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Where does consciousness come from? | rms: Consciousness isn't special. And neurology can't satisfactorily explain what it means to exist because English itself can't describe how a bunch of chemical reactions add up to cogito ergo sum.http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombies.html seems a little relevant. |
Where does consciousness come from? | randomwalker: "do you wonder how do we feel a sense of "personality" and consciousness based on nothing more than electrical signals firing off?"This is one of the central questions of cognitive neuroscience today, and scientists aren't even close to a convincing answer. It is exactly the wrong question for an ask HN post -- it's like a bunch of sailors speculating about quantum mechanics. Please read the papers. Here's a great introductory video for a lay audience -- Dan Dennett's TED talk: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consci...I do sympathize with your point that the abstract scientific jargon seems to leave one wanting for a "real" answer, but since the science itself is way incomplete at this point, any attempt to pare it down will result in something that's no better than random guessing. |
Where does consciousness come from? | pg: The word "consciousness" doesn't mean one single thing. To the extent it means anything definite, it seems to refer to a collection of self-referential thoughts.I'm sure everyone who studies the brain wonders very much how neuron firings correlate with these thoughts or any others. I'm equally sure everyone who studies the brain would be surprised if they weren't "based on nothing more than electrical signals firing off." |
Where does consciousness come from? | skynomad: I think this might be the wrong place to be looking for such answers. Anyway, you might like to do some research on Emergence and Chaos theory. The fundamental aspect of emergence is that individual agents (ie neurons) follow simple rules, and through interaction with other agents also following these simple rules, a system emerges which is greater than the sum of its parts, with its own goals and intelligence which is not known to any of its individual agents. There is a brilliant book on this entitled "Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software" by Steven Johnson.Another interesting author to read is Brian Fay. He argues that the conscious 'self' does not exist as a concrete thing, but rather, it is dynamically created through interaction. He gives a very interesting analogy of an eye traveling through space, and can only become aware of itself by seeing its reflection. He then explains that we see our reflection in others, and eventually that becomes internalised.The reality is that the brain is the most complex structure we have yet encountered, and it will be a very long time before we fully understand how it works and how the mind is thus constructed within it. |
Does programming make you happy? | mct: Looking over the responses thus far, I'm surprised no one has posted an
unequivocal "yes".Yes, the act of programming itself makes me happy.
I've always loved building things, and programming is yet another outlet
for that energy. Additionally, I love the thrill of bending a computer
to my will, teaching it to do what I want to produce the output I need.
Shortly after finishing an extended programming project, often times I
feel a sense of loss, and a drive to seek out the next interesting thing
I'll get to tackle.Are you asking because you feel like you should be enjoying it more than
you do? Did you used to get more enjoyment from it than you currently
do, or have you always felt this way? If you're second guessing yourself, I think mechanical_fish's suggestion
of giving it a break for a while is a great one. |
Where does consciousness come from? | paraschopra: Four to five years ago, I would have asked the same question and would have been superemly excited about being able to ponder over such questions.Now, I simply don't bother. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tlrobinson: This is one of those questions that bothers me. Not the question itself, just the fact that we don't know, and likely can't know.Is there some test to prove if something has "consciousness"? Without such a test I don't think we can know what it really is. You might propose having the thing explain the feeling to you, but I could just program a computer to do the same thing (theoretically).I have no way of knowing whether or not anyone else besides myself experiences this thing called consciousness.You all could be perfectly designed robots that are tricking me into believing you're also humans who experience consciousness. |
What are your goals for 2009? | pavelludiq: I hope to survive my time in prison(high school) with out dying of boredom. I hate this crap! |
