/dev/chat

hello @Fabby

Fabby

:-) Bonjour...

I'm going to shut down here and boot work PC...

sounds ok I'm at work already

7:57 AM

I'm reading a bit about you @Fabby, so you are going to lie and told us that it wasn't you behind that attack ? meta.askubuntu.com/questions/13734/…

8:39 AM

@Kiwy What attack?

@FaheemMitha follow the white rabbit, or just the link to the question. it was quiet a strange question. well handle by fabby I have to admit

@Kiwy I've read all that before.

I think terdon's answer is quite restrained. I think it's clearly a medical issue.

@FaheemMitha No doubt about it, however I think Fabby took so much action to restrain the OP to express himself... it's suspect, maybe he's the ex step father in law hidden in the shadows

@Kiwy Aha, you think that Fabby is implicated? The plot thickens!

I mean, it's not because you hear voices that no one hears that voices actually don't exist.

We 've all heard of alien technology hidden in Area 51 that could allow remote mind control...

8:55 AM

@Kiwy I don't quite follow that.

@FaheemMitha ”(ᴗ_ ᴗ。) every time I'm trying to go second / third degree humour I feel like I lost you, I'm wondering if my english is bad or we are just not on the same page regarding humour... Maybe a bit of both

@Kiwy The triple negative probably did not help.

@FaheemMitha Well .... you might be right on that one

btw regarding voices , the movie "Voices" from Marjane Satrapi is quiet good

@Kiwy Thank you for the recommendation. BTW, it's "quite", not "quiet".

@FaheemMitha thank you, never ever hesitate to correct my English. quite/quiet is a mistake I'm making every F*ing day

9:04 AM

@Kiwy It's a common error.

@FaheemMitha I 'm now learning English for almost 2/3 of my life, I should be able to do better than this...
(though even in French I tend to do a lot of mistake)

@Kiwy It's easy to make elementary errors. I do it all the time. Though I also go back and correct my mistakes if possible.

On chat it's often not possible. Because one gets 2 minutes to edit. It's annoying.

SE chat, that is.

Also, English is a weird language. Programming languages are bad enough, but natural languages are a nightmarish brew of irregularity, irrationality, and just plain insanity.

@FaheemMitha it's like twitter restraining edits to avoid fake news and stuff like that if one gets his account hacked

@FaheemMitha allow me a small

    |       __   |
    |      |    |  |
    |_ _ |__|  |__

If you find English weird, I bet you never tried French

ok my LOL attempt is obviously a major fail

9:22 AM

I've read and written English all my life. I still regularly have difficulty remembering how to spell things. And also get flummoxed by grammar issues.

 _     ___  _
| |   / _ \| |
| |  | | | | |
| |__| |_| | |___
|_____\___/|_____|

Granted, my education is sorely lacking. And my memory is not the best.

Also, I never learned any grammar to speak of.

@StephenKitt ho now you're taunting me... that's very low

@StephenKitt Nice work.

@StephenKitt At least my attempt was original and came from the heart, wasn't a simple copy/paste from a random site :P

@FaheemMitha I think my English grammar is better than my French

9:25 AM

@Kiwy How do you know that Stephen's effort wasn't carefully crafted "from the heart"?

@Kiwy I was specifically talking about my formal knowledge of grammar.

@FaheemMitha I know it ! I can feel it in my bones

@Kiwy I can feel it in my bones

Also, probably a period after the "I know".

@Kiwy figlet is your friend, not some random site ;-)

@StephenKitt I was about to say site or command, but I restrain myself. Should have though.

See @Kiwy, Stephen made it from his heart, with the assistance of figlet.

9:32 AM

@FaheemMitha Well in any case, French and English are both old languages that evolved slowly through ages. And they are both quite complex when you look in the corners. But for reasons unknown to me, I never struggle to make myself understood in English. While I feel foreigner learning French can have huge problem being understood in France.

@Kiwy I suspect both of them can pose significant difficulties.

Maybe because we are self-oriented protective selfish racist bastard

The funny thing is that I've consistently scored in the 99th percentile for every English test I've ever taken as a adult. I wonder what everyone elses English is like.

@Kiwy The French, you mean?

If so, that would apply quite as well to the British. If you were so minded to apply it.

