users have with me. They are always available in the same time and often comment.

3 hours later…

9:04 AM

@user9303970 if you're guessing that one of these two horrible, evil people who are mean to you by downvoting you all the time is me, then you'd be wrong. I mostly ignore your questions...and I rarely downvote anything, not even your abysmally awful duplicate questions (I've downvoted a total of 73 times in 6 years 9 months on U&L. 2822 upvotes in that same time). You need to stop being such a hyper-sensitive paranoid. Nobody's out to get you. Your questions just tend to be really bad.

You also need to stop re-posting trivial variations of the same questions (or even the exact same questions) just because you don't like the answers you're getting. You might also stop to wonder if, perhaps, the problem might just possibly be with what you're doing and not with all the mean horrible people who keep telling you what you're doing is a bad idea and downvoting your questions.

9:18 AM

@cas Why are you inferring he is talking about you? Not that it matters, but I'm just (idly) curious.

@FaheemMitha I’m guessing because he’s had significant interaction with user9303970 (in his various incarnations), and it hasn’t always been pleasant (not dissing cas at all, just sayin’)

@StephenKitt I see. "various incarnations"?

@FaheemMitha user9303970 has used other accounts in the past

@StephenKitt Oh. Weird.

I thought it was just a username change

9:24 AM

@MichaelHomer no, he has at least three accounts which are still in existence here

Well clearly not, 31 days old

Yeah

Those userxxx names are the default names. Usually people move away from them. And not to them.

Cas kind of looks like Terry Pratchett in those photos. Or is it just me?

@FaheemMitha because he's chucked a wobbly accusing me of "stalking" and "trolling" him at least once before, on code review a day or so ago. he didn't like my review of his code so he did this weird frothing at the mouth paranoid delusional thing, spewing semi-coherent accusations, and flagging my answer to moderators as abuse. He ended up spitting the dummy and deleting his question.

@cas That sounds... unpleasant. Sorry about that.

@cas yeah he does that quite a lot unfortunately, including flagging lots of comments he doesn’t agree with

9:27 AM

"spitting the dummy"? Is that AU slang?

@FaheemMitha urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spit%20the%20Dummy

@StephenKitt Ah. I've not come across that one before.

@FaheemMitha I hadn’t either, but it’s very relatable if you’ve ever seen a dummy-equipped toddler throwing a tantrum ;-)

I'm not even sure what a dummy is, in a baby context. Is that another name for a pacifier?

BTW, i just checked all my downvotes back to about June last year (AFAIK, he's only been around since Dec or Jan). Not one of my downvotes was on any of his posts. I've made critical comments about his posts a few times (because they are usually about him doing something bizarre and/or insane and not being able to figure out why it doesn't magically do what he wants), but I've never downvoted them. i should probably start doing so, they're bad enough to deserve it.

9:30 AM

@FaheemMitha Yes

@MichaelHomer I see. Thank you.

Is AU and NZ slang similar?

@FaheemMitha I don’t know about that, but AU slang is quite familiar to many UK residents because Australian soaps are so popular there

@FaheemMitha that photo is nearly 10 years old. I have quite a lot less hair now (although i've grown a fair bit back since i got my transplant) and also have a purple beard instead of dark-red henna (unfortunately, henna doesn't come out dark red on grey hair. it's clown orange, i prefer purple or blue or green).

@StephenKitt They used to watch something called "Neighbors" when I was in the UK. It's been a while, though.

@cas Do you still have that hat?

@FaheemMitha yes, australian slang. it's when a baby is having a tantrum and spits his dummy out in frustrated anger. and yes, dummy == pacifier. "chuck a wobbly" is also australian slang, with a similar meaning.

9:36 AM

TerryP's pictures usually feature him with a hat with a wide brim.

@cas Hmm. Colourful.

@FaheemMitha yeah, Neighbours and Home & Away...

I think Neighbors might actually still be on.

Improbably though that seems.

@FaheemMitha yep, still got the hat. it's black leather with a good wide brim for keeping rain out of my glasses. goes well with the black leather coat. and the rainbow scarf is there partly to make me less scary (i'm 6'5" and have to be careful not to accidentally scare people just by existing). Also because a good friend gave me the scarf and I like it.

@FaheemMitha yes, it’s still on

@cas Wow, 6'5"?

