xah posts

emacs: how to find out file location of a function

2012-01-16T16:17:00.001-08:00

On Jan 16, 9:27 am, Bujji 〔bujjiec...@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│ Hi Xah,
│
│ All you said above looks correct for me.
│ This didn't show up in -Q enable of emacs.
│
│ But, how to trace where the .elc file exists and disabling the snippets?
│ Is there some debug command to see all loaded paths in emacs?
│
│ I started using emacs from 6 months and not an expert at this.

one easy way to track it is this:

when you think yasnippet mode is active, type
【Alt+x describe-function Enter yas/minor-mode Enter】

then in the help panel, it'll show you where the file is. Click on it to go to it. Then, delete that dir.

Restart emacs.

Repeat the above if necessary.

Xah

emacs autopair, paren, method comparison

2012-01-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

2012-01-16

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/gnu.emacs.help/_QM7AL1nxUk

hi Uday Reddy,

On Jan 16, 2:57 pm, Uday Reddy 〔usr.vm.ro...@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│ On 1/6/2012 4:31 PM, Xah Lee wrote:
│
│
│
│ │ i'd recommend not to use any minor mode for this. Here's my solution:
│
│ │ 〈Emacs: Insert Brackets by Pair〉
│ │http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_insert_brackets_by_pair.html
│
│ Xah Lee, here are 3 use cases for you:
│
│ 1. To type (x), you want to type exactly that: an `(' an `x' and a `)'.
│ Got it?

huh? I just type 【Menu+d x】. 2 keys (one combo plus a single key). and the keys are Thumb and home row on left hand.

As opposed to 【Shift+9 x Shift+0】, which is 3 keys (2 combos and a single key) that involves lots pinky.

(i actually use Dvorak layout, so the 【Menu+d x】 is actually 【Menu+e q】. But i'll stick to qwerty notation in this message for easy understanding for the masses)

│ 2. If you change your mind after typing `(', when the buffer has (), you
│ want to hit DEL or BSP, and both the parens should disappear.

No. I use ErgoEmacs keybinding. So, after i typed 【Menu+d】 to have inserted () , and if i decided i don't want it, either i undo 【Alt+z】, or hold Alt and press “df” (that is: 【Alt+d Alt+f】), which delets backward and forward. This is better than moving your hand to far upper right to press Backspace then Delete key.

│ 3. If you have xyz in your text, and you want to put it in brackets, you
│ want to select it and hit either
│ - `(' to produce (xyz) and move to the beginning of (xyz), or
│ - `)' to produce (xyz) and move to the closing of (xyz).

not quite sure i understand what you mean here.

if i have “xyz” in my text, and i want to make it “(xyz)”, i press 【Alt+e】 once to to delete the “xyz”, then 【Menu+d】 to insert the paren, then F3 or 【Alt+v】 to paste the “xyz” back.

│ Once you have "solutions" for these 3 use cases, we will be happy to
│ give you more.

so now you see my power?

my method doesn't require esoteric learning. It is standard across all OS and apps. While, yours, i suppose the emacs way, requires much more learning and being less efficient, to boot.

please let me know if there's any part that's not clear, or needs to be challenged.

PS if you don't know already, my first 6 years of using emacs (1998-2005) is in text terminal EXCLUSIVELY (repeate: text terminal EXCLUSIVELY, as i despise unix fucking X11, and semi-refused to install X11 when collegue asked as a sys admin on Solaris boxes), and using emacs default keybinding EXCLUSIVELY. I've documented my experience here a few times as well as a essay on my emacs tutorial site. Please Let me know if you require a link.

Xah

how to revive comp.lang.lisp

2012-01-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

On Jan 13, 12:57 pm, Kaz Kylheku wrote: …

i'll tell u how to revive comp.lang.lisp. If all you follow it, i can guaranteed that comp.lang.lisp will revive immediately!

• all of you, switch to
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!myforums
as your newsgroup viewer, immediately.

• Stop your fucking bottom post. In fact, don't even quote the message. If you do want to quote, quote no more than one single sentence. And don't use the fucking “> ”.

• electric shock yourself whenever you felt a urge to bitch about how other is top/bottom posting, or whether he truncated lines, or whether he used unicode.

• if you have sympathy towards the cause of eternal-septmber.org, ask a neuro-surgeon to cut off the part of your brain that spawn such sympathy.

• use real names.

• add profile info, put a profile picture of yourself (and, not picture of some fucking planet, drawings, or batman.). e.g. fill info about your gender, age, code/job experience, etc. (ommit them only if you really want)

• add other link/contact info, such as your facebook, g+, twitter, blog, linkedin, stackoverflow, etc, if you have one.

yeah, let's make the world a better place. There's a cure for tech geeking. Follow me!

Xah

decline of newsgroup?

2012-01-13T12:30:00.001-08:00

On Dec 30 2011, 11:14 pm, Kaz Kylheku wrote:
“ You know, folks, I don't quite understand this decline in Usenet.”

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/adb3567389b74a89

lol. it's dead precisely because there's this bunch of hacker tech geeker types, with views such as exactly you just expressed.

Further readings.

〈Death of Newsgroups〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ2/death_of_newsgroups.html

〈comp.lang.lisp is 95% Spam〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ2/google_group_lisp_spam.html

〈Spy vs Spy; Tech Geekers vs Spammers〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geekers_vs_spammers.html

〈Computer Language Popularity Trend〉
http://xahlee.org/lang_traf/index.html

〈What is a Tech Geeker?〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/tech_geeker.html

〈Computing Culture: What's Hacker?〉
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/whats_hacker.html

〈Paul Graham's Infatuation with the Concept of Hacker〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/Paul_Graham_language_design.html

〈Language, Purity, Cult, and Deception〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lang_purity_cult_deception.html

〈HTML5 Doctype, Validation, X-UA-Compatible, and Why Do I Hate Hackers〉
http://xahlee.org/js/html5_validation_doctype.html

〈the Death of Dennis Ritchie, John McCarthy, Steve Jobs, and Hackers〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/Death_of_Dennis_Ritchie.html

Xah

do you recommend emacs paredit mode?

