skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"The input data would be considered the language"

really? I would have thought that the question is one of equivalence between a program (not the input) and a language (evaluator)

so i read the quoted SICP fragment to mean

input --> program --> output

and somehow an equivalent

input --> (equivalent to program) language evaluator --> output

with the "language" (that is evaluated by the evaluator) and "program" being (somehow) "points of view". This seems to posit an equivalence between a program and a language evaluator.

Not really disputing your(jacquesm's) formulation, just providing an alternative. I don't completely understand the quoted paragraph either.

I find it a little hard to think of a randomly chosen program (say the HN webapp) as a language. The inputs would be submissions, upvotes (clicks), downvotes (clicks)etc. The output would be the display page and scores etc. How is this a language processor?

Seems to be one of those "zen koan" elements of SICP, which needs a flash of insight to understand. :-)

edited for clarity,

(1) responding to jacquesm's response "input -->(equivalent to program)language evaluator" substituted for "input --> language"

(2) expanded HN web app example in terms of explicit inputs and outputs
Yeah, I especially like the part where the article quotes from Sethi's court filing as if it was the judge's ruling.

The judge found Arrington/Techcrunch guilty of nothing. It looks like the author bought Sethi's lies about the case hook, line, and sinker.
Yes and no.

There are a lot of companies which simply never talk about what they use internally; as such, it's really hard to get an accurate picture of what's really in use, because the only glimpses we get are the (fairly rare) places which choose to be open about what they're doing.

Based on that, and on interesting tidbits picked up from talking to people in the trenches and paying attention to little clues (interesting addresses showing up on mailing lists or IRC, peculiar code quirks, etc.), I suspect that if everybody laid their cards on the table the results would be surprising to people who think they know what the "mainstream" is using (and not just in the "lots of people using Rails/Django sense -- there are many more exotic things out there).
I use OneNote. I use a scanner to capture the bits of paper, and add them into OneNote.

I agree, it's a great program.
Health Insurance and the Power of Reputation
laws like those that forbid people from not hiring a person based on skin color?

ask yourself if it's fair for some developers to be forced to develop on platforms with 30 million fewer customers

You didn't just seriously draw a line between those two statements, did you?
Moreover please show me a developer who is forced to develop anything for any platform.
the program implements the language, but is not usually written in the language that it implements.
"The program implements the language, but is not usually written in the language that it implements."

I agree. Edited my formulation to make it more clear.
Search for "azobe"
Ah yes, humour. I forgot we can't have any of that here.
Pretty neat- used to do this with a b&w copier when I was on the newspaper staff back in high school. We had stuff like giant pictures of David Letterman up on the wall. None of it really made sense but it was funny to us. Gonna try it with my printer.
Get an actual notebook with binding, so the pieces of paper don't get lost. The notebook itself is usually quite hard to lose too, just carry it wherever you carry your laptop.
Where can I get a copy of that?
I think the problem is that the abstraction from 'program processes data' to 'program implements language' is a pretty tricky one to get your head around.

When you're using stuff like lex+yacc though you quickly realize that almost every processing that you do on structured data of some sort is actually equivalent to implementing a language.
Yes, I did. I assume your objection is that racism isn't in the same league as what Apple is doing. I agree with you on that. But the government doesn't take a stance on racism. If Government was taking a stance on racism then they wouldn't allow racist literature to be distributed (as just one example). But they do allow that meaning racism isn't the issue.

So the question at hand is fairness not racism. Which brings me back to my original point of "Should the government legislate whether private industries treat people fairly?"
I'm sure you'll acknowledge that neither Rails nor Django is universially more used than PHP is. A better estimate is that PHP is about 100 times more widely used. The discrepancy between that and the results of this poll is so big I can't think of a word in the english language to describe it.
http://djangohosting.ch/
DSLs in Erlang
[sarcasm]You don't get it dude, we're serious here. We're going to be multi-millionaires shortly and we can't waste our precious time on your silly jokes. Get with the program man.[/sarcasm]

-4 ? really ? Wow, you must have a fanclub of sorts.