D:

@FaheemMitha the French indeed

9:36 AM

It's true we French people don't make foreigners' lives easy when they come to France and try to speak the language ...

@avazula So I've heard. What do you do?

@FaheemMitha What do I do ... when I talk with a foreigner? :p

We're not all like this. It's pretty true in Paris but otherwise it's better overall.

I used to be a grammar nazy when talking with foreigner in French, nowadays I'm more tolerant though

@avazula I mean, what do the French do?

The term "you" is inherently ambiguous in English.

@FaheemMitha Well, in Paris they'll pretend they don't understand you speaking English, but won't be much nicer if you try your French

9:38 AM

@avazula That's not very nice.

@avazula New here?

@FaheemMitha Nope, indeed.

@Kiwy Nazi. And either "foreigners", or "a foreigner".

@FaheemMitha Nah, I've been lurking in here for quite a long time ;) I'm just not so talkative. IIRC chatting in here was much more about unix-related issues before and not so much of a banter :)

@FaheemMitha true, I should know that even better than you. Who cares about a little S :P

@avazula It varies. I'm aggressively off-topic much of the time. But most people here are much more restrained.

And mostly stay on topic.

9:41 AM

@FaheemMitha Well, thank you for your offtopicness then

;)

@avazula You're welcome. :-)

I mean, I do talk about on topic things too. But often people aren't interested if it doesn't directly relate to site topics. Like shell. People love the old Unix stuff here.

@FaheemMitha We can talk in Bash if that comfort them

@avazula LOL

If you ask a question about the finer points of some obscure shell feature, people will be all over it.

10:10 AM

@Kiwy @avazula Talking about off-topic....I did not feel much problems in communicating myself in Paris, however my spoken French only was surfacing when I left. (....) What I did find were that people were extremely rude. I opened the gates/doors in the metro to go in, and they walked in my place like I was their porter. I was younger at the time, knowadays I am a bit more agressive with those situations because of jerks like that.

@RuiFRibeiro Well sounds very rude though I'm not surprise to here that about Paris

10:32 AM

@Kiwy It happens here too, just not as blatant and frequently. If it is a youngling or older, or absent minded, I let it go, if someone around my age, I just keep on my course as they are doing sometimes. Normally I am bigger than them and I know only their ego will be damaged.

Rakib Fiha

11:35 AM

I have script that runs fine when run standalone but when I put it in the crontab it does not go inside a loop

@RakibFiha Please open a question in the main forum. Better yet, research for similar questions, that one is a regular several times per week.

Rakib Fiha

thank you. yeah I will open a question I think, I am wasting my time looking for correct answers. :(

12:07 PM

@RakibFiha There are some standard things to check for. I think this is covered on the net. For example, the environment is different, specifically for PATH.

Have you checked the obvious things?

12:44 PM

What IDEs do you Linux gurus use for your choices of computer languages (for example but not limited to C, C++, Bash, Awk, Python, Java, Scala, JS, ...) respectively?

@Tim really depends what your coding.
For any java base language I tend to use netbeans for C base codeblocks for python/scala/js atom

in fact I don't really use IDE for scripting

Is it a headache to use different IDEs for different languages?

Thanks. @Kiwy

May I have attentions of other Linux/Unix gurus please?

@Tim Bash: emacs, Awk: emacs, Python: emacs, C (the very few times I've coded in it): emacs, Perl: emacs, HTML/CSS: emacs.

well each IDE tend to be god in some situation and scripting language and to my limited code development skills I've no knowing in bash/python/awk IDE.

and JS will never be even a script language or a language at all. JS is an abomination an error in the matrix, VB.Net was better than this mindless crap

@terdon emacs is not an IDE it's a whole OS :P

Also forgot to mention C#, F#

Is atom a good one, compared to VSC and sublime?

12:52 PM

@tim Probably not, I've give it a long try for now. and I think notepad++ on wine is better than this. Performance wise it's pretty meh at best and the shortcuts are all over the place, I think vim has a nicer learning curve

By "it". what did you mean that you tried? Atom? or VSC? or Sublime?

Well I'm using it as a main text editor for now 6 months

it's very "meh".

and guess what ? underlying technology is JS... I can perfectly understand why the perf are so bad

@Kiwy There's a Linux version of notepad++ isn't there?

