MarcusBrutus

The integers are totally closed under multiplication. They lack an inverse under multiplication that's why they aren't a field.

For those who had the misfortune to suffer the consquences of his folly, he is not controversial at all. He is a conceited man-child with very bad manners. There's readily accessible, amble evidence for that by looking at photos of him in various settings, both formal and relaxed. The way he dresses and, more importantly, his body language make it quite plain. His writings and interviews attest to the same. BTW, and to do him full justice, his mathy book on game theory is not bad (though hardly a classic) so he may be somewhat competent as an academic economist.

The problem with chess is that what makes it so addictive is the effect of memorizing openings. Opening theory adds strategic depth, flavor, and a landscape to what would otherwise be a dry, abstract, overly tactical game. It also allows psychological warfare and an element of surprise which isn't possible in variants with randomized starting positions. At the same time however everybody bemoans the fact that you need to memorize openings. I don't see an easy way to solve this conundrum. I understand the situation in Bridge is somewhat similar but I know nothing about Bridge.

Economists started using mathematics purely out of Physics Envy. I am obviously not talking about financial products which require some statistics and complex probabilistic models due to the way they're structured.

All the great economists of the liberal tradition up to and including Von Mises wrote monumental works without the need for equations. It was Keynes who first used mathematics both as a quest for respectability (Physics Envy) and as a way to convince credulous politicians like FDR that this stuff is complex and best left at "experts". The disastrous results are still with us today. And no, Keynesian politics did not end the Great Depression, they actually prolonged the misery and it took WWII and the destruction of all global competition to end it.

Not to mention that what passes as "mathematics" among the economists is laughable among mathematicians. Latin was employed towards similar ends by the Roman Catholic Church (although a plausible defense could be mounted that a standard language better preseved the Doctrine against heresy). Ditto for the complex models sometimes employed by astrologists.

A con game, 'nuff said.

Flow is not a transpiler, there is no concept of "emitting code", only of stripping away the annotations. In contrast, TypeScript is a transpiler. TypeScript being a transpiler means what gets executed at runtime is not what you wrote but some other sources emitted by the TypeScript transpiler. You say that presently (apparently due to the delta between ES6+ and TypeScript being currently very small) what is emitted is not materially (for some definition of "materially") different from the input sources. Even if that's true, this is simply a transient situation that may not hold next year (we're still in the "embrace" stage after all) and certainly didn't hold when I looked at TypeScript circa 2013.

Otherwise, can you please explain why bother implementing a transpiler if the emitted sources are identical to the input sources minus the annotations?

Even the names should give you a hint: "TypeScript" is a language name (the microsoft version of ECMAScript more specifically). "Flow" is not. That's why it's called "Flow" and not "FlowScript".

I 've used both. Flow wins hands down:

(1) It is less intrusive. Flow's type system is built on annotations which are simply stripped away at runtime (as opposed to writing in another - albeit similar - language that gets transpiled to JS. Sure the transformations are always "file-local" as TS folks say but still it is another, totally unecessary level of abstraction and transpilation.

(2) Flow's type system is at least equally and quite possibly much more expressive and nuanced than TS.

(3) Flow annotations can be applied in a much more piece-meal way than TS.

(4) zero issues integrating with 3rd party libraries (because of 1) - and that includes the ability to type-check said 3rd party libraries (which is a breeze with flow-typed)

(5) To take advantage of TS you have to write JS code in the "JS with classes" style (a.k.a "JS for C# coders"). In contrast Flow allows you to take advantage of its type checking while coding: (a) in idiomatic JS (prototypes) (b) in JS with classes (c) any combination and mix of the two approaches. Flow feels a lot less opinioned as to your JS programming style.

(6) Flow it is not coming from microsoft (but hey, don't you know we've changed, please give us another chance and we won't fuck you over this time, please we love you so). TS team is trying very hard (perhaps too hard) to distance themselves from the negative brand value of microsoft

(7) Flow is not a blueprint for the Mother of all embrace-extend-extigunish strategies (see #6).

In your database always store time as seconds since the Epoch (or milliseconds since the Epoch if you need more precision). Forget about SQL date/time types, they are useless. Then convert to "civilian format" only in the presentation layer. You can't go wrong with that.

Seconds since the Epoch is unambiguous, eschews time zones, daylight savings time and other man-made concepts (it makes sense to Martians too). Plus it only requires an INTEGER type in the database which every RDBMS provides (so is migration safe). You also create demand for your future colleagues (or future self) around 2038. Or you can use BIGINT if that bothers you.

It gives me a very warm feeling to know that those simpletons now have you to care for them and prevent other people from taking advantage of them. I do hope they show some appreciation for your efforts on their behalf.

I know very well what these systems are and, more importantly, I also know what they have in common (with German National Socialism, Maoism and Arab Islamism too): contempt for the rights of individuals and belief in the right of the state to impose its worldview even to the extent of trumping voluntary contracts and arrangements between consenting adults. It is that mindset, the thin edge of the wedge, that I see everywhere, not witches. Of course France (and most of the EU dystopia) is a socialist basketcase beyond redemption so the "thin edge" metaphore is not entirely applicable here.

... asks the one who can't write 11 words without a syntactic error (in case you edit it: "Do you even know the meaning of the words to use ?"). Also be advised that it's not correct typography to prepend the question mark with a space.

If a business is willing to offer me free soda refills and I freely choose to patronize thar business, then it takes a hardcore Stalinist to dare stand between us two and prevent by the force of guns this peacefull, voluntary exchange. Does one really need to explain that in the 21st century?

The US did it by virtue of it being a lot more homogeneous when it was first created. Last time I checked they didn't need any translators when they were debating the constitution, nor is the US constitution printed in 17 official translations like all EU documents and treaties are. Also, most people actually came to these shores having nothing but bad memories (if not outright contempt) for the countries they left behind and they were eager to embrace a new identity. The new land had a dominant cultural identity and they quickly aligned to it. Finally, the experience of the revolutionary war and a few more major wars down the road helped with "bonding" - to use a cute phrase. None of above conditions hold for Europe. The French are not eager to shun their national character and start speaking German and the last time they went to war they fought against the Germans and the Italians, not alongside them.

Additionally, crossing the Atlantic served as a filter to select only those people that were truly desirous of becoming Americans. Disgruntled EU voters have the nasty habit of lingering around.

It most definitely is and it takes a very starry eyed sort of person to expect otherwise. The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histories, frames of reference, economies could somehow achieve monetary or much less political union under the rule of an un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy of "commissioners" who rule by means of "directives" (you couldn't make it sound more soviet-y even if you tried) was beyond ludicrous from day 1. A modest trade union with some freedom of movement for qualified workers was achievable and maybe in the end it will settle to just that. In fact I think the soviety approach to building the whole thing ensured its demise. Diverse people can collaborate productively and profitably under win-win free market arrangements. But in the EU system there's too many zero-sum games being constantly played and decided on a purely political level (rather than by market forces) and that creates a lot of bad blood pretty quickly. The reluctance of Germans to bail out southern Europeans is just an instance of that.