Skeime

I mean, most of the code that I write would be side-effect free anyway. In an imperative loop, this would also be true except for updating local variables. If this is the case, `reduce` really is the same as a loop over a collection, except that the names for the state passed between iterations come out better. In the `reduce` version, you can name the parameters to the reducer, but often not the return values. As a reader, one needs to connect the return values to the parameters by position.

(Note that by "loop over a collection", I explicitly mean a looping construct that gives the elements of the collection directly, instead of looping over indices and extracting the elements manually.)

I think this is because in an imperative language, `reduce` does not actually give you much over a `for item in collection` loop. With `map` and `filter`, you immediately learn something about the result (it's a list of the same length as the original, with each item only depending on the corresponding original item; it's a list containing some of the original elements unchanged and nothing else). This is useful, so `map` and `filter` are good.

With `reduce`, the result could be anything, and in an imperative language, side effects are also possible. So it's just a loop with worse syntax.

(Admittedly, in an imperative language, `map` and `filter` could also have side effects, though I think most people would consider this bad style.)

The rectangle case is just choose(w+h, h), with w, h being the width and height, respectively. (Or choose(w+h, w), which is the same.)

Depending on how well you know binomial coefficients, this can also lead you to the dynamic programming solution. After all, for the rectangle case this is nothing but construction of Pascal's triangle by summing two adjacent numbers in a row to get the number below them. If you recognize this, the solution for paths on grids with holes falls out almost immediately.

Lots of formatters also unify things like trailing commas, so it would be slightly more involved than this.

I feel like you are describing that the parser is too lenient rather than too picky. It could just require you to always put `let` and `in` on their own lines, in which case the indentation makes sense, I think. It's only when trying to keep more stuff on the same line that the details of Haskell's indentation rules come into play.

Isn't the Macintosh desktop (with Cmd as the modifier for standard shortcuts) older than Windows and Linux desktops? So historically, it's not Apple that deviated but the others?

(I did not do an extensive search into this, so there might be Ctrl-based standard shortcuts that predate Apple.)

I think modern browsers are actually quite good here. They show a template in the form TT.MM.JJJJ for me (so the German equivalent of MM/DD/YYYY, with the usual order and separator in German). I can just type the date, including the dots if I want (they're just ignored; there would be extra points for moving me to the next component when typing "2.", but the world's not perfect). If I'm confused about the format, or want to see a calendar view, I can click on the calendar icon (also accessible via tab) and select a date there.

For normal date inputs, I really don't think there is a good reason to use anything else. (Possible exceptions I can think of: Selecting date ranges and/or showing extra data about the dates (like daily prices).)

Mobile keyboards also do have the advantage that they can at least change the label of the button; so writing Submit on the Enter key if it submits.

I am also at the office almost every day because I think it's better for my mental health and food. But I also appreciate that for many, it's different, so actually having the choice individually is nice.

Wouldn't it also be much better to evaluate the Taylor polynomials using Horner's method, instead? (Maybe C++ can do this automatically, but given that there might be rounding differences, it probably won't.)

I wrote "predominant", not "official". And I think that is still true.

Also, from what I can tell using the site, it does not serve as a full dictionary. Rather, it lists the general rules of German orthography (as decided by the Rechtschreibrat) and has some limited tables of special words.

Fun fact: I looked this up in the online version of the Duden (the predominant German dictionary). It does have an entry "Black Hole" (so the English term!) but not for "schwarzes Loch", which is the normal German term for it.

(In the printed versions, you might need to go to the Universalwörterbuch or so to find the English entry, it might not be in the normal "Die deutsche Rechtschreibung"; I have not checked.)

I don't quite get what you mean here. While you need to allow infinite expansions without repeating patterns, you also need to expansions with these pattern to get all reals. Maybe the most difficult part is to explain why 0.(9) and 1 should be the same, though, while no such identification happens for repeating patterns that are not (9).

I think that's basically the same reason, right? XML itself is bloated if you use it as a format for data that is not marked-up text, so it comes with bloated APIs (which where pushed by Java/.NET proponents). I believe that if XML been kept to its intended purpose, it would be considered a relatively sane solution.

(But I don't have a source; I was just stating my impression/opinion.)

This article is weird. It wants to shoot against JSON, but then has to make half of its arguments against YAML instead. JSON has no "ambiguity in parsing", JSON has no indentation-based syntax, and JSON has no implicit typing to turn "no" into false.

XML "lost" because it is also a poor format for structured data. It requires constant choice between whether some content should be conveyed using attributes or child nodes. If you use child nodes, indentation may or may not be relevant (because it can introduce leading/trailing spaces). There is also no standard for data types. (Do you write a boolean attribute foo as foo="foo", foo="true", or foo="yes"? Sure, a schema can describe the allowed values, but whoever interprets the XML still needs to add the right translation to true and false in their programming language by hand, presumably.) Due to the manifold ways of expressing essentially the same data, working with XML is always painful.

This is not really XML's fault. It was designed as a way of marking up text. When that is your goal, XML is not a bad choice, and all of its features make a lot more sense. (For example, this child-attribute distinction: Is this part of the text? If so, it should be represented as child nodes. Otherwise, it should be an attribute.) Here, something like JSON really falls flat.

But most data is not marked up text. And yet, some people and institutions tried to push XML as the universal solution to all data transfer problems. This is the reason for the push-back against it.

This isn't to say that we did not also lose some things. In complex cases, having something like a schema is good. Comments are appreciated when the files are also read and edited by humans. JSON's data types are underspecified. But I firmly believe that the solution to this is not XML.