@terdon I don't think so the official site always mention the use of wine I think

notepadqq.com/wp

@Kiwy ^^

12:57 PM

I'll give it a try

Thank you Almighty @Terdon You might have save the day once more

@Kiwy Did you mean Atom, VSC or sublime?

So, the LaTeX/KOMA issue I've been struggling was apparently an actual, bona-fide bug, which has now been fixed.

@Kiwy Don't thank me, thank @Fabby:

16 hours ago, by Fabby

Well, Notepadqq is the Linux version.

A: Extra interline spacing in two sided mode with scrlttr2, and tcolorbox environment redefining quoting environment

1

Using \flushbottom in twoside-mode was a bug in scrlttr2 since version 3.17. It has been fixed in scrlttr2 v3.27.3111 by adding \raggedbottom to the definition of the letter environment. Before this change \documentclass[twoside]{scrlttr2} \usepackage{mwe} \begin{document} \begin{letter}{You\\...

Which is sort of gratifying. But for a non-expert, trying to deal with TeX bugs is quite stressful.

@StephenKitt Whenever you have a chance, could you reveal what IDEs do you use for your choices of languages?

1:00 PM

@fabby Thank you

@Kusalananda ditto

@Tim Emacs?

@terdon thank you still

@Tim Atom is based on chromium and JS technology

did I mention that JS sucks ?

deeply

like a ton lot

@kiwy So why are so much more JS jobs than other languages?

you are not working on JS, I suppose. what are you working on instead, if I may ask?

because it's language for lazy dev.

1:03 PM

what are you working on instead, if I may ask?

when I have no choice I use it like doing some ajax request, but I don't use it as long as I can bypass it. People would like to transform JS into the new age of dev but I refuse. Strong types and explicit declaration are the mother of all good dev

what are you using instead?

@Tim please don't ping random people to ask them to answer your question. It's pushy. If Stephen or Kusalananda is around and wants to answer, they will.

@tim I see no situation where it's mandatory except some html/css/js case and even there it's almost always doable otherwise

will they?

1:06 PM

@Tim Maybe they won't. It's up to them.

But as a general rule, pinging people and pushing them to answer random questions (not even something where you know they have expertise, just a trivia question for your own curiosity) isn't considered polite.

yes I am impolite

I am trying to be as polite as I can.

So, if I was to upload a PDF to SE, I've got to convert it to a JPEG or PNG first?

@FaheemMitha you can maybe convert it to png integrate it inside a word document and print it as an image for maximum efficiency :P

@Kiwy Eww

@FaheemMitha yes, you can only upload image files.

1:11 PM

@terdon Bummer

GIMP, here I come.

@FaheemMitha It's trivial to do. convert foo.pdf bar.png

@FaheemMitha If you ever did some user support you end up in situation like that from time to time :D

@terdon I like GIMP. But thank you for the reminder than Imagemagick is also an option.

@Kiwy What situation?

@FaheemMitha situation like: "could you give me result of ping", and you end up with a word document printed in pdf with a printscreen inside :D

@Tim I use Vim exclusively, no matter whether it's for C or shell script programming, or just editing text or writing an email.

1:12 PM

@FaheemMitha That might not work actually. I got an error.

@terdon Hmm? An error doing what?

$ convert foo.pdf bar.png
convert: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy `PDF' @ error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/408.
convert: no images defined `bar.png' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3300.

@Kiwy Unfortunately, the world is full of people who don't know any better.

We have Microsoft to thank for that, at least partially.

@terdon Security policy?

A: ImageMagick security policy 'PDF' blocking conversion

Huh

39

Well, I added <policy domain="coder" rights="read | write" pattern="PDF" /> just before </policymap> in /etc/ImageMagick-7/policy.xml and that makes it work again, but not sure about the security implications of that.

I think I'll have a tshirt printed which says "I reported a bug in KOMA, and all I got was one measly upvote".

I don't see why a PDF is not considered an image.

It looks pretty damn imagey to me.

1:16 PM

@terdon after a quick test, notepadqq though promising is not even close to notepad++, it's more like notepad with synthax coloring

I'm so disappointed... I was so exited of finally having a nice text editor on Linux... :-(

@Kiwy I'd just like to point out there is this thing called Emacs. You might have heard of it.

