nendroid · HackerTrans

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Haha how about no. Why the fuck should I follow your rules when you falsely accused me of an attack. I didn't launch a single attack. Literally cite a source.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Case in point, This guy turned what was just fact checking into something personal. See, it's not about being civil. That's just the way people like to think they are. The reality is most people can't accept being wrong and they can't accept opinions they disagree with and the irony is everyone believes they're above this base behavior.

No one is above it.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Nix has a multitude of drawbacks the biggest being learnability.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

>learnability

I feel this is the single most important causative factor for language popularity.

Javascript may have much more bad parts to the language than say Haskell but it's far easier for a programmer to learn all the bad parts of javascript and avoid those bad parts then for him to learn all the good parts of haskell and use those good parts.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

"In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm that uses statements that change a program's state."

The above quote is ripped straight out of wikipedia's definition of imperative programming showing that what I said wasn't a misunderstanding but an official definition.

The definition of imperative programming must include mutation otherwise it's isomorphic to functional programming. Because functional programming is simply statements without mutation.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

I see no personal attack. Technically speaking.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Welp most of my accounts don't have much karma to even downvote. I have some that went past 800 but I abandoned them because I like to tell people how I disagree.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Imperative_programming

"In computer science, imperative programming is a programming paradigm that uses statements that change a program's state."

You will see from the quotation above. The very act of changing state is an imperative style by definition. The purpose of mutable state is for it to change. So mutable state = imperative instructions.

>You don't have to listen to me, but you should seek out a second opinion from a competent person who can get through to you.

I'll throw that advice back at you. But you don't need to find that person. I'm right here in front of you telling you how it is.

>Everything I said in my last post is basic, well-understood computing knowledge. If you want me to disagree with it, you need to find yourself a competent computer scientist to aid you in framing your ideas in a way that is comprehensible with respect to the subject matter.

Yeah but you didn't account for the practical parts of computing. The theoretical parts often deal with machines that can't be realized in reality. It's pretty much common sense. How do you represent a function call without mutable state? How can you have a machine do an algebraic operation without mutable state? The very act of holding that information in state requires a state change meaning to even load a lambda machine with a program requires an imperative instruction.

We're also in a corner of computer science that isn't formally well defined. A language can be formally defined as pure but there's no formal theory for systems design and how the system overall influences the content of a pure SQL string in Haskell.

I define a haskell sql string to have syntactically correct SQL. The external requirements of my database are forcing me to define a string this way, is that a side effect? There's no formal rules in literature so it's just raw talking points... you won't be able to find an official source stating who's right or who's wrong.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

I've been here for over 10. I've had accounts with lots of karma generated by simply agreeing with everything I read or just commenting with useless side suggestions. T

I've experimented a lot. Without changing tone just disagreeing with a popular opinion is all that you need to get voted down. I've even experimented with emotionally charged impolite popular opinions. People will vote you up just because they agree.

If I wanted a shitload of karma. I know how to get it. Removing one or two of the more "expressive" sentences above will in my experience not do much for a thread that is very very biasedly supporting FP. FP is great, I prefer it but most people cannot maintain such neutrality for their favorite paradigm. Or favorite anything for that matter.

Not to mention if you recall a while back someone posted a GPT-3 AI generated story that got voted to the front page. Most commenters didn't realize it was AI generated. A select few were able to figure it out and they posted comments that were vehemently voted down for not being in agreement with the general sentiment. HN is a technical crowd but they are not above common mob behavior.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/16/21371049/gpt3-hacker-news...

Scroll down to the picture. The person stated facts but his facts were misinterpreted to be attacks and he was told to be civil by someone who thought of himself as level headed. The reality is that the levelheaded person is as biased as one can get.

You think you're helping me. You think I'm putting up stubborn resistance to your help. Is that the case or am I just simply describing to you some of the insight I've gotten from messing around with HN for over a decade? Did I in fact put up stubborn resistance or am I just conversing with you and stating a disagreement? Hard to say.

Your immediate assumptions are no different than the "levelheaded" dude from earlier. Let's just be clear, I'm fully aware of the "expressive" areas in my posts.

You will also note that many of the posters assumed I'm attacking FP and that I don't have much experience with FP. All wrong assumptions. I have lots of experience and I prefer FP over other paradigms. I am simply stating that I disagree with the fact that algebra is the future of programming and can replace all imperative programming.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

>The stdout buffer.