I think HN's stance on 'humorous' content has it's merits but I highly doubt if pg would have written such a thing that he would be modded into the ground like that.

On the other hand you really don't want HN to become another ./.
Mine was unpaid. It was the hardest 4 months of my life too :) I would get up go to school, drive 15 miles to my internship, then drive 20 miles to work (in thick rush-hour construction traffic), get home play LAN games with my friends then sleep and repeat.
Consider your example of a web app: if you implement the app following the REST principles, then the app simply evaluates a language of HTTP methods (verbs) and URIs (nouns). "GET /users" "POST /orders"...

Edit: And your program printing the Fibonacci numbers has a single verb whose semantics is to calculate and output.
Hold it: Cuba has run out of toilet paper for the next 5 months
The problem is that a handicap doesn't have to be a physical or mental disability. There are serious asymmetries of information that handicap all of us, even the smartest. To take your example, I'd say that ingredients are listed on food so that consumers have the same information as the producers. People with allergies are just a particular subset of consumers who benefit from the level information playing field.

Another example: the SEC is set up to help keep information equally spread within financial markets, and in fact its (perhaps inevitable) failure to keep up with new information asymmetries involving complex mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps contributed significantly to the recent economic collapse.

But we can disagree in each particular case about whether the government should be responsible for improving information flow, or whether consumers should carry the burden themselves. I am definitely in favor of as little regulation as possible to get the job done. I'm just saying that some information asymmetries are literally huge and there's not much consumers can be expected to do without government's help.
Icombinator down for two days. Any alternatives?
My favorite iPhone friendly version of news.ycombinator.com has been down for going on two full days now. I can't live without it. Are there any good alternatives?

Or maybe someone has the time to make a new version, which would be awesome.
Boost Your Memory Power with a 30-Second Eye Exercise - Memory - Lifehacker
docs for this are non existent or I can't find anything more than that poor wiki.
Make a camera for your cat
Printable Batteries Should Arrive Next Year
I used to use zend framework, moved onto kohana and I am looking now at doophp http://doophp.com/ - though I am really really (I promise) exploring an option to move to python/django. The problem is I have a mountain of legacy code which I don't feel like rewriting (it works!).
There's always a small chance that they're not billion dollar genius' but are instead people who have had a pretty good idea at exactly the right time.

If the right time is just after a step forward step in some seemingly tangentially related field and just before everyone else spots the connection then it more about luck than genius.

Of course, this doesn't apply to people with ideas that are trivially easy to shoot down but won't listen :)
Shipping (circa 1995)
Error messages are not for end users. And certainly don't belong on iPhone apps
The name puts me off a little bit. I think "The Rasterizer" or something would have been better off.
If you have a tablet PC (or a tablet) you can annotate pdfs using software like Jarnal.
I wonder if the "designed to fail" trend will get worse or reverse in the coming years?
Wow, that was a lot of dodgy quasi/pseudo-scientific claims packed into a 3-minute video. I wonder of how much of it actually holds up?

(Telling me that the ancient Greeks wore sprigs of rosemary in their hair on exam days isn't much of a selling point, seeing as these are the same people who tried to foretell the future through close examination of bird entrails....)
i'm just restating post hoc ergo propter hoc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

basically falsely attributing cause when this inference isn't warranted.
Get a spiral bound (so it opens 359 degrees) 8.5 x 11 sketchpad with detachable pages for about 4 bucks at CVS or Walgreens. When it fills up, file it away. Remove any pages that apply to a certain project and put them in that file. I attach 4 different color markers to mine and carry it everywhere.
Pinning down the fleeting Internet: Crawler stores historical data for searching
PHP is more widely used, yes, and that's obvious. But I didn't try to say otherwise.

What I'm objecting to is your apparent assumption that use of tools like Django or Rails necessarily sets one apart from "the mainstream", or even that there is such a thing and that it can be quantified.

