I don't know, but for me Perl has not died at all. I still use it for smallish scripts and some CGI. Maybe I am an old retired fart, but it is the tool I reach for, when the problem looks like Perl-ish. Like I reach for C or other languages when I need that kind of things.
agreed. it's often in my toolbox -- mostly since I already know it, and I prefer semi-colon-driven syntax -- but it's just one of a few languages I use.
I have never been much info blogging, but I am in the habit of writing things down in small text files on my computer. It has almost the same benefits as a personal blog that has no outside readers, and a bit less stress about having to write something or worry about what I can say in public...
I hate titles like "Why don't you use blah-blah". Usually because blah-blah might be an acceptable (maybe good?) solution to a problem which I don't have. Let me ask in return: Why should I even care about blah-blah. If the first (two?) paragraphs don't give a clear answer to that, never mind!
For what it's worth, the article is the author arguing why they don't personally use blah-blah (Dependent Types) despite being a leading academic in the field (PLT) where blah-blah is frequently touted as the holy grail of that field, and justifies his experience using blah-blah-2 (Higher Order Logic), a tried and true "sophomoric" choice that seems dusty and crusty by comparison (literally, PLT undergrads learn how to formalize systems using blah-blah-2-reduced frequently in their sophomore years, as a way to learn SML). The rest of the article is really only interesting for the PLT/proof automation community since it is pretty niche. His conclusions is that you don't need the shiny new blah-blah to do things, often in more complicated ways, if older blah-blah-2s can do things mostly just as well and have the benefit of simplicity and ease of automation.
The title currently on HN has dropped the quotes that are in the article title: the article is not titled Why don't you use dependent types? (i.e. asking that question of the readers) but is titled "Why don't you use dependent types?" (i.e. the author quotes that question and answers it in the blog post).
FairPhone Moments looks like a good idea. But why does it require a mechanical switch? I am not going to upgrade my FP4 just for that, but might be willing to install an app that does the same kind of thing
Slightly off topic, but I once had a Siamese cat. I could not teach her to fetch a ball, but she could very well teach me to throw again. And it had to be a yellow foam ball - none of the other colors were of any interest.
I can not make out how those things were chosen. A lot of Ikea furniture, a random selection of bollards, Dolly Parton, and a Yellow-Spotted Millipede.
The philosophy of nonexisting things can be confusing. Most people agree things like zombies, ghosts, and vampires do not actually exist in the physical world. But they do exist as concepts, and we have a fair understanding of what the words mean, how such things should behave if we meet them in a story.
Many abstract concepts also have a questionable reality. Like "concept" and "reality".
The belief in (non?)existence of things can be a matter of life and death - think how many people have been killed because of their religion.
> The philosophy of nonexisting things can be confusing
This comment hit a raw nerve, and tied many things in my own understanding.
Because concepts can depict non-existing things, we have to learn via feedback from experience "operationally". Operational meaning by action in the real world. And, language and imagination can create concepts which have no ground truth even though they may exist in the "inter-subjective" reality created by people among themselves. Religion is one such inter-subjective reality. It explains the scientific method, and why that was needed and has been successful to cut through the mass of concepts that make no sense operationally. It explains why the formalism of math/science have been successful to depict concepts operationally and not natural language. And, ties into the recent podcast of Sutton who mentions that LLMs are a dead-end from the perspective that they cannot create ground-truth via experience and feedback - they are stuck in token worlds.
But, concept-creation and assigning a symbol to it is a basic act of abstraction. When it is not grounded, it could become inconsistent and go haywire or when very consistent it becomes robotic and un-interesting. As humans, we create a balance with imagination to create concepts which make things interesting which are then culled with real world experience to make it useful.
Vampires and zombies surround you every day. And I don't mean the people who you consider too exciting, or the ones you consider too boring, or the toxoplasmosis carriers. I mean how nearly every abstract concept is in fact a skeuomorphic metaphor. Try it for yourself.
I hate the way the web site wobbles up and down for no reason. And even after scrolling down to the end of the front page, I don't have any idea why this should be a good idea, or what kind of problems it might solve. Meh!
Wish I was like you. I have NOT touched them since MS acquisition. And now I don't have access to the email linked with the account anymore. Guess they are just gonna train the *it out of my data. Really really regret signing up for that service.
That was one very good reason for me to choose a FairPhone. (Almost?) everything is user replaceable. It has been in my pocket for a could of years and I have not needed to replace anything yet. But I do like having the option.
Samsungs Galaxy S21 is also really simple to fix stuff. The back is made of relatively flexible plastic connected via glue, which you can easily get under by blowing into the charging/speaker port. Once your inside its all just a lot of screws.
Had to reattach the battery ribbon cable after my phone fell one too many times (I could have also just fixed it by pressing on the back in the right place, but I only really figured that out after I disassembled the phone).
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