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All posts blake shaw 🇵🇸's posts Back to profile
22 posts total
blake shaw 🇵🇸
Kristopher Johnson

@rml If anyone else ever realized C++ was complicated, we wouldn’t need him to save us.

4 Oct 2023 at 12:27 | Open on mastodon.xyz
blake shaw 🇵🇸

Its honestly ridiculous that so many people seem to think that if you maintain libraries in rust or clojure or typescript its "production software", regardless of whether its deployed in production, but if you maintain a library with the same functionality in any lisp thats not clojure its "a hobby", even if its an emacs package used every day by countless programmers.

but then again, most production software is bad, and most things people put their heart and soul into tends to be good (:

3 Oct 2023 at 16:52 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

what corporations demand shouldn't be the metric of software quality. developer bitch and groan about mainstream software practices and then hate on anything that actually goes against the grain.

3 Oct 2023 at 16:57 | Open on functional.cafe
vruz

@rml

The ethical higher ground of #FOSS culture in the context of the software industry doesn't make it immune to the consequences of its own arbitrary aesthetic values.

3 Oct 2023 at 16:57 | Open on mastodon.social
Boarders

@rml the whole way of thinking and talking where there are reified concepts of “senior software engineers” and “best practices”, free-floating ideas of “beginner friendly” and “production quality”/“production ready”, along with a whole class of ever-changing meaningless truisms “actually abstractions are bad”, “actually comments are bad” “everything is a trade off”makes me despair - people are genuinely convinced there is something meaningful about all of the above and become very angry if you doubt the framing

3 Oct 2023 at 18:41 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
blake shaw 🇵🇸

#GCC size: 343Mb*
#Rust size: 1Gb
#GHC size: 1.4Gb
#Clang size: 1.7Gb

#Chez #Scheme size: 5mb

[ * ] all based on the results of using #guix size, removing common and documentation-based dependencies such as ncurses, bash, and zlib

19 Sep 2023 at 21:23 | Open on functional.cafe
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blake shaw 🇵🇸

woke: type systems are for safety
bespoke: type systems are for stimming

18 Sep 2023 at 13:36 | Open on functional.cafe
mnl mnl mnl mnl mnl

@rml the sweet tickle of a well tuned expressive type assertion

18 Sep 2023 at 13:37 | Open on hachyderm.io
Digital Mark λ 📚 🕹 💾 🥃

@rml You know when the religious types get all hyper and start speaking in tongues and dancing around at the magical touch of Jesus? That's how any heavy-duty Haskell/ML stuff sounds to me.

18 Sep 2023 at 13:45 | Open on appdot.net
blake shaw 🇵🇸
blake shaw 🇵🇸

if you think the former is more desirable than the latter, then I got a theorem prover to sell to you dressed as a programming language

24 Aug 2023 at 18:27 | Open on functional.cafe
l'empathie mécanique

@rml how do you know it isn’t the other way around?

24 Aug 2023 at 18:39 | Open on qoto.org
Grigory Shepelev

@rml I was a huge fan of #haskell & type theory. That's how I got into "advanced programming languages". I tinkered with it over a year and end up considering it totally useless.

In (kinda&-)functional programming we have just functions and data. MLs praises functions. Lisps praises data. And I prefer data.

24 Aug 2023 at 19:33 | Open on fosstodon.org
blake shaw 🇵🇸

Boss: "can we add #ChatGPT there to speed up production?"
Me: "no, but we can add it anywhere to sabotage production"

23 Aug 2023 at 12:31 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

#LLVM installation: ~40Gb
Chez #Scheme + Nanopass: ~4Mb

3 Jun 2023 at 14:38 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

People are seeing better results in less time while having more fun targeting the latter. But if its not a massive industrial pile of fast moving complexity seeped in corporate interests it cant be very serious, right? I mean, 4mb? C'mon, thats not a very serious compiler. I want my compiler toolchain to be big, strong, manly.

3 Jun 2023 at 14:50 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

That #SBCL's assembler can be extended at runtime is such a flex tbh

30 May 2023 at 6:54 | Open on functional.cafe
David Wilson

@rml as much as I don't care for Common Lisp, SBCL is a solid piece of engineering work

30 May 2023 at 7:02 | Open on fosstodon.org
blake shaw 🇵🇸

What other #distro includes a system service for blocking #facebook out of the box?

#guix
24 May 2023 at 15:39 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

never came across this before, but looks like @civodul added it back in 2014
24 May 2023 at 15:43 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

@akater
I did it y'all. I turned #scheme into a proper #lisp

(we already have defmacro, loop [ala (let loop () ...)], defmethod (as define-method), defun is simple function definitions iirc, so all is thats left is unwind-protect, which trivially defined using dynamic-wind)
25 May 2023 at 14:31 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

I think something the scheme community could learn from Haskell is to lean-in on it's prestige. I see so many people post about how they were never able to figure out how to use scheme in any practical way, and most schemers I've spoke to said it took them about a year to get really compfortable. But I think the #scheme community has traditionally advertised it as "so easy, you can learn it in an afternoon!", and so people, often times already coming from some other #lisp like #clojure, expect to be able to just pick it up, and when they fail to they think the language is lacking. But nobody comes to #Haskell with such expectations, and the Haskell community never advertised it as super easy and quick to learn. In my experience, Haskell has always been sold as "takes time to learn, but is worth it".