Where does consciousness come from? | jbert: As far as I know, you'll get no answers here (or anywhere).My view of things was shaped a lot by some sections of Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. If you allow that symbols (think of a bunch of object properties + some methods) can be represented in the brain and operate on each other. (There's a good description in GEB which suggests we use a javascript-like prototype object-based system. Briefly, if someone starts talking about an individual they know called Joe, who's a football player, you basically mint a fresh new symbol which carries some of it's own data (name => Joe) but also inherits from your default 'football player' symbol. As you find out more about Joe, you add more specific data on Joe's symbol, which shadows the football player one. That, to me, explains a lot about prejudice (some people's heads overly-favour the inherited attributes. But I digress...)Your brain models the world by creating symbols which reflect the world (evolution helps for that). An important (the biggest/most complex?) symbol in your head is the one which represents yourself.Consciousness is then that symbol operating on itself.All this is of course happening in a physical substrate which has it's own methods of affecting things (psychoactive substances washing through your brain etc). |
What are your goals for 2009? | mikeyur: 1. Finish high school (got about 3 more months of online-schooling)2. Move out3. ???4. Profit (and/or get laid, either one) |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | antiform: There are a slew of fascinating recent advances in CS and I discover more with every passing semester, but for brevity I will pick three things that have been occupying my mindspace as of late.1. It seems that lazy functional programming languages (like Haskell) may provide a basis for a serious improvement in more robust natural language processing. A survey paper: [http://cs.uwindsor.ca/~richard/PUBLICATIONS/NLI_LFP_SURVEY_D...]2. Semi-Human Instinctive AI, a new dynamic, nondeterministic decision-making process, seems to be the new hotness in robotics/learning algorithms. In it, a given agent is given a set of basic behaviors ("instincts") that it hones with both open and closed learning methods in a problem space. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Human_Instinctive_Artifici...]3. Anatoly Shalyto's Automata-based programming, using finite state machines to describe program behavior, seems to have a lot of potential. It attempts to view programs from the context of engineering control theory, which opens the door to the use of powerful techniques from dynamical systems in mathematics. |
Where does consciousness come from? | mpk: I doubt you're going to get any answers here. I've seen GEB mentioned already and if you're a reader I highly recommend Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Fascinating theory, but the consensus seems to be that it's probably not correct. I picked it up after encountering references to it in a diverse set of sources. |
Where does consciousness come from? | chengmi: This question is better suited for a philosopher rather than a biologist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind |
Where does consciousness come from? | sgrove: I major in cognitive neuroscience, which is exactly what you're asking: how does conscious thought arise from unconscious parts?I think one book you may benefit from reading is http://www.amazon.com/Vehicles-Experiments-Psychology-Valent.... It's a wonderful and short book with some subtle humor and amazing powers of explanation. After reading it you may very well have a better understanding of how it's possible (and how many different ways it might be possible) for what we see as complex behaviors to emerge.I've had dozens of friends read this short book, and they've all thanked me for the recommendation and ended up buying a copy for themselves. |
Where does consciousness come from? | Tichy: Consciousness doesn't really exists, it is just an illusion.It is both scary and amusing to me that there are entire (expensive) conferences dedicated to something the participants can't even give a definition for. |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | brk: The Atlassion products (Confluence and Jira) were awesome at my last startup. I'm using TikiWiki right now for something similar because it fits my budget ($0). |
Where does consciousness come from? | renno: http://www.boundless.org/features/a0000901.html |
Where does consciousness come from? | cool-RR: I can try to answer this according to my theory. So one big "IMHO" on all the following text.Saying that chemical activity "causes" us to feel certain emotions is not correct. A little thinking could show you how absurd this is. "Causing" would mean that there is some sort of cause and effect here, some event X that causes event Y. Like when you turn on the kettle and the water boils. So this would mean that when a chemical event X is happenning in a brain, it will cause the person to feel an emotional event Y.
