Xah Programing Blog
syntactic obsession, imperative despisal, unicode love ♥, hacker hate
Put $5 in my patreon. https://www.patreon.com/xahlee
virtual reality with goggle going nowhere
suddenly, i have a feeling, that virtual reality with goggle will be going nowhere. as opposed to, in every house hold. Rather, 3d projection will be everywhere, when that tech comes about.
all you don't want to know want to know about lisp
and
- lisp mistake. “The definition of quote is broken. I personally explained it to John McCarthy. He agreed” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12112800, 2016-07-18, by dogfishbar
- Wikipedia Fexpr Fexpr
- [on lisp fexpr By John Shutt. At https://fexpr.blogspot.com/2011/04/fexpr.html ]
2018-07-12 thx to Timofey Lagutin https://twitter.com/nuopnu
Guy Steele Says: Don't Iterate, Recurse, and Get rid of cons!
old article. minor update
programing languages traps for hackers
in programing languages, uncommon features are traps for hacker types. Hip coders form undue obsession about 'em. e.g. lisp symbols, macros, read syntax, advice. haskell of such is monad, currying. Unusual features is also cult brewing.
most hip love of lisp features r wrong.
- macros complicates code logic, harder read/write.
- symbols vs string. symbols pollutes obarray.
- advice complicates code logic, thwart expectation, harder debug.
- lisp read syntax ≈ useless. hobs progress in builtin parser.
duckduckgo vs google
after using duckduckgo.com for half a year now, it is decidedly inferior to google search. for popular simple search queries, it works fine. But if you are looking for anything weird or uncommon, google is better. i wonder how bing's doing
now we have machines that emulate various animation insect flights mechanisms. there r few major categories by mechanism: birds, insects. birds: eagle, seagull, sparrow, hummingbird. house fly, dragon fly, butterfly, beetle.
should we include sting-ray as flying? depends. one is air, one is water. In physics, they are both fluid dynamics. But due to density, the mechanism and flight property, is significantly different. If we include, then we have types such as: dolphin, shark, ray, even octopus et al.
more generally, there are all considered locomotion. that is, how a animal propels. so what's the diff between “flight” and “walk/run”. The essence, is one is based on fluid dynamics, vs friction.
why are we interested in flight here? because, the various mechanisms of birds/insects, are interesting with respect to engineering. but note, walk/run is also quite interesting mathematically, in that the number of legs, and “gaits”, have diff properties and limits.
for flight, some of the top interesting properties is can it: hover, glide, fly backward, agility, speed, lift power, enegy efficiency. For ground based locomotion, some are: stability, speed, agility, power, carrying capacity, efficiency, terrain, control complexity.
Unicode Arrows → ⇒ ⇄ ↻ added some 10 more arrows, more organization
jwz vs xah twitter spat
few days later, when he twitted about a perl question, and i reposted it with “stop using perl” or such, he blocked me.
i liked jwz and linked to his site often in 2000s. But since this, i no longer support him.
1920x1200 monitor
1920x1200 monitor is nice! extra 200 px gives you 10 more lines. Doesn't seem much, but for coding that's quite useful. Normally, it's 1920x1080. You can find out your resolution at JS: Find Window Size and buy it Buy Dell monitor
Unicode symbol for X-men ⮿
major update. Added some 100 arrows i missed before.
on iphone and android phone, the arrows don't show. strange, because these are from unicode 7, year 2014.
ribbon arrows
added to Unicode Arrows → ⇒ ⇄ ↻
thx to https://twitter.com/vladresende/status/1013890682933710848
Unicode Symbol Become Emoji. major update. Added a table.
this utter stupid unicode page http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/text-style.html there r 1214 emoji there, and each picture is base64 encoded in the html. the file is 3 mega bytes. removing them, the file is 153k
YouTube Shows Blank for Deleted Video
It used to be, when you visit a YouTube video that's gone, YouTube says why. E.g. Deleted, went private, account violation gone. Now, it's just a blank.
Google Forcing HTTPS
[Google and HTTP By Dave Winer. At http://this.how/googleAndHttp/ ]
google is now the biggest skummbag on earth. it wants $, and full control. Dave Winer is an asssshooole. but i agree with his say here. i have 5 domains. https would increase $ burden a lot for me. Its effect is wipe out all small players.
i've voiced against google forcing https, but quite a few nerds don't agree. about security, google chrome browser would be the number 1 problem. if google does backdoor, nobody will know, and they r the biggest octopus wrapping the globe from underground to outer space.
one of the problem of writing JavaScript svg math grahph plotter, is the canvas size problem.