The stdout buffer is not part of the haskell language, it is part of the OS. The haskell runtime reads the haskell language and accesses the buffer. Neither the runtime or the buffer is part of the haskell language, get it? That's why haskell is called "pure" Category Hask: https://wiki.haskell.org/Hask#:~:text=Hask%20is%20the%20cate....

>Just because mutation isn't explicit doesn't mean it isn't there.

So? I never said it wasn't there. I'm basically saying as far as the programmer is concerned when operating within the haskell language no haskell language primitive is mutating. stdout buffer is not a haskell primitive... it is an OS primitive.

>That's completely untrue. Imperative languages can be implemented as a subset of functional ones[1] and vice versa.

This is true theoretically, but physically but you can't actually build a functional machine. Lisp isn't actually a functional language and you'll see from the instruction primitives that the lisp machine is more or less a turing machine that mutates memory.

>No language can do anything if it isn't implemented in a machine.

So? Never said this wasn't true.

>A machine isn't "imperative"[2], it's a pile of atoms that do what atoms do, without paradigm or instruction.

The machine you build is limited by what you build it with. You have a limited set of atoms. Therefore you can only build a machine with limited amount of state. In order to use the state efficiently the state must be mutable. Mutable state means imperative instructions. You can imitate functional programming with such a machine and you can sort of solve the memory problem with garbage collection. But with what paradigm do you implement the garbage collector? Imperative primitives.

> The reason nobody has, is because it doesn't matter: any Turing complete language can be used to implement any other language[3].

No the real reason is also because it's physically impossible. A physical translation of a actual lambda machine cannot be realized. What they can make is register based machine that are more efficient at compiling certain functional languages that's it. All machines we build have some sort of state that changes.

>Don't assert it, Prove it. Show me one computable function that cannot be computed using boolean algebra.

Sure I can prove what I said. But you're changing the problem from IO and ST to a computable function which I assume is algebraic. So of course all of algebra can be used to create all algebraic functions. I'll just prove what I said rather than what you changed it to.

Assuming mutation is an axiomatic operation that cannot be built from immutable operations, you will see that no mutation operation exists in algebra indicating that mutation cannot ever exist in any theorem of algebra:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Algebraic_operation#:~:text=In%2....

You will see that no algebraic operation involving mutation exists in the above document.

>Try to implement `volatile` in C without using another language. Does that mean C fails to model real hardware? No, because it has `volatile` to get volatile semantics! Just like Haskell has IO to get I/O side-effects. Or ST to get mutation semantics.

No but I can implement volatile with imperative primitives from other languages. All I am saying is you cannot implement ST and IO with functional primitives.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

>Let's just gloss over the increasingly-common smoke from wildfires... :)

Yeah that part is bad. Not sure how to rate CA in general when you account for this as the wild fires only started getting crazy recently. For most of my life overall the fires weren't a problem.

>Certainly some of the sunniest in the English-speaking world. Personally (as an ex-Londoner), I overheat a lot and actually miss a good rainstorm from time-to-time - but your evaluation does line up with most people's, I think.

Scientifically it is actually rated as some of the best in terms of closest to something like room temperature throughout the year. It's a climate zone called the mediterranean climate zone. It exists in a few places in the world.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

For the south bay it's not 3 months of the year, 100F lasts for like 2-3 weeks at most (actually realistically it's more like 95-100). It's the same for socal. Socal has about 2-3 weeks in the summer where the temps become sweltering.

Even within LA the temperatures vary, the closer you are to the coastline the better the weather.

I know because I grew up in the south bay, I lived in SF for 2 years and lived in LA for 10 years.

What's overall better in socal is that the winters are much more mild. In the south bay the worst you can get is ice in the morning and really cold nights. Socal winters just has a very slightly lower temperature than spring.

Not trying to say NorCal has better weather than Socal. I'm saying NorCal has some of the best weather in the world despite it not having the "perfect" weather that Socal has. The entire CA coast line is afterall still in the mediterranean climate zone.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Technically everything in the universe can be modelled by math. If it isn't modelled yet we can make something up to model it. Math is just axioms and theorems so yeah, you're not wrong.