This is an absurd hypothesis. Where is event Y? It's actually hard for me to explain why I find that hypothesis so absurd. Maybe someone here can help.Anyway, my opinion is that THERE IS a correspondece between chemical events and emotional events, but it's not causality. I can't lay down all of my theory here, but I would say that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the "inside" world and the "outside" world. (Like a 1-1 correspondence between sets.) And those X and Y are paired together in that correspondence.I remember when I was in elementary school I wanted to make a conscious computer program. I was programming in Basic at the time. I thought, "Okay, the program should be able to feel pain. So I should make a variable PAIN, and when certain events happen it will cause PAIN to be equal to 1 or 0 or -1 or whatever." But I kind of got stuck there, because what do you do after you set a value to the PAIN variable? The best you can do is to have the PAIN variable determine the behavior of the creature, for example to make it scream "ouch". I believe that when it comes to emotions of creatures other than ourselves, behavior is all there is to their emotions. When it comes to our own emotions, it's more complicated and independent of our brains. |
Does programming make you happy? | trapper: If I couldn't work on things that I love every day I would hate it. I don't know how there are so many todo lists, chat apps, crm and accounting packages out there, I couldn't stand it! |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | galonso: To brk, thanks for the link, TikiWiki looks promissing. I think I'll give it a try. |
Where does consciousness come from? | seejay: I think Buddhism has very good explanation for such questions. I suggest you read some good Buddhist books or find someone who has a good knowledge about Lord Buddha's teachings (probably a Buddhist monk)
Good Luck finding answers! |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | oscardelben: I use a text based wiki synced via git. The advantage for me to use a text based system is that I can access it from different text editors, without the pain of custom vendors formats. For example I'm currently using textmate with this plugin: http://interconnected.org/home/more/2007/05/textmate-wiki/ but you can find macros for all the major text editors. |
Where does consciousness come from? | ahoyhere: I'll give you $8k and two months this summer. If you come up with an answer, we'll both get rich. |
Where does consciousness come from? | Eliezer: I recommend either Gary Drescher's "Good and Real", or the relevant parts of Overcoming Bias (which aren't exactly collected into one place yet). |
Where does consciousness come from? | ram1024: consciousness is simply the state of being responsive to one's environment.it can boil down as far as gauging the responses of one neuron, but the "environment" of that neuron is its connectivity to others, so it's far more comprehensive to total consciousness up as the whole collective.ideally, you'd be able to single out a singular and distinct "thought" and trace the workings of all your cognitive elements involved. the result of this thought then loops back through the system and re-patterns it with a "conclusion".the chemical nature of one's neurons is the important part whether malleable or incorrigible, allowing us to exhibit unique traits and personality. |
Where does consciousness come from? | yan: Check out "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter, he tackles that question and argues from the point of view that hard ai is possible. Check out "Emperor's new mind" by roger penrose for a conflicting viewpoint. Both books will teach you much, much more than it's central thesis and is a tour through other important topics in science.Also, you might find the brain science podcast ( http://brainsciencpodcast.wordpress.com ) interesting. She tackles some of these questions also, summarizes current research and interviews other people in the field. |
Where does consciousness come from? | gregorylent: western science is barbaric, primitive, stubborn, and totally ignorant about this ... and so arrogant about their model, which says consciousness comes from meat ... yogis have nailed this so well over a few thousand years of investigation of the nature of the self and its relationship to consciousness ... you will have to learn some new vocabulary, and do some meditation ... worth every moment spent .... just as an example of the subtlety of the east, there are five words in sanskrit for aspecets of the mind, while we have only the one ..your question is great, the motivation is wonderful, and may your search be fruitful .. it is the reason for birth, to come to understand this ...enjoy |
Where does consciousness come from? | Retric: At birth, when does the first neuron fire, and how does it sustain itself?The brain starts well before birth. Humans don't have a single on switch so much as a long bootstrap process that starts when the first few neurons start to link up and ends at death. Although most positive changes happen by ~25 years old.What we think of as consciousness is basically the neuron's that stop focusing on what is going on and start considering options that we don't directly carry out. AKA when you actually catch a ball you don't really think about it but when you consider how you might do a better job in the future well that's consciousness. The brain is not a fixed entity but a constantly adapting system and consciousness is really best thought of as part of that adaptive process. |