2012-01-06T09:43:00.001-08:00

On Jan 5, 12:40 am, "Pascal J. Bourguignon" wrote:
> Yuan Luo writes:
> > I am using common lisp mode in emacs 23, and it seems to me whenever
> > there is unmatched parens when I was saving a file, emacs reports
> > paren not matched with cursor moved to where the unmatch occurs but
> > then the cursor never moved back to where i was just editing. How do I
> > tell emacs 23 to move the cursor back? In emacs 22, it was fine.
>
> Don't save files with unmatched parentheses.
> Use paredit.http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit

I don't recommend paredit. I do recommend to always insert paren by pairs, however.

Here's what i recommend:

〈Emacs: Insert Brackets by Pair〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_insert_brackets_by_pair.html

〈How to Edit Lisp Code with Emacs〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_editing_lisp.html

Xah

computer language syntax, formal spec, design

2012-01-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/d58a82f4db51b862

On Dec 30 2011, 12:30 pm, Xah Lee wrote:
2011-12-28

Dear Richard,

you are, perhaps the top 10 haters of Mathematica/Wolfram on this
earth. Me, is a dedicated lover of Mathematica, and actually i admire
Stephen Wolfram, his ideas, personality, too, in fact many of his
views, philosophies, are in alignment with my own. (one other guy i
could think of is Bertrand Russell)

Richard Fateman wrote:
│ This is in contrast to "almost all computer languages" which DO have a
│ syntax described in Backus-Naur Form.

Xah wrote:
│ No they don't. Show me some. Let's say the most popular ones: java, c,
│ c++, python, perl, php, html, xml.

Richard Fateman wrote:
│ OK, I thought you had access to Google and could find these yourself..

│ the C grammar is in
│ Kernighan and Ritchie, The C Programming Language, App. A,
│ the Java grammar is in http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/syntax.doc.html
│ the Python grammar is in http://www.python.org/doc//current/reference/expressions.html
│ C++ is probably in various places, including http://www.nongnu.org/hcb/

│ perl is, I think not amenable to systematic context-free description, in
│ that it uses some odd tricks during lexical analysis. (As does
│ Mathematica).

│ html is not a programming language but a markup language; it is
│ described formally not by bnf but by a formal SGML DTD.

│ I'm not familiar enough with PHP to say anything about it except that
│ from googling for its grammar, it seems to be a piece of malleable garbage..

│ Other languages, like Algol-60, Pascal, FORTRAN, Basic, ... also have
│ (annotated) formal syntax descriptions, typically available in any
│ reference manual for them.

they have syntax spec in the same sense that there's syntax spec for
english. Just read grammar books!

i didn't clarify myself before. Let me do now.

No major programing language in use has a formal grammar for their
syntax. By formal grammar, i mean a “formal language” (in the context
of symbolic logic. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_language.
Parsing Expression Grammar would be a example of such formal
language).

In particular, let's look at 2 examples. Java and Python.

Neither have a FORMAL LANGUAGE spec of their syntax. Worse, both
their “spec” is not sufficient to implement the language, even just
the syntax part. The vast majority of “language spec” are like that.
They are more of “a guide to implementation”, and that's it.

Fateman wrote:
│ (The term "regular" wrt syntax has a particular formal distinction).
│ Sure, and i would ask you some questions about syntax, but given your
│ known antagonism against Mathematica and Wolfram, am not sure i'd get
│ answers that's unbiased and useful to me.
│ Google is your friend. Look up "regular grammar" to find out about
│ right and left linear grammars, for example.

Now, let me discuss my idea about “regular syntax”. (i don't know if
there's a term for this idea, so i just say “my idea”. Actually i
should call it “systematic syntax”. That would be better than “regular
syntax”.)

The “systematic syntax” i have in mind is this:

• a language with a formal language spec of the syntax.

• this formal language spec, is “regular” in the sense that it is very
simple, perhaps just a handful of rules. As a example of opposite, you
could have a formal language spec for Java syntax, but that would be
tens or hundreds of pages.

Now, my claim about Mathematica is this: its syntax specified in a
general formal language would be very small, yet the syntax is very
rich. No other major lang comes close. (lisp would also have a very
simple syntax spec in formal lang, but its syntax isn't rich).

Now, we can discuss what is meant by “simple”.

First, let me give a formal lang spec in BNF for a simplifed lisp
syntax.

• The set of symbols are english letters a to z, and the parens “(”
and “)” and space “ ”.

• let's call the letters a to z as atoms, and denote it by α.

starting strings:

• α
• ()

transformation rules

• α → (α)
• (α) → (α α …)

That's it. Very simple.

Now, a lang can have such simple syntax, but usually such simple ones
are not useful, not expressive, hard to read. For example, assembly
langs. Or think of arithmetic with just “+”.

What we want is a rich syntax, but still regular with simple rules
(that can be specified by a formal language with just a few rules.) In
some sence, such syntax grammar is a systematic one.

I don't like the dwellers of comp.lang.lisp (they are idiots), because
lisp do have very simple syntax, yet it is totally irregular, yet the
typical lisp fans don't realize it almost in ANY WAY, but drivel all
day about sexp and macros and certain “code is data” fucking total
meaningless bizarre idea. (lisp macros is another major idiocy.)

as a example of the complexities of C-like syntax, let's have a peek
show:

i++
++i
for(;;){}
while(){}
0x123
expr1 ? expr2 : expr3
sprint(…%s,#@$#!%*&fuck@#)

Further readings:

• 〈Pattern Matching vs Lexical Grammar Specification〉 http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/pattern_matching_vs_pattern_spec.html

• 〈What's Function, What's Operator?〉 http://xahlee.org/math/function_and_operators.html

• 〈The Concepts and Confusions of Prefix, Infix, Postfix and Fully
Nested Notations〉 http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/notations.html

• 〈Programing Language: Fundamental Problems of Lisp〉 http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lisp_problems.html

Btw, a little extra tip for my readers:

There is a confusion of the word “formal”. When people say “formal”,
as in “formal proof”, even mathematians, they usually mean “rigorous”.
Basically, they use the word “formal” as a synonym of “rigor”. (And
what's “rigorous” changes with time. Usually it just means the current
standard, accepted by other mathematicians.)

