Invisible wrote:
> This strikes me as bad documentation, frankly...

For Erlang, I think it's forgivable. It started as a custom-built 
language for one company (where you'd expect to be hanging around with a 
bunch of people who can answer questions), and the actual flaws in the 
documentation I'm attributing at least in part to the fact that it was 
created in a country where English isn't the native language. (It makes 
some of the sentences where they're trying to be mathematically precise 
even more confusing than if they just stated what they meant informally.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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>> Well, some people have a "real job" to do, and a computer is just a tool
>> to them.
> 
> I'm not talking about office workers. I'm talking about IT people for whom a
> computer is their real job.

In that case, my second set of comments apply - there really is no 
excuse for not bothering to learn your trade.

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andrel wrote:

> No, you're not weirder than some of the others here (possibly including 
> myself).

There are few places where *that* could be said! ;-)

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andrel wrote:

> Actually, a possible reason I came up with the analogy in the first 
> place is that it is the inverse of Donald Knuth's 'literate programming' 
> quest. Don's concept is that code should be as readable as literature. 
> To give examples to the community he published much of his source code 
> as books.

I wrote a post here about a logic programming system, which is also an 
executable logic programming system. ;-)

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>> My mum seriously wanted me to do a PhD. Because, I mean, 6 years in 


> Most people here get paid to do a PhD, I can not imagine that it is much 
> different in the UK. And your mum may be right a PhD would fit you 
> better than your current job.

A tiara made of thorns would fit me better than my current job! ;-)

My mum also wanted me to do an A-level in mathematics. Because, as you 
know, everybody wants employees with qualifications in mathematics. Oh, 
wait...

> One major problem is that you don't want to move. Your current home town 
> is not exactly a hot spot of computer science research.

Oddly, my home town isn't exactly a hot spot of... anything. I really 
can't begin to imagine why. Maybe because it hasn't been here very long 
yet? *shrugs*

> Another problem is your pathological lack of self esteem (or at least 
> the constant public display of it).

Pathological? Maybe. Lack? Incontravertably! :-/

> Any sane person would not have 
> referred to 'my pathologically weak writing skills' after all that has 
> been said over the last few days.

I said I'm bad at writing "large" documents - which is presumably what a 
final PhD thesis is. Also, all of my work at uni that involved any 
element of what academics refer to as "research" was extremely hard for 
me. I have no idea what "research" actually is, or how you're supposed 
to do it. As I understand it, a PhD is 82% research...

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Bill Pragnell wrote:

> If I'm writing a paper, I tend to write a draft, leave it alone for a 
> few days, then go back to it.

Yeah, same here... if I can.

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> I said I'm bad at writing "large" documents - which is presumably what a 
> final PhD thesis is. Also, all of my work at uni that involved any element 
> of what academics refer to as "research" was extremely hard for me. I have 
> no idea what "research" actually is, or how you're supposed to do it. As I 
> understand it, a PhD is 82% research...

Didn't you have to do a final year project at university?  Usually that is 
meant to be something relatively novel and consists of writing a big report, 
so presumably that would be a good introduction for what you would be doing 
during a PhD.

One example that I heard you mention before of research, is getting Haskell 
to work on a GPU.

Here are some more examples of research that I'm sure you would be 
interested in:

http://research.microsoft.com/research/default.aspx
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/graphics/research.html

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scott wrote:
>> I said I'm bad at writing "large" documents - which is presumably what 
>> a final PhD thesis is. Also, all of my work at uni that involved any 
>> element of what academics refer to as "research" was extremely hard 
>> for me. I have no idea what "research" actually is, or how you're 
>> supposed to do it. As I understand it, a PhD is 82% research...
> 
> Didn't you have to do a final year project at university?

Yes. It was one of the subjects I had substantial trouble with...

I mean, sure, the *programming* part was pretty easy. Time-consuming, 
but not conceptually difficult. But there's supposed to be a "research 
element" in there - whatever the hell that's meant to mean. This gave me 
significant trouble.

> Usually that 
> is meant to be something relatively novel and consists of writing a big 
> report, so presumably that would be a good introduction for what you 
> would be doing during a PhD.

Distrubuted MVC.

VNC, X11, RPD, etc. work at the raster level, which is too low. HTML 
over HTTP doesn't support server push. If MVC could go over a network, 
all these problems would be eliminated. Apparently a tiny amount of 
prior art exists for this problem...

> One example that I heard you mention before of research, is getting 
> Haskell to work on a GPU.

> http://research.microsoft.com/research/default.aspx

Guess where this research is happening? ;-)

[Lots of Haskell-related stuff is funded by Micro$oft - for reasons I 
don't entirely comprehend yet...]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> Distrubuted MVC.
>
> VNC, X11, RPD, etc. work at the raster level, which is too low. HTML over 
> HTTP doesn't support server push. If MVC could go over a network, all 
> these problems would be eliminated. Apparently a tiny amount of prior art 
> exists for this problem...

Well there you go, a good subject for a PhD...  Spend a couple of years 
getting a good working demo of the system, do some testing with it, then 
write a big report saying what you did, then say hello to Dr Invisible :-)

> [Lots of Haskell-related stuff is funded by Micro$oft - for reasons I 
> don't entirely comprehend yet...]

Because they're just a little bit interested in computer software?

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scott wrote:
>> Distrubuted MVC.
>>
>> VNC, X11, RPD, etc. work at the raster level, which is too low. HTML 
>> over HTTP doesn't support server push. If MVC could go over a network, 
>> all these problems would be eliminated. Apparently a tiny amount of 
>> prior art exists for this problem...
> 
> Well there you go, a good subject for a PhD...  Spend a couple of years 
> getting a good working demo of the system, do some testing with it, then 
> write a big report saying what you did, then say hello to Dr Invisible :-)

That's basically what I did - except I spent only 1 year doing it, and 
the final report was tiny, and the demo program was minimal. 
Fortunately, the people I had to demonstrate it to (yes, they actually 
made me do that. Cruel, heartless people they are...) were the guy who 
proposed the project, and some guy who didn't speak English. Every 
question he asked me, the other guy basically hinted to the point of 
*feeding* me the answer. Damn, I am so lucky I passed that thing...

It was written in Smalltalk, BTW. Because, well, Smalltalk already uses 
MVC. Just gotta make it distributed. This amounts to writing a proxy 
that takes change notifications and pipes them across the network 
somehow. I suspect UDP would have been a better idea than TCP, but I 
don't know how to do that. There's also the "minor detail" of sending 
interface descriptions, and setting up the link in general. I only 
really addressed the problem of making the system work once everything 
is configured.

There's also the minor detail that my system permits (or rather, "works 
by") arbitrary code execution. As in, when you move a slider, it sends 
the text "X=7.2" over the network. The machine at the other end parses 
the "X=" part, and then *executes* the rest of the string to obtain a 
result. This string can be an arbitrary Smalltalk expression. This makes 
it trivial to send user-defined datatypes across the network - and 
reformat somebody's harddrive. (Especially under Windoze 98...)

>> [Lots of Haskell-related stuff is funded by Micro$oft - for reasons I 
>> don't entirely comprehend yet...]
> 
> Because they're just a little bit interested in computer software?

Yes, but only poor-quality software. Why would they be interested in a 
language for writing bug-free software?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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