You could play Doctor Who.

@StephenKitt Wow.

9:40 AM

@FaheemMitha 7790 episodes so far apparently...

@StephenKitt Double wow.

Neighbours is an Australian television soap opera. It was first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems together. Seven decided to commission the show following the success of Watson's Sons and Daughters, which aired on the network. Although successful in Melbourne, Neighbours underperformed in the Sydney market and struggled for months before Seven cancelled it. The show was immediately bought by...

yep. 6'5", about 195cm. and about 140kg - about 20kg more than i want to be.

@StephenKitt It was quite young back when I was in the UK. How time flies.

9:53 AM

so they're still making that show? i had no idea - i rarely watch tv, and when i do it's not soap operas.

10:04 AM

@FaheemMitha the last time i was travelling around India (~2000. haven't been both rich enough and well enough at the same time to travel since then) it took me a while to figure out why, wherever i went, I'd have packs of kids chasing around after me calling out "Undertaker! Undertaker!". Apparently there was some huge wrestler of that name at the time. no idea - wrestling is some kind of sportsball without a ball, isn't it?

10:16 AM

@cas I have no idea either. And 2000 was quite a long time ago.

What did you think of India? And you have been multiple times?

10:28 AM

There was a US (possibly) wrestler by that name, who acted in a Hindi film once.

indiatoday.in/movies/bollywood/story/…

Though to make it more confusing, not the same person, just the same character.

@user9303970 Moderators have no way of knowing who downvotes (nor, by the way, do you) so it isn't something we can help with. And not all your question have downvotes either, so it might be that people simply find your questions worth downvoting.

Though why any sane person would spend 2 minutes watching anything WWE-related passes comprehension.

Then again, this is the same nation that elected Trump President.

@terdon I thought mods had access to that information.

No. Only SE employees have access to voting data.

We can see some trends, sometimes, but never details on who voted for what post.

@FaheemMitha I loved India. i expect i wouldn't be so happy if i wasn't a rich western tourist (even backpacker types like me are relatively rich - rich enough to be able to save up a few thousand dollars just to travel, anyway) but had to make a living there. but it's a fascinating place. I've been a few times. Would love to go again if health permitted.

@cas Yes, everyone says things like that. (I have an Airbnb rental, so I've been meeting quite large numbers of tourists recently.) I don't get it.

As I am ready to tell people, I think of India of a rather large Third World lunatic asylum.

Not that the rest of the world is that much better. Like with anything, it's all relative.

I suppose perhaps it's just that it's so different from the West - differences are stimulating.

10:48 AM

@terdon I am fairly convinced it is usually either of these two users. You know of one of them and you have seen examples of wars I had with that user. I am sad to see that SE has yet to develop better mechanisms to handle what I recognize as vendetta downvoting.

I guess the chaos is appealing when you don't have to live in it all the time. There were lots of things I didn't like about India (air pollution, poverty & the exploitation that goes with it, having to haggle for almost everything you buy, baksheesh and low-level corruption as an unavoidable/accepted part of life) but also a lot i loved. I wasn't a big fan of what I called "dead dog road" - the main road between Agra and Varanasi.

@cas Yes, those things are even like likeable when you actually have to live with them. Plus a thousand other things a tourist would not be aware of.

@cas Dead dog road, as in lots of dead dogs? From vehicular collisions, I suppose.

there were dead dogs, hit by cars and trucks seemingly every few miles. I hired a car and driver for that trip and, while I didn't think of it beforehand, I was extremely glad it turned out my driver didn't drink. So many crashes - buses, trucks, cars on the roads. Truck drivers are overworked everywhere, and forced to take long trips without enough sleep but it seemed much worse in india.

@cas Yes, most things are worse in India, relative to the West.

With the possible exception of gun violence.

But that's more of a US thing, really.

Truck drivers having to go without sleep is a big problem in North America, so I hear.

the food is good. and the people are generally friendly.

10:53 AM

Because it's so big. Lots of accidents.

@cas Indian restaurants, you mean? These days you can use Airbnb.

And possibly sample Indian home cooking. Which is probably better.

@cas If you hire a car and driver, you want to go through a company.

i mean the street food. and cafe/restaurant food too. Where i live in melbourne there's a sizable indian population so we have good indian restaurants and cafes too.

