myg204

Thanks for posting.

Others may be interested in this short clip of Weil talking at the 46 minutes mark of “The Story of Maths” documentary: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ejqof

A rare sight, as there isn’t a lot of recording of him online.

"About the series - The Perspectives series is a collection of essays written by individuals from Sun Microsystems Laboratories. These essays express ideas and opinions held by the authors on subjects of general rather than technical interest."

Would someone know where I could find other essays from this collection?

I second that, awk's a very clean language to look at log files or data files and do quick analysis or clean up.

Definitely has a Lucida Grande feel to it, which, if I recall correctly, was one of the font on Plan9. The Go Mono isn't close to Lucida Grande Mono, but certainly looks like an interesting update.

About 8% of the world is color blind, so having standard positions on traffic light is indeed very important.

I am interested and curious. Could you give an example of something you were dissatisfied with, and at which you became great because of those books? Thanks.

It clarifies the fact that Go is successful for more reasons than just being pushed by Google. So it focuses the question to "what is it that people like about it". And then we can have a better conversation.

Swimming.

> Part of the goal was to make something fast that's both safer and easier than C.

Right, and also fast compilation.

I remember reading the goal was ~20% slower than C for overall performance.

True. But plaintext is almost a self documented format. The structure/format of an org more file is obvious just by looking at it really. Can't say the same about a binary file.

Interesting timing, there's a new Bourbaki volume coming out in a few weeks, the first one in decades: Topologie Algébrique, Chapitre 1 à 4.

So Kernighan uses the sam editor, classic.

Good comment by Gates. It's the difference between giving out of your excesses and giving out of your poverty.

Agreed, I like the design. If you're here checking out the programming language, you're up for an original experience I'd say. I don't mind clicking 'about' to learn the minimum, and dive further on various sections...looks clean and I enjoy that. Personal opinion obviously.

> throwing away all of that familiarity in the name of elegance

That looks like a good deal to me! :)

Thanks for posting this. The mathematics involved is way above my head, but it's very pleasant to read about this group of mathematicians and particular time.

This sentence from Illusie says a lot: "The person who at the time could repair anything that went wrong was Deligne. ".

Also, this nod to Knuth is worth mentioning:

"Nowadays you have such efficient TEX systems, manuscripts look very nice. In Grothendieck’s time the presentation was not so beautiful, maybe, but Dieudonné-Grothendieck’s manuscripts were still fantastic."

The amount of time spent formatting papers at the time should have been better spent.

Also, Serre placing Weil higher than Grothendieck is interesting to read. I wonder if they all place Serre higher than anyone...

yes, yes, reasonably close.

The good think of portable ANSI C, compile anywhere there is a C compiler. Very nice.

Waiting for this Kernighan piece: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Addison-Wesley-Pr...

What a good expression. Did the author originate it?

It may have more GC issues, or maybe it probably has more GC issues.

Certainly it will be considered if your project has certain kinds of requirements other languages fails to cover (no vm, highest performance, no gc, ...). Those are very relevant to a lot of projects. C++ is not a legacy language, it's sometimes (with C) the only viable language in some sets of conditions.

Interesting. Why don't you use an include file directive there?

    enum_example_t
    {
        #include "example_values.txt"
        EXAMPLE_Max,
    } 

where example_values would have the strings 'EXAMPLE_foo,'? Just wondering.

As per wikipedia: "An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence. "

I fail to see how IQ is "defined to follow a bell curve" as you wrote. The tests were designed so the answers distribution is a bell curve?

In my statement above, just replace "Intelligence" by "IQ", I believe that's what being discussed.

In any case, "Intelligence" can takes a thousand forms that I don't think IQ tests or even our vocabulary can really pin down.

Email a professor at a nearby university talking up some interest in his field and pitch him/her your interest in gaining experience building software, he/she may have something in store if you're willing to do it for free?

Having said that, the other thing that will help you down the road may be getting some good theoretical knowledge in related fields (math, cs); as noted by paul_milovanov in this thread.

Good luck.

Right. Also, in theory, intelligence (or height) can be infinite it if is said it follows a bell curve, but that's sort of impossible too.

If one considers intelligence (or other features) as the sum of many random sources, then it makes sense again to invoke the CLT. Maybe that's what the article implied.

[edit: see other replies saying the same thing below]

Maurice Audin was a young Mathematician who died in 1957 in Algiers under torture by the French Military because he supported the Algerian independence cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Audin