Or, succinctly: there probably are a lot more people using not-PHP and not-Java than you think. Some are using hip, trendy new things like Django or Rails. Many are still using ancient, forgotten things like COBOL and IBM mainframes (some friends of mine deal with those types of folks on a daily basis). And there are a lot of places that aren't single-language shops, but have an amalgamation of code accreted over the years.

Which all adds up to the fact that you really can't make useful statements about "the mainstream"; all such statements tend, ultimately, to reflect hype machines rather than reality.
This is sort of confusing. Any picture you can upload to that service is already a "raster" picture (as opposed to a vector picture). I think what they mean is that they just blow up really huge?
Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
WHAT THE FUCK. what's next? blocking lung cancer treatment because it encourages people to smoke?

fuck the nanny state. jesus.
Timeless elegance of a luxury furniture.
I`m so glad to have found the perfect furniture to enchance the beauty of my home. This company surely knows the value of luxury. Visit their website and be amazed.
It's an interesting double-standard, forcing corporation transparency, when your own goverment isn't.
Case in point: I had recently the pleasure of signing up for your country's "visa waiver" program. Technically, it's not a big deal, since it automatically accepts anyone with a recent passport, and a valid background. What got me is the fine print:

"...Waiver of Rights: I have read and understand that I hereby waive for the duration of my travel authorization obtained via ESTA any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer's determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program. ..." [ https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/ ]

So, the way I understand, the "American Way" is forcing transparency from everyone, as long as it's not me? How is Apple any different?
Near realtime face detection on the iPhone w/ OpenCV port [w/code,video]
please go back up and read the wiki link on post hoc ergo propter hoc. thanks!
Penyergapan Noordin M Top Hanya Sandiwara?
Benarkah Densus 88 sukses menyergap Noordim M Top? kalo memang Noordim M Top benar-benar terbunuh kita semua akan mendapatkan 1 point untuk Mengembalikan Jati Diri Bangsa yang bertepatan di HUT RI ke 64 ini... Merdeka...merdeka...merdeka...!!! :) Sarimin juga berharap Pasukan Sexy Antiteror bisa untuk Sarimin semuanya karena Noordin M Top sudah tewas :)
Putri Indonesia Tampil Sexy Mengenakan Swimsuit
Ingin memberikan dukungan kepada Zivanna Letisha? atau kontestan lain seperti Miss Japan Emiri Miyasaka yang beberapa minggu lalu bertemu Perdana Menteri Jepang Taro Aso yang terekam dalam sebuah video /* :) yang pasti Maria Ozawa aka Miyabi dan Asuka Kirara gak ada di kontes Miss Universe 2009 ini ... */

Berikan dukungan Anda melalui Voting yang diadakan Missuniverse.com di halaman berikut ini http://missuniverse.com/galleries/view/1018
Jeeze what a non-article. It seems he makes no point at all.
Maxima does:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_%28software%29
You know, the chances of an old 8 bitter firing up on the first try and loading its files from tape somehow does not surprise me. But you may want to worry a bit about the electrolytic capacitors, they tend to dry out over time.

If you did the same with a 15 year old 486 and read a bunch of 3.5" floppies (or worse, zip disks) I would be much more impressed :)

Eletronics back then were built to last, and the size of an individual bit on a medium from those days was large enough to withstand decay by auto-demagnetization better than anything new. Lucky you did not have any 'copy through' effects on the tape, that's the biggest killer trying to read old tapes.
I worked with a CM (at EPCC in Edinburgh, Scotland) in the mid-nineties for a little bit. I think we used CM Fortran -- basically Fortran 77 with extra knobs on for parallelism. I remember it as being a pleasant experience. The programming paradigm effectively hid details of the data decomposition and communications and allowed you to write parallel code in a fairly straightforward fashion. It was also the first supercomputer I go on to, so that was pretty exciting.
At the time, the CM was already being eclipsed by the Cray T3D and YMP.
Some more ideosyncratic parallel machines I used a bit later were the APE 100 (from Alenia Spazio/Quadrics) and Fermilab's ACPMAPS, which was reminded me of the CM for programming, although I don't know if they were at all similar architecturally.
First off, please stop mixing labor law and human rights into this. That's so idiotic, it's not funny. Especially since there isn't even an employment relationship involved here.