@user9303970 You should seriously consider the possibility that it isn't a vendetta and is honest opinion. To be quite frank, I would also downvote your recent question if it weren't already at a negative score. You have many questions with a positive score an all of the ones with negative ones I've seen, I can understand why someone would downvote.

@cas Yes, people are friendly towards foreigners. It's a mix of curiosity, racism, and a vaguely patriotic thing (as in, let's welcome the foreigner to our country).

@cas Street food isn't terribly safe.

@FaheemMitha I like that. It's like thinking "the poor fellow has so many problems already since he's foreign, let's try and help him out"!

Good deal better than "Eeek! Foreign!"

@terdon Heh. That's one way of thinking about it.

10:59 AM

Flanders & Swann

At any rate, Indians are friendlier than the British when it come to welcoming people.

British people do a stinkeye thing. It's quite charming.

> It's not that they're wicked or natuarally bad
It's knowing they're foreign that makes them so mad!

As you already know, I'm a big fan of the British.

You may have mentioned it, yes P

:-)

They do have a sense of humor, have to give them that.

11:01 AM

@terdon thanks for sharing that opinion. I do desire to become better in publishing questions as helpful and communal as possible in relation to the context.

@terdon Flanders & Swann are great

Aye, that they are

I especially like the Kings’ Singers’ rendition

@StephenKitt ?

Don't know that one

The King's Singers

The King's Singers are a British a cappella vocal ensemble founded in 1968. They are named after King's College in Cambridge, England, where the group was formed by six choral scholars. In the United Kingdom, their popularity peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thereafter they began to reach a wider international audience, appearing frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the U.S. In 1987, they were prominently featured as guests on the Emmy Award winning ABC-TV special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas. Today the ensemble travels worldwide for its performances, appearing...

11:03 AM

Ah!

in the late 70s they did a Flanders & Swann special

unfortunately it’s pretty much impossible to get a hold of nowadays

I asked them about it two or three years ago and the current singers said they loved that repertoire too

so who knows, perhaps they’ll revisit it at some point

11:42 AM

@terdon This reminds me of Cecil Rhodes' oft-quoted statement. about being British was to have won the lottery of life.

Except he wasn't being satirical. Nasty psycho.

Yes. They're not being serious, at least :)

@terdon I should hope not.

12:27 PM

Please share an opinion on this quite small issue:

https://github.com/benqzq/ulcwe/blob/master/install.sh

I have here 2 functions respectively, one is `assignments()` and one is `localize()`. For some reason I cannot run `source "$HOME"/.bashrc 2>/dev/null` inside `assignments()` successfully...

For some reason, it will run successfully only when putted inside the later `localize()` function.

I wonder why is that?

@user9303970 What happens when you try to do that?

As I recall, nothing special besides that the file isn't sourced.

12:49 PM

Am I the only one who feels like discussing number of char in a command is really not the goal of the site ?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/428243/is-it-possible-to-make-find-more-efficient-to-use-than-find-grep-in-this-scena

@Kiwy Yes, I think. I don't see any reason why that would be off topic. The main question is "how can I make this command shorter so it's faster to type", which seems perfectly on topic.

@Kiwy Stephane's point in comments is valid. This is about making the interactive experience better for this particular user. The user doesn't say anything about why a few key presses matter to him, but we are given the task to help him type less. It's not a code golf challenge.

@terdon I guest if Stephane and Terdon says it's OK it's OK I guess.

@Kiwy Great. Now if you could only convince my girlfriend to take that eminently reasonable position. . . :P

but I really feel like it has nothing to do here, that's not a problem and it's probably opinion base as lots of people could suggest different ways to shorten typing and "optimizing" and other bash/hack trick ...

I would understand if it was How can I make find faster but that way I dont

@terdon well let me speak to her I certainly could help with that thought I'm not sure you would be happy with a woman only saying Yes to all your statement...

1:00 PM

@Kiwy I'm not sure if it applies to this particular user, but we have had requests from people with various disabilities in the past.

@Kusalananda That would certainly be a great question in this case indeed

@Kusalananda laziness is a valid disability IMO, there you go…

@dessert Damn! I'm disabled?

@Kiwy Oh good grief, that would be awful! Especially since she tends to be correct most of the time anyway.

