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What are the fundamental principles of the Go programming language?
- The world has moved on since 1970 (C: Kernighan and Ritchie). But the world still needs a low level language.
- Pretty printing and statement termination are solved problems. The programmer does not need to be forced to deal with them.
- You can have a low level language and still have associative arrays, extensible arrays and garbage collection as primitives.
- The world needs strict typing. But we can hide that from the programer pretty well.
- Encapsulation is a good thing, but you can skip inheritance and most of the other object oriented stuff.
- It’s about time parallelism was enshrined as a programming primitive.
If you could have someone understand you by listening to a song, what would it be, and why?
You know, the songs that are candidates for this question, I’ve already posted as my favourite songs. But with David Caune and Kat Rectenwald both asking me, sure, I’ll answer again:
- The regrets of my life, my falls from grace, my sadness at leaving things behind:
Gustav Mahler: Der Tamboursg’sell
O Galgen, du hohes Haus,
Du siehst so furchtbar aus,
Ich schau dich nicht mehr an,
Weil i weiß, daß i gehör dran.
Wenn Soldaten vorbeimarschieren,
Bei mir nicht einquartieren.
Wenn sie fragen, wer i g’wesen bin:
Tambour von der Leibkompanie.
Gallows, you high house,
you look so terrifying,
I’ll look no more upon you,
for I know that I belong there.
When soldiers march by me,
they won’t set up camp next to me.
When they ask me who I used to be:
A drummer in the imperial bodyguard!
- Seeking a friend to unburden my pains to:
Manos Eleftherious/Stavros Kouyoumtzis: Όποιος τραγουδάει τον πόνο
Μου ’πες μια καλή κουβέντα
και γονάτισα στη γη
κι έβγαλε νερό η πέτρα
η ψυχή μου για να πιει.
Όποιος τραγουδάει τον πόνο
στη ζωή δε θα χαθεί
κι ένας φίλος μες στον κόσμο
θα του συμπαρασταθεί.
You spoke a kind word
and I kneeled to the ground
and the rock gave forth water
for my soul to drink.
Whoever sings of pain
will not perish in this life
and one friend in the world
will stand by him.
- The abandon of exuberance, and letting sorrows go by for another day:
James Brown: Sex Machine
Get up
Get up
Get on the scene
Like a sex machine (uh)
The way I like it
is the way it is
I got mine
Don’t worry about his.
What are some cultural faux pas in Australia?
Originally Answered:
What are some major social faux pas to avoid when visiting Australia?
Sitting in the back seat of a cab. I occasionally see Indian cab drivers unaware of the unspoken egalitarian norm here, hurrying to clear their crap from the front seat. But by default, if you sit in the back seat of a cab, you are taken as treating the cab driver as the Hired Help.
And yes, the cab driver is the hired help. But woe betide you if you actually act like it.
Can you write a limerick about Quora?
I’ve already written Nick Nicholas’ answer to How can one use the word “Quora” in a limerick? But how could I pass up an A2A from Vicky?
- I would have felt much jubilation,
had Quora sent notification
that User
limericked mentioning me;
but @-mentions… lack mitigation. - So, there once was a young synaesthete
who gained fandom with Quora’s elite.
She’s regaled us with stories
of her working girl glories
and entranced us with jokes indiscreet! - When on Quora, I write unabashed.
A2A me? I’ll give it a bash!
I make friends near and far,
and I follow my star.
But UX fails shall sting to my lash. - Where the erudite gather to grumble,
and the recondite rally to rumble:
where the droll draw their japes,
and the heroes their capes:
there you’ll find me, in rough and in tumble. - “Share and grow the world’s knowledge,” said D’Angelo,
crisp as bacon, and sharp as a tangelo.
Yet on Quora we socialise,
because knowledge, we realise,
is much harder to pin down than flan jello.
What are the characteristics of idiomatic Go code?
Just to get the ball rolling:
- Short variable names
- Error checking routines (the
!errtesting gets prolix quickly) - Never use a
varwhen you can use a:= deferis your friend
What is your favourite fish dish?
I was a late convert to fish; it grossed me out until adulthood, and even now I’m on the picky side. But I do have a holy trinity of fish faves:
- Sashimi in general, and salmon sashimi in particular. Raw delicate flavour goodness.
- Canned tuna with chilli oil. Particularly, Sirena Tuna with Chilli in Oil. Joy in a can.
