News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

hyperswine

Re:Low Cost Robot Arm on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @02:33AM (#39902939)
wow, thats really amazing. Are you a hardware engineer?
Re:GitHub Disabled the Xz Repo on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @02:31AM (#39902932)
One hell of a social engineering attack
Re:Niklaus Wirth has died on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @08:03PM (#38861873)
Will be missed.
do you happen to know any?
systems programming and HDL are quite enlightening, though bordering EE. Really gets deep into how computers work and what they really are, so you are not just dealing with a compiler black box on a high level language. Being able to understand and write your own device driver is great

for maths, I think being able to quickly read binary and hex or at least quickly gauge the magnitude of a hex number is pretty underappreciated. Multi variate calculus and linear alg was also very useful in general in reasoning about programs especially those involving lists, vecs, matrices, and ML

compilers are great too but I feel like most resources and thinking around it is a bit too focused on parsing and the frontend, not enough on the "essence" of languages and compilers, abstraction, and more recent developments in static analysis other than simple typing

Re:Programming languages that are “finished”? on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @03:30AM (#33606727)
StandardML or maybe OCaml
Re:What will be the second order effects widespread AI? on Thursday November 10, 2022 @06:20AM (#33544940)
A functional society

Ask HN: What are we all missing?

There's AI, quantum computing, lab grown meat, genetic engineering, security and data, better iterations of current technology, and so on. These get talked about often.What things arent being talked about that much, that you think may have a significant impact in the next 20 years?

( Read More... | 2 comments | on HN )

Ask HN: What part of the computing hierarchy can be most improved?

In terms of hardware, systems software, end user software. I think higher level software is an area that can be improved greatly but Im curious if there are any opinions on the lower levels of the compute stack.Perhaps the hardware landscape we're in is a shallow minimum that we're just stuck with. Perhaps other computer architectures like Lisp would allow much more efficient hardware in...

( Read More... | 1 comment | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:23PM (#32844855)
why google if the docs are great and the lang server/IDE actually shows good docs + examples on hover
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:21PM (#32844837)
absolutely
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:20PM (#32844830)
Ruby is quite perfect for simpler, web based kinds of things from my experience. BUt one thing that always puts me off is that `start, do, end` syntax
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:19PM (#32844818)
A bunch of them already show up in languages like rust. Generics are the more ergnomic impl of HKTs and with ownership after you pass an entity it off to another context, you cant use it again, which I guess isnt exactly linear per se
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:17PM (#32844803)
Having the "same syntax but in multiple different contexts" is a good idea in general I feel
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:16PM (#32844796)
Ooh this is something Ive been pondering too. Perhaps a transformer model like GPT but focused primarily on language semantics and such. Especially the point about cognitive load - which I find to be quite undersaid
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:15PM (#32844782)
Hm, Im hearing a lot about REPL and GC
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @07:15PM (#32844779)
Interesting
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @05:34AM (#32834950)
Id be fine with delphi if their IDE was available on other systems like linux or mac. I also kinda find fpc a bit verbose and clunky. Something like an elm interface would make sense I think + the points you laid out
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @05:33AM (#32834939)
I guess you could use arr.for_each() or arr.map()
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @05:32AM (#32834937)
What specifically about JS do you think you are attracted to most? Maybe the clean syntax and dynamic typing? npm?
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @02:22AM (#32833876)
I kinda just like using the default os shell with simple cargo run/test/etc. I want to understand why REPL is more and more used, in langs like julia, elixir, etc. Do you guys find it more conveninent or something? I do like elixir playground though
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @12:28AM (#32833319)
really? Thats the complete opposite of my vision
Re:Ask HN: What would be your “perfect” programming language? on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @12:27AM (#32833317)
lol
What kinds of exotic syntax, Lifetime annotations and parameterising impl Trait like in returns? Also thoughts on carbon?
Why not just use elm?
A lot of langs have a std lib namespace (c++, rust for example) where you could just do `use std::fs::*` and write `read_to_string(path)`. Even better if those convienience functions were placed in `std::prelude` so that it would be immediately known to your project namespace.

I do like the idea of a better dev ops system. Maybe with better github workflow integration or a custom git frontend? Then everything would be coupled together a bit tighter with the advantage of an ergonomic, uniform interface to do your devops

I personally hate lisp syntax, maybe im just no used to it or something but the (brackets (and (stuff))) feels a bit weird. Is there a reason why you want lisp syntax specifically?
Can you elaborate on the no higher order functions, and the no modules but namespaces part?
An actual functional lang server that doesnt randomly die on you and tries its best to infer your intent would be nice.

I like that last point too, as copilot I think is going in the right direction with "step 1" of full optimisation. Maybe step 2 would be some AI based optimiser scheme to transform IR into optimal cpu/gpu ISA. Though maybe stability would be a problem

Older »