Practical Linux Tutorial
new nav panel on the side
git, and its doc, is the prototypical think of programers, like C unix lineage, it's the most incomprehensible, to mathematicians, to logicians, to laymen. Only other programers can understand it, by means of “grok”.
Mathematicians remove anything unnecessary. What's left is the pure abstract substance. programers and their writing, moves around things with semi algorithm. Sometimes recipe like, sometimes lose definition. The land of the middle brain.
i propose, that big endian should be henceforth called the natural byte order.
There isn't much mentioning of design pattern these days. I suppose it's dead since ~2012. It reigned for a decade, since 2000. Reaching its pinnacle around 2007.
Why Software Suck. written in 2001. Why Software Suck
isn't JavaScript the greatest language
In coding, there is lots frustrations. After you get old, you knew, the main problem cause, is the corporations, enterprise. However, the story is impossible to tell, due to social forces.
In html, one major problem is that it's hard to find the matching end tag. Usually, they are all ＜/div＞. One solution, is to allow arbitrary tags. E.g. ＜x70612＞something＜/x70612＞. This is beginning to be espoused, but killed by html5 fckkks.
Recall, xml rose as a fix of 20 years of sgml html mistakes. With streamlined syntax. Html5, was mostly Apple and opera, e.g. They want canvas for iphone for game for $$$. There are tons of articles written about the controversies, but, they are now history. When you try to say it, nobody cares.
For 12 years i blogged about ills of html xml css stuff. But realized, all the articles are just buried. It makes no sense to repost them. And it's hard to find the thousands of articles about them by others. All buried, as, “history”. Young people, only knew about current fad n bitches.
The ill of all this, the driving force, is really, just $. From each programer, to standard bodies such as w3c and wtfg, corps. If some tech is really good but makes no $ for nobody, it'll dieee.
So programing languages, is like the outcome of a cellular automata, just like other social things. That's why all lang r like total fkkcdp n extremely complex. Handful clean ones, from academia, no force to bubble them up.
Am starting to see, young people claiming they love javascript, or that js is a great language. Now, you feel old, too. Lol. Now, try to tell them things. Experience no communication.
Meanwhile, ten thousand corporations, libs, frameworks, etc, are shooting fireworks daily about how great JavaScript is, how modern it is, how universal it is, beautiful, with their libs, framework, ide, browser, engine, methodologies, things they peddle.
When you are a young coder, say, 20, that's all you hear. Sure, now and then you'll hear history of things. Some, would be curious and look. But, history is like a shroud. You don't really know it unless you wore it.
░░░░░░▄████▄ ░░░░░▐▌░░░░▐▌ ░░▄▀▀█▀░░░░▐▌ ░░▄░▐▄░░░░░▐▌▀▀▄ ▐▀░▄▄░▀▌░▄▀▀░▀▄░▀ ▐░▀██▀░▌▐░▄██▄░▌ ░▀▄░▄▄▀░▐░░▀▀░░▌ ░░░░█░░░░▀▄▄░▄▀ ░░░░█░█░░░░█░▐ ░░░░█░█░░░▐▌░█ ░░░░█░█░░░▐▌░█ ░░░░▐▌▐▌░░░█░█ ░░░░▐▌░█▄░▐▌░█ ░░░░░█░░▀▀▀░░▐▌ ░░░░░▐▌░░░░░░█ ░░░░░░█▄░░░░▄█ ░░░░░░░▀████▀
blackletter thou shall
0000000 000 0000000
111111111 11111111100 000 111111111
00000 111111111111111111 00000 000000
000 1111111111111111111111111100000 000
000 1111 1111111111111111100 000
000 11 0 1111111100 000
000 1 00 1 000
000 00 00 1 000
000 000 00000 1 000
00000 0000 00000000 1 00000
11111 000 00 000000 000 11111
00000 0000 000000 00000 00000
000 10000 000000 000 0000
000 00000 000000 1 000
000 000000 10000 1 0 000
000 1000000 00 1 00 000
000 1111111 1 0000 000
000 1111111100 000000 000
0000 111111111111111110000000 0000
111111111 111111111111100000 111111111
0000000 00000000 0000000
NYTimes.com: All the code that's fit to printf()
We're hiring: https://nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/Tech
note that @nytimes logo is a capital blackletter T. aka 𝔊𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔠, 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯. Gothic no mean bible. It means barbarian. Fraktur meas fracture. Now, you go spend 1 hour on history of things, typeface, unicode, etymology, carolingian, old english, midevil❗
𝔄 𝔅 ℭ 𝔇 𝔈 𝔉 𝔊 ℌ ℑ 𝔍 𝔎 𝔏 𝔐 𝔑 𝔒 𝔓 𝔔 ℜ 𝔖 𝔗 𝔘 𝔙 𝔚 𝔛 𝔜 ℨ Math Font ℤ ℚ ℝ ℂ
Symbola Font for Unicode No Longer Free
Crap. George Douros changed licenses in March 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20180129230141/http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180420071257/http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ This means Symbola versions after 10.23 are no longer (libre) Free.
