Hacker News: jeorgun

New comment by jeorgun in "C++ Programming Questions to Ask on Interview (2017)"

jeorgun — Fri, 19 Oct 2018 05:53:04 +0000

These questions seem pretty good!

In the max heap question, I'd argue that add should take a parameter by value, rather than a const reference, since this prevents having to needlessly copy temporaries (and is less verbose than overloading for T&&).

List of iterator categories is missing input iterators.

New comment by jeorgun in "Thefuck – Corrects your previous console command"

jeorgun — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 19:56:14 +0000

To that end, I highly recommend the command line utility 'sl', which runs an unskippable ASCII animation of a steam locomotive. Makes for great fun explaining it to the flummoxed coworker borrowing your computer!

New comment by jeorgun in "[dead]"

jeorgun — Sat, 07 May 2016 21:58:08 +0000

Notably, the "al" in algebra and algorithm really is the Arabic 'al-'— algebra and algorithm are latinized forms of al-jabr and al-Khwarizmi respectively.

New comment by jeorgun in "When code is suspiciously fast: adventures in dead code elimination"

jeorgun — Fri, 06 May 2016 15:56:38 +0000

That seems pretty harsh. From context, 'been there, done that' sounds to me like sympathizing with the article's author, not dismissing them.

New comment by jeorgun in "Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game"

jeorgun — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 19:08:45 +0000

If it's more than 10-20% of Dropbox users, that says pretty bad things about their market share.

New comment by jeorgun in "A difference between Haskell and Common Lisp"

jeorgun — Mon, 21 Dec 2015 18:07:43 +0000

Calling Scheme a "new language with a strong Lisp influence" is a bit rich. It's certainly not new, and in many respects it's more representative of Lisps-of-Old than Common Lisp.

New comment by jeorgun in "Java's Cover (2001)"

jeorgun — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 23:31:32 +0000

"Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++."

In what sense was C++ designed for other people? IIRC Stroustrup came up with it to use on his own research projects.

New comment by jeorgun in "Suleiman the Magnificent's tomb believed to have been found in Hungary"

jeorgun — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 09:24:47 +0000

Mehmed II? In any case a lot of the territory Suleiman conquered did remain part of the Ottoman Empire into the 20th century.

New comment by jeorgun in "Why Homejoy Failed"

jeorgun — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 20:58:45 +0000

I think the intention is less "the tipping model makes more sense", and more "given that the tipping model is in effect, you shouldn't unfairly punish the housekeepers by not tipping them".

New comment by jeorgun in "Google’s look, evolved"

jeorgun — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 16:14:21 +0000

Uncharitably, I'd say the old logo looked much more professional, and so didn't jive with Google's corporate ethos of "seem as much like a preschool as humanly possible". The new one definitely fits better in that respect.

New comment by jeorgun in "The Town without Wi-Fi"

jeorgun — Sun, 30 Aug 2015 19:39:32 +0000

I wouldn't object to somebody creating, from whole cloth, an electric-stuff-free place, but I do object to people co-opting an existing community that they're not part of and insisting that it become such a place for them. That seems to be what's going on here.

New comment by jeorgun in "OCamlers' critiques of Haskell"

jeorgun — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 18:46:41 +0000

I think it's undeniable that a substantial portion of the interest in XMonad came about because it's written in Haskell, but that's very different from saying that all of the interest in it comes from a concerted propaganda campaign on the part of the Haskell community.

New comment by jeorgun in "WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages"

jeorgun — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:05:19 +0000

Ditto in English, for that matter, although for various reasons we spell "i" with two "e"s.

New comment by jeorgun in "A Simple Fix for Drunken Driving: Modest, Immediate Penalties"

jeorgun — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:07:40 +0000

If I'm understanding right, grandparent isn't saying "effectiveness(minor, frequent) == effectiveness(major, infrequent)"; they're saying "effectiveness(minor) == effectiveness(major) && effectiveness(frequent) > effectiveness(infrequent)".

New comment by jeorgun in "Emacs X Window Manager"

jeorgun — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 06:07:58 +0000

I'm going to assume from context that they're talking about xmonad.

New comment by jeorgun in "Apple has published a great free learn to code course for on GitHub"

jeorgun — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 17:44:08 +0000

My first language was some awful proprietary BASIC dialect. It hasn't harmed me any, so far as I can tell. Learning one language, proprietary or not, gets you about 99% of the way to learning a second (potentially more open) language. And in any case, isn't the language due to be open-sourced pretty soon?

New comment by jeorgun in "How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?"

jeorgun — Sun, 31 May 2015 04:35:14 +0000

Without looking too closely at it, the infographic looks suspiciously similar to this one: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/04/lies-damned-lies-and-fa... . Does that same rebuttal apply, or are these numbers more accurate?

New comment by jeorgun in "Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison"

jeorgun — Sat, 30 May 2015 04:01:48 +0000

I agree with your overall point, but you're forgetting a third effect: preventing non-current-drug users scared of more conventional venues, but not by Silk Road (which, as you point out, is comparatively convenient and safe), from buying drugs from there (and then possibly developing an addiction). I don't know how large a segment of the population that might be, but addictions have to start somewhere.

New comment by jeorgun in "Improve your touch typing"

jeorgun — Thu, 21 May 2015 05:31:26 +0000

Would it be possible to edit this comment and stick that in a code box or something? It's breaking the page width.

New comment by jeorgun in "“Profession” (1957)"

jeorgun — Tue, 19 May 2015 11:24:04 +0000

I've always loved this story. Reading it now, though, it's funny that it was written by the guy most famous for his robot stories. They seem like a pretty glaring omission. If you could program the job skills and knowledge onto a human brain, why not a positronic one? All the non-creative jobs would just end up being automated.

Which is basically the situation we're heading towards now in any case. Pretty prescient, I suppose.