Where does consciousness come from? | time_management: I'm philosophically a Buddhist, so I put consciousness ("mind") first and wonder more about where the physical world comes from. Experientially, the world is not much different from a dream (except the sex is more awkward) but it has certain properties of persistence, regularity, and sharedness among ~10^11-14 sapient organisms that make a convincing case for a world of cold, hard matter that exists independently of us. But that's an illusion.The physical universe doesn't actually exist, any more than a dream world does. There are probably trillions of universes in existence-- maybe infinitely many. They can't be counted, and they don't much matter because they're physically inaccessible to us. We're lucky, though, to be in an exceedingly successful universe whose laws are set ("fine tuned") to allow for complex life. The universes that don't support complex life to observe them might be "out there", but they effectively don't exist.Mind is eternal, but the processes it can support depend on the physical system (body/brain) to which it binds, and of course that physical system evolves and, sadly, collapses. We're extremely lucky to have our minds bound to such beautiful, powerful creatures as humans. We could've just as easily been bound to cockroaches or tapeworms (and it can happen after death in a negative rebirth, but karma's another subject entirely).The transmigration of consciousness is taken as self-evident by Eastern religions, and there's actually a fair bit of evidence for reincarnation (refer to the work of Ian Stevenson). What's controversial is whether or not a mind-- or, at least, an unenlightened mind-- can exist independent of a physical body at all. The Theravadan perspective tends to be that it cannot, whereas Tibetan Buddhists believe in an intermediate experiential state called the bardo.Am I butterfly dreaming I'm a man? Or a bowling ball dreaming I'm a plate of sashimi? Never assume what you see and feel is real! -- Doreen, Chrono Trigger. |
Where does consciousness come from? | kirse: This is a great question, and one that will never be answered by scientific naturalism. The current worldview assumed by scientists is that the "natural" and "material" is all we have and all that can be used to explain everything.Unfortunately, while this does form a powerful basis for truth in the empirically observable, it completely shatters and is horribly faulted when one tries to explain the unempirical and unobservable with only what you have. It is an extremely powerful assumption (based on faith in a worldview) that the domain of the metaphysical is purely explained by the physical (the laws of physics and the material)... In your case, where does this concept of mind, self, and consciousness come from? It's clearly powered by a physical entity (the brain), but the "self" is also clearly not a physical entity.There is absolutely no proof that the system of material thinking holds water in other domains such as the metaphysical, so most of what scientists think about the mind and self come out of some seriously convincing bullshitting. They really have no clue how it arises, and it will never be explained unless we manage to re-create a conscious entity ourselves.With that in mind (pun not intended), take anything you read about how the "self" comes about with a serious dose of common sense. This is where it's up to you to make a decision, because the scientists (while sounding smart), really have no more clue than you do =) |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | jaydub: I'm a part of the XMT project @ UMD http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~vishkin/XMT/index.shtmlAdmittedly, the concepts involved are dated since PRAM theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Random_Access_Machine) dates to the 70's. However, this project marks the first successful commitment of PRAM theory to silicon |
Where does consciousness come from? | markessien: Consciousness is just the firing of pleasure centers when external actions fit into pre-defined purposes. It's like the very highest abstraction of a functional event-triggered programming language. |
Where does consciousness come from? | yan: At birth, when does the first neuron fire, and how does it sustain itself?Body activity doesn't start from birth, even the zygote has already processes inside it that are life processes. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tricky: Maybe a little off-topic, but something I've been thinking of for a while. Has anyone ever tried to build a mesh network of nodes that react to signals and fire outputs? I'd to build a few million of these and evolve them to see if they'd ever do anything interesting.Does anyone know if anyone is working on something like this? |
Where does consciousness come from? | mrtron: Id recommend reading Godel Escher Bach.It talks about how complex things can be built from simple building blocks.There really are no answers other than it is impossible to exclude such complexity from a system. |
you're rich, now what? | teehee: Aside from the usual self enrichment activities. I would set up a foundation that does many small unique services to a community.
Examples:
Go around to different communities to offer free construction to link up sidewalks to make it more pedestrian friendly.
Consulting and financing to small shoppes so they can stay unique and viable against large competitors.