[2018-06-05 from https://twitter.com/FakeUnicode/status/1004206237620113408]
quite interesting turn of events. George Douros is the guy who created the Symbola font, for years its the most popular and basically the only open source font for emoji. Now the license change is rather drastic. e.g. linux distro cannot use it as is.
about 6 years ago, i emailed George for permission to use his font (i think it was put on my website for download) to be sure, and he seems annoyed. e.g. “what part of free for any use you don't understand”. So i gather he's very “free” guy, not necessarily any open source fsf faction.
unicode 11 is out
Agile is Dead
lol
See also: Voodoo of Software Engineering
[APL deserves its renaissance too By Oleksandr Kaleniuk. At https://hackernoon.com/apl-deserves-its-renaissance-too-caec3df9ba85 ]
by the way, lots people don't know. APL is one of those considered array languages. Matlab, Mathematica, are similar. In fact, Mathematica is far more powerful. you can implement APL in Mathematica in maybe just 50 lines. #xahcode
See also:
Cognitive dimensions of notations
to read in detail.
programing language design and popularity. Save a weekend to watch
#python #JavaScript #ruby #haskell #golang
opinions from programers about programing language can be ignored, as well from those lang creators. pay attention only to expert on these issue, namely, researchers on language design, popularity, history, notation systems, human cognizance field etc.
programer's opinions on languages is like carpenter's on hammer. lang creator's opinion's like the maker of a hammer brand's. what u want instead, is from researchers, designers, scientists, on human anatomy, accident statistics, material science, physics, mech engineering.
history of APL
[A History of APL in 50 Functions By Roger K.W Hui. At http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/50/ ]
See also:
See also: The Unix Pestilence
build a silent computer
https://tp69.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/completely-silent-computer/
nice article.
Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34-Inch Curved LED-Lit Monitor amazon
anyone have experience with big curved monitor for coding?
Xah Code Sitemap (updated)
- Unicode in Ruby, Perl, Python, JavaScript, Java, Emacs Lisp, Mathematica
- Perl: Unicode Tutorial 🐪
- Python: Unicode Tutorial 🐍
updated.
to read
Thanks.
Browser Console, More Sophisticated Than Full-Fledged Java IDE
Browser console today, is more sophisticated than full-fledged Java IDE. And probably 10 times more complicated to implement too.
now you can search by typing 2 different words, e.g. “heart card”
generative art = piss splash + programing
here's history of processing, the generative art programing language for non-programers. Non-programers? lol, actually, it's java.
[Research essay: The History of Processing By Maks Surguy. At https://maxoffsky.com/research/research-essay-the-history-of-processing/ ]
hackernews graced me
looks like hackernews graced me again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16741116
thanks to https://mastodon.technology/@danielhglus for shoutout
Spaceship CUNEIFORM
two old articles.
Ban Code Elegance
Am beginning to think, elegance of code should be ban'd. Because, often, they make code slower, harder to understand, and also far more time consuming to create.
It's like artwork. Often, they serve no everyday value. Prime example is modern geometric furniture.
However, a society where concept of code elegance doesn't exist, then code quality will suffer in general. It'd be like a society sans notion of beauty.
what should be done, is that code elegance should become a branch of math. Like, groups represented by generators and relations. So that, code elegance becomes precisely defined, and part of representation theory. Just as complexity theory is the study of algorithms.
Patterns mean “I have run out of language.” — #clojure inventor Rich Hickey
Xah on Lisp (new index)
JavaScript Module, and Math vs Programing
follow xah
follow me on my new mastodon account at https://mstdn.io/@xahlee and on reddit https://www.reddit.com/user/xah
code elegance vs efficiency vs modularity vs readability
for my patreons https://www.patreon.com/posts/17567297
to my patreons, an intro to Xah Lee, is that right?
