herodotus

First edition of Copernicus has a starting bid of $600,000.

It does. Parenthesis are allowed - they are syntax for lists so that a * (b + c) will compute the contents of the list before sending the resulting object to a*. The inspiration is the idea of Currying in Lambda Calculus, although it requires postfix notation. Now you have me thinking about whether I could alaso make parenthesis and commas into objects. So (1+2) for example for do this: ( is sent the object 1. That yields the object (1 That is, an object that is not ready to be sent on. The "(" bounded object would only be released when it received a ")". Thanks for the thought!

I once invented a programming language where EVERYTHING was an object. No message keywords. 1 is an object. + is an object. You can send an object to another object - you get back an object. Example 1+ is an object. Its is the result of sending + to 1. If you send 1+ the object 1, you get 2. If you send 1+ the object + you get a run-time type error. You can also go left to right. +1 is an object. If you send +1 to 2, you get 3. It gets nice when you add list objects. (1,2,3,4,5)+1 => (1+,2+,3+,4+,5+) 1 => (2,3,4,5,6). And so on.

Sorry - it was so long ago I really do not remember that particular feature.

Good. One of the things I loved about my years working at Apple is that everyone I had dealings with really cared about the user experience.

Yes. When I was working at Apple, I was developing some animation stuff for Keynote. I came in to work one day, and my build was broken completely. Turned out that Roger Rosner had demonstrated this animation feature to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs hated it, and before then end of the evening the code had been stripped from the Keynote build.

I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.

My most interesting interview experience, but as interviewer not interviewee, was when we interviewed someone by phone and could hear a friend of the candidate whispering answers to him. He was not offered a job. We should have offered it to the mystery voice person.

I am seeing way to many "Performing security verification This website uses a security service to protect against malicious bots. This page is displayed while the website verifies you are not a bot." from Cloudfare these days. It strikes me that, if it has verified my client once, it should hold off at least for a day or so before putting me through that hoop again. How does Bunny DNS deal with bot protection?

For those who need some context: In 1983 David Warren published a paper describing an abstract machine that could be used as the target of a Prolog compiler. This machine became the basis of most Prolog compilers - it is much faster than interpreters. His paper was not easy to understand. Hasan Air-Kaci's book was a brilliant exposition of Warren's work, and was a must-read for anyone serious about working on Prolog interpreters or compilers.

Knuth's Optimization Principle: The computer scientist Rod Burstall had a pithy way of saying this: "Efficiency is the enemy of clarity"

I don't know what country your ancestors came from, but I assume you are not held responsible for any horrible thing that government does.

I am curious. If it is on the far side, where does the light come from for the photos? Other stars?