Types of Type Systems Explained
So basically, there are 4 dimensions:
Static (expressions have types) vs. dynamic (values have types)
Strong (values cannot be coerced to other types without a cast) vs. weak (the runtime performs a variety of coercions for convenience)
Latent (no type declarations) vs. manifest (type declarations)
Nominal (subtyping relations are declared explicitly) vs. structural (subtyping relations are inferred from the operations available on types)
Wow. I think I get it now.
Finally, you deliver to the customer two things: your conception of the problem they brought you and your concrete solution to that problem.
This is the most insightful thing I've ever written in my life. Have a look, it peaked at -1 on Proggit.
If all your problems look like Nails, should you use a screwdriver?
At the end of the day, what you really want is two pieces of wood joined together, whether it was done with nails or screws.
My business partner Reid wrote this a month or two ago and I feel like inflicting it on all of you.
I contributed "I'm in ur database, normalizing ur tablesz."
Really not very much work at all. And Audacity only crashed, like, three or four times while I was using it! (Mostly when hitting the play button to play the section I was working on...)
Proof that people use Macs because they have work to do.
How to Develop a Mindset for Math
Math uses made-up rules to create models and derive relationships.
Lately I am coming to think that English, math and programming languages are not points in a single continuum, and that this is a distortion which computer scientists absorb for no particular reason, a bug in the amber.
How Experts Fail: The Patterns and Situations in Which Experts Are Less Intelligent Than Non-Experts
A book-in-progress about expertise and its failure.
Ostensibly about Thai naming, the comments reveal a lot of information about other cultures like Chinese, Icelandic, Swedish, Italian and French.
Predicting the Winner of the 2008 US Presidential Elections using a Sony Playstation 3
Our chosen-prefix collision finding method enables us to produce colliding documents in many different formats, and in such a way that it is not immediately obvious whether another meaningful message that collides with it is known to anyone.
Among their twelve "predictions" with identical MD5 values are Oprah Winfrey and Paris Hilton.
On Anthropomorphism in Computing Science (EWD 936)
The critical reading of articles about computer-assisted learning -- excuse me: CAL for the intimi -- leaves you no option: in the eyes of their authors, the educational process is simply reduced to a caricature, something like the building up of conditional reflexes. For those educationists, Pavlov's dog adequately captures the essence of Mankind -- while I can assure you, from intimate observations, that it only captures a minute fraction of what is involved in being a dog--.