The app-store is a digital retail store. You are free to develop an iPhone app and offer it to them. They are free to reject it.

Just like you are free to develop a better mousetrap and offer it to WalMart - and they are free to reject it.

If you don't like their rules then don't develop an iPhone app. It's really as simple as that.

And in case you are wondering what their rules are: They are explained in this big blob of text presented to you when you sign up. The one with the checkbox labeled "I understand and I agree" at the end.
Ridiculous. Flagged. Stop whining for the love of god.

Why not also whine about how your local cinema refuses to show your home movie!
Ask HN: What do you want in a tech event?
I'm one of the organizers for the Developer Day series (http://developer-day.com), and as we're putting on an event in Boston next weekend and planning for the future, I'm wondering: what would HN-readers like to see in a local event?

We're already committed to bringing together devs from different backgrounds and technologies and booking great speakers, as well as keeping the price low... Is there something we're missing?
This seems like complete spam to me :/ Am I missing something here?
Luxury resort offers $19 room _ minus bed and TP
I think the important part is that it's half-toned (little dots of varying radii according to color and intensity) rather than just making each pixel into one big square. So really its a misnomer. Should be halftonabator or ditherbator, if only those rhymed with masturbate. (TEE HEE!)
I would have a problem with this - it's like forcing a shop to justify not stocking a particular product. I do think Apple should be clearer, but they shouldn't be compelled to do so.
You can not understand and agree to that which is not published, such as the official rulebook on which apps will make it through approval and those that do not.

A transparent approval process would solve this instantly.

And even Apple would benefit.
The goal of a SLA is to insure that the service is up most of the time and can provide a given bandwidth most of the time. If you really want to have high up time you need 2 or more independent connections. T1 + cable works just fine. It's not about preventing downtime so much as reducing the window for a double failure.

PS: You can get an SLA that covers double time with a per indecent penalty, the ISP really will hop to fix the problem, but costs even more.
Link to stats? I don't know anyone who hangs out on bebo, but then perhaps it's mainly kids.

My money would be on facebook being biggest in UK :/
Smart Internet Marketing Solution
Hell has officially frozen over- I just watched this video training with my eyes glued to the screen, taking notes on Greg Clement`s Property Launch Formula. I guess you can get some good info from free stuff.
The danger of vague claims
Debt Settlements Companies
Just a short time ago I heard a couple of interviews with people who worked in Spanish radio stations during the Franco dictatorship. They described all the inane rules they had to follow to appease the censors: songs that contained any hint of sex, atheism, "un-spanishness", etc. could not be broadcasted. But none of them knew exactly which the forbidden words were; the censors seemed to make up the rules as they went along. A given song could be allowed by one censor, and forbidden by the next. If the "transgression" was too serious, you lost your job (or more).

All this was, of course, entirely lawful.

Their stories reminded me a little bit too much of recent events.
"carbs and meat and regular produce" covers almost all food, doesn't it? I thought it was supposed to be funny. :)
I am a big believer that everyone's thinking the same thing at roughly the same time. My partner and I tend to come up with great ideas, and then 2-3 years later it appears on the market executed well. We are continually saying "I told you so" with new products that come out.

I don't think it's that we are amazingly innovative people, it's just that we keep a pulse on technology and science trends, and love extrapolating them.

The ones that aren't on the market usually have a technical hurdle if you look into them. I've got a drawer full :)
I bought it at a campus bookstore. You may find one on line. See one here:

http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl
And advantage of XML is the ability to easily get substructures out of the data using XPath, and/or use XSLT to transform the XML directly to XHTML. So if you expect API users to be doing any filtering of the requested data on the fly at the client side, XML may be preferred.