@Kusalananda Thanks.

It's only been around for like 40 years.

Give or take.

@FaheemMitha I am using emacs, but not sure it can be good IDE for the languages

@Tim Depends what language you are talking about.

1:20 PM

@Kiwy Assuming you're not interested in real text editors like emacs or even (shudder) vim, I hear sublime is supposed to be very good and that has a Linux version.

Is using vim for IDE better than emacs?

@Tim There is no answer to that. It depends on what you, personally, prefer.

I have a unreasonable feeling of betrayal if I use vim

I used to use it to write C++. It worked adequately. I think that the MS environment is supposed to be good. It works a bit harder for you. But I've never used it.

Q: What are the pros and cons of Vim and Emacs?

363

How would you compare these editors? What are the pros and cons of each? [note] This is not meant to be answered by those who "hate one and love another" or those who haven't used both.

1:21 PM

Emacs doesn't do that much as an IDE, but it does have other advantages.

@FaheemMitha Yes it does. If you set it up right.

Which isn't trivial, granted.

But really, the problems you run into when writing C++ aren't the sort of things that are going to be solved with an IDE, anyway.

@terdon Well, it's not Visual Studio.

@FaheemMitha heu Sarcasm ?

@Kiwy Hmm?

what languages are you using @Kiwy

1:22 PM

I'm not use to that coming from you :P

@FaheemMitha No, but it can have most of the features you might want. See, for example, eide.frama.io

@terdon I don't know that one.

I've used emacs when student I didn't really enjoyed it but I'm sure it's good enought for most task

@Kiwy It's not really intrusive. I'm not sure what people want from an editor that Emacs can't give them.

@Kiwy It's crap unless you actually spend time to customize it. Which is not a very easy process but wow, when you have it just the way you like it, it is incredible.

1:23 PM

@terdon Sublime is not OpenSource won't use it

@Tim An editor is not objectively better than another. It comes down to personal preferences and usage patterns. I'm not using a graphical interface on the systems I'm doing programming on, hence a text-based editor suits me well. I have not always used Vim though. At Uni I used Emacs, but that was 20 years ago. By now, the Vim commands are in my muscle memory.

If you want to keep it simple, Emacs has no problem with that.

If you want Emacs to do acrobatics, it can do that too.

@Kusalananda I have to disagree some editors are way better than others.
For example one the function I use the most on text editor is column edition.
Atom is bad at it if you edit more than 20 columns notepadqq is bad at it also after a quick test

@terdon Do you use this eide thing?

A graphical IDE could be of some help. I've just never bothered with learning how to properly use one. The seem to come and go as well, and are sometimes tied to a particular development platform.

1:25 PM

@FaheemMitha I used to. I had some issues with it at some point so I disabled it. I will try to install it again now though.

@Kiwy I did mention personal usage patterns.

@terdon Ok. How did it work?

SLIME is pretty nice. I remember I was quite impressed by it.

@FaheemMitha Pretty well. But at the time, I wasn't really developing anywhere near as much as I am now, and not on such complex a codebase. I think I will find it even more useful now.

Contextual pop-up compile errors. Nifty.

@terdon What language are you writing in?

kiwy, you haven't answered that either.

1:28 PM

@FaheemMitha Now? Perl and Python mostly. I sometimes change a line or two in existing C++ programs. But rarely.

Oh, and of course shell and awk.

Though awk very rarely in an editor. That's usually one lienrs.

@tim I use any language I need and learn any language I need at a given time. So far I've done C C++ Java 4/6/8, VB 5 VB.net, proC, bash, some perl, HTML/CSS/PHP/JS, recently some Python and scala

I'm mostly done java shell and python

As a polyglot, what languages do you think are better designed?

Well Java and C definitely have my preferences has they are structured and strongly typed.

besides JS, what do you think are not?

Adam

@Jesse_b this was my grandmother's you tube upload made shortly after I gifted her a tablet I had finders keepsies when I visited her in the dementia ward youtube.com/…

1:34 PM

Scala is nice though I'm not sure to understand all the underlying concept behind functional programming.

@tim Well any non typed language Python/JS/PHP(old version I think recent one has type)

@terdon Oh. I don't think Python works that well in Emacs. It gets confused by that whitespace thing. But it works pretty well for C/C++.