@terdon So are you in the UK now? I haven't been keeping track.

1:08 PM

Yes, I am. Well, I'm in London anyway, which is kind of its own thing within the UK.

@terdon Yeah, London isn't really UK, at least not from a UX point of view.

@Kusalananda the same apply to Paris, Paris is not really France but from a non parisian point of view :D

@terdon ... those women, they are always right whatever you say...

@Kiwy It's probably the same no matter what country and capital you look at.

@Kusalananda Well probaly indeed the concentration of economical and political power transform (not to say corrupt) everything

The US capital is actually kind of a ghetto/slum

1:20 PM

slum ?

@Kiwy Oh, I wouldn't generalize it to any sex. I just happen to live with a clever person, that's all :)

"a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people."

Can someone help here please? Maybe I miss some symlink, some outer conf?

@Jesse_b hum never heard this word thank you

0

Q: /etc/php/7.0/fpm/zz_overrides.ini isn't effective (isn't counted) after server restart

In Ubuntu 16.04 with Nginx (LEMP) I created the file /etc/php/7.0/fpm/zz_overrides.ini. The file contains only this code: [PHP] post_max_size = 2000M upload_max_filesize = 2000M max_execution_time = 3000 cgi.fix_pathinfo=0 After creating the file I saved it and restarted Nginx and PHP-FPM: s...

1:23 PM

But the US is very weird about capitals I think. In most states the capital city is a small town compared to other cities. For example the capitol of New York is albany with a population of 98000 where you would think it would be new york city

@Jesse_b One can do much better, Brazil for example has built a whole new city to serve as the federal capital.

Brasília (Portuguese pronunciation: [bɾaˈziljɐ]) is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top the Brazilian highlands in the country's center-western region. It was founded on April 21, 1960, to serve as the new national capital. Brasília and its metro area were estimated to be Brazil's 3rd most populous city. Among major Latin American cities, Brasília has the highest GDP per capita at R$61,915 (US$36,175). Brasília was planned and developed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer in 1956 to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to a...

@terdon How do you like it so far?

Crowded, I expect.

@FaheemMitha Cold, I heard.

@FaheemMitha Rainy asweel

@Kusalananda Some of the time. But not particularly by Scandinavian standards.

1:32 PM

@FaheemMitha It's better than I feared. Let's leave it at that.

On the bright side, this was my back yard last wednesday!

user image

@terdon Jealous. I live in denver and we haven't really gotten any snow at all this winter

I'm constantly amazed at how many people have recently moved here but hate snow. I feel like saying: "You do realize you voluntarily moved to the top of a mountain right?"

@Jesse_b I love the snow ! But it snows only once or thwice a day where I leave

1:47 PM

@Kiwy Only once or twice a day huh?

a year :D @Jesse_b

no not leaving in antartica

:-P. I much prefer snow and cold weather to brutally hot weather. So many damn dirty hippies have moved here from hot climates and then they complain so much about the weather.

@Jesse_b Anyway, I try not to complain from the weather because that's pretty much on of the only thing on which you have no immediate control

2:05 PM

@Kiwy True, but people do have control over how they dress. I find people complaining about the weather are always the most improperly dressed. When I tell them what they should wear they always roll their eyes at me.

It's never about the weather. The weather just provides a handy medium to tell other how they feel.

That goes at least for the British :-)

@Kusalananda I think it's sometimes about the weather :-P. It was worse in NJ because so many people there are into being "fashionable" so there would be women coming to work in skirts when it is well below freezing out and then they complain about how cold it is outside. Duh, you should have wool leggings on. Men would wear these super light jackets/sweaters and do the same.

/rant

that's despressing... I personnaly look like a total Michelin Man if I feel I will be cold going outside :D

@Kiwy Yea I think under dressing in the winter is a lot like riding a motorcycle without a helmet. I'm honestly surprised more people don't simply die of hypothermia

2:56 PM

@Jesse_b it's not that cold where I live :D but still very impressive

3:07 PM

@terdon Not sure why that is the bright side. Are you fond of snow?

@FaheemMitha I would guess it's more because he has a back yard in London :D which is very unlikely

and hard to find

Though I recall that I was quite excited with I first saw snow, as an adult.

