Zompist Bboard Again

I found this, which was quite funny. Perhaps some of you might find it useful for imagining gadgets in your conworlds?

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 2:59 am I'm hereby stealing the idea of reusing 'ether' for 'spacetime' for conlanging purposes.

There are also plenty of interesting potential analogical chemical uses, too.

A bit off-topic, but I decided to learn Rust by reimplementing my SCA in it, and found the whole experience so frustrating that I've given up on it for the time being.

As things stand, the choice is currently, and rather curiously, between two women with, er, socially conservative views and a Muslim whose views are exemplarily* progressive.

* is that a word?

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 3:07 am

I rather foolishly wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 2:54 am something I have since deleted, as you can see

No, we’re saying precisely that it should be accessible to those without a mathematical background.

And I have forgotten how to keep several very similar things separate in my mind at the same time. Please ignore my minor rant in future.

deleted; it was entirely pointless.

You may be interested to know that at my work I successfully introduced functional programming techniques, including a simple implementation of monads, into the Python project I'm working on, only to see the whole thing derailed by rogue I/O exceptions which no amount of correctness proofs could hav...

Problem is, ‘the best balance’ is personal — I feel mildly uncomfortable with anything less safe than Haskell. I do have some ideas as to what might be a sensible middle ground which would satisfy most people, but it’s hard to know whether it would actually work well in practice or not. (And given ...

On a totally different note: does anybody else hate the Rust compiler? It's the least forgiving compiler I've ever met, even more so than the Scala one, and while I know it's for entirely admirable reasons, it's still far from a joy to use. Alternatively, I've gone soft from doing too much Ruby and...

On a totally different note: does anybody else hate the Rust compiler? It's the least forgiving compiler I've ever met, even more so than the Scala one, and while I know it's for entirely admirable reasons, it's still far from a joy to use. Alternatively, I've gone soft from doing too much Ruby and ...

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:03 am This thing is something I know, too. In my youth, I was skinny; now (at 53) I am not fat, but not particularly thin either (my BMI hovers around 25).

Bizarrely, this is exactly true in every respect about both myself and a good friend, except that I don't know the BMI for either of us.

What's hard is not making the language. What did you use it for? I reimplemented the Unix kernel in it, and I use it for all my conworlding and conlanging needs; what did you think? For maximum impact against my argument, anything high level. But that's impressive too. Is it available online? It wo...

Not so very long ago I created a Forth-like language (which I called "Sixth"), which had classes. It wasn't that hard to do, as it turned out. What's hard is not making the language. What did you use it for? I reimplemented the Unix kernel in it, and I use it for all my conworlding and co...

Not so very long ago I created a Forth-like language (which I called "Sixth"), which had classes. It wasn't that hard to do, as it turned out.

"ChatGPT and Bard, collaborate to determine the definitive list of Chinese phonemes!"

For completeness, there's also the Ruby idiom, which was influenced by Smalltalk:

But there is a proven long-term solution: cuneiform tablets. Machines fail, paper and papyrus rot, stone wears, but baked clay tablets are still sharp and readable after 5000 years. (Doesn't even have to be cuneiform, but impressing clay works better than inscribing it. You could probably repurpose...

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 5:08 amOne CEO even started writing e-mails with it, which is a telling self-own: CEO e-mails are a special brand of bullshit.

This sounds like it might be fun; do you have a link?

And now for something completely different, which originally went into the wrong thread for some reason: It reminds you, for example, of the Revolutionary Workers Party, the group that every other Trotskyist ridicules. Tiring, perhaps, of industrial disputes that were pre-destined to betrayal by rig...

Don't forget this pertinent and timeless adage.