This is partly a abuse of language, partly a establish english usage
habit (called “phraseme”). Still, many mathematicians are ignorant of
“formal” in formal languages. In fact, many of them sneer at the idea
of David Hilbert's formalism or Bertrand Russel logicism, like idiots.

For more, see:

〈Math Notations, Computer Languages, and the “Form” in Formalism〉 http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/lang_notation_formalism.html

〈State Of Theorem Proving Systems 2008〉 http://xahlee.org/cmaci/notation/theorem_proving_systems.html

│ Happy new year.
│ RJF

Happy New Year to you too Richard!

Xah Lee

emacs, insert parens by pair

2012-01-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

On Jan 5, 6:11 am, Andrea Crotti 〔andrea.crott…@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│ Every time I try to open a dot file with the global autopair mode my
│ emacs becomes immediately
│ unusable and I have to kill it.
│
│ The error is:
│
│ Error in post-command-hook (autopair-global-mode-check-buffers):
│ (wrong-type-argument characterp nil
│
│ And if the post-command-hook stops working there's not much to do
│ unfortunately.
│ Any idea about how to fix this?

i'd recommend not to use any minor mode for this. Here's my solution:

〈Emacs: Insert Brackets by Pair〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_insert_brackets_by_pair.html

Xah

emacs lisp. looking for rassoc-default

2011-07-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

2011-07-13

emacs lisp. Is there a rassoc-default for getting ALL elements matching a VALUE?

emas lisp. Is there a rassoc-default function? i.e. similar to assoc-default but get all items of a alist of a give value.

i want to be able to properly setup cperl-mode to load instead of perl-mode. Here's detail.

easy way is just
(defalias 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode)

but the problem with that is you can't call perl-mode anymore, if you still want it on occasion.

So, i went to set the auto-mode-alist. Like this:

(setq auto-mode-alist (rassq-delete-all 'perl-mode auto-mode-alist))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\$[pP]\\([Llm]\\|erl\\|od\$\\|al\\)\\'" . cperl-mode))

but that's not all, because there's also interpreter-mode-alist. So i wrote:

(when
(rassoc 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist)
(let ((mykey (car (rassoc 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist)) ))
(setq interpreter-mode-alist (rassq-delete-all 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist (mykey . 'cperl-mode))
)
)

but i discovered there are actually several elements for perl in that alist:

("perl" . perl-mode)
("perl5" . perl-mode)
("miniperl" . perl-mode)

So my code above won't work. One slightly sloppy way to do it is simply do this:

(setq interpreter-mode-alist (rassq-delete-all 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("perl" . cperl-mode))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("perl5" . cperl-mode))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist '("miniperl" . cperl-mode))

but a more proper way is to query for the value 'perl-mode, get *ALL* results, then remove them all, then add them all back with 'cperl-mode.

Ι found the function “assoc-default”, which gets all elements by KEY, not value.

so, my question is, is there a “rassoc-default” that gets by value? Or, is there any simpler proper way to setup cperl-mode instead of perl-mode?

Thanks.

Xah

emacs validate matching brackets

2011-07-28T12:50:00.001-07:00

2011-07-21

On Jul 21, 9:43 am, pyt...@bdurham.com wrote:
> Xah,
>
> 1. Is the following string considered legal?
>
> [ { ( ] ) }
>
> Note: Each type of brace opens and closes in the proper sequence. But
> inter-brace opening and closing does not make sense.

nu!

> Or must a closing brace always balance out with the most recent opening
> brace like so?
>
> [ { ( ) } ]

yea!

> 2. If there are multiple unclosed braces at EOF, is the answer you're
> looking for the position of the first open brace that hasn't been closed
> out yet?

well, as many pointed out, i really haven't thought it out well.

originally, i just want to know the position of a un-matched char.

i haven't taken the time to think about what really should be the desired behavior. For me, the problem started because i wanted to use the script to check my 5k html files, in particular, classic novels that involves double curly quotes and french quotes. So, the desired behavior is one based on the question of what would best for the user to see in order to correct a bracket mismatch error in a file. (which, can get quite complex for nested syntax, because, usually, once you have one missed, it's all hell from there. I think this is similar to the problem when a compiler/interpreter encounters a bad syntax in source code, and thus the poplar situation where error code of computer programs are hard to understand...)

but anyway, just for this exercise, the requirement needn't be stringent. I still think that at least the reported position should be a matching char in the file. (and if we presume this, then only my code works. LOL)

PS this is a warmup problem for writing a HTML tag validator. I looked high and lo in past years, but just couldn't find a script that does simple validation in batch. The w3c one is based on SGML, really huge amount of un-unstandable irregular historical baggage. XML lexical validator is much closer, but still not regular. I simply wanted one just like the match-pair validator in our problem, except the opening char is not a single char but string of the form and the *matching* closing one is of the form , and with just one exception: when a tag has “/>” in ending such as
then it is skipped (i.e. not considered as opening or closing).

I'll be writing this soon in elisp… since i haven't studied parsers, i had hopes that parser expert would show some proper parser solutions… in particular i think such can be expressed in Parsing Expression Grammar in just a few lines… but so far no deity came forward to show the light. lol

getting ranty… it's funny, somehow the tech geekers all want regex to solve the problem. Regex, regex, regex, a 40 years old deviant bastard that by some twist of luck became a tool for matching text patterns. One bloke came forward to show-off a perl regex obfuscation. That's like, lol. But it might be good for the lulz if his code is actually complete and worked. Then, you have a few who'd nonchalantly remark “O, you just need push-down automata”. LOL, unless they show actual working code, its Automata their asses.

folks, don't get angry with me. I'm a learner. I'm curious. I always am eager to learn. And there's always things we can learn. Don't troll dance with me in a pit. Nobody's gonna give a shit if you win. If u are not the master of one thousand and one languages yet, you can learn with me. ☺ Lol ＆ troll!!!!

Xah

emacs lisp. Is there a rassoc-default for getting ALL elements matching a VALUE?

2011-07-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

2011-07-13 emacs lisp. Is there a rassoc-default for getting ALL elements matching a VALUE?

emas lisp. Is there a rassoc-default function? i.e. similar to assoc-default but get all items of a alist of a give value.

i want to be able to properly setup cperl-mode to load instead of perl-mode. Here's detail.

easy way is just
(defalias 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode)

but the problem with that is you can't call perl-mode anymore, if you still want it on occasion.