I didn't get out much as a child.

That was in Cambridge, England.

@Kiwy Yes, I guess that's possible.

@Kiwy There are many backyards in London! London is big. I'm speculating that he's visiting someone, or is staying (sensibly) at a B&B somewhere.

@Kusalananda A B&B would get pricey very quickly.

In case you're not aware, he's moved to the UK.

Personally I'd prefer Greece, all things being equal.

@FaheemMitha I was not aware.

3:21 PM

@Kusalananda Ah, ok. Well, I'm pretty sure it's not a secret. So...

@FaheemMitha Very.

@terdon oh

@terdon +1

I guess they don't get a lot of snow in Greece. Maybe in the mountains. Though I think Greece doesn't have terribly tall mountains.

@FaheemMitha Not by Indian standards, no. The tallest is ~2800m. But we have a lot.

And yes, I've never lived somewhere where snow was normal so I never outgrew my child's delight in it.

3:30 PM

@terdon You lived in the UK, though. And France. Or was it Spain?

@terdon That still seems quite high. So maybe they get snow. Or maybe not.

@FaheemMitha If I recall he was in south of france where snow is very uncommon

A while back I was chatting to someone in Zurich (I think), on IRC. And he pointed out that the Swiss Alps have lost their snow. As he put it, it makes climate change deniers looks pretty silly.

@Kiwy Oh, I see.

Wow, someone did an anime of "Five Children and It".

@FaheemMitha that’s odd, I wonder what my Swiss colleagues have been skiing on all these weeks

@StephenKitt Well, perhaps not all their snow.

He showed me side by side pictures. I'm gullible that way.

@FaheemMitha right, they’ve lost a noticeable amount of snow cover, but there’s still a fair amount left

it’s worrying

3:40 PM

@StephenKitt For now.

but people exaggerating just makes discussions with skeptics harder

@FaheemMitha All of the above. UK for 4 years, Spain for 7 and France for 5.

@FaheemMitha Oh, the mountains do, sure. But I lived in the plains.

"The rain in Spain... etc. etc. ha ha"

@terdon Ok. So you moved around quite a bit.

So, of France, Spain, UK, Greece, which would be your preferred place to live, given a choice?

@Kusalananda But not snow :)

@FaheemMitha Uhm. Spain, probably. Or Greece if I didn't have to work there.

3:51 PM

@terdon Ok. Thank you.

Now this was a bit sad I thought: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/428302/…

@Kusalananda Well I've tried not to be to mean in my comment but i didn't please the OP

It's an interesting challenge, but the question fails to show what has been attempted. It is not a request for learning materials.

It's interesting since find does not process things in lexiographical order.

@Kusalananda see this however

2

Q: Recursively numer directories

I have the following directory structure: $ directory tree Data Data ├── Mercury ├── Venus ├── Earth │ ├── Australia │ └── Asia │ └── Japan | └── Hokkido ├── Mars ├── HellasBasin └── SyrtisCrater How can rename/number/label all the directories recursively to get a res...

command-line directory find rename directory-structure

from the same user

@StephenKitt Ah, so they're failing to generalize the given solution.

3:57 PM

Too bad I can't consult deleted stuff it coud be handy sometimes

@Kiwy Get more rep.

@Kusalananda I'm not looking at more, I just try to give back what this community has bring to me by doing a bit of editing and tag...

what level it is ? 10k reputation ? It would need a lot of work from me and I'm not that good, I just know how to use linux and to administrate it but all I do is reading manual and forums :D

unix.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools

@Kiwy 10k, yes

@StephenKitt thanks wasn't sure, anyway I will probably get there in the next 3 years :D

with my currents answers

@Kiwy Look at me. I have the golden bash tag and I don't even use that shell... It's a trickle that forms a puddle.

4:04 PM

I was just chatting with a young person. A young Indian person, who is doing a programming degree or something, here. Apparently in India they make you read books before they let you program. Very weird. I mean, who does that?

No wonder Indians are so terrible at programming. They die of boredom before they can do anything.

@FaheemMitha I do, sometimes

:-) It's like having to take theory before driving... crazy!

@FaheemMitha I started to do pure algorithmic before even doing my first program

@StephenKitt Are you saying you sat down and read a book on Python before writing Python code?

For example?