Unicode Circled Numbers ① ② ③ (major update)
Standard Fonts on Linuxes (minor update)
start to post to patreon again
am going to start to post to patreon again. see https://www.patreon.com/posts/17332715
for paid audience. It's better that way, increases my quality, with a goal.
the problem just blogging or posting to twitter, is that, nobody really cares. With patreon post, there's a goal, similar to commercial org. You write, if it's good, people pay. When no good, people stop.
And comments tends to be more valuable. It has a basis.
20 years of open source, has eliminated the power of individuals. Instead, you get these “we support opensource” mega corps like google and Facebook. The programers, by day work for these greed, by night sing open source, put to git, wipe out bread of small programers.
Open Source, worst suck of the century
[Why There Will Never Be Another RedHat: The Economics Of Open Source By Peter Levine. At https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/13/please-dont-tell-me-you-want-to-be-the-next-red-hat/ ]
[RethinkDB: why we failed By Slava Akhmechet. At http://www.defmacro.org/2017/01/18/why-rethinkdb-failed.html ]
༕ ༖ ឱ ឲ
my day schedule for the next 3 months looks like this
- 1 hour compiler
- 1 hour golang
- 1 hour logic, proof theory
- 1 hour differential geometry, complex analysis
- 5 hour js math graphics
Chinese Chess pieces in unicode
now you can play chinese chess! Play Chinese Chess here Play Chinese Chess Online
see the https://twitter.com/xah_lee/status/965774858746347520unicode 11 draft https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/
See also: Unicode Characters ∑ ♥ 😄
linked from home page, bottom ∑ Xah Code
programer's canvas reverse y-axes
one very annoying thing when coding a 2d grapher is the reversed y-axes in programer idiot's coordinate.
In svg, either u do (ymin+ymax-y) for every point, or,
g.setAttribute("transform", `translate(0 ${ymin+ymax-y}) scale(1 ${-1})`
but, your text get flipped. what a fing pain.
why programer's canvas reverse y-axes? not looking into history, but i surmise, cuz 'was just easy in the early days, like unix f and opengl f. Its ok to realize necessity, but the programer idiots is such that they see it as good. Every lang design, you run into such idiotic problems.
from unix to c to java to opengl (or whatever gl fk). and these idiots say, well but it is fast! it's efficient! the problem with these fheads is that they don't really understand math or meaning of efficiency, they just know micro-tuning and memory address.
I think the hard-ware based mindset is slightly going away today. Because , new generation dunno it anymore. And, langs like haskell golang, are teaching people to unstand the separation of efficiency and abstraction.
1 example of pseudo-efficiency trumps language design is Bitmask Used as Boolean Parameters. See
http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/writ/bitmask.htmltypical hacker get confused by this, and defends it vociferously.
this happens for languages up to about 2005, but not after.
See also:
high resolution monitor
time to buy a high resolution monitor. 2560x1440. You. See more, sans fidgeting with scroll swipe.
find out your screen resolution size JS: Find Window Size
lots opinions on coding, eg coding style, what makes productivity etc. Most pop blog posts r drivels, thrive for a few years, then buried. This is the best book on programing opinions, based on statistics. I read parts in 1990s. the book is now old.
Idiocy of Computer Language Docs: Unix, Python, Perl, Haskell
software testing, is one of the wart product of eXtreme Programing (that became agile). The effect is, even less understanding of programing languages, math, design, but more trial n error, speed prototype, churning, Cuz, there's test!
On Meta Syntax, Formal Language, and Logic (minor update)
Clojure Lisp Has Failed
i'd have to say, clojure lisp has failed, due to, complex intermix with java/jvm, and the clojure community as a cult refusing to listen. While, golang , @kotlin are thriving. The kotlin actually replaces clojure, with 10x more users.
it's funny, that the clojure head Rich Hickey emphasize simplicity, and makes a fuzz about simple may appear hard. But that's a tinted glass look of simplicity. Clojure, the way it forces intermix with java, is more complex than ANY programing language.
See also:
safari don't have favicon in tabs
safari don't have favicon in tabs? what extreme idiocy. I was switching to it, but now i don't think so.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4sm2d1/its_2016_why_do_we_still_not_have_favicons_in/
having favicon in tabs makes it easy to identify tabs. When you have 10 tabs, not having favicon is a major problem.
xah comp sci growth roadmap
of my personal comp sci growth roadmap, there's few thnigs i like to horn. In no particular order:
- ① get experience in writing a compiler.
