lokedhs · HackerTrans

2 months agodiscuss

Dyalog APL, along with other modern array languages that are related to it can all do imperative programming with loops etc.

There are certainly valid arguments that you hive certain things up when moving to an array language, but loops are not one of those.

That said, you won't use loops as much, but that's not because loops are not available.

lokedhs

2 months agodiscuss

Thanks, that makes sense. I guess most CSV data you see in the real world do have headers. Perhaps I was looking too much about thr default CSV export format from Excel, focusing on making sure it can always be parsed. And Excel doesn't have column headers.

lokedhs

2 months agodiscuss

I see. Kap tries to be as generic as possible, so assuming that the table has headers doesn't feel right. If the table dont have headers, and the reader assumes it does, then you'll potentially silently lose the first row of data.

lokedhs

2 months agodiscuss

The string to specify the column types is not a terrible idea. Does it have other configuration options, like whether or not to assume the first row is the headers, or specifying the separator character?

lokedhs

2 months agodiscuss

That wouldn't help much. People who don't use these languages doesn't understand that what makes the language different isn't the syntax. There are plenty of dialects that use English words instead of symbols (check out Ivy by Ron Pike for example).

The difference is much deeper, but the best way to understand it is probably to check out an introduction (there is a lot on youtube).

I'd personally be happy to give an introduction to anyone willing to listen, but this comment field is not the place to do it.

lokedhs

3 months agodiscuss

Which would have been fine. In fact, if you read the notes from the very first implementation of APL you'll find that it was noted that they considered the lack of proper flow control as a gap that needed to be filled later.

Yet, even as the 90's rolled around you could find people writing articles in Quote Quad arguing that suggestions to add structured programming constructs to APL was somehow going against the spirit of the language.

Kinda sad it took 50 years for that attitude to change.

lokedhs

3 months agodiscuss

That list is incomplete. Those are things that Lisp invented but is now commonplace. What it also invented but rather few languages also support is the capability of metaprogramming, being able to treat code as data.

lokedhs

3 months agodiscuss

This is a good article to understand the thinking behind array languages in general, and APL in particular.

However, I disagree with some points made. In particular, this one:

> Some people say the most important issue at hand is to improve the data structures of APL. Others say what APL needs is a little bit of Franglais, which in our terms is APLGOL. “If APL only had the while-statement, or the if-then-else, or the for-statement, it would become such a perfect language.” That’s ridiculous. And it’s silly to say that if APL had arrays of arrays, all of our troubles would disappears. In point of fact, what will happen is that the amount of troubles would just grow almost exponentially if that happened.

This turned out to be untrue. And the resistance in the community to do this is partly what lead to its loss of popularity.

Modern array languages, and indeed most APL implementations, have these things and they did not create troubles. In fact, it made them practical and easier to learn, because it allows users to use the style that suits the problem at hand the best. And in some cases, a pure array solution is just not appropriate.

lokedhs

3 months agodiscuss

To be fair, most languages in use today are just FORTRAN with diffrent syntax.

Both Lisp and array language programmers are sadly somewhat rare.

lokedhs

4 years agodiscuss

I've never used voice in Matrix, but I was sure that it was implemented using Jitsi on the backend?

lokedhs

4 years agodiscuss

This is precisely the realisation that is the basis of Qubes OS. The entire system is basically an admission that you cannot hope to preserve security on a system where you have users running stuff.

Just allow them to do anything, but isolate the environments such that it doesn't matter if one is compromised, because there is nothing to compromise other than the application itself.

Strongly recommended if you're willing to live without GPU support.

lokedhs

4 years agodiscuss

On the desktop perhaps, but I tried for the longest time to connect using a mobile browser and it just wouldn't let me.

I ended up having to go to a computer to connect with using a browser.

lokedhs

4 years agodiscuss

Quite honestly I would be love to hear an argument as to why anyone would use zoom over jitsi. I'm not trying to be controversial, and I readily admits I've only used zoom maybe twice, but I saw nothing that was better than jitsi.

I also had performance issues on zoom, but I'm willing to ignore that since most other people don't seem to mention those issue so that's probably on me.

lokedhs

5 years agodiscuss

Yes. A device doesn't even need to support reading and writing. The driver simply registers some name in /dev and the userspace code opens it and does ioctl.

You could also register a name under /proc. There is really no reason to have custom system calls.

lokedhs

5 years agodiscuss

In Singapore they had massive outbreaks in foreign workers dormitories one year ago. Now they have apparently seen new cases among the previously infected, suggesting that immunity starts to wear off after about a year. I'd definitely get vaccinated even if you already had it.

lokedhs

5 years agodiscuss

Except that its numbers are underspecified and cannot be used safely outside of a certain range. The spec explicitly states that the precision of numbers is not defined, meaning that N and N+1 may be the same number, and its behaviour would depend on the parser you're using.

The number one rule when creating a serialisation format should be that serialisation and deserialisation is predictable. It's quite remarkable that two of the most popular formats doesn't do this.

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen any major security issues caused by this.

lokedhs

5 years agodiscuss

It doesn't copy all the good things about the Unix shell though.

The reason people are comfortable with the POSIX shell is because you use the same syntax for typing commands manually as you do for scripts. But, you're going to have a hard time finding people who prefers writing:

    Remove-Item some/directory -recursive

Rather than

    rm -fr some/directory

People who write shellscripts are often not seeing themselves writing a "program". They are just automating things they would do manually. Going to an IDE in this case is not something you'd consider.

I happen to be very aware of all the pitfalls in POSIX shell, and it's rare that I see a shellscript where I cannot immediately point out multiple potential problems, and I definitely agree that most scripts should probably be written in a language that doesn't contain so many guns aimed at the user's feet. I'm just pointing out a likely reason why people are not adopting powershell in the huge numbers that Microsoft may have hoped for.

lokedhs

5 years agodiscuss

I've done the same, with the only difference being that I bought the stuff a few years back. I never enabled cloud management nor remote access though so I think I'm OK for now.

Not buying any more hardware from them though, unless things significantly change.

lokedhs

6 years agodiscuss

Need? There are a lot of things people use but doesn't "need".

Can one make good use of gigabit Internet connectivity? Yes, definitely. I wouldn't want to go back. If that qualifies as "need", I don't know, but it sure is convenient.

lokedhs

6 years agodiscuss

1 saturate a 1 Gb/s connection when downloading things from steam. That's one of the few cases where if the speed drops below 700 or so I get annoyed.

As you suggest, 10 Gb/s would be fun, but the time saved in practice would be quite minimal. I guess being able to play a game after 2 minutes instead of 6 would be nice.

Then again, I remember back in the late 90's when I got my first broadband connection. 10 Mb/s Ethernet connector installed in the wall of my apartment, I was amazed at the speed. I remember being shocked at how I could download a CD image (a Linux distribution, most likely) in only 20 minutes. It felt like the future had arrived.

Now, those speeds would mean several seconds to download a regular web page. I guess once a capability becomes available, you'll find a way to make use of it. I suspect that's true for 10 Gb/s internet as well.

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