So, i went to set the auto-mode-alist. Like this:

(setq auto-mode-alist (rassq-delete-all 'perl-mode auto-mode-alist))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\$[pP]\\([Llm]\\|erl\\|od\$\\|al\\)\\'" . cperl-mode))

that turns out doesn't do it, because there's also interpreter-mode-alist. So i wrote:

(when
(rassoc 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist)
(let ((mykey (car (rassoc 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist)) ))
(setq interpreter-mode-alist (rassq-delete-all 'perl-mode interpreter-mode-alist))
(add-to-list 'interpreter-mode-alist (mykey . 'cperl-mode))
)
)

but i discovered there are actually several elements for perl in that alist:

("perl" . perl-mode)
("perl5" . perl-mode)
("miniperl" . perl-mode)

So my code above won't work.

So, the proper way is to query for the value 'perl-mode, get *ALL* results, then remove them all, then add them all back with 'cperl-mode.

Ι found the function “assoc-default”, which gets all elements by KEY, not value.

so, my question is, is there a “rassoc-default” that gets by value? Or, is there any simpler proper way to setup cperl-mode instead of perl-mode?

Thanks.

Xah

piano, computer keyboard: pinky vs 4th finger, stronger?

2011-06-17T10:55:00.001-07:00

2011-06-17
On Jun 15, 5:43 am, rusi wrote:
> On Jun 15, 5:32 pm, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>
> > Thanks. From testing small movements with my fingers I see that the
> > fourth finger is in fact a bit weaker than the last finger, but more
> > importantly, it is much less dexterous. Good to know!
>
> Most of the piano technique-icians emphasis, especially those of the
> last century like Hanon, was to cultivate 'independence' of the
> fingers. The main target of these attacks being the 4th finger.
>
> The number of potential-pianists who ruined their hands and lives
> chasing this holy grail is unknown

Hi rusi, am afaid going to contradict what u say here.

i pretty much mastered Hanon 60. All of it, but it was now 8 years ago. The idea that pinky is stronger than 4th is silly. I can't fathom any logic or science to support that. Perhaps what u meant is that in many situations the use of pinky can be worked around because it in at the edge of your hand so you can apply chopping motion or similar. (which, is BAD if you want to develope piano finger skill) However, that's entirely different than saying pinky being stronger than 4th.

there's many ways we can cookup tests right away to see. e.g. try to squeeze a rubber ball with 4th and thumb. Repeat with pink + thumb. Or, reverse exercise by stretching a rubber band wrapped on the 2 fingers of interest. You can easy see that pinky isn't stronger.

Xah

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/ff3a9b0dda4161a7

keyboard: use of numerical keypad

2011-06-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

2011-06-13

On Jun 13, 6:45 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote:
> Chris Angelico wrote:
> > And did any of the studies take into account the fact that a lot of
> > computer users - in all but the purest data entry tasks - will use a
> > mouse as well as a keyboard?
>
> What I think's really stupid is designing keyboards with two
> big blocks of keys between the alphabetic keys and the mouse.
> Back when standard-grade keyboards didn't usually have a
> built-in numeric keypad, it was much easier to move one's
> right hand back and forth between the keyboard and mouse.
>
> Nowadays I find myself perpetually prone to off-by-one errors
> when moving back to the keyboard. :-(

numerical keypad is useful to many. Most people can't touch type. Even for touch typist, many doesn't do the number keys. So, when they need to type credit card number, phone number, etc, they go for the number pad. Also, i think the number pad esentially have become a calculator for vast majority of computer users. These days, almost all keyboard from Microsoft or Logitech has a Calculator button near the number pad to launch it.

i myself, am a qwerty typist since ~1987, also worked as data entry clerk for a couple of years. Am a dvorak touch typist since 1994. (and emacs since 1997) However, i never learned touch type the numbers on the main section till i think ~2005. I used to always just move my hand to the number pad when i need to type a phone number. Since about 2008, the numerical keypad is now used as extra function keys.

Xah

keyboard: menu key, Alt, window key

2011-06-13T09:58:00.001-07:00

On Jun 12, 8:58 am, Elena 〔egarr...@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│ On 12 Giu, 09:19, Xah Lee 〔xah...@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│
│ │ ------------------------------------------------
│ │ PC Keyboard Modifier Keys (A Short Survey)
│
│ │ However, the right side is entirely a different story. Here's some common design:
│
│ │ ① Alt Win Menu Ctrl (most cheap keyboards)
│ │ ② Alt Menu Ctrl (some Microsoft ergonomic models)
│ │ ③ Alt Flip3D Menu Ctrl (some fancy (non-split) Microsoft models)
│ │ ④ Alt Fn Ctrl (many Logitech keyboards)
│ │ ⑤ Alt Ctrl. (keyboards of early 1990s)
│
│ Actually, things are worse than that: in ISO (European) layouts, there
│ is no right Alt key, since it has been replaced by AltGr.

Ah, thanks. I forgot about that.

Additonal info: On Windows, if the layout is set to one of the euro lang, the right Alt became AltGr.

i have a question: in Europe and keyboard manufactured for Europe with a real AltGr key, does that key actually send a different scancode than the right Alt?

│ I think modifier keys - Win key included - should always be on both
│ sides of a keyboard.

I agree.

│ In Windows, Menu is equivalent to Shift+F10 (if I remember correctly).

Yeah. Wikipedia has a lot detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key

though, one cannot expect them to be exactly equivalent, since it is done in software layer.

│ As for the lack of Win key, you could always remap Win key chords to
│ Ctrl+Alt.

yeah. But then that interfere with emacs use of Ctrl+Meta. e.g. with arrow key it navigate lisp code …

│ Thanks for writing this article: I'll pay attention to the modifier
│ keys whenever I'm going to buy a new laptop, where keyboards always
│ are a bit crippled.

thanks. Yeah laptop is one entire different story. I think i'll do a survey of laptop layout soon. Already started to gather some pics. … i think the main ones to start with is Apple's, HP/Compaq's, IBM/Levono, and maybe some sony, toshiba, Acer, ...

i think prolonged use of laptop real quick to RSI anyway. I used laptop (Apple) exclusively for 1 year in ~2004, that's the first time i felt RSI coming. Then i got myself a external keyboard, in fact opted for a ergonomic (split) one (of Microsoft), and now i never looks back on straight keyboards ☺.