@FaheemMitha No, it works fine.

@terdon Well, I used to write Python in Emacs.

I think MichaelHomer is a language specialist

JS being the worse as it's one of the most accessible and done by persons who never learn what is a type a memory allocation and have no clue what so ever about clean code / performance and memory efficiency

1:36 PM

@FaheemMitha OK. I still do, and it works fine.

@terdon I'd have to differ there.

If we are still talking about Python.

Auto indent, variable name auto-completion, keyword auto-completion, you name it.

@FaheemMitha I am guessing you didn't configure it much.

And you didn't install elpy

That whitespace thing probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's just a nightmare of a misfeature.

emacswiki.org/emacs/Elpy

@terdon I'm not sure what configuration would help Emacs deal with syntatically meaningful whitespace.

1:38 PM

@FaheemMitha I don't disagree. Although I do admit that it helps promote readable code.

@FaheemMitha elpy

The whitespace just isn't an issue on emacs.

@terdon I don't recall.

Is it very new?

You might object to it on philosophical grounds, and I wouldn't say you'd be wrong, but emacs doesn't have any problems with it.

@FaheemMitha Not at all

@FaheemMitha it's the best python feature, those whitespace finally find a solution to the bracket problem in all other language

Well, I wouldn't go that far. It makes it absurdly hard to copy code blocks, for example.

I have been working with python for almost two years now, and while I have grown to like the language, the whitespace thing has not convinced me.

I never had that much problem with that

1:41 PM

@terdon Um, it's not actually possible to know what the correct indentation is. So I'm not sure how Emacs could be fine with it. Since, as already noted, it's syntatically meaningful.

I always lost so much time converting code into end of line bracket instead of new line bracket

I think we might be talking at cross-purposes here.

@Kiwy Try taking a function and testing it as a stand-alone script, for example. I need to paste into a new file and then use sed or something to reduce the leading whitespaces.

@FaheemMitha What do you mean? Of course it's possible (trivial, even). That's why emacs does it for you automatically when you hit enter to go to a new line, or hit tab to align an existing line.

@terdon I'm not using Python for that long but I feel like it's a ok problem with all the readability it provide

Basically, 4 spaces == one indentation level. That's it.

3 spaces == syntax error.
5 spaces == syntax error

1:43 PM

@terdon Dinner time. Back later.

So emacs simply indents you in multiples of 4 and you forget about it until you need to copy your code and add it as a function to a new script or vice versa.

ok new test on notepadqq thousand replace with regex is terribly slow

That's what sed is for!

@terdon when using a text editor why would I open a temrinal to use sed ? Maybe emacs is the answer but still :P

@Kiwy Because it's faster and easier than screwing around trying to click things with the mouse? :)

1:47 PM

well at least notepad++ is pretty good at it. I understand why there's no equivalent on Linux as Emacs VIM and orthers are already there, but damn, notepad++ is such a nice tool ...

I almost never use a mouse on any text editor that's also why notepadqq is bad, keyboard shortcut seems implemented a strange way.

@terdon Or just :%s/.../.../g in the right editor.

;-)

like column edition request you to select column with the mouse which is dumb

@Kusalananda What? That isn't emacs forma... oh, I see.

@Kusalananda how to use Extended Regular expression in that case

simple pattern are not up to the task in most case IMO

Q: Vim and Regular Expression: what kind of regex does Vim use?

I'm not actually entirely sure what the expressions Vim supports are. It's regular expressions with a lot of extensions.

It depends in part on the magic setting.

15

Since 6 months I'm using the excellent Vim text-editor. The most interesting thing is Vim's excellent regex support build-in. I would like to understand regex better in order to ask less questions here :) I tried Regex coach, Espresso and other regex-help applications but I found out that even ...

regex testing vim

2:01 PM

hum... own regex support, I'll dig it, hope this isn't that horrible synthax where you have to type \[a-z\]

Emacs has its own flavor too. I guess most old editors would.