I think something the scheme community could learn from Haskell is to lean-in on it's prestige. I see so many people post about how they were never able to figure out how to use scheme in any practical way, and most schemers I've spoke to said it took them about a year to get really compfortable. But I think the #scheme community has traditionally advertised it as "so easy, you can learn it in an afternoon!", and so people, often times already coming from some other #lisp like #clojure, expect to...

20 May 2023 at 15:29 | Open on functional.cafe
Ramin Honary

@rml
If you were only interested in computers as a brute-force calculating tool, or interested only in the business side of #software, you aren't interested in #Lisp because it lost out to languages like Python, JavaScript, C/C++. So I think any Lisp will only attract people who are interested in lambda calculus and/or programming language theory, and/or maybe people interested in dependent typing, like anyone who has run across the work of Dan P. Friedman.

I assume it is not just me that the reason Scheme is appealing is because it is a well-designed minimal Lisp. And just being able to understand, from a pure computer science perspective, the deep philosophical implications of what a "well-designed, minimal Lisp" even means has already narrowed down the pool of potential converts to a tiny minority of people.

But the fragmentation is still the biggest problem. The absolute first question I had when I wanted to get started with #Scheme was, "which implementation should I use?" And immediately it becomes clear that once you have picked one, it isn't easy to just switch your code over to some other implementation in the case that later on you feel like the one you picked first is wrong. So there is soooo much pressure to pick the right implementation on your first try. That alone I think scares too many people away. I didn't run away because I was already committed to the idea mastering a "well-designed, minimal Lisp."

@rml
If you were only interested in computers as a brute-force calculating tool, or interested only in the business side of #software, you aren't interested in #Lisp because it lost out to languages like Python, JavaScript, C/C++. So I think any Lisp will only attract people who are interested in lambda calculus and/or programming language theory, and/or maybe people interested in dependent typing, like anyone who has run across the work of Dan P. Friedman.

20 May 2023 at 16:02 | Open on emacs.ch
blake shaw 🇵🇸
blake shaw 🇵🇸

@daviwil never heard of this, I have a big stack of books lined up rn so it will be a while before I get to it, but you should do a series of streams working through some of the ideas!

18 May 2023 at 8:40 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

The #scheme benchmarks are a fascinating case of techno-anthropology
12 May 2023 at 2:56 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

This #conj23 talk is great, Sam Richie going through his journey diving into Sussman's #SICM and #scmutils, it will be very relatable to anyone who has become possessed for several years with the drive to truly understand some body of knowlege (I'm looking at all of you)

youtube.com/watch?v=MNiqDZz-lp

#clojure #scheme #lisp

5 May 2023 at 1:04 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

When I first go into #guix, I experimented with every little thing. Now I only change my configuration every three months or so, while for anything else I just use guix shell. And my system remains solid and predictable, with no weird state and quick environment variable tweeks building up leading to library collisions etc that can come to haunt you at a moments notice. Just my studio, as I designed it to be.

1 May 2023 at 10:21 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

This has meant that I havent contributed much in a while. But I'm honestly not the type to try out the newest software as its released. Everything I need is packaged in guix already. And of all the things I've packaged, I never started actually using any of them lol. So I'm kind of glad I didn't submit them upstream, because im not sure if we really need to include any packages that noone is using.

1 May 2023 at 10:26 | Open on functional.cafe
Andres Moreno

@rml

How do you manage your Emacs packages? Do you have a core set under your profile and then load others on demand via Guix shell?

Or do you have a manifest that you use for each project as needed?

I declared Emacs bankruptcy and am considering moving to Guix and starting from scratch.

Suggestions welcome

1 May 2023 at 16:14 | Open on fosstodon.org
blake shaw 🇵🇸
blake shaw 🇵🇸
blake shaw 🇵🇸

#guile tip of the day: use module-map to create a list of all the functions in a given module

#lisp #scheme #guix
16 Apr 2023 at 10:41 | Open on functional.cafe
blake shaw 🇵🇸

I think the idea that if you have a big project you need a big language is backwards. If you have a big project — taking that to mean something that will be the focuse of your attention for many years — what you actually want is the least opinionated, most generic foundation possible, where a powerful runtime can be molded to your needs and where the tragedies of dead generations weigh on your practice the least, something like #scheme. for quick, non-commital projects to knock together a useful gui app your non-hacker friends can use in a weekend or two, then you want larger languages with larger ecosystems like #cpp or #lisp

I think the idea that if you have a big project you need a big language is backwards. If you have a big project — taking that to mean something that will be the focuse of your attention for many years — what you actually want is the least opinionated, most generic foundation possible, where a powerful runtime can be molded to your needs and where the tragedies of dead generations weigh on your practice the least, something like #scheme. for quick, non-commital projects to knock together a useful...

24 Feb 2023 at 20:29 | Open on functional.cafe
Steve

@rml ... and the #ide ? Do you use #emacs ? ;) I am still exploring (not programming actively, but the possibilities of EMACS. My gosh. Havent noticed, whats possible. Like Org and Mail and other stuff ...

What IDE do you use, if I may ask?

24 Feb 2023 at 21:07 | Open on mastodon.social
blake shaw 🇵🇸
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