Last time, we talked about how anonymous functions could be created in most any language that supports first-class functions. In brief, we discussed how a function definition can be used as an expression in these languages, stored in a local variable, or passed back as a return value from another function. The one key piece [...]
Think back to some of your earliest programming days. Unless you first learned LISP or the like (bless your little heart), you probably learned on an imperative programming language like C, PASCAL or BASIC. I say you learned “on” a language, because this initial experience shapes our idea of what a computer can and can’t [...]
Programmers have big egos. It’s not like it’s a big secret or something; we’re used to being right, and it can be very difficult for us to admit when we’re wrong. And, God help you if you ever have to say:
I don’t know.
If you say that, no one will ever respect you again, and you’ll [...]
I personally have a very difficult time understanding how anyone ever got by using just a slide rule, yet the Apollo astronauts took them to the moon to make any calculations there that they needed to. I sit there and think that it requires someone to examine the distance between two marks on the rule [...]
If sci-fi and fantasy has taught us anything, it’s that we should never judge anything by its size. In fact, there’s even a geeky principle called The Bishonen Line which is:
…the tendency of monster creatures (especially evil ones) to become big and disfigured as they increase their power, then suddenly shrink back down to human [...]
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