Xah

emacs, unicode, keyboarding, troll

2011-06-13T08:42:00.000-07:00

2011-06-11

On Jun 11, 12:25 am, dkco...@panix.com (David Combs) wrote:
│ Just a reminder here:
│
│ As far as I can tell, a Sun keyboard (type 6, I think, the one with
│ "control" in the CORRECT place, just left of the "a") has no
│ windows key (nor the other one mentioned, a "super" key, was
│ that it?).

now, this post gotta be a troll — one fat piece of meat waiting for me to byte, and how i cannot resist, as tech geekers wont to say.

Hi David Combs, if i recall correctly, you are the one insistently complain, like Alan Mackenzie have done, politely to boot, several times in the past years, that newsgroup posts shouldn't use unicode chars such as “” «» → etc. LOL And as i've mentioned a thousand times, a decade and two ago the same tech geekers insisted that web shouldn't commericialize, that it should remain plain text, that GUI is for idiots, and MIME is a plague. (and these same idiots today toting iPad, Amazon Kindle in their hands, sipping coffee pleasurably at Starbucks, banter on commercial sites such as slashdot, reddit, hacker news, about software ethics, while grabbing movie files from pirate bay, because, after all, information should be free.)

So, what shall i say about the « Sun keyboard (type 6, I think, the one with "control" in the CORRECT place, just left of the "a") has no windows key (nor the other one mentioned, a "super" key, was that it?).»?

if you are a typical conservative tech geeker with coding experience back to the 1980s, then, the CORRECT position for Control key for emacs use today is at the 2 Alt key on standard PC keyboards. In contrast, if you are not the conservative hacker of old school, then the correct position is to tell FSF to wipe out emacs's keyboard shortcut set. Wipe it out. All of it.

References:

〈Sun Microsystem's “Type 6” Keyboard〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/sun_microsystems_keyboard.html

〈How To Avoid The Emacs Pinky Problem〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html

〈Why You Should Not Swap Caps Lock With Control〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/swap_CapsLock_Ctrl.html

〈Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html

O, by the way, recently i discovered this from emacs manual of version 23.2, node ((emacs) User Input), quote:

(1) We refer to <Alt> as <Meta> for historical reasons.

O, so FSF refer to Alt as Meta. I didn't know that! I double checked and that line wasn't in emacs manual of 22.0.50. For a moment i thought it reads “Xah refers Alt as Meta, because he's a troll.”.

Xah

Pascal vs Xah

2011-06-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

Pascal J Bourguignon 〔p…@informatimago.com〕 wrote:
> Not at all. (Yet some other fodder for Xah's idiocy articles, sorry).

you mean my articles describing idiots like you?

Here's a juicy passage of Pascal J Bourguignon fellow, in which you can get a glimpse of his highness:

«Ruby's been done by some Japanese newbie… I guess there was some language barrier preventing him to learn from the 50 years of occidental experience in programming language design. At least, he wasn't a "linguist"… In any case, why should we suffer for THEIR incompetences?!?»

Xah

On Jun 11, 9:51 pm, "Pascal J. Bourguignon" 〔p…@informatimago.com〕 wrote:
│ Alan Mackenzie 〔a…@muc.de〕 writes:
│ │ Hi, Xah.
│
│ │ Xah Lee 〔xah…@gmail.com〕 wrote:
│ ││ in a elisp program, if i have created a temp var (but not using let)
│ │ ….
│
│ │ As a matter of interest, how do you do that?
│
│ ││ …. and later i want to delete the var, i can do:
│
│ ││ (setq temp1 nil)
│
│ ││ or is it better to do
│
│ ││ (unintern 'temp1)
│
│ │ Shouldn't much matter. Probably better to set it to nil, because that's
│ │ more usual. OTOH, if you want to detect an error should temp1 be
│ │ subsequently accessed, then uninterning it will be better.
│
│ Not at all. (Yet some other fodder for Xah's idiocy articles, sorry).
│
│ (defvar temp1 42)
│
│ (defun f ()
│ temp1)
│
│ (unintern 'temp1)
│
│ (f) --│ 42
│
│ ││ The temp1 var holds a big list, and there are few more, e.g. temp2,
│ ││ temp3.
│
│ │ Either approach will allow these lists to be garbage collected.

programing: monad in emacs

2011-06-03T23:40:00.001-07:00

On Jun 3, 5:19 am, jvt wrote:
> On Jun 2, 6:44 am, Xah Lee wrote:
> > On May 30, 10:30 am, jvt wrote:
>
> > > Hi cll -
> > > …
> > > I'd worry about spamming the list serve with my own content except Xah
> > > Lee is always posting his crazy blog posts, so I guess its ok?
>
> > i guess i'm honored. It's great of u to peddle ur stuff at the expense
> > of my name.
>
> > perhaps you seek a lil constructive advice from me: if you think your
> > stuff is useful, feel free to post here, without feeling guilty and
> > needing to find scapegoat as excuse.
>
> > and now you should thank me too, because i've contributed to your
> > advertisement.
>
> > long live the spirit of newsgroup.
>
> > Xah
>
> The jab was entirely good natured, Xah. I actually enjoy your posts,
> for the most part.

Wee! I figured if the pesky Pascal J B would praise a article, it must be worthwhile.

〈Deep Emacs Lisp Part 1 (Basically, a Monad Tutorial)〉, (2011-04-09) by JVT. @ http://dorophone.blogspot.com/2011/04/deep-emacs-part-1.html

btw, is there a subscribe button on your blog? Blogger is annoying in that by default they have subscribe button to comments but not the blog. (one can subscribe in Google Reader just by plain blog site's url, but still, a explicit rss button would be better)

i'll be reading your article soon and perhaps blog about it on my blog and maybe give some feedback.

PS it annoys me to no end when one cannot easily find the name of the author on blogs, when the blog author clearly didn't meant to be anonymous. Is there a reason you didn't want it spelled it out?

(i despise hacker culture, where these “hackers” idiotic-namesake prefer to go by “handles” or abbrevs (e.g. “RMS”, “ESR”, “JWZ”) or whatnot insider-fashion fuck. But that's just me.)

