I’m a libertarian who tried to stop Donald Trump with my vote in the PA primaries – even changed party registration to do it. But Trump’s opponents may make me unto a Trump supporter yet. From Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch through John Conyers being the guy every female reporter in DC knew not to get… Continue reading As the pervnado turns
Month: November 2017
Proposal – let’s backport Go := to C
The Go language was designed with the intention of replacing C and C++ over much of their ranges. While the large additions to Go – notably automatic memory allocation with garbage collection – attract attention, there is one small addition that does an impressive job of helping code be more concise while not being tied… Continue reading Proposal – let’s backport Go := to C
Language engineering for great justice
Whole-systems engineering, when you get good at it, goes beyond being entirely or even mostly about technical optimizations. Every artifact we make is situated in a context of human action that widens out to the economics of its use, the sociology of its users, and the entirety of what Austrian economists call “praxeology”, the science… Continue reading Language engineering for great justice
The big break in computer languages
My last post (The long goodbye to C) elicited a comment from a C++ expert I was friends with long ago, recommending C++ as the language to replace C. Which ain’t gonna happen; if that were a viable future, Go and Rust would never have been conceived. But my readers deserve more than a bald… Continue reading The big break in computer languages
The long goodbye to C
I was thinking a couple of days ago about the new wave of systems languages now challenging C for its place at the top of the systems-programming heap – Go and Rust, in particular. I reached a startling realization – I have 35 years of experience in C. I write C code pretty much every… Continue reading The long goodbye to C
Against modesty, and for the Fischer set
Over at Slate Star Codex, I learned that Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing a book on, as Scott puts it, “low-hanging fruit vs. the argument from humility”. He’s examining the question of when we are, or can be, justified in believing we have spotted something important that the experts have missed. I read Eliezer’s first chapter,… Continue reading Against modesty, and for the Fischer set