jimws

This tutorial uses Pascal as the implementation language. Is there a similar tutorial done in a language that is mainstream today? Like Python? Go? Rust?

I am one of those who moved from Perl to Python. As a Perl coder I loved writing clever hacks. After a few months of Python I began appreciating simplicity and elegance in code.

Take a look at https://github.com/susam/texme. It does not introduce a new Markdown flavor. Just the regular Markdown + support for Latex.

> But there is a point where using a simple and elegant tool stops being simple and elegant - it can only be tortured so far outside its intended use-case before it stops being useful.

An alternative tool I've begun to like is TeXMe: https://github.com/susam/texme. It is like Markdeep but minimal--does not support any fancy features. Just plain Markdown and Latex. Very useful for note taking in a file that can publish itself. I don't think I can draw fancy diagrams while taking notes live so I don't need diagrams. So this simple tool serves me well.

When a website disappears completely, there is no web server to respond with HTTP 300.

Problems like this can be easily caught by linters like eslint or standardjs.

These open source groups could surely use a chatbot to log the chats to some place for archival and make the archive searchable, can't they?

By the way, I find IRC/Slack good for real-time support. By nature of being real-time support, some questions get repeated over and over again. The repeition is typically mitigated by adding trivia bots to the channel that can provide answers to frequently asked questions.

The best solution I have seen for archived solutions and to avoid repetition are Stack Overflow (encourage users to post questions on SO with relevant tag) and mailing list with a mailing list archive.

Open space offices is another similar fad that I cannot stand. Who wants to be at the constant risk of being interrupted and be distracted by side-channel chatter!

The situation has become so bad that I cannot find many companies I can work for that has not succumbed to this fad. The only workplace that works for me now are the ones where I can work remotely.

This is something that bothers me a lot. I have traveled to the UK a lot and oh, what a fine nation! I love being in the UK. Good weather, amazing people, great food and drinks!

The literary culture is still very strong in the UK. But what happened to its science and technology landscape? Merely a century ago, it was at the forefront of science and technology. Where did the UK lose its steam? Anyone with historical insights into the UK care to shed more light on this?

> Most people don't have side projects.

Do you have any citation to back this up?

My anecdata indicates otherwise. Most people I meet in IT do have side projects. They may not be popular or successful but they exist.

I think you can use ".intel_syntax noprefix" with GNU as to assemble Intel assembly.

What are the advantages of pipenv compared to plain pip and python3 -m venv/virtualenv?

The latter works fine for me. What are good reasons to switch to pipenv?

There was a recent thread[1] that shows how to setup Lisp development environment in Vim.[2] If you know Vim already, then check it out.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21735148

[2] https://susam.in/blog/lisp-in-vim-with-slimv-or-vlime/

Yes, the project is disingenuous. It claims there is a bug but really it is just functioning as designed.

Just provide the commands again as text. I don't have to wait for the entire asciinema to replay. I can ctrl+f what I need and copy-paste.

Thank you for making this point. Plain text is really underappreciated. When I visit a project README, I don't want to wait for the entire replay. I just to skip to the part of the documentation that is relevant to me.

A short asciinema replay can be useful for a quick demo buy don't let that substitute your text documentation. I may watch the replay only once but I will come back to a well written documentation again and again.

This did sound like a disclosure to me as well. A disclaimer would be something like, "Use it. Your mileaage may vary. I am not responsible for any troubles you encounter whilen using it."

This is an awesome project with awesome write up. I miss the days of pixelated console games. The constrained environment led to so much creativity. Are there any new games like this being written anymore?

Lisp had this kind of interactive programming support for a long time using SLIME and Emacs. Why isn't this a more common feature in the more recent languages?

> Looks just like PDF.

It's better than PDF. Text in PDF is not reflowable. This demo is by virtue of being HTML under the hood. Looks good even after resizing the browser.

I wish PDFs had a reflowable mode. What would it take to add such a mode to the PDF spec without breaking backward compatibility?

PDF's fixed layout is a real problem when we try to convert PDF books containing math to EPUB or MOBI with Calibre. It really messes up the beautifully typeset math in the PDF during the conversion. What's a good solution for this?

I have seen this in CentOS. Also see https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/159390

> Is there any persuasive reason for a college student today to try desktop Linux?

I think not if we look at Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc. But maybe small ones like Alpine Linux?

This brings up a good question: What good free and open source operating system is out there that would be persuasive for a college student or someone who wants to learn an operating system as opposed to merely using it?

Who else here dislikes Systemd? I do. There is so much hidden magic in terms of configuration that when things go wrong, they really go wrong. One of the things that burnt me initially was that journalctl logs are not persistent. They disappear on restart. It needs to be configured for persistent storage.

> Most non-trivial theorems about TMs are un-provable[0]

Did you mean "conjectures"? Theorems need to be provable by definition, don't they?

After Picasa (the desktop tool) was sunset, Darktable became my tool of choice. It is free and open source and understands real life photo related editing better than GIMP.

The interesting question is: Has someone "harcoded" a clever optimisation specifically for Collatz conjecture? Or did the general optimisation techniques figure this out of their own?

That's the reality of a lot of open source based services. Did you know that the entire PyPI was run and probably still is being run by just two guys?