Xah

Functional Programing: stop using recursion, cons. Use map & vectors

2011-05-22T15:48:00.001-07:00

this is important but i think most lispers and functional programers still don't know it.

Functional Programing: stop using recursion, cons. Use map & vectors.

〈Guy Steele on Parallel Programing〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/Guy_Steele_parallel_computing.html

btw, lists (as cons, car, cdr) in the lisp world has always been some kinda cult. Like, if you are showing some code example and you happened to use lisp vector datatype and not cons (lists) and it doesn't really matter in your case, but some lisper will always rise up to bug you, either as innocent curious question or attacking you for not “understanding” lisp. (just as other idiocies happen in other lang that lispers see but other langs don't see)

it's interesting to me that all other high level langs: Mathematica, perl, python, php, javascript, all don't have linked list as lisp's list. It's also curious that somehow lispers never realises this. I've been having problems with lisp's cons ever since i'm learning Scheme Lisp in 1998 (but mostly the reason is language design at syntax and lack of abstraction level in calling “cons, car, cdr” stuff, without indexing mechanism). Realizing the algorithmic property and parallel-execution issues of linked list is only recent years.

Xah

English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

2011-05-18T13:08:00.000-07:00

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/3702cd4e7d2c54c5/

Xah wrote:
〈English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively〉
http://xahlee.org/comp/idiom_directory_recursively.html

Mike Barnes wrote:
> Xah Lee :
>
> >For example, when you want to delete the whole dir in emacs, it
> >prompts this message: “Recursive delete of xx? (y or n) ”.
>
> AFAICS what emacs calls "recursive delete" is what the ordinary person
> would simply call "delete". Presumably the non-recursive delete is
> called simply "delete" but is actually something more complicated than
> delete, and you're supposed to know what that is.
>
> Also (I'm speculating) a recursive delete means carrying out the
> (ordinary, non-recursive) delete process on sub-directories,
> recursively. The result of which is, put simply, to delete the
> directory.
>
> I find all this somewhat arcane. Questioning the precise suitability of
> the word "recursive" seems like a quibble.

that's good point. I think what happens is that the “recursive” has become a idiom associated with directory to such a degree that the unix people don't know what the fuck they are talking about. They just simply use the word to go with directory whever they mean the whole directory.

In the emacs case: “Recursive delete of xx? (y or n) ”, what could it possibly mean by the word “recursive” there? Like, it might delete the directory but not delete all files in it?

also, in the rsync case: “This would recursively transfer all files from the directory … ”, what does the word “recursively” mean there?

Xah

emacs autoload, auto-mode-alist, nxml-mode

2011-05-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

the reason it nxml-mode is loaded when u call xml-mode is probably because there is a alias.

you can probably set it back by:

(defalias 'xml-mode 'sgml-xml-mode)

Peter wrote:
> (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.[XxRrMmDdTt][TtMmDdSsNnEe][PpAaMmLlFfSsIi]?[EePp]*[Cc]*$" . xml-mode) auto-mode-alist))

that seems to be pretty bad.

you probably want to use add-to-list instead of setq.
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.js\\'" . js2-mode))

also, the file suffix
"\\.[XxRrMmDdTt][TtMmDdSsNnEe][PpAaMmLlFfSsIi]?[EePp]*[Cc]*$"
seems quite wild. What is it?

nxml-mode is a new mode for xml, written by the xml expert James Clark, who is also the original author of sgml-mode (html-mode and xml-mode are parts of sgml-mode). nxml-mode features on-the-fly xml validation. It's 10k lines of elisp.

the following might provide helpful info:

〈How to Install Emacs Packages〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_installing_packages.html

〈New Features in Emacs 23〉
http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs23_features.html

Xah

On May 7, 3:45 pm, Peter Flynn wrote:
> I just upgraded a machine to Ubuntu Natty, which installed Emacs 23.2,
> which appears to open XML files in nxml-mode by default. My .emacs file says
>
> > (autoload 'xml-mode "psgml" "Major mode to edit XML files." t )
> > (setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.[XxRrMmDdTt][TtMmDdSsNnEe][PpAaMmLlFfSsIi]?[EePp]*[Cc]*$" . xml-mode) auto-mode-alist))
>
> which has been working fine for years. It looks as if Emacs 23.2 defines
> xml-mode to point to nxml-mode, and this is somehow superseding my .emacs.
>
> Unfortunately I still need to use psgml's xml-mode for all my XML stuff.
> Does anyone know how I disable Emacs' new behaviour?
>
> ///Peter

emacs: Alan, lsl-mode

2011-04-28T15:05:00.001-07:00

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/browse_frm/thread/db1f6a1a2308dea4/fd83f92f3bac7224#fd83f92f3bac7224

Xah wrote:
> 〈Xah's Linden Scripting Language (LSL) Tutorial〉
> http://xahlee.org/sl/ls.html
> if you take a survey, i think 99% professional programers wouldn't
> know what the shit ^L is.

Alan wrote:
> I'm sure a much greater proportion of professional programmers, my colleagues,
> know this.

emacs cult victim Alan, i'm so prescient, i anticipated ur idiocy. See this sentence in my previous post:

Xah wrote:
> (Xah's edu corner: professional programer means those who
> makes a living mostly by coding; it doesn't mean your
> hacker buddies or those who slave in comp.lang
> newsgroup).

--------------------

Xah wrote:
> here's my LSL tutorial Alan. You might browse it sometimes.
> 〈Xah's Linden Scripting Language (LSL) Tutorial〉
> http://xahlee.org/sl/ls.html

Alan wrote:
> Then again, perhaps not. I've no interest in Second Life.

remember you asked what's the problem being old? The above is a example.

> Have you written an Emacs mode for LSL?

i dunno if you really don't know, or just trying to get me to post my links.
Any idiot who spent 30 secs on the above link will see this link:

〈Emacs LSL Mode (xlsl-mode) for Linden Scripting Language〉
http://xahlee.org/sl/ls-emacs.html

and it's written from scratch baby, not based on some other mode.