Are you using emacs GUI or emacs cli

GUI

Is it possible to use regex with non-latin character ? I've never encountered one

@Kiwy Sure:

$ echo "καλημέρα" | grep -Po 'ημ'
ημ

2:13 PM

I am using emacs CLI

have been so for a long while

@terdon Well I know regex are base on graph theory but does every written language are language mathematically speaking. I don't know. Apparently Greek is :-)

@Kiwy As far as I know, this is all unicode stuff.

@terdon :D too bad it's not all unicorn

I was wondering how is regex based on graph theory? I realize that I am ignorant.

@tim Graph theory defines term such as "word" "language" for example and a regex is just an oriented graph with loop

2:25 PM

I feel even more ignorant

How do you visualize a regex as a oriented graph with loop?

If I may also ask, which one shall I learn, Scala only, or Haskell first and then Scala?

@tim like that regexper.com/#%5Ba-z%5D%2B%5Cd%7B5%7D

Is that FSM diagram?

Is Haskell better designed and more stable, whereas Scala is constantly changing (remove old features, add new ones or change existing features),and keep borrowing ideas from Haskell? That is why I am wondering if it is better to start with Haskell and then it could be much better to pick up Scala?
Normally, how long does it take to learn Haskell + Scala, versus Scala only?

@Tim regexper.com/#%5BA-Za-z_%5D%5BA-Za-z0-9_%5D*%20%3D%20%5B1-9%5D%5B0-9%5D*

I have no idea what FSM means or is.
I have also no clue about HakShell or Scala

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism. Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarianism) is a social movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion and opposes the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in public schools. According to adherents, Pastafarianism is a "real, legitimate religion, as much as any other". In New Zealand, Pastafarian representatives are authorized to officiate weddings. However, in the United States, a federal judge has ruled that the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster...

2:30 PM

Hey, I am a Church of the Dude and Universal Life Church ordained priest ;) 😎

Better example: regexper.com/#%5E%5B-%2B%5D%3F%5B0-9%5D*%5C.%3F%5B0-9%5D%2B%28%5BeE%5D%5‌B-%2B%5D%3F%5B0-9%5D%2B%29%3F%24

Hmm... it drops the end of the URL....

I don't really think it as graph theory, unless I am ignorant.

Haskell not HakShell, unless I misunderstand what you meant @kiwy

@Tim IntelliJ IDEA for Java, Eclipse for Go, Light Table for Clojure and JS, Emacs for everything else

Surprising. Why Eclipse for Go?

Is it because you don't find a satisfying IDE for Go?

@StephenKitt VI....VI....heretic.

2:35 PM

:q!

@StephenKitt Hey, that is not that the top asked question in SO?

Do you consider light table vs VSC vs atom vs sublime?

Sublime and Atom seem interesting....

@Tim no, I’ve never used VSC, Atom or Sublime

Have you considered Scala, Haskell, ...?

2:40 PM

@Tim yes, I use IntelliJ for Scala too; I’ve not done much Haskell but I use Emacs for that (and ML and OCAML)

What do you think is the best approach to Scala, OCaml, and Haskell? What learning order specifialy may be more rewarding?

Assume I know little. Assume I am bad at OO and procedural languages

there are more Scala jobs out there among the three.

@Tim that’s fine, it’s better to tackle functional languages with as few preconceptions as possible ;-)

I think Haskell is simpler

core Scala is fairly simple but many of the popular uses are rather complex

@tim IMO Whatever functionnal language you learn once you've get the point of functionnal programming they will all be the same

although the trend has been moving away from that

from what to what?

2:45 PM

away from artificial complexity in Scala

but I would start with Haskell and Clojure

Unnecessary complexity? To what?

@Tim :
from wikipedia:

Linguistics
Graph-theoretic methods, in various forms, have proven particularly useful in linguistics, since natural language often lends itself well to discrete structure. Traditionally, syntax and compositional semantics follow tree-based structures, whose expressive power lies in the principle of compositionality, modeled in a hierarchical graph. More contemporary approaches such as head-driven phrase structure grammar model the syntax of natural language using typed feature structures, which are directed acyclic graphs. Within lexical semantics, especially as applied to computers, model…

@Tim I don’t understand the question

@kiwy I thought you were talking about relation betw graph theory and formal languages theory

@StephenKitt Doe the trend (presumably of Scala) move from uncesary complexity to what

@Tim to simplicity

2:48 PM

purer functional?

