QOTD

I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one’s own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one’s time that exists. Whether it’s consulting a disagreeable book or a person, somehow at the intersection of intelligence and difference lies a “something” that is mind-expanding.

From Sealed Abstract - Why I stopped reading HN via @conal

QOTD

Do not have the mind set that the day you release version 1.0 is the finish line, it’s the starting line, so hurry up and get there.

-- Sam Howley

From: Lessons learned from 13 failed software products via @ericries

QOTD

It's not that people cannot think mathematically. It's that they have enormous trouble doing it in a de-contextualized, abstract setting.

-- Keith Devlin

From In Math You Have to Remember, In Other Subjects You Can Think About It

Education is not linear

And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education and it's impoverishing our spirits and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.

-- Ken Robinson

QOTD

The role of the proof for mathematics is similar to that for orthography or even calligraphy for poetry. A person, who had not mastered the art of the proofs in high school, is as a rule unable to distinguish correct reasoning from that which is misleading. Such people can be easily manipulated by the irresponsible politicians.

-- V.I. Arnold

From: The antiscientifical revolution and mathematics

QOTD

Teaching for understanding didn't offset the destructive effects of telling them how to get the answer. Any step-by-step instruction in how to solve such problems put learners at a disadvantage; the absence of such instruction was required for them to understand.

-- Alfie Kohn

From: Education's Rotten Apples

QOTD

‘CL is great and Blub is crap’ has not worked as a strategy for selling Common Lisp. People invest years of their life learning Blub and don’t want to hear this message. A strategy of infiltation is better.

-- Mark Tarver

From The Next Lisp: Back to the Future.

QOTD

Whether it's being done in honest ignorance, blind obedience, or cynical exploitation of the market, the result is the same: our ability to envision new solutions to the latest challenges is stunted by a dependence on market-driven and market-compatible answers.

-- Douglas Rushkoff

From Economics is not Natural Science. An interesting article arguing that our current economy is derived from an archaic set of man-made rules designed to serve particular interests. Rushkoff calls for consideration of alternative models (not based on scarcity, competition and centralisation) rather than assuming the status quo.

QOTD

I can honestly say if someone had shown me the Programming in Scala book by by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon & Bill Venners back in 2003 I'd probably have never created Groovy.

- James Strachan

From Scala as the long term replacement for java/javac?

QOTD

The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.

- Albert Einstein

From Einstein, by Walter Isaacson, p299.

It is a shame we haven't got this sorted out yet.

QOTD

Blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

- Albert Einstein

From Einstein, by Walter Isaacson, p67.

QOTD

There are two today.

Indeed the early airplanes didn't come with a specification. You just jumped into them and switched it on and hoped for the best. Much as we do with software today.

The second (in response to the relationship between TDD and specifications).

A specification is just nothing but a generalised test.

Both by Tony Hoare in his keynote The Science of Computing and the Engineering of Software at QCon London 2009.

Commercial Uses: Going functional on exotic trades

A peak into how derivatives trading works at Barclay's and their supporting Haskell application.

QOTD

As we performed the work outside of a traditional it team, management was willing to take a risk on something that promised a good fit and rapid development process.

Abstract

The Functional Payout Framework, fpf, is a Haskell application that uses an embedded domain specific functional language to represent and process exotic financial derivatives. Whereas scripting languages for pricing exotic derivatives are common in banking, fpf uses multiple interpretations to not only price such trades, but also to analyse the scripts to provide lifecycle support and more. This paper discusses fpf in relation to the wider trading workflow, and our experiences in using a functional language in such a system as both an implementation language and a domain-specific language.

The paper is here.

QOTD

Regarding JavaScript:

Given the process we use to create web standards we deserve something much worse.

Douglas Crockford at JAOO Brisbane.

QOTD

Java is the Brier Rabbit of IT. Once touched you can't let go. Its simplistic enough to be inadequate in almost every situation.

From The Book Of JOSH - Scala In The Enterprise

QOTD

Regarding emerging technologies:

First, it is ridiculed by those ignorant of its potential.

Next, it is subverted by those threatened by its potential.

Finally, it is considered self-evident.

- Paul Moller

From his TED video, Take a ride in the Skycar.

QOTD

If you have had Panadeine Forte, Endone and a Morhpine injection and the pain is still so bad that you can't move, then you know you have a problem.

QOTD

Desparate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heatsink, dissipating thinking that might have otherwise built up and caused society to overheat.

- Clay Shirky

From the video below, which I found here.

QOTD

Mutable stateful objects are the new spaghetti code

From the Clojure Rationale.