Random thoughts and finds...

[yikerman (Yi Cao)]

You made me do that search

[hatsnp (Nuno Paulino)]

@bastibe

The trick to reading Lisp is really just that the parenthesis comes before the function name instead of after: it’s (sum 1 2) instead of sum(1, 2). Realizing this, I made my peace with the syntax. I still miss that punctuation could be part of variable names. least-squares and even? still read better than leastSquares and is_even. (and I love the word “kebab-case”)

I only have very surface knowledge of lisp, but from what I understand it seems like its programmers see data structures and manipulation in a completely different way(even if that’s obviously not the case). That’s the idea I get anyway. Like looking at any C like code, or even more functional stuff like lambda or iterators in rust, js, c#, what have you, it’s more or less clear and easy to get a general idea of what is happening when it comes to data transformation, even if you don’t know the language, but in lisp like languages my mind can’t really wrap itself around it. That’s all to say that it feels like a completely different paradigm, it’s really hard to put into words.

[Tim (Tim Cuthbertson)]

@hatsnp

That’s all to say that it feels like a completely different paradigm, it’s really hard to put into words.

It is a completely different paradigm.

[afre (Alan)]

I do not like over-highlighted syntax either. I do enjoy mild auto-completion and contextual highlighting/focusing. If everything is bright, nothing is clear. I do not understand the RGB stuff in computer hardware, cars and people’s rooms. Ugly and hurts the eyes.

[afre (Alan)]

@dnzm

Related: this blog post I ran into a while ago.

Sorry, Max, but I cannot read the blog post with the overlaid dense snow animation. It is both a and absurd experience. I hope the irony is not lost to you and that you will not take offence to my commentary. (I think your site is meant to have a humorous effect.)

[elGordo (Gord)]

@kofa

There’s a reason why LISP is humorously resolved as Lots of Irritating/Incomprehensible, Superfluous Parentheses.

There’s the saying: ‘if it was hard to write, it should be hard to read’

I encountered LISP approximately 50 years ago. At that point in time, it was all car and cdr, and the most exasperating language I had ever seen. I understand that it has evolved over the years, but have no desire to revisit it and see its current state. Battle scars and all that.

[mino]

@afre

Sorry, Max, but I cannot read the blog post with the overlaid dense snow animation.

Seeing the title “Christmas lights Diarrhea” getting obstructed by snowfall is hilarious.

[luator (Felix Kloss)]

In a similar case, I once learned that there is a Kate Haskell working at some news station.

[kofa (István Kovács)]

There’s a snowflake at the top of the screen, where it can be disabled. There’s also a crescent Moon to provide light. A bit of irony might be involved.

[dnzm (Max)]

Oh, it’s not my site, so no offence to be taken (and even if it were my site, still no offence). At least Firefox has Reader Mode, which removes all styling from the page. There’s also the snowflake icon button at the top, which disables winter mode.

[hatsnp (Nuno Paulino)]

This is eye opening. While I never use such heavy themes, I’m gonna give this a go today.

[Tamas_Papp (Tamas K. Papp)]

@elGordo

I encountered LISP approximately 50 years ago. At that point in time, it was all car and cdr, and the most exasperating language I had ever seen.

Yes, I can totally sympathize. Lisps (including Scheme, etc) were used for pedagogical purposes, mostly with the idea of setting up a base language of 10 or so operators, and showing how you can do everything with them.

But Lisps used for practical purposes are very different from that. Take Common Lisp: it has structures, multimethods (light years ahead of OOP languages like C++/Java), powerful macros, escape hatches like read syntax which allow you to parse a completely different language in the middle of your code, namespaces… the list is endless.

It is a very powerful, elegant language for quick prototyping. Reasonably fast, too, though of course not as much as eg C/C++ or Fortran for numerical calculations.

But, since most CS/EE people were exposed to the kind of Lisp courses where you did everything with lists and variants of car/cdr, and the exercises were more like math puzzles than something you would actually program, they would hate Lisps from then on, or at best consider it a toy language.

The legacy of Common Lisp survives in Julia, which has multimethods, macros, but compiles to very efficient code and has infix syntax like a + b instead of (+ a b).

[Thad_E_Ginathom]

@Vente

Windows troubleshooting:

1. Clear cache
2. Reinstall app
3. Reinstall Windows
4. Reformat your drive(s); reinstall Windows; reinstall applications and data. Again.
5. Cry in the corner

There. Fixed that for you, as they say on the internet,

One of the things that I most despise about Microsoft is that they gave the world the impression that this was normal life with a computer.

[Masterpiga (Daniele Pighin)]

@Vente

Windows troubleshooting:

1. Clear cache
2. Reinstall app
3. Reinstall Windows
4. Reformat your drive(s); reinstall Windows; reinstall applications and data. Again.
5. Buy new computer
6. Spend one afternoon to create a MS account and remove bloatware
7. Painfully download, reinstall, authorize and setup all the apps that you need one by one
8. Cry in the corner
9. Goto 1

@Thad_E_Ginathom I think you forgot a couple of edits.

[Thad_E_Ginathom]

@Masterpiga

I think you forgot a couple of edits.

Thanks, I also left out the nervous breakdown, thinking that that was just too obvious

[lphilpot (Len Philpot)]

@afre

I do not understand the RGB stuff in computer hardware, cars and people’s rooms. Ugly and hurts the eyes

When I was doing desktop support shortly after moving to IT in the late 90s more than a few times I’d have to work on someone’s computer with a hideous color scheme. The worst was one with a chaotic family snapshot wallpaper and purple FG / gold BG app colors. She (the user) was so proud of it: “Don’t you LOVE my LSU colors??” (LSU is Louisiana State University and their team colors are purple and gold.)

I told her it hurt my eyes. I didn’t mention that I didn’t give a *@&!+ about LSU, despite being from Louisiana. Of course I’d never mention that to my wife either, given LSU is her alma mater…

[Vente]

@Thad_E_Ginathom

Thanks, I also left out the nervous breakdown, thinking that that was just too obvious

Truth be told I experienced that way more issues on the penguin os systems, but that’s likely biased by my hardware (mostly laptops) and the software I used, and how I used it
I heard that desktop systems are more reliable, which is why I will wait for a desktop if I ever try Linux again (very likely considering M$ just went insane or something)

[Tamas_Papp (Tamas K. Papp)]

I found a relatively new FOSS program for sending/receiving files from my Android phone to the Linux desktop:

GitHub - nozwock/packet: Quick Share client for Linux

It is dead simple, requires no extra apps on the phone (just Quick Share), and works reliably. This has been a long-standing itch for me that is now scratched

[hatsnp (Nuno Paulino)]

Copyparty is also a good option. Sure it needs termux but it’s a 5 minute setup and termux is always useful either way. I used it to backup my phone to my PC multiple times and it works great.

[luator (Felix Kloss)]

@Vente

6. Spend one afternoon to create a MS account Search the internet how to skip the account creation

It gets more obscure with each new version but its still possible to set up Windows with a local account (just did this a few days ago at work, as we needed a Windows machine to run a specific software)