@Tim no, I’m only talking about syntax here; there’s lots of Scala code which is very hard to read because of complex syntax

you could learn Rust as well though absolutely no one does except some guy from Mozilla foundation and one guy that develops a POC for new video encoding :D

@StephenKitt . For that reason, if start with Haskell first and then Scala, will I be able to write simpler Scala code?

@Tim I don’t know. All I’m saying is that it’s easier to learn Haskell than Scala, IMO.

How shall one learn to write better/simpler Scala code, considering the problem you mentioned?

2:55 PM

the first video on haskell.org really have a name of bad self empowerment mystic group article :D

They would have say:
Haskell a way to get away with everyday little trouble and purify your innerself
would have been the same :D

@Tim if you learn basic Scala you’ll write simpler Scala code, but its syntax will still be more complex than the equivalent Haskell

however if you want a Scala job you’ll end up having to learn complex Scala anyway because you’ll come across it in professional contexts

Is the complex thing part of functional language features, or OO feature, or their combination

And working on that recently if you have to compile in a jar your scala code to run it on spark, you go beyond a huge pile of problem if you try to do it with any IDE

@Tim it’s mostly functional syntactic constructs

read appliedscala.com/blog/2016/learning-scala and dive in

3:32 PM

@Tim Languages are in large part a matter of taste. And also, of course, your purpose in learning it matters.

@Kiwy Possibly a slight exaggeration. :_)

@terdon So, my recollection of working with Python code in Emacs is that, if you reasonably complex code with lots of indentations, if you (for example) absent-mindedly start hitting tab, as I am/was prone to do, it's a good way to completely mess up your structure very fast. In contrast, with a language where whitespace isn't syntatically meaningful, all it will do is correctly indent your code.

And in theory it shouldn't matter a lot. But in practice I don't keep close track of where the indentations is, because I expect the code to take care of itself, so to speak.

And of course Emacs didn't/doesn't have much idea of what the structure should be. I can't remember if the writers of whatever Python mode I was using built in enough intelligence to avoid obviously absurd constructs.

@FaheemMitha on my setup, one tab indents correctly. Hitting tab again removes successive layers of indentation until you reach the outer block and then another tab takes you back to the correct level.

And, the obligatory comment is that if you use reasonably complex code with lots of indentations, you're doing it wrong and you should write it differently. That's the standard Python approach.

Which I also used to find annoying until I started messing around with python more and now I think it's 100% correct.

If you find yourself at more than, say, 3 levels of indentation, you're doing something wrong.

Here's an example of a python file in my emacs. Note the vertical lines indicating indentation.

(and yes, I know that's more than 3 levels of indentation but i) I never said I'm good at this, ii) that's not my code and iii) since the blocks are so small, the extra indents do not make it harder to read. )

4:02 PM

@terdon Possibly a fair point. But having a lot of functions calling each other can also get confusing. And keeping track of context can become a chore in itself. And even three levels of indentation can be enough to get confused over.

@terdon Hey, I wasn't going to say anything.

I can't remember how many indentations my code had. And I'm too lazy right now to go and look.

@terdon Actually, that's some nicely formatted code. And colorful too.

Performing actions...
(Reading database ... 40973 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../python-google-compute-engine_2.8.13-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking python-google-compute-engine (2.8.13-1) over (2.8.13-1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/python-google-compute-engine_2.8.13-1_all.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/google_accounts_daemon', which is also in package python3-google-compute-engine 20181206-2~bpo9+1
Errors were encountered while processing:

... good job, Google!

@derobert Was that older package a pre-release or snapshot or something?

I don't think so. This is just stuff that was pre-installed on the default Stretch image on Google Compute Engine

So you would have to manually uninstall that package first? And that uninstalls a host of other things that depends on it?

I'm uninstalling python-google-compute-engine on one of the VMs and seeing what happens. Well, I know it uninstalls, going to reboot the VM and see if its broken.

4:09 PM

@derobert Their packaging kinds of sucks. Which is surprisingly, considering.

Oh! Actually, that may not be there fault. Somehow it appears python3-google-compute-engine from debian-backports got installed on said machine.

It looks like Google enables backports by default...

So, any of you fine folks thinking of running for mod?

4:25 PM

Donno. I did it once before, but I'm so busy at the moment...