Top all-time · #2056
enfranchisedmind.com
Personal blog · enfranchisedmind.com/blogprogrammingculture
enfranchisedmind.com is a personal blog at enfranchisedmind.com about programming and culture. Since 2007, 36 different Hacker News readers have linked it 65 times, most often “What is a functional programming language?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (20) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this programmer's blog for posts on functional programming, Scala, hash table problems, and whether a CS degree is worth it. Commenters mostly cite individual posts as support rather than praise them.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Described as an informative post on the problems with hash tables, cited in a discussion of binary trees.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 20 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- What is a functional programming language?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-23
- Scala is Not a Functional Programming Language3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-05-14
- The problem with STM: your languages still suck3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-28
- Programming Doesn’t Suck Or At Least, It Shouldn’t2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-02-23
- Dear User of My Open Source Project2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-07-24
- Problems with Hash Tables2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-02-26
- Postgres for the win2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2007-12-10
- 7 Actually Useful Things You Didn’t Know Static Typing Could Do2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-04-14
- Problems with Hash Tables2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-08
What Hacker News says?
I read the article differently than most of you. I think Zed is still grumpy that contributing a big piece (if not irreplaceable, but unarguably useful) of the rails stack didn't lead to more recognition and, more importantly, the type of recognition that's useful when it's time to pay the rent. Hence his rails is a ghetto post -- I read it as something like, "This rails shit has worked out well for DHH but a bunch…
Comment linking /blog/posts/commercial-grails-plugins/
on “There Are No Famous Programmers”Submitted Apple is just Microsoft with better marketing as a story · 147 points
HN discussion"Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly." --Henry Spencer Which can then be turned into: "Programmers who do not understand history are doomed to reimplement it - poorly" - http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/what-good-is-a-cs-deg... I thought both of them were good sayings to keep in mind, while reading the above post.
Comment linking /blog/posts/what-good-is-a-cs-degree/
on “Free your technical aesthetic from the 2010s”Submitted Apollo 11 Dismembered as a story · 73 points
HN discussionI find it repulsive that poor diligence on the part of a programmer can be blamed on some ‘community leader’ setting a bad example. As a programmer, all code that goes into your project is your responsibility. When things go well you’re the only one who gets paid, therefore when they go wrong you’re the only one who should get the blame. See also: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/fyi-my-open-source-us...
Comment linking /blog/posts/fyi-my-open-source-users/
on “Reminder: "Broken gets fixed, but shitty lasts forever"”Submitted Dear User of My Open Source Project as a story · 70 points
HN discussionSTM and locks have some interesting clean-up and (as is cited in the article) you really need for it not to crash and not to deadlock or go all priority-inverted on you. Message-passing, on the other hand, doesn't need particular locking and crashes are (somewhat) simpler to deal with. (And most any scheme I've encountered can deadlock, and will usually choose the most inopportune moment to demonstrate this capabili…
Comment linking /blog/posts/thoughts-on-parallelism/
on “PyPy - We need Software Transactional Memory”Submitted What is a functional programming language? as a story · 66 points
HN discussionMaybe I was unusually naive, and probably everyone's more informed these days, but the thing I'd add is that tech companies are very different from other companies for CS majors. I supposed in my innocence that there were the overtly-sexy apps and the unsexy but still challenging apps* . I haven't had the opportunity to work for a real tech company yet, but my impression is that programming in IT is essentially a di…
Comment linking /blog/2009/02/22/programming-doesnt-suck-or-at-least-it-shouldnt/
on “Things I Wish I’d Been Told: Tips For Students with a Bachelors in Computer Science”Submitted Clojure won't win the battle but may win the war as a story · 65 points
HN discussionThis is sort of a "when all you have is a hammer…" situation. You don't need binary trees, but only in the same sense most of these data structures can stand in for one or more of the others. Binary trees can actually be better than hash tables in many cases where hash tables are used in mainstream scripting languages simply due to language support. An informative post on the subject: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blo…
Comment linking /blog/posts/problems-with-hash-tables/
on “Rob Pike: Notes on Programming in C”Submitted What is a functional programming language? as a story · 50 points
HN discussionYou're probably thinking of this article at Raganwald: http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/certification-bring-it-o... Rebuttal here: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2007/07/04/certification-pl...
Comment linking /blog/2007/07/04/certification-please-no/
on “For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time”Submitted Scala is Not a Functional Programming Language as a story · 38 points
HN discussionif anything saves imperative programming it will be transactional memory, which is exremely hard. hardware TM and code written for TM are in a chicken-and-egg situation. the answer is hybrid hardware/software TM and the sun guys are way ahead on this too. What's interesting is STM is only hard in imperative languages. It's relatively straightforward in Clojure and Haskell. See http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/…
Comment linking /blog/posts/the-problem-with-stm-your-languages-still-suck/
on “Clojure: It’s About the Libraries”Submitted 1024 by 2012 as a story · 34 points
HN discussionFWIW, RobertFischer's blog is http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/
Comment linking /blog/
on “Functional programming explained ... IRC-style”Submitted Problems with Hash Tables as a story · 32 points
HN discussionhttp://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/02/22/programming-does...
Comment linking /blog/2009/02/22/programming-doesnt-suck-or-at-least-it-shouldnt/
on “Why functional programming doesn't catch on”Submitted Ruby Is The Future as a story · 31 points
HN discussionA monad is a kind of control structure between functions. Kind of like if you could overload add extra hook functionality to the Unix shell pipe, besides just piping stuff along. For instance, seed it with a countdown, and every time stuff is piped to another process, see how much time has elapsed; if at any point it's been more than, say, 30 seconds, just stop the whole series and return an error. Or find a path th…
Comment linking /blog/2007/08/06/a-monad-tutorial-for-ocaml/
on “JavaScript = C + Lisp”Submitted Programming Languages are PC OSs circa 1986 as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI think the comparison Brian Hurt makes between "core" and "edge" languages ( http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/09/20/programming-lang... ) is pretty relevant here. "Edge" languages are often used as "glue" languages, because they're good at wrapping separate components and making them work together, while "core" languages are usually better for complicated systems that do most of their work internally, such as…
Comment linking /blog/2008/09/20/programming-languages-are-pc-oss-circa-1986/
on “PHP vs. Lisp?”Submitted 7 Actually Useful Things You Didn’t Know Static Typing Could Do as a story · 23 points
HN discussionI've always been a fan of PostgreSQL. The one bit that appealed to me was its erstwhile ability to 'shard', or partition data across tables. http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2006/11/04/postgres-for-the... Any comments?
Comment linking /blog/2006/11/04/postgres-for-the-win/
on “PostgreSQL 8.3 Released”Submitted Steve Yegge is an idiot as a story · 17 points
HN discussionH-M doesn't necessitate an object system, but that will work in OCaml's, specifically. See the Duck Typing section here: http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2008/04/14/useful-things-ab...
Comment linking /blog/2008/04/14/useful-things-about-static-typing/
on “Hindley-Milner type inference algorithim, explained”Submitted The problem with STM: your languages still suck as a story · 13 points
HN discussionhttp://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/what-is-a-functional-... Note: NOT written by same guy who did "Scala not Functional". Everybody has a different definition of FP in mind with these, uh, parameters: - "no hidden side effects"; clearly demarcated IO functions, database calls. - curry, partial function application; lexical closures - TCO - 1st class, higher-order functions - Immutable / persistent collections /…
Comment linking /blog/posts/what-is-a-functional-programming-language/
on “Functional Programming with Java”Submitted "Great tools are what you get when your language sucks" as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