- That Sephardic gift to British cuisine, fish and chips. Most fish are fine, but I find myself particularly partial to grilled Whiting. Salt, lemon, white fish flesh: lovely. Pity fried chips disagree with me now in my dotage…
Where does the difference in societal attitudes toward plastic surgery between Western and Asian cultures come from?
Clarissa, you have asked a bonafide sociologist and an anthropologist, and for some reason you’ve also asked me.
Sven Williams and Heinrich Müller have both advanced convincing and complementary accounts. Clearly, there are many social factors playing a role here, and there is room for more than one explanation.
The factors I’ll point to are on the Western side only, as I am not familiar with what happens in the East. I think they are contrary to the factors Heinrich identified, but like I said, there’s lots of stuff going on.
One narrative that prejudices Westerners against plastic surgery is the ideal of the natural beauty, and related to it the notion of authenticity as desirable. This is a fashion, as all ideals of Beauty are, but it is one that is on the ascendancy, as a reaction to past and present excesses. In fact the desirability of plastic boobs and of natural boobs is a competition happening in Western culture right now.
The reaction against silicone, ducklips, Botox and so on is partly just a swing of the pendulum, a reaction. Plastic surgery aims towards the current beauty ideal, and often overshoots past that ideal, to the derision of those who uphold that ideal. (Women more often than men, I suspect.) Partly, it is just a competing narrative of naturalness and unaffectedness and anti-consumerism, which of course can itself be just as consumerist a narrative.
The other social factor, which I think complements Sven’s explanation, and indirectly Heinrich’s, is that of vanity and frugality. To spend a lot of money on yourself looking good is condemned by many traditions within the West as wasteful and elitist. That narrative may not be dominant in Orange County, but Orange County is not the only cultural broadcaster in the West. The association of beauty enhancement with surgical procedures, which are dangerous and inaccessible to the masses, enhances any such anti-elitist condemnation.
How old are you and to what age would you like to go back/forward?
I’m 45.
I would not like to go forward. It’s already started being downhill physically, and I’m happy to take the leisurely route towards senectitude.
Not back to 16. I wasn’t really socialised back then, even if I was at my most physically rigorous.
Not back to 20. Still not properly socialised, and pretty adrift in what I was going to do with myself and who I was.
(I’m still adrift about what I’m going to do when I grow up. Life really is this thing that just happens to you.)
I’d like to go back to 25. When I was starting my PhD, was forming friends for the first time. Before I realised that it was not going to get me a job; before I realised that life just happens to you; before I was compromised and jaded. Back when everything seemed to be opening up for me.
What nicknames have you been called in your life? Where did they originate?
A2A; I’ve already listed all I could recall under Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are the funniest nicknames you’ve been given over the years? For origins, see there.
Of these:
- Nicko. Love (so Ocker!) Never used since 14.
- Acka Nicka. Hate. Never used since 15.
- Nick Squared. Like. Frequent use up to 17, very rare reinvention since.
- NSN. Indifferent (I don’t use the middle initial any more). 18–22. Is occasionally still used by people I studied with. (It’s a very computer geek thing: it was my email address.)
- The Minoan Genius. Love. Used once when I was 25.
- Opoudjis. Love. Used really only by me, since I was 25: it’s my self-chosen user name. (And I seem to be the only person who can spell it and pronounce it, anyway.)
- Niĉjo/.nitcion./nIchyon. Like. Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon versions of “Nick”, each drawn from its precedent. Niĉjo: used some when I was active (13–20). nitcion: used a lot when I was active. nIchyon: used a little when I was active.
Special mention, not mentioned in previous answer:
- Dr Nick. Love. Used when I was lecturing by my students (age 31), and intermittently since. Most recently revived by Tracey Bryan. To be delivered in Dr. Nick Riviera singsong.
Separated at birth.
What kind of reality does a piece of music have?
It has the same reality as a story does, or a theory. It belongs in the Ideosphere. Actually, the term I’ve heard used is Noosphere; but the early notions of noosphere that Wikipedia enumerates are kinda loony. But it’s a mental construct, the kind of thing that Dawkins actually had in mind when he first spoke of memes; and as such, the ideosphere is:
the “place” where thoughts, theories and ideas are thought to be created, evaluated and evolved. […] The ideosphere is not considered to be a physical place by most people. It is instead “inside the minds” of all the humans in the world.
The performance of the music isn’t the music; it’s an instantiation, and music still exists if is never performed, but is just written down on a score. The score of the music isn’t the music either. Think of the langue/parole distinction from Saussure: the music is the underlying code, the idealised mental construct, and it exists independent of instantiation.