- ② understand what features make language slow.
- ③ understand the relation of various kind of strict type to its computability
- ④ understand what language features allow what degree of static analysis
- ⑤ a grip on proof systems, computability theory, math foundation
golang syntax not composable
here's systactic complexity of golang.
slice type is declared like this:
var name []type
but map type is declared like this:
var name map[type]type
you see, there's a inconsistency.
That is, there's no single form for both. Basically, every semantic thing in the language has its own ad hoc syntax. The syntax is not composable.
see
See also:
xah reddit channel
been posting to my reddit r/Xah. see https://www.reddit.com/r/Xah/
just trying it out. If you are reddit user, find my post on reddit as convenient, vote up my posts. If i don't see much user, i'll stop doing it.
also, since i have blogs on emacs, JavaScript, programing, and other topics, do let me know what you want to see, so i can shape up what kinda things i post there.
brave browser annoyances
.@brave browser allow/deny notification bar is annoying. It pops up for fullscreen, notification, and others. If you ignore, the bar don't go away but adds up space to the top of the browser. And when there's multiple, you might click the wrong allow/deny button.
another thing @brave browser is annoying is that when you hover mouse over a tab, it shows that tab's content temporarily (and in grayish fog). Very annoying and confusing, especially if you have hover tab/dwell on in OS.
xahlee info popularity ranking 2018-01-15
climbing the ladder.
arduous.
how to become a mathematician for programers
xah's edu corner extempore! episode №20180115122340 on math courses, and how to become a mathematician for programers
for young coders out there, the proper order of learning math is: highschool algebra, trig, pre-calc, calculus, linear algebra, then optional intro diff equations. These are basics. Must be in that order. These are basic needed for engineering. But are not math major basics yet.
for math major (to become mathematician), you need abstract algebra, real analysis. Order doesn't matter. After you had these, you are acquainted with math “language”, or math maturity. i.e. the way mathematician talks. These are typically 3rd year math major.
after that, you may have the following in arbitrary order: complex analysis, different geometry, topology, set theory. After studying these, you can consider yourself mathematician. You know what math is about, or know where to go. All the above, are traditional main math courses.
for programers, you might wonder, where is graph theory, type theory, game theory, logic, combinatorics, statistics. These are not typical main courses of MATHEMATICIAN. These are called discrete math, sometimes as comp sci. (while statistics n probability r applied math)
the discrete math, they do not have the elaborate pre-requisite sequence as analysis/algebra. Anyone can start to learn graph theory, game theory, combinatorics, number theory, etc. But you don't get deep without the years of analysis/algebra of real mathematician stuff.
See also: Free Math Textbooks
Logical Operators, Truth Table, Unicode (updated)
Programing: “or” Considered Harmful (updated)
Proliferation of Computing Languages there are so many in past 5 years, that people don't care anymore. Certainly, i stopped listing new ones. #elmlang #purescript #TypeScript #haskell
ask Xah, 2018-01-07
[CoffeeMiner: Hacking WiFi to inject cryptocurrency miner to HTML requests By Arnau Code. At http://arnaucode.com/blog/coffeeminer-hacking-wifi-cryptocurrency-miner.html ]
seems like a good article.
See also: http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_iptables_basics.html
pop stars and programer stars
pop stars, quietly drops out every decade or 2. And this is also true for programer stars. A star everybody knows and talks about, but you don't know or recall who's in previous decade.
classes of the rich, and classes of programers, and you don't know nothing
when something is beyond us, we can't distinguish the level. e.g. some are millionairs, but some r billionairs. To us, we don't comprehend. We group them as just “rich”. To them, it's 1 thousand times diff, literally. This goes for pop stars, to politicians, businessman.
Similarly, in programing, to outsiders, we all smart nerds beyond their comprehension. But to us, there r script kiddies, and “web designers”, to those who wrote google search engine. This applies to any field or community u r not familiar with. which basically means, everything.
intel chip bug Meltdown and Spectre
just read a few articles/papers about the intel bugs Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown require OS kernel patch, cause 5% to 30% slow down for system call intensive apps (networking/file). and Spectre is unfixable.
We are screwed. by next week, nobody will remember the problems, except hackers and gov. But have a cookie, you are screwed already anyway with ur phone and usb and ssh etc.
if you are not a computer nerd, here's the gist: hackers discovered one very big hole to your password, and there's nothing you can do.
If you have a question, put $5 at patreon and message me.