Hacker News: whlr

New comment by whlr in "Roc rewrites the compiler in Zig"

whlr — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:48:57 +0000

According to [1], they want to use a systems-level language for performance.

[1] https://www.roc-lang.org/faq#self-hosted-compiler

New comment by whlr in "Priced out of home ownership"

whlr — Tue, 28 May 2024 15:26:16 +0000

If I'm understanding properly, this would be called a "coop" in NYC. I don't think any other cities in the US have them in significant number.

New comment by whlr in "What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)"

whlr — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:05:24 +0000

Not a linguist, but I think this is just a matter of proto-indo-european having complicated morphology and its descendants reverting to the mean.

A related reddit thread (I know, I know, sorry): https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/o12hy0/instanc...

It's worth noting of course that there is more to grammar than morphology.

New comment by whlr in "What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)"

whlr — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:43:30 +0000

I don't think it's true that languages get simpler over time.

New comment by whlr in "New study reveals most classic video games are unavailable"

whlr — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 18:35:40 +0000

I think it's possible to sidestep the harm vs suboptimality discussion. It's clear that there is a benefit to the public when works become public domain, and copyright law should balance benefits to creators and consumers (though of course we all fill both roles to some degree). Laws also have to be politically viable, of course.

> Using your logic, the government then ought to force you to donate all your savings and excess possessions to "society" so that harm is reduced.

I would argue that governments do a "soft" version of this with redistributive tax schemes and social programs.

New comment by whlr in "State of Machine Learning in Julia"

whlr — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 16:17:08 +0000

It’s worth noting that PyPlot.jl is a nearly seamless way to use matplotlib from Julia. JIT compilation of the middle layer does mean that it suffers from time to first plot problems though.

New comment by whlr in "TikTok and the Sorting Hat"

whlr — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 14:42:43 +0000

Don’t know much about this, but I would have thought TikTok relies on the watch patterns of its viewers, rather than direct video analysis.

New comment by whlr in "Do notation considered harmful"

whlr — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 15:00:39 +0000

Because it looks imperative.

New comment by whlr in "An animal that doesn't breathe oxygen"

whlr — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 20:45:19 +0000

It can still work on a population level.

New comment by whlr in "I Don't Use Classes"

whlr — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 03:03:47 +0000

That is the version of the |> operator I'm familiar with from Julia.

New comment by whlr in "I Don't Use Classes"

whlr — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 16:04:28 +0000

> I find the latter easier to read and lends itself to a fluent, lightweight style.

Maybe I'm bikeshedding, but I think this is a nontrivial part of why people like OOP languages. Being able to read right to left, without nested parens, makes code comprehension easier.

I think the mathematical notation for function application has held programming languages back. I realize that there's a huge benefit to uniformity of syntax across languages, and that syntax is ultimately much less important than semantics, but I wish we could settle on something better than f(x). I really appreciate languages that are willing to do something different (e.g. haskell and lisp).

New comment by whlr in "The MTA is going after an Etsy artist over a New York subway map it didn’t make"

whlr — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 21:49:10 +0000

I'm not convinced that Berman's map shows weeknight and weekend service massively better than the current one, which includes that info with the key. I find the symbols on Berman's map a bit confusing, and I suspect I would have to reference the key, negating their benefit.

On the other hand, citymapper, google maps, etc. make showing the "outside world" on a subway map less important than in the past, so perhaps it's time to reevaluate.

I think the current map really shines in lower manhattan, where the stops closest to the staring/ending location aren't always the best ones to get on.

New comment by whlr in "The MTA is going after an Etsy artist over a New York subway map it didn’t make"

whlr — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 17:36:29 +0000

It's rush-hour-only service. He's using the notation from the official map [1], but I think he forgot to put it in the key.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Official...

New comment by whlr in "The MTA is going after an Etsy artist over a New York subway map it didn’t make"

whlr — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 17:30:42 +0000

I dunno. It looks like an improvement on the Vignelli map, but I think the less pretty one the MTA uses today is more functional.

New comment by whlr in "A 160k-year-old jaw in a Tibetan cave might explain high altitude living"

whlr — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 17:49:01 +0000

(paywalled) article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1139-x

New comment by whlr in "Why Nukemap Isn't on Google Maps Anymore"

whlr — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 17:39:55 +0000

This also happens with rivers! It's incredibly annoying.

New comment by whlr in "The Value in Go’s Simplicity"

whlr — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 16:24:05 +0000

> This doesn't speak to Go's simplicity so much as it does to Go's conservatism.

I think this really hits the nail on the head. There are benefits to a conservative approach, but it's not the same as simplicity.

New comment by whlr in "Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft"

whlr — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 21:13:59 +0000

There are some parallels, but I don't know if the writing:editing::programming:testing analogy is very strong. I think editing is more like refactoring than anything else, but I hesitate to make parallels between code and prose in general.

New comment by whlr in "Tensorflow 2.0"

whlr — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 20:43:28 +0000

I like julia a lot (use it everyday, it's my primary language right now), but this isn't really a reasonable recommendation, imho. Julia seems like it could be really great for ML, but I'm not sure if the current libraries are mature enough to wholeheartedly recommend.

I'd love to be proven wrong about that, though.

New comment by whlr in "Consciousness Doesn’t Depend on Language"

whlr — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 13:43:41 +0000

Is it established that internal dialogue is facilitated by our language faculties, though? That’s certainly not was I would guess from my subjective experience.