I'm speaking in less technical terms. For example in general mathematical equations or axioms represent immutable concepts. In programming, variables mutate and change... very different from what math traditionally represents. Haskell is an attempt to segregate the immutability (the math part) away from the less "mathy" part (the mutations/IO).

Maybe math is too broad of a term. I probably meant to say "algebra" can't model all of programming, or whatever more suitable word that may or may not exist.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Of course but bay is still one of the best in the world.

Also the bay encompasses more than SF, while SF and daly city have notoriously foggy weather, the rest of the bay area is quite good.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

I think the migration out of the bay will make it a more reasonable place to live. We do have some of the best weather in the world. I'm going to gamble on staying.

Hopefully this isn't like detroit.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

>I think you’re getting downvoted (I can’t) because of your first statement.

nobody is reading this stuff anymore. It's just you and me. You have over 800 karma. You CAN downvote and you ARE. There is no theatrics, you're just voting me down, stop.

>I do not consider sqlString to be impure.

It's not "impure." But it doesn't change the fact the way you you write your SQL has imperative side effects within the database. You can trigger a deadlock in the database from within your pure haskell code if you wanted to.

It's not a philosophical thing. You absolutely have to consider imperative side effects even in your pure program.

That is reality. The philosophical part is whether you can call it "pure" or "impure."

>If you want to think that sqlString is “impure” outside of the context of execution (i.o.w. a Monad...) then sure, that’s valid, but so is my assertion that it is pure since it is referentially transparent. It exists in the void as just another string until the programmer decides to make it into an IO value that’s executed for its impure side effects (the only reason we do anything in computing, right?)

Yeah so? I never said your assertion was wrong. I never said that it was "impure." But I did say that you have to account for side effects in your program. Example:

   sqlString = "SELECT * FROM ASKDLSADSA DFLDSJFL DLSKFJSDLKFD SDLFKSDJF DSLKFJSDF SDFKLSDFJ "

Is a valid "pure" string, but will trigger a syntax error in your database. You have to account for all of this within your "pure" program. Haskell eliminates side effects in the category Hask but does not actually eliminate the need for YOU to deal with those side effects. This part is an objective fact.

Here's a better way to put it. For this specific example, the impurity of the real world leaks into your pure haskell program by affecting the contents of the string. The type itself can be seperate from the real world but the contents of the string reflects knowledge and impurity from the real world.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

It does. You're completely and utterly wrong. You don't understand.

I'll reiterate my example a SQL string is pure. Just like the IO monad is pure. However when you're coding the sql string in your "pure" haskell program you have to account for imperative side effects related to the SQL itself.

   sqlString = "UPDATE X SET X.Y=2 WHERE X.Z = 1"

sqlString is technically "pure" but that doesn't mean you can treat the UPDATE command in the string as a pure concept.

It doesn't matter how "pure" your language or sqlString is... the concept of a mutation leaks over into the language and the programmer still has to deal with the concept.

Like you're original post said. The interpretation of the monad is different, and the programmer still needs to account for this in how he composes things together. The concept leaks across boundaries.

edit>>this whole karma thing is unfair. Posters can't vote down responses. I simply state my opinion the person responds then votes me down because he disagrees. What's the point of even having a discussion?

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

I never said it's not pure. Just like how a SQL string in haskell is fully pure. Doesn't change the fact that you're using pure primitives to control a process that is fundamentally unpure. The concept leaks across the boundary.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

I refer to business problems but in reality what I said applies to all problems.

nendroid

hace 6 añosdiscuss

Not all aspects of programming can be described by math.

Mutations and IO are very critical parts of programming and the two areas where FP breaks down. Even the IO Monad leaks the imperative nature of the program over to the programmer.

The only way pure FP can sort of work is if there are heavy frameworks abstracting IO and mutation away from the programmer. If you're not doing IO or mutating something then your caching framework, database or Haskell runtime is doing it for you. Additionally like I said earlier, Even if your database is handling mutation for you, you still end up embedding mutation commands into the strings of your pure FP function. Updating a database in haskell still necitates the haskell user to place the mutation command in a SQL string.

My point is, that math is not the complete solution to the programming problem. What FP allows the programmer to do is to use the framework to segregate combinatorial logic away from mutation and IO. Your combinators will always be more composeable and modular but your IO and mutation functions will be less modular but they still have to exist.