Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Depends on your definition of "functional". Some people say that
>>> first-class functions is the definitive thing. Others claim it's
>>> referential transparency. A few people even claim it's the type system
>>> or the syntax...
>>
>> I can't think of any language nowadays that doesn't have first class
>> functions. COBOL and FORTRAN, maybe, but that's about it.
> 
> Java? Eiffel?

Well, alright. You have to wrap them up in an anonymous class.

> Sure. But people often reverse the word "niche" as a kind of polite way 
> of saying "hopelessly unsuccessful". ;-)

I can't help people don't know english. :-)

> People claim that Unix (or maybe specificaly Linux) is insanely 
> reliable, and that's almost all pure C.

I've never heard anyone claim that.  I've heard Linux people bash Windows, 
and I've heard people brag about how reliable Linux is, but it's certainly 
not reliable enough that it'll run ten years worth of upgrades without a 
reboot or loss of service, unless you go to something like a Tandem.

> So many, BUT NOT ALL. It seems to vary inconsistently. Sometimes there's 
> an atom to tell you whether it was OK or not, and sometimes there's only 
> an atom to tell you when it failed.

In practice, in those routines (like catch) that return the value or an atom 
if it failed, people return an atom tagging the success as well. Or they 
return a different type like a list.

>>> Some people might refer to that as "luck". ;-) Apparently there are
>>> Windows 95 systems with this kind of uptime.
>>
>> No there aren't. All the 16-bit Windows machines had a seconds counter
>> that wrapped after 42 days and crashed the computer.
> 
> Got a reference for that?

I'm sorry your computer can't get through to Google. I hope your 
connectivity gets restored soon.

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-222391.html

>> And if A connects to B, then B
>> passes a connection to C to A, A needs a connection to C anyway.

 > What makes you think that?

Because B may pass to A a connection to a mailbox on C.

>>> And the "cookie" is presumably sent unencrypted from node to node when
>>> they try to connect too.
>>
>> No, the cookie doesn't get sent at all.
> 
> So how do you compare it then?

Oh, I see what you're asking. I assume they're smart enough not to send 
passwords in the clear to machines that haven't proven they already know the 
password.

>> Why do you make mistakes like that? How often do you write code and use
>> reserved works as variable names?
> 
> More often than you'd think. 

Wow.

>> No, because there really wasn't much of an alternative to C for many
>> years. People tried many alternatives, and they all sucked so bad they
>> never really got out of the lab. So clearly C is doing something right.
> 
> That's the actual reason? I've often wondered about this, but it was a 
> long time ago when all this stuff presumably happened...

C was designed to be a portable that was *not* abstracted from the machine. 
Therefore, it got ported a lot, often as the first HLL ported to a new 
architecture.  The other languages only got ported to architectures being 
used for that particular type of computing.

When people tried to make better languages than C, they tended to pile so 
much extra stuff into it that would make it appropriate for both 
machine-level stuff and high-level applications that it turned into a monster.

> Wait - the CPU on my PC *doesn't* process the incomming packets??

Not packets not destined for your machine, no. WTF do you think a MAC 
address is for?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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