@FaheemMitha for example, yes

4:06 PM

@Kiwy What's "pure algorithmic"?

@StephenKitt Huh

Oh hey, when did @StephenKitt catch up to me? Eeeek!

I'd just fall asleep. But I guess maybe that's just me.

the only language I learnt on the fly was Logo, everything else I learnt from a book or documentation

stackexchange.com/leagues/106/alltime/unix/2010-08-10

@terdon 2k to go... heh heh heh

4:07 PM

@FaheemMitha You take pseudo code with keyword like if goto == and you write program with your pencil to solve problem

Oh man. And I thought that thing dripping down my neck was the English rain!

:)

@terdon it’s far worse than that, it’s Scottish drool

@Kiwy How do you know if they would work?

@StephenKitt hahaha

surreptitiously wipes his neck, just in case

and I’m only 100k behind slm

4:08 PM

@FaheemMitha well you know if in the end your teacher told you if it does :D

@Kiwy How reassuring. How about if your teacher doesn't have a clue?

In my point of view this is amazing to think code note associated with a langage

I mean, I have programming books. I just don't think I've read any of them.

At most, sections.

well first algoritme are sorting and moving variable really basic stuff but the idea is to understand how the logic should be before thinking the implementation

Yeah, I started to read one, then stopped and started doing stuff. I regret that though, it means I still have all sorts of holes in my knowledge. I think reading the book through to the end is the way to go.

4:10 PM

@terdon at least if the book is well written ;-)

@FaheemMitha there's also a difference between learning how to program because you need to do a specific thing, and learning how to program in order to learn how to program.

@terdon which we see in action here every day

true

@terdon I'm not sure I follow that.

Oh, you mean practice/exercises.

For the former, which is what I did, I just needed enough to make something that worked and gave me the results I needed. For the latter, for learning how to program arbitrary tools, it is far better to learn from a book as well as by doing since it gives you a deeper understanding of the concepts involved.

4:13 PM

@terdon I definitively agree with this statement.

@terdon That doesn't sound like any programming book I've ever read.

@FaheemMitha Well, I learned how to program because I needed to analyse a data set. So, for example, I needed to know how to select the top N results or whatever. I leaned how to do that, then put the book down and went about my day.

But maybe you've encountered some specially good programming books.

See you probably tomorrow.

Then I needed to do something else so I learned how to do that. Now, after a few years of this, I've gotten a basic idea of programming but I still hesitate to call myself a programmer.

4:14 PM

@terdon Hmm. I didn't mean to suggest you don't need to think about programming. Just that reading a book isn't a particularly useful way to do it. IMO.

I mean, I've thought about programming. That's why I wound up learning Common Lisp. Because all the other languages were so horrible.

Well, you should always do both. I mean combine theory (book) and practice (hitting your head against a problem until you solve it)

With the partial exception of Python.

@terdon Not hitting your head, exactly. Just generalising from specificity to generality.

@FaheemMitha I think you’d find Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming very, very interesting

it’s one of the good books

github.com/norvig/paip-lisp

The C Programming Language is excellent too

As in, what would you like your program to look like. Apart from the actual language being used.

as is the camel book for Perl

4:16 PM

@StephenKitt Yes, I had a copy of that for awhile. Unfortunately, the owner took it back.

It's certainly interesting.

@StephenKitt Yes, I learned C from that.

@FaheemMitha Peter Norvig recently released the book under the MIT license

Sort of learned it. Never much cared for C.

@FaheemMitha see? you have learnt from books ;-)

@StephenKitt It helps that Tom can write:

38

A: Word for a body of water that is sufficiently populated with fish and worthy of fishing in

A piscary is a body of water natural or artificial (a piscine would only be an artificial one) under active piscicultural care to render it fit for piscation and related piscatorial—or simply piscatory—pursuits perpetrated by piscivorous piscators, at which point said piscose body will be perfect...

@StephenKitt Yes, I think I might have downloaded that.

4:17 PM

@terdon oh yes definitely

good programming books aren’t written by good programmers but by good writers

@StephenKitt Yes, that was my first language, so I actually sat down and read it.

outstanding programmers are often good writers

it sort of goes with the clarity of thinking required

Kind of a poor choice, in hindsight. Don't try learning C as your first language. You won't enjoy it.

