Erkki

Duolingo is great! I've been wanting to learn more languages for years, but stumbling onto duolingo made me finally do it. And after learning ~1h every day for a month, I'm now taking a real Spanish course as well.

I bet Henry's thumbs are mostly idle.

PS. Another aspect of the language is "everything is an expression". A good example of the math code possible is a Mandelbrot convergence function, this particular one implemented using custom complex number type and a loop construct that may seem unusual: // how many iterations does convergence take? def converge(z0: ℂ, c: ℂ) = loop (i := 0, z := z0) while i < 255 ∧ |z| ≤ 2.0 do (i := i + 1, z := z² + c) yield i The loop is an expression that computes some final value, you can read it like this: Start a loop with (i initialized to 0, z initialized to z0) While i is less than 255 and the magnitude of z is less than 2 do continue the loop with (i = i + 1, z = z² + c) (otherwise the loop will end) yielding the last value of i The language uses the concept of tuples a lot -- here a loop starts with a tuple initializer, and the loop body has to end with a matching tuple with new values. If multiple values are needed after the loop, the expression can also return a tuple e.g. yield (i, z) instead of yield i. If you need more values changing with the loop, you add them as elements of the tuple -- I haven't implemented mutable variables yet.

The quadratic formula still have to be written on one line, using parentheses where necessary. I'm still limiting the language to plain text and a context free grammar (not sure this is relevant, I'm still a bit confused about grammars). Also I don't know what the ± would mean in a program, so you would probably write two versions, and one would be: x = (-b + √(b² - 4 * a * c)) / (2 * a) So in this case there isn't anything special about my language except for allowing √ as an identifier, and the b², which is syntax sugar for calling b.superscript(2). I could also allow juxtaposition as an "operator", although it usually messes the rest of the grammar up too much. If allowed it could be: x = (-b + √(b² - 4 a c)) / (2 a) I have given some thought to writing multi-line formulas, but every time I think about how it would destroy some assumptions about the parser and tooling and it's just too crazy. Would be nice if the below was possible and rendered well: ⎧ b ± √͞b͞²͞ ͞-͞ ͞4͞ ͞a͞ ͞c x = ⎨ ––––––––––––––––– ⎩ 2 * a But maybe something like this could be presented as a hint (e.g. a tool-tip when hovering over the / symbol) while the code would be written as in the first version.

That site is kind of horrible to navigate as Twig said. But I wouldn't mind if I could leave Twitter behind. I have followed too many people and now my stream is just so much constant noise that I only read maybe 5% of it. And I can't be arsed to go and unfollow another bunch of people. Too bad the lists thing never really worked well in Twitter. I would have loved to have contexts I could easily switch between while keeping my main stream rather minimal. Seems like this ello thing might have something like that, though I didn't yet figure out what the Friend/Noise distinction is.

Can haz invite?

Indeed, I probably also wouldn't choose a language over this feature. I initially started with other goals, basically functional / OO with many ideas taken from Scala, but a lot simpler and without the obligatory garbage collection of the JVM, and a focus on enabling data-oriented programming in a more comfortable way than C or C++. The main design goal is perhaps that the feature set should be small and orthogonal. All this takes so much time to research and implement*, though, that I just got sidetracked and refocused on syntax for a while. It has been fun messing with syntax and I could probably claim that my language could be one of the best for implementing inline DSL-s if fully realized. * for example, I still haven't figured out a good way to implement or to not implement overloading, but I don't think any language has.

Of course I'm fully aware that the symbols are hard to write, and the language even has a feature to help with that: aliases. The library writer (or user) can define aliases for functions: alias ∙ = dot ∙ and dot are then fully interchangeable. An IDE would support this by providing a "switch alias" fix and perhaps having a preferred alias profile, so that for example you could write dot(a, and when you save the file (or press auto-format or whatever) it would turn into a ∙ b. Writing must be easy, that is given. But code is more read than written. [edit] the aliases are of course scoped like everything else

IMHO, direction is represented as unit vectors, not zero vectors. A zero vector represented as (x,y) has no direction.

Here we go. Dunno if I should be worried yet, but Russia seems to want further escalation, after Obama's confirmation in Tallinn this week that NATO article 5 still holds. And with UK proposing serious sanctions against Russia... A new cold war in the making? Or a hot one?

Well, it's my personal choice to mute anyone I want (it was not you BusbyBerkeley, and I'm not trying to invite others to mute anyone specific). When reading two weeks worth of posts in this thread in a row, I was just getting really really tired and pissed of some people trying to make "but Zoe Quinn is not that great" as an actual argument in this situation.

When you mute someone here (by going to settings and adding them to Ignore List or somesuch), the forum still shows that they posted and you can still click to see their post, so IMHO that's perfect. This thread actually made me put 3 or 4 people there last month, probably for the first time in IT history. Or maybe just the first time since the forum software switch.

I remember Tim said in the video that Peter Chan's vision for the scenes had 4:3 in mind. Did he concept all scenes or just cutscenes?

For the first time ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, I'm getting a bit scared that war in our small country is not out of the question. Although many Estonians have always had this fear of Russia during that time, I haven't really taken that seriously, but I'm starting to.

Wow, the game looks way more interesting than what I imagined so far. It's also cool that there are actual people you have to deal with, wasn't expecting that.

Man, I forgot to back this I would have done it just because it was run by the original creators of Outcast, arguably the 57th best game of all time.

So true! Whenever I've seriously changed my eating habits with the goal of losing weight, I've managed to get a good weight loss of 1 kilo a week or so. But at the moment I'm not feeling disciplined enough to do it. Instead, for the past 4 months I've been working out 10+ hours a week and there is almost no change in my weight (maybe -3 kilos). I seem to have swapped some fat for muscles, though. That said, I'm not doing the exercise that much for weight loss, just to keep getting a bit more fit or at least maintaining my current fitness. I'm fine with not losing weight quickly, but eventually I do want to develop better eating habits as well and lose some of that fat.

I didn't realize how great this Pixies song was before the Pixies linked to it on Facebook (after some band had covered it) and I really listened to it this time. Oh Alexander I see you beneath the archway of aerodynamics. I love kinda-nonsense lyrics like these.

Indeed http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/ Maybe this was actually the game I was thinking about but I had just forgotten about it Edit: hehehe, that is the case. RPS is where I saw some GIFs of it initially.

Color me interested. The look initially (before the bridge) reminded me of another game in the making with really realistic graphics that were made from photos or video or something. Can't remember what it was, maybe it was on Kickstarter.

I've been listening to some afro-latin music from the last century and this is the shit:

Yeah, thanks clyde, I thought of that as well soon after posting. Also, found the La Bamba dance:

Does anyone here know if the bit starting at around 2:25 in Pueblo Nuevo (from Buena Vista Social Club) is "quoting" some other song?

"A “British indie S.T.A.L.K.E.R.”" http://www.big-robot.com/2012/03/12/and-now-sir-you-are-being-hunted/ This might be interesting. I haven't played the first game Big Robot and Jim Rossignol of RPS fame made, but I'm also looking forward to Fallen City and of course procedurally generated stuff is always cool.

The Bronstring tweeted about duolingo.com (which I didn't know) and that was somehow the trigger to finally set me on a course of learning another language (Spanish). Weird, I've been meaning to learn for years, guess I was just almost ready.