When it comes to learning, and “doing things well” for it, you can’t be lazy. You simply can not be lazy.
You won’t get away with it. Eventually you will screw up. Maybe you will catch it, and maybe you won’t. Maybe it won’t matter to anyone else or maybe it will. The only thing that [...]
A program is one or more functions that work together.
– Stephen Bloch
(via PLT)
No amount of language design can force a programmer to write clear programs. If the programmer’s conception of the problem is badly organized, then his programs will also be badly organized. The extent to which a programming language can help a programmer to organize his problem is precisely the extent to which it provides features [...]
Carneades is an argument mapping application, with a graphical user interface, and a software library for building applications supporting various argumentation tasks.
The interesting thing about this is that it is written in both JavaFX and R6RS Scheme!
(via comp.lang.scheme)
The poster of this thread on the PLT discussion list wondered why Scheme code is so much slower than Python. It was interesting to see how the question was answered because there were at least 3 levels to the problem:
The source code to the solution itself
How the source code worked “under the covers” (it called [...]
While reading a discussion on the R6RS ratification, I came upon a comment explaining that there were features under consideration that were considered to be “Controversial or difficult but necessary“.
It is a virtuous goal towards which all of us ought to work in both our personal and professional life.
The computer is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. The computer is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and [...]
Is looking cool and going through the motions all that it takes to be a good programmer?
(via Zhong)
What would the Massachusetts Institute of Technology look like if we did not charge undergraduates tuition?
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. [...]