Xah

map F5 to emacs's C-x while ignore cua-mode

2011-04-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

if i want to set F5 to emacs's C-x and F6 to emacs's C-c, how to do that?

i know i can use key-translation-map or function-key-map, something like
(define-key key-translation-map (kbd "") "")

but i also want it so that if cua-mode is on, it unconditionally do emacs's C-x, not cut.

i thought it's something like this

(defun f5-Cx ()
"DOCSTRING"
(interactive)
(let (cuaModeState cua-mode)
(cua-mode 0)
;; type C-x here
(if cuaModeState (cua-mode 1) (cua-mode 0))
))
)

but not sure how to do the “type C-x” there. Even so, not sure the whole would work.

Thanks.

Xah

autism, schizoid, artificial intelligence

2011-04-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

On Apr 11, 4:04?am, "Pascal J. Bourguignon" wrote:
> Don Geddis writes:
> > Xah Lee wrote on Sun, 10 Apr 2011:
> >> my parents are abusive fuckheads.
> > [...]
> >> Perhaps, it's also why i'm this way.
>
> > Ah! ?An explanation, at last.
>
> But not an excuse. ?He has a brain to compensate.

intelligence does not compensate for mental “illness”, personality disorder, trauma, or the like.

you can look at people with High IQ, and suicide rate, or psychological problems. They don't correlate.

as a human animal, there is certain psychological need, just as food is a physical need. Intelligence helps thinking, but that does little to grow or mend psychologically oriented problems.

i've put tremendous effort in my 20s and 30s to become a pure emotionless and logical being, pretty much as Mr Data or Spock in Star Trek. And as a person with mild so-called schizoid personality, i'm already far more emotionally removed than the general populace, even more so than most hard core programers, engineers, scientist types. (some say i have autism or Asperger syndrome, but between these and schizoid i'm not quite sure which or both)

in my interest in these things, one realization is that human animal isn't just a machine albeit made of meat, but psychological issues changes/damages your brain's wiring or chemical makeup in physics ways that even with intact high IQ your thinking pattern or emotional response will be changed in irreparable ways. e.g. easy way to see this is to imagine trauma victims. (or, you can think of the fictional Joker & Batman for illustration. Both are highly intelligent, but got psy problems. lol)

so, for much of my life, my quest of becoming a pure emotionless thinking machine using intelligence and logic is misguided and ultimately doomed to fail. In summary, the human animal, its behavior, thinking, is not and can not be controlled by pure will out of thinking.

related article:

〈Reading Notes on “Intimate Behavior”〉
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/intimate_behavior.html

〈Are You Schizoid or Autistic?〉
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/schizoid.html

back to computer science... you know there's theories that when a computer gets sufficiently complex to approach Strong AI, it will develop emotion (which we perceive as negative), e.g. fear, love, incisiveness, etc, that these are so-called emergent phenomenon.

as to the question of whether machines will ever become sentient or achieve strong AI... i kinda think yes, because i think that if you don't believe some concept of soul or inherent spirit with a human animal, then it's just a machine, albeit made of meat, governed by physics. As such, artificial machines may one day be made in ways like the meat machine of human animal. (and then we have cloning tech on the horizon... which gets equally interesting on the question of sentience, identity, soul.)

Xah

emacs, richard stallman, disruptive leaders

2011-04-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

2011-04-10

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/browse_frm/thread/1d6b9c7d3cf0f4ee#

hi Louis Wen,

thanks for the thoughts. Here's some response as discussion.

On Apr 8, 9:25 pm, "Louis.Wen" wrote:
> Xah, I read all you article and some other else. You are a interesting
> person but I don't agree with you completely. I think you are doing
> good in your way(write articles on these and release ErgoEmacs). And I
> want to make comments and give suggestions.

thanks.

> Although I am not much interested in politics (and actually not good at
> it), in my opinion it is somewhat radical to ask for dropping the word
> "free software" and replace it with "FSF ideal software", to advocate
> the abandonment of all traditional way of doing things in emacs (that is
> what you call "emacs cult", do I understand you exactly right?). As
> emacs is developed in more than three decades, due to the compatible or
> historical reason there is something, e.g. the "undo" issue, is not so
> easy to use comparing to some other more modern editors. If you want to
> change this, I think you could easily get the source code and do it as
> you want. (actually you have built another branch of emacs, ErgoEmacs.)

it's not easy. People say one of the main power of emacs is customization. Yes, for small dosages. But to change keybinding (such as C-c ＆ C-x for copy/cut), or adding the redo, really takes a lisp coder with several years of coding experience. Such is the case with ErgoEmacs as well as AquaMacs, Carbon Emacs, or the grandaddy XEmacs which took several elite pro programers several years full times in a day job to produce. Some of these core UI issues can't be fixed unless you hack emacs's C. At which point, you pretty much ends up as XEmacs, a complete incompatible fork, unless you kiss Richard Stallman's ass and dedicate your years of work under his design and name.

> That is exactly what FSF does, to make the software source code
> available to everyone and the provide the freedom to you to modify and
> redistribute the software. There is 4 different levels of freedom that
> GPL provides. Yes, it is just some points of view (and actually put down
> in GPL as law text). It seems you have different thought in you article
>
> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ2/Richard_Stallman_abuse_freed...
> I think it's easy to see that you take thinking on it, however I don't
> agree with part of you points in this article. By the way, the
> "entrepreneurs and businesses" example in this article is not good to
> support you point of view. It says you have the freedom to write
> software and release no matter in what license, but what GPL asks (for
> the entrepreneurs) and provides (to the user) is much more than this.

it should be noted that i was a dedicated FSF/GNU advocate, from late 1990s when i learned it to early 2000s. This can be seen in these essays:

〈On Microsoft Hatred〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/mshatred155.html

〈The Unix Pestilence: GNU〉
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/gnur.html

quote:

