mattfenwick

5 ms·

1.
by mattfenwick 12y ago
The paper ( http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... ) is not an example of good science. First: did they even find some kind of correlation, or is it just a statistical aberration? Second: if th
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
That's right. And it's not even clear that they found a correlation that would hold up in different experimental conditions. The paper is at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... ,
3.
by mattfenwick 12y ago
I think the word syntax is ambiguous. Is homoiconicity about concrete syntax ? Abstract syntax ? Both? Some other kind of syntax? Does parsing have something to do with homoiconicity? I don't know the answers to these question
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
This is my understanding of homoiconicity. There's a good chance that I'm wrong. Comments and clarifications welcome! ----- Is homoiconicity about concrete syntax? I think the answer is no , but I also think that this confuse
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
My suggestion is to use "side effects" -- it seems to me that most people have an intuitive understanding of that term. ... but I may be wrong about that.
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
From your article: > Monads are not "about effects". What is your definition of "effects"? I ask because this article[0] and many others[1] seem[2] to use a contradictory definition, in which failure, nondeterminism,
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Sure, we can't rule out those possibilities ... but to me it just sounds like wild speculation.
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Oops, instead of "reality" I meant "experimental observations". Good catch. > You arbitrarily claim to be able to make accurate assertions of reality Nope. > while at the same time agreeing that the essence of rea
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
At no point did I touch on morality or ethics. I do not know why you think that I did so. > I agree with you that experimentation is futile in the absence of ethics. I do not agree with that. -------- Dictionary.reference.com: > usef
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
I'm not sure that I agree. I think that once you get into the realm of "absolute truth" (which is what I'm interpreting your post as saying -- apologies if I'm mistaken), you've left science behind. IMHO, sci
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
An alternative viewpoint: everything's easy after it's been done, but it's hard up until then. > after centuries of science as a profession, pretty much all the easy stuff has already been done. But with the benefit of all
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
> If I say that an airplane functions on fairy dust and you make an argument about propulsion and lift, and you claim that my assertion is wrong because ... The only reason "science" would claim that your assertion is wrong is
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
> Philosophically speaking you can never verify anything through experimentation This depends on what you mean by "verify". You seem to mean "prove that something is absolutely true". That is not what I meant. I sho
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
I do agree with you that science doesn't show causation, but I think your interpretation of science is incorrect: > Therefore, all scientific analysis is unverifiable. I disagree. It's verified by experiment. (Here I'm u
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
> it's fair to say that experiment shows causation No, that experiment doesn't show causation. > I do think 'perhaps' we could use correlation more to assume causation. I think we are too cautious Why do you think
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Wow, I had no idea that such a thing existed. That is far more feature-rich. Thanks for posting it. However, one advantage (or disadvantage depending on your P.O.V :) ) of the Clojalyzer is that it's not tied to Clojars. So, for ins
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Author here. Thanks! What other features could the Clojalyzer provide that you would find useful?
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Author here. That's really cool! Thanks for posting it, it's giving me more ideas for improving the Clojalyzer. What are your favorite or most useful features of godoc?
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Show HN: The Clojalyzer(mattfenwick.github.io)
21 points by mattfenwick 12y ago|8 comments
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
I don't know what you would like clarified, so please let me know if this doesn't cover it: IMHO, the OP is presenting a DSL (DSL = domain specific language), and there are at least two common ways to implement DSLs, embedded and
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
This seems to be implemented as an external DSL, with a brand new syntax and semantics. So my question is, why do that instead of implement it as an embedded DSL? (Disclaimer: this is an honest question out of curiosity. I don't mean
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
It's difficult to see the point because it's not a very good example. Why do Elephants inherit from Node (they seem entirely unrelated)? How can I put things other than Elephants in boxes -- by also having them inherit from Node
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
> Could we generally agree that language is instinctual and follows formal or formalalizable rules No, not without some evidence. ---- > First in it's immediate dismissal of any formalism inherent in natural language That's
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Men More Likely to Make Dumb Decisions at U.S. Open(time.com)
1 points by mattfenwick 12y ago|0 comments
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Please forgive my ignorance, but what is the problem with bundling n different versions of a library? Is it just that the bundle size increases? Or are there additional problems? (That's not to say that the bundle size isn't imp
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Sorry, I think I'm missing something because I don't see the problem -- why can't foo and bar just use different versions of baz? Is it not possible to do that?
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
That doesn't answer my question as far as I can tell, unless you're saying that: "Style checking" means "Automated style checkers such as jscs"
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
I'm confused by what "Style checking" ( https://github.com/bevacqua/js/#style-checking ) means. Aren't many of the other suggestions precisely "style checking" concerns? Semicolons, sp
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
This is very interesting, however, I think the paper must be viewed with some skepticism: - their Scopus queries had tons of problems, some of which they acknowledge. Their model for positive and negative results also seems to be inadequat
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by mattfenwick 12y ago
Formatting thanks to @tempodox: ---------------- It's very interesting and neat and I hope they keep making progress, but one big question that I'm left with is why this is better than using an embedded DSL. This is supposed to be

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