Another rule of thumb is that the deeper the nesting of complex data structures, the easier XML will be to manipulte. With XPath I can quickly get a list of all the foo/bar/baz where haha=true, whereas with JSON I would have to have three nested loops to extract that data.
"That makes it great for stuff like configuration files"

Nothing beats YAML for configuration files.

For everything else, use JSON.
The user of the web app has a model and a desired result in mind and somehow needs to communicate this intention to the system. Viewed this way, it is clear that there must be a language in which this communication happens. Of course, we call this the interface. A user interface can be thought of as very high-level, very domain-specific language.
Guys, you got to try this. It works perfectly. Just upload a really huge photo, 'rasterize', then print it.
Ferengi Programmer and the Dreyfus Model
F*c%n& 'ell: Gordon Ramsey faces tough times with his restuarant empire
1. Turing machine: there is no difference between data and instructions. Meaning: any data can be interpreted as instructions (e.g. 1 + 1, GET /, [ 1, 2, 3], ...)

2. Writing is turning ideas into meaningless symbols, reading is turning meaningless symbols into ideas.

3. The alphabet consists of meaningless symbols and meaningless sounds.

Conclusion: any sensory cues can be interpreted, given meaning, and be converted into action; also by computers.
Hello,

I don't really have as deep an understanding of this subject as I'd like, so my explanation might seem rough, but here's my two cents.

You can say a language is a set of rules. Syntactic rules describe what proper sentences in that language look like, while semantic rules describe actions associated with syntactic constructs. The most basic of languages have simple semantic rules. For each language, you can have a program, which accepts as it's input a sentence, checks if it respects the syntactic rules of that language, and then performs the actions dictated by the semantic rules. This bit is clear, I think. Starting from the other direction, if you have a program, you can invent a language, which describes what the program does (semantic) and what are proper inputs (syntactic).

Some examples are in order.

* Suppose you have a program that finds out the maximum element in a sequence of comma separated numbers. What would the language associated with this program be? Well, it's syntactic rules are simple : a proper input sentence of this program's language is a list of comma separated numbers. The semantic action associated with such a sentence would be to find the maximum of the sentence.

* For your Fibonacci example. Even a simple function/program such as this defines it's own language. What would the syntactic rules be? A proper sentence for the Fibonacci function would be a single number (let's call it n). The semantic rule associated is calculating the nth number in the series.

* Of course, no list of examples would be complete without the poster children on language - program equivalence : regular expressions and compilers. Regular expressions are written in a small language that describes a program which, when given a certain input, says weather the input matches or doesn't. The syntactic and semantic rules are more complex than in our previous examples, but are well known. As for compilers, if we bend our minds and language a little bit, we can say that GCC is a program which receives a sentence written in the C programming language (so GCC's syntactic rules are C's syntactic rules), and produces an equivalent program in machine language (so GCC's semantic rules are to produce a machine language translation of a C program).

Anyway, I hope these few examples help.
Implement or Die
Barefoot running: enthusiasts swear by weird-looking shoes
Next-Generation Human Resources and Recruiting Software
Video clip yoga
You can not understand and agree to that which is not published, such as the official rulebook on which apps will make it through approval and those that do not.

You are mistaken, the official rulebook is published and it's right there in the blurb that you agree to during sign up.

It's really short, too, as there is only one rule: Apple decides whether an app is accepted and they will neither tell you the criteria nor the reasons for a rejection.

If you don't agree with that then you should not tick that checkbox. Easy, huh?
"improving the MS brand."

Keep in mind he also has some investments in biotech too. Giving someone money in order to allow him to buy your products and prop up your market cap may be a very profitable form of charity ;-)
But in these tough times, the scammers said, they are relying more on a crucial tool: voodoo. At times, Banjo said, he has traveled six hours to the forest, where a magician sells scam-boosters.

I do enjoy the irony.