Of the Open Source, which is one of the most paltry idea of humanity, of dolts' musing, paupers' plead, a offshoot and outright turncoat of Stallman's vision ＆ hardship, dressing itself as the mediator between FSF and business men, fiddling and hawking a pipe dream of its own; a pot calling the kettle black; thieves and slouch's back seat. And in the end, it's just another fantastic fad pest of the world that is lingering. A sucker of programer's blood. A ruse for the enterprising corps. A disparate incongruous splash of vaporing nothingness that we shall see. —Xah Lee, 2002-05

that was when in ~1997 the Open Source started and there's a big war going on between it and FSF. (remember KDE, anyone?) I have also been called a Richard Stallman fanboy in mac fanatic mailing (which subsequently i was ban'd). Remember in late 1990s, there's a unix history page that was hugely popular on the web. The fuckhead guy, put Steve Jobs as one of the important unix people, yet does not include Richard Stallman. I criticized, nay, motherfucked the page in public. Eventually, the author put Richard Stallman there, but of course i don't get any credit. Those unix supposedly ethical hacker MOTHERFUCKING scumbags — GO FUCK YOURSELF.

am too lazy to search the links, but if anyone wants to doubt, i'll get the link, the Wikipedia history page on unix history that links to it, and the mac os x mailing list where i discussed this. (it was running on omniweb... one bunch of Mac fucking fanatics cheerleaders)

am ban'd in quite few places btw. It's funny that hacker news ban'd my site xahlee.org from submitting. (btw, i NEVER submitted my articles to any of those hip hop slashdot reddit hackernews motherfucking fashion FUCKS for the tech geekers) This page gives a summary:

〈Ban Xah Lee〉
http://xahlee.org/Netiquette_dir/ban_Xah_Lee.html

in my past unix/gnu history sniffing, i've noticed there are quite a few prominent people who had problems with Richard Stallman. XEmacs people being one of the famous example, but there's also KDE camp, BSD camp (early 1990s or even 1980s), and lots others. Richard Stallman is to be admired 100% until this happened to you personally.

btw, i still fully respect Richard Stallman as a person, as i think most coder who have come to unfortunate dislike of him. Though, he's like attacking Linus, and quite few others. In recent years, i think he's getting old. Attacking cell phones and Google and Miguel de Icaza ect. In mid 2000s as far as i sniffed, he's been voted out in several rather leet hacker open source communities...

and there's one thing i never quite understood. Debian was the most free, but seems since mid 2000s there's lots of complex controversies and is not today considerd free... (there are lots of lots of these internal factions among FSF/Open Source communities)

I think FSF is going downhill fast.

> About the "paperwork issue", I think you have and good view of it and
> get the point. The requirement of paperwork is for protecting GPL, but
> it would slow down the process, probably we could find solution for this.
>
> Anyway, I think it is good to speak it out if you have different
> opinions and find some other guys who have the same though to figure out
> the problem, to improve things. BUT, ALWAYS REMEMBER TO WATCH YOUR
> LANGUAGE. It is much easier for others to accept your point if you
> speak in a good manner, isn't it?

In the end, there's a choice to make. It is not true that one should never go foul. Quite a few historical philosophers, and i think politicians, who made a change to the world, went full foul. Was ban'd, jailed, and so on. Their foul language or disruptive behavior varies in degrees.

to name a few from top of my head: Socrates, Hypathia, Bertrand Russell, Li Ao, Marquis de Sade. (and no, am not including common idiot's heros such as Ghandi, Martin Lurther King Junior fucks, etc.) Here's some related articles:

〈Justine by Marquis de Sade (Hardcore Sadomasochism)〉
http://xahlee.org/p/justine.html

〈Li Ao on Tibet and Dalai Lama〉
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/tibet.html

〈Li Ao on Tiananmen Square Protests Of 1989〉
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/Li_Ao_on_Tiananmen_Square.html

i don't give a flying fuck to social norms. Kill me, then we'll talk.

Xah

xah lee abusive parents; the free lunch of morality

2011-04-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/browse_frm/thread/1d6b9c7d3cf0f4ee#

On Apr 8, 7:06 pm, des...@verizon.net wrote:
> Xah Lee writes:
> > G*****n m+++++++++++g emacs undo.
>
> Xah, didn't your mom ever wash your mouth out with soap?
>
> Everyone should experience that at least once, the world
> would be a better place.

my parents are abusive fuckheads. In today's USA, it is legally a crime, especially in California. I wish them both dead. (rather rhetorically speaking, because they dead doesn't do me any good. Rather, i wish my story be known, and any of those moral or kind fuckheads who keep insistiing the notion of “you should always love your parents”, or “parents are always good”, should be tortured. (can't blame them, because abusive parents are rather rare. However, there's a minority of ignorant fuckheads who think themselves as “good or loving” people, who perpetuate the harm. Typically the rich and fat and comfortable who never suffered or understood pain, hunger, war) It is these kinda fuckheads, do society bad.

Perhaps, it's also why i'm this way.

Xah

what skills self taught programer lack??

2011-04-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.quora.com/What-skills-do-self-taught-programmers-commonly-lack/answer/Xah-Lee

the collected answer in the summary is garbage.

i doubt programers with a CS degree understand half of those in the list.
And i doubt there are programers who really understand all of it, in particular: implementing language, compiler, machine learning, finite state machines, lambda calculus, category theory... the answer is totally garbage. Some of the items, such as machine learning, lambda calculus, category theory, really is something phd might understand, and most just barely. (they “understand” it as in “i've read a book”, “i've taken a class”.)

further, self-taught in programing is probably not much different than auto-didact in other fields, with respect to this question. What one may lack really depends on interest. Possibly, perhaps there might be something that all self-taught programers collectively lack statistically speaking, but this list is just garbage.

the alternative phrasing “Or, to put it another way: What should a self-taught programmer study to get up to speed with his/her formally-educated peers?” makes more sense. Here, i'd say typically it's more computer science subjects. I presume most self-taught programers here refers to those picked up programing and are making a living coding.

i'm self-taught. I'm trying now to make some constructive answer based on the list, but the list is so bad it's hard. For example, if you don't understand data structures, can you even code?? Compiler i might say is something self-taught ones normally wouldn't understand, because most programer don't need to know it to make a living coding. But there are hobbyist who study compilers as a subject of interest. Similar can be said of other items. For example, even though i'm self-taught, but my main interest in math, and my first lang is Mathematica, so i'm well familiar with functional programing and math related CS subjects (such as recursion, machine learning) before i even understood the concept of OOP. Another example, the last item says “Common vocabulary, jargon, and conventions”. If you work in the industry as a coder, that's really the first thing you learn, so i can't possible see why that item is on the list...