dougws

5 ms·

1.
by dougws 10y ago
This is a pretty good blog post (based on a really good paper) that describes the fundamental differences between interpreters and compilers: http://blog.sigfpe.com/2009/05/three-projections-of-doctor-f...
2.
by dougws 10y ago
You've just invented the field of program synthesis, which is a super active research area right now in programming languages! Here's the paper list from a class at UW focused on this area: http://courses.cs.washington.
3.
by dougws 10y ago
Speaking from academic computer science, I have never heard of anyone making the decision not to work on something for this reason--perhaps because if an idea could immediately be turned into a successful company, it's probably not goo
4.
by dougws 11y ago
You absolutely shouldn't feel "mentally inferior" to folks with PhDs. Doing academic research, which probably involves getting a PhD, is almost certainly the best way to make a significant contribution to Computer Science. Th
5.
by dougws 11y ago
One could imagine doing some kind of differential testing of another key-value store against vard to ensure that for a random but large number of requests, they return the same value. I'm not sure that doing that would gain you anythin
6.
by dougws 11y ago
At this point, the standard intro text is Software Foundations [1]. I highly recommend it; it will teach you Coq and also probably make you a better programmer. After SF, Certified Programming with Dependent Types [2] gets more into the pra
7.
by dougws 11y ago
Thanks! Let us know if you have any questions about the proof itself--unfortunately, it's not particularly well-documented, and Coq isn't super easy to read in the first place.
8.
by dougws 11y ago
We are reading! This is a great question. We currently don't prove anything about liveness. We'd love to work on this. As you probably know, Raft and other consensus algorithms are not guaranteed to be live in all situations. But
9.
by dougws 11y ago
Hey, I'm Doug Woos--thanks for this excellent summary! It's worth noting that the Raft proof was completed by a team of people, including me, my research partner James Wilcox ( http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~jrw12&
10.
by dougws 12y ago
Investigating theft takes up police time, which expends taxpayer resources. The market wouldn't take this into account. Also, "doesn't California have bigger issues to worry about" is just silly, as if the government of
11.
by dougws 12y ago
Your objections to MongoDB's model seem reasonable, but I don't see any evidence in either this comment or the linked blog post that DocumentDB is better (especially in the absence of benchmarks). What is this "battle-tested
12.
Teens Make App To Rate Police(motherjones.com)
1 points by dougws 12y ago|0 comments
13.
by dougws 13y ago
Seems like this is pretty comparable to Vagrant using the Docker backend. Anyone have thoughts on pros and cons of each?
14.
CTO/Founder--What's my job again?(medium.com)
5 points by dougws 13y ago|0 comments
15.
by dougws 13y ago
Did you read the whole article? If not, go ahead and read the part about pressuring the intern into giving his assistant oral sex while he (Kennedy) watched. That is absolutely not "normal behavior".
16.
by dougws 13y ago
Last I checked, GIT_DIR wasn't actually respected by a lot of git subcommands. Is that no longer the case?
17.
by dougws 14y ago
Maybe give some usage examples in the README? This sounds interesting but I'm still pretty confused about what exactly the program does.
18.
by dougws 14y ago
Have used all of the techniques in the article (plus dict/set comprehensions) but had never heard of dict views [1] until now. Good stuff! [1] http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#dictionary-vi...
19.
by dougws 14y ago
I don't see the programming language set. Is it one of the ones that shows up on the front page?
20.
by dougws 14y ago
Github's project pages present a really nice, standardized, easy way to find out what a library does. I am always relieved when I find out that a 3rd-party python library I want to use is hosted on github, as it means I can very easily read
21.
by dougws 14y ago
Seems like it's likely to be very difficult for a browser to detect whether or not a given request is idempotent, no? You could use HTTP verbs (i.e. assume that GETs are and POSTs are not) but then you're trusting the server to use REST cor
22.
by dougws 14y ago
I've got two conflicting viewpoints on this article. On the one hand, I got my current job (as one of the first 10 employees at a startup) by "traditional" means--I saw a job ad, responded to it, interviewed, and accepted the offer. It work
23.
by dougws 14y ago
Absolutely right. There are plenty of ways of making the same point without invoking a very serious condition that makes a lot of peoples' lives extremely difficult.
24.
by dougws 14y ago
This is absolutely true. Market validation goes both ways! Don't assume a product is either viable or unviable without confirmation from the intended consumers.
25.
by dougws 14y ago
Please re-read the article--the author is absolutely not making the point you think he is. All he is saying is that hackers are less likely to be willing to pay for software than most people, so the fact that the typical hacker news reader
26.
by dougws 14y ago
Feynman story is neat, but it's being used by a rabidly sexist man[1] in an attempt to prove a false point using anecdotal evidence. [1] http://pechorin2.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/women-shouldnt-hav...
27.
by dougws 14y ago
Email with a "+" sign still not working as of 12:00 Wednesday morning.
28.
by dougws 14y ago
How on earth did you end up with that impression? While it's true that it's possible to pick up the material on your own, it's the rare individual (I know one) who is actually able to do so completely--and I think this particular guy would
29.
by dougws 15y ago
Yes, clearly you have to relearn everything you know about computer programming now that a new version of PHP has arrived.
30.
by dougws 15y ago
Computer science != Theoretical computer science.

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