I would have to check, but the resources on lex/yacc that I remember would make a point of their usability at scale. Generally it would be unlikely to wrote a faster lexer than what lex could do, but very likely to write a better parser than yacc. However writing a small lexer and/or parser _quickly_ would be easier with those tools than hand rolling one almost every time. Its great parser generators are still being developed and improved, and its fine to point out issues, but this article misses the point by a wide margin.
Readit Newsstepvhen commented on Why not to use (f)lex, yacc or bison tomassetti.me/why-you-sho... · Posted by u/rajnathani
stepvhen commented on By Quitting Social Media You Could Read 200 Books a Year qz.com/895101/in-the-time... · Posted by u/elorant
The author's math works out to a bit over 2 hours a book. I assume this was elided because thats wild to expect.
I would have been more convinced if the author posted their list of books, with page and/or word count, and math'd from that.
For what its worth, my speed is between 1 to 3 minutes a page, depending on size and subject matter. At best, 2 hours would get me through a novella, a moderate sized book of poems, or maybe one of Plato's dialogues. That actually sounds right. But most books are longer than that.
stepvhen commented on Stallman Still Heading the GNU Project lists.gnu.org/archive/htm... · Posted by u/rurban
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth how quickly people will let one bad cluster of comments negate a man's entire life work. I have already outlined my opinions on this matter elsewhere but I still hope this incident doesn't ruin RMS.
in situations like this "one bad cluster of comments" isn't considered a mistake or a lapse in judgement but a symptom of what a person actually thinks. RMS more than likely did not form those opinions on the spot and then forgot he had them afterward. and RMS has a public history that is congruent with those opinions and how he presented them.
im sure it leaves a bad taste in a lot of mouths what the leader of GNU has done and how he thinks.
The "Hard CC" isn't a power move its how things get done. I constantly check in to make sure I'm doing my job right and when I am and the problem isn't fixed, its time for it to be someone else's problem.
source: working in Support.
stepvhen commented on J can look like APL or English wjmn.github.io/posts/j-ca... · Posted by u/paliilap
I want to like J, but I find that most of my programs get too cluttered with @: all over the place. I see the k-means example shown here has a similar problem (7 usages of @: in only 4 lines of J). I find implicit programming a more elegant paradigm, but lambdas with pre-declared argument names (like x,y,z in k or α and ω in Dyalog APL) more comfortable to work with (and, at least for the time being, more productive).
I think part of the reason is that J's syntax for function composition is too heavy. In an improved visualization of J like the one shown here, I would find very interesting to try something like, for example, composition by simple juxtaposition and trains with under(or over)lining, maybe even playing with colors to indicate if verbs form a train or other composition. I understand that is a quite different problem from just substituting @: with o̲.
Nevertheless, very nice work. It is interesting to see the English and APL versions next to each other. The video is also very good.
> maybe even playing with colors to indicate if verbs form a train or other composition. I understand that is a quite different problem from just substituting @: with o̲.
With regards to how different of a problem that would be, J's syntax is context-sensitive. If you were to accurately identify trains and forks, you could not use regex, and would probably end up implementing a subset of the J parser.
If you only read one book, I suggest Don Quixote, the Grossman translation particularly, if only for the higher quality footnotes (compared to Lathrop's which is very well translated but poorly commented). The advantage here is DQ is really like four or five books of various types, and has a Yale Open Courseware series attached to it, so for any chapters you want to know more about, the resources are at hand. Through this book you can learn so, so much about literature.
But also, watching Don Quixote and Sancho's friendship develop is heartwarming. It was a book written for entertainment first, and just happened to be saturated in intense philosophical and literary quality.
My to-go favorite for relaxed summer evenings is "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov.
It is a literature masterpiece that magically adjusts to my current inner state. It can be both easy reading when I'm tired and just want to unwind, and thought provoking when I'm ready to be thoughtful.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Ma...
i actually just finished reading it last night. probably one of the best bits of fiction ive read.
stepvhen commented on How many holes does a straw have? [video] youtube.com/watch?v=JqqzI... · Posted by u/ColinWright
I’m a Marxist on this and I’m saying that a “big enough quantitative change equals a qualitative one”, meaning that in the first example if you stretch that cup long enough in order to almost change it into a plate then the cup is actually not a cup anymore (because of the quantitative “long enough”) and trying to answer the question “does a cup have a hole?” by presenting as a counter-example a “long enough” stretched out cup (which is not a cup anymore) serves no purpose. The second example with the straw which can be seen at the limit as a doughnut is similar. Granted, I’m not a topologist, just an admirer of Hume and of his fascination for mathematical induction and of people’s blind faith in it (stretching a cup until it’s no longer a cup can be seen as similar to some mathematical induction operations).
i think you might be making metaphysical claims, while the topologist is not. moreover, in topology, things dont.become other things or kinds of things; they stay as they are and the (simplified) statement "a staw is a donut" means "a straw is similar to a donut in that they share certain qualities." there is never any actual stretching of an object to change its metaphysical identity, that is a virtual process (and one that has rules and restrictions) that is used to help humans wrap their head around the concept of homotopy.
stepvhen commented on Which American accent do you have? (2007) youthink.com/quiz.cfm?obj... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
Got Neutral, but it was missing some utah valley isms that I'll slip into if careless.. for -> fer, creek -> crick, mountain -> mou'n (or other nt+vowel+n suffix, n and t are soft enough to not be there and the vowel is replaced by a pause; clinton -> cli-in/cli'n, mitten -> mih'n...), both -> bolth... The NYT one linked was interesting too, the heatmap included everything aligned and west of Utah minus Arizona, plus a bit of the northeast and great lakes areas. The NYT one was also interesting in that a few examples, like roundabout, had me think for a minute about what I'd say in a conversation vs what I expect to hear (traffic circle) in general from e.g. google maps and might say instead if primed with it.
is for->fer Utah? I'm in Indiana, born on the West Coast, and I dont know where I picked that up. I have also started to morph "car" and similar in the direction of "kerr," and (most embarrassingly) instead of "robot" in conversation ill say "robit." I havent been able to find out from those around me, or hear the same changes.
I have never done a web project before, so this has been a great learning experience. I still have some functionality to complete, but so far it has been pretty useful, even just the "available now" feature.
[0] https://xvetrd.tilde.institute/index.cgi
[1] https://kristaps.bsd.lv/kcgi/