So glad to see him articulate what I've always felt about x-exprs.
It often gets overlooked because we all understandably want to hype something in a language that's really cool, original, abstract or otherwise reflects well on us. But being able to intuitively, iteratively and rapidly work on XML & HTML files is lush, and the IDE with built-in REPL is just gravy for this purpose.
Even if working on XML and HTML files is boring and a technically solved problem in most languages, it feels better in Racket to me, and the essay did explain why it feels better.
>some staff "sympathetic" to the Muslim Brotherhood
I think you're accidentally overstating the strength of their case, probably just the clause-level equivalent of a typo.
They actually said:
> some of whose staff have links to organisations sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.
So, just to be clear, they're excluding anything with (interpreting the vague language generously) <=3 degrees of separation from the Muslim Brotherhood (organisation -> staff member -> an organisation -> Muslim Brotherhood) as a reliable source.
Totally unscientific, but to put this in a kind of very loose and silly context, Facebook claims that its users are on average connected to every other user by 3.57 degrees of separation. I suspect that the figure for this kind of connection is actually, relatively, much higher, but I sincerely doubt it's all that much higher than 4 (i.e. enough to make this sort of connection relevant) - especially when you think that these aren't even friendship relationships, but something so much weaker!
So, I just started learning Haskell and I learned a bit of Standard ML in the past.
I was/am expecting Haskell to be broadly similar to ML - what's the main way the two languages differ?
edit: never mind, from the reddit discussion you linked:
> while these languages are undoubtedly strongly typed, they are not referentially transparent by default, and actually embrace some levels of imperative programming.
Especially for cases like that - if someone has more 'sway' on Wikipedia than you, they can (and will often) just say something like "Thanks for the source - I'll verify and if it says what you think it says, I'll add it in to the article." Then do nothing, ever again. In fact, unreliable citations, or citations that don't actually say what the citer thinks they say, that can be easily checked online are far more acceptable on Wikipedia than citing a book.
Inertia like this leaves useless pages like "Oplomachi" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oplomachi) live way after they should have been merged, as well as leading to the deletion of useful pages/sections/references.
The major articles, which are more likely to get attention, tend to be less dysfunctional than niche interests. That said, there are of course far more articles relating to niche interests than there are major articles.
Theoretically 6 & 7 should be a big red flag (the biggest possible UX red flag) to Google regarding the specific Quora page visited - I know that I almost never see Quora results in search, for example.
Following Bartosz Goralewicz's post about how well botting works to manipulate Google in...2014 I think? there's a small black hat industry that's sprung up around imitating this kind of user reaction, and it does reportedly work to remove pages from Google. I've had my suspicions that it's been used against sites I've worked on a few times (2 or 3).
TL:DR; Quora should generally not be ranking so well (but Google's complex enough to be unpredictable on a page-by-page basis these days).
I don't personally think that is a hatchet job - the quote seems harsh, but it's not the full extent of the review.
> The sublime moments come when Donen calms down and concentrates on melody.
That's a pretty glowing quote!
Overall, the review gives two stars - bad, but not exactly a hatchet job. The criticisms are fair, and well-justified - and Syd Barrett is a pretty cool point of comparison. If anything, I would say it suggests that the hatchet job really is dead if this is the worst that can be found - it's negative, but it really works to justify its negativity and struggles throughout to pick out bright spots.
A hatchet job, in my opinion, must be unremittingly & deliberately brutal, or slash quickly and leave the target all-but-beheaded. Coldplay saw many examples of the former, as reviewers struggled to explain why mediocrity in sufficient quantity became something somehow worse, while I think it was Terrorizer magazine (maybe Metal Hammer?) who managed a one-word review of Fall Out Boy.
What's wrong with writing JSON by hand? I've never touched YAML before, but JSON seems pretty clear to me - doesn't feel much different to writing a list naturally.
Is YAML one of those things that proper professional programmers need but us amateurs can botch our way around?
I agree. Game dev is a very different way to learn to code, and one that's more accessible when you don't have specific guidance.
If you just want to do indie game dev, it's great, but it doesn't transfer and it teaches bad habits without the basis you mention in bits & bytes, data structures & algorithms.
While programming in general is highly abstract & often requires you to form a roughly analogous model of the situation in your head, game-dev programming usually involves you working directly on that model. It's very physical. Move this to that location, shrink those, animate the other, fade that out of existence. It's much easier to see the effect of your code in a game engine than through programming a sorting algorithm and logging the results to console.
For that reason, it's a great way to see if programming might be something you enjoy. It's not a great way to learn programming.
edit: apologies, I didn't see xyzzy_plugh's comment before making my own.
Just commenting about Facebook ads, the rest is pretty accurate in my experience -
On FB, that's the remarketing side, and it's a lot more manual. Generally the goals and data will be selected by the advertiser themselves. It works, but it's a bit blunt-weapon-y - let's say it'll catch 10% of people who are absolutely going to convert, and 90% of people who are absolutely uninterested for campaign X. All percentages here are pulled from nowhere, they're just to give you a general idea.
Remarketing is popular because conversions. Also, if you're well-off or otherwise a desirable target, you cost more to reach through Facebook - so you're likely to see more remarketing campaigns, because automatic campaigns will adjust to target less expensive individuals until they've gone through all of them.
Facebook's automatic targeting is a lot more sophisticated, and much more in line with the suggestion engine idea. Let's say it will catch 0.2% of people who are absolutely going to convert, 9.8% of people who might possibly convert, 45% of people who vaguely appreciate the ad being there without converting (including people who might Like/Share/comment on the post), and 45% of people for whom the ad doesn't really connect. It's not usually quite as powerful for conversion, but on average it's pretty accurate at guessing if you'll be interested.
Also, StumbleUpon was a decent suggestion engine once upon a time - if they could actually design a proper extension that did something similar, I'm sure it would be a success.
Looking at Steam, there's a huge undercurrent of games that don't get pushed, don't appeal to the hardcore, but that - in aggregate - sell a very noticeable amount.
Hidden object games, educational games for children, iOS and Android ports.
In the case of the former two - with no real marketing, and with a great deal of competition, these still fly off the digital shelves, and are not expensive to produce. There are people who want these games, and Steam honestly is not doing the best job of getting in touch with these people. Integration with the rest of the Facebook ecosystem would really really help push these games towards the people who want to buy them.
For the last option, people often buy these games when they felt good about playing the iOS/Android game and want to continue the experience (or in rare cases, play a more full-featured version - usually the PC port is incomplete, but sometimes it does contain unique bonuses). I imagine Facebook would have a killer app if it could sync your iOS/Android saved games (or even just achievements) to the PC version of the save game.
TL:DR; I think there's a huge opportunity for a major casual gaming platform, and I think Facebook's pretty well placed to be that platform.
I guess that makes sense actually, I think I only even ran into an issue where bytecode was actually relevant because I'm just a hobbyist programmer. So I like to explore things that have only marginal utility and don't have anyone else to help out with specialist stuff. I can imagine how a professional developer wouldn't ever want or need to deal with bytecode.
> [Oracle]: even Java programmers don't learn about Java bytecode.
Uh, what? I'd hardly call myself a dedicated Java programmer and I've learned about Java bytecode. I had to, and wanted to. I'd guess most professional Java programmers would consider it a point of pride to do the same!