@StephenKitt yep

@FaheemMitha it was my fourth or fifth, and I loved it ;-)

4:20 PM

@StephenKitt I never learned to like it.

@FaheemMitha I’ve learned to like it less, but at the time I thought it was fantastic

@terdon Is that the Tom who hangs out in ELL?

@FaheemMitha yes

@StephenKitt Maybe I liked it at the time. I forget.

@FaheemMitha it doesn’t matter really, I won’t think any less of you for not liking C

4:22 PM

@FaheemMitha ELU, but yes.

4:37 PM

@StephenKitt I honestly found no real use for the Camel book over the perldoc documentation...

Whew! I just installed 529 packages to get the Gnome desktop environment so that I could answer a question that parsed ls

3

@Kusalananda Same author in many cases anyway.

@FaheemMitha It was my third, but the first one that I actually was old enough to understand :-)

@Kusalananda I read the camel book before delving into perldoc

but I see your point

@StephenKitt I self-learned Perl out of boredom, and the online docs were easier to navigate and search in than the book.

4:42 PM

@JeffSchaller I don't know if I should give you a cookie or refer you to an addiction specialist.

@terdon why not both?

529 packages! I think I need to do a yum history undo last now

What if you have a sugar addiction as well as a U&L one? I'd just be enabling you!

Aren't moderators here to support the community?!?

Oh man, it's worse than I thought!

No, it can get worse

Sesame Street: Share It Maybe

(one of my daughters insisted, for a while, on playing that song before her bus came in the morning)

4:48 PM

That one or the original?

the cookie one

heh

5:27 PM

@StephenKitt Actually, I think I neither liked nor disliked it at the time. I was just intimidated by the difficulty of learning it, without help, in the middle of a very busy semester, for a class that wasn't even about programming. It was numerical analysis.

A very badly taught class on numerical analysis, as I recall.

The lead singer of the Cranberries just died. That's unexpected.

About two thirds of the way through the semester, I gave up on the programming assignments for that class, out of sheer exhaustion. As a consequence, I think I came in last in that class. But the lecturer was very polite about it.

He knew I was learning programming from scratch. And he hadn't really helped me at all.

Phew... after a lot of digging and testing I now know more about xargs and different implementations of it than I want to know.

I still have correspondence with a friend in the UK, who knew C, asking him questions and stuff. I recall I had trouble with the notion of having to allocate space for something before creating a pointer to it.

Not a very difficult notion, but Kernighan's book didn't exactly emphasize it.

@FaheemMitha That was a few weeks back, wasn't it?

@Kusalananda Well, just is relative, but yes.

I didn't know till now.

@FaheemMitha I did numerical analysis for my Ph.D., but we mainly used Fortran 77...

5:34 PM

@Kusalananda Yes, the lecturer mostly programmed in Fortran.

I think he did know C, though.

Nobody suggested that I try using an "easy" language for my first attempt. Like Python, which would have been quite new then. I suppose it could have been difficult to get someone to install it on the University computers. Maybe it was already there, but probably not. Or even Perl.

I learnt C while teaching object oriented programming with C++. I was drawn to the simpler C language "underneath" C++. This was before the STL libraries were standardized.

@Kusalananda Oh. My reaction was the reverse. If you had to use something like C, I wanted something as "high level" as possible.

Though C++ is still a horrible language, at least you can do some (relatively) high level things with it.

Of course, you can easily murder your performance if you aren't careful.

Looking at the recent C++ standards, I don't even recognize the language any longer.

@Kusalananda they're certainly changing a lot of things. But I think it's all backwards compatible.

5:59 PM

@FaheemMitha Ah yes, it's all backwards.

;-)

1 hour later…

7:05 PM

@FaheemMitha unfortunately not, a fair amount of valid C++99 code isn’t valid C++11 or C++17.

7:49 PM

@StephenKitt Oh, isn't? Well, I haven't paid C++11 etc. too much attention.

2 hours later…

9:21 PM

This can't be good for us: Kali Linux for WSL

4

2 hours later…

11:23 PM

Oh man. We really need to decide if that's going to be on topic here.

Just what we need, Windows and Kali.

11:37 PM

@StephenKitt Oh. That's unfortunate. Like seriously invalid? Or just a tweak away from valid?

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