Setup free clinics that solely cater to helping people sleep more restfully. |
Where does consciousness come from? | speek: It depends on who you ask, but there are two general camps: the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach (neuroscience and psychology, respectfully).I believe it to be a side product of response to stimulus (neurons firing off). If I'm right, we're going to have a lot of fun with interfaces in the next 20 or so years. I'm a big believer in emergent neuropsychology (the functional programming version of brain science).I'm not going to delve into the top-down approach because you get a lot of other really cool theories, but a lot of it has to to with perception ("Is this red the same color to me as it is to you (other than just naming this color red)?").In response to your edit, I'm pretty sure that neurons start firing before birth but neurons are interconnected in a multi-dimensional graph, so it's pretty much a chain reaction that gets influenced depending on external (or internal) stimulus.I believe that when we take both the bottom-up and the top-down approach and meet in the middle, we will have a true AI... but I'm guessing it'll be based on a non-vonNeumann architecture. |
What are your goals for 2009? | safetytrick: Profit from the next two weeks of intense polishing and releasing my product week 1 of January 09! |
Where does consciousness come from? | joubert: Study some ethology. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jackchristopher: There are two methods for investigating consciousness; One subjective, the other objective. The first is philosophical, the second is a physical. And they should lead to the same answer.Both sides will claim their method to be the right one. And from time to time one will seem better than the other. But ultimately, some questions will be left unanswered. And both methods will break down. And you will want to fill in the gaps.But you'll realize that one may complement the other. And you may decide the course ... but you'll never be sure. |
How do you manage your knowledge base? | generalk: We use a MediaWiki install for a lot of general knowledge, and for project-specific stuff we throw it in our Basecamp. |
Where does consciousness come from? | fawxtin: Conciousness is somewhat a prevalence over instincts, you got "magically" a way to "choose". You really should read S. Freud, and M. Minsky if you want to know more about. |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | brent: Well, if you're interested in machine learning NIPS was last week.http://books.nips.cc/nips21.htmlThere were several papers near applied areas like text classification, breaking audio captchas, and even brain machine interfacing. However, even the theoretical papers usually come with examples (e.g. image classification) that show optimistic results. If you were doing any learning task that is definitely the place to find the state of the art. |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | tsally: You should certainly look into research related to Google's Map Reduce and Big Table. |
Where does consciousness come from? | tsally: Woah, woah, woah. What's this business of talking about consciousness like it exists? The only thing you know for sure is conscious is yourself. You simply make assumptions that other people are conscious based off of their responses to various challenges (questions, interaction, etc). But you don't know whether their 'consciousness' is even remotely related to yours or not.This is why the Turing test does not seek to address the issue of consciousness. It simply tests the appearance of consciousness. We will _never_ know anything about the consciousness of anything else besides ourselves. |
Interesting recent developments in academic computer science. | ken: I'm more interested in using interesting concepts in academic computer science from 50 years ago. I'm not against new good ideas, but it's not as if we've run out of old good ideas already. |
Where does consciousness come from? | pygy: First one has to define consciousness as subjective experience, not as being awake.The only consciousness one is able to experience is his own. But solipsism is a point of view that is both depressing and not really explanatory of anything.Let's assume that people around, who are similar to us, are conscious too. The problem in the last sentence is the word "similar". A few centuries ago, Black people were considered soul-less animals by their "enlighted" European peers. We recentlty came to realize that most traits that we thought made us unique, like symbolic language for example, or "theory of mind" ie realizing that other creatures have other thoughts and other beliefs than our own, are shared by other species (eg bonobos).Even if they don't recognize themselves in the mirror, in most animal species that I know of, individuals are able to recognize their own smell.Assuming personnal consciousness can be mapped to some part of the brain processing, can a dog, a frog, a worm be conscious? How many neurons make a conscious brain?Let's keep on recursing.Are plants conscious? At least, some of them seem able to compute. The opening and closing patterns of stomata (the pores that allow the gaz exchanges on leaf) are not statistically different from those of some 2d cellular automata. (Evidence for complex, collective dynamics and
emergent, distributed computation in plants http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0307811100 )Can a monocellular animal be conscious? Not only do they sense and react to their environment, but some are able to anticipate periodic variations of their surroundings, and memorize stimuli patterns. (Amoebae Anticipate Periodic Events http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.018101 )Now please be confused :-)I don't think that consciousness is related to the ability of having explicit self referential thoughts (how do we define thoughts, BTW? are they language related or not necessarilly?), nor to symbolic language.From the "mapism" point of view, something that really puzzles me is the fact that identity is preserved overnignt, despite the extensive plasticity that occurs while one is sleeping.Could identity rely on the statistical properties of a brain rather than on a strict material mapping? Cognition at least, and possibly conscious access to information relies on bayesian processing of the information (see Hakwan Lau's work).As long as we don't have proper formal models of these concepts, we'll keep on speculating.I really wonder whether it's possible to find a Gödel-like paradox regarding statements about consciousness pronounced by conscious beeings... :D/rambling. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | ScottWhigham: I've tried lots of ways (Excel, text docs, google docs) but I settled on using OneNote for it today. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | thomasswift: I struggled with this too and I still don't have a proper solution. Text Docs for very early stage idea, Wordpress Drafts/Private Posts (in older version it would put them at the top of the page). |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | noodle: in what context? personal blogs or professional/company?i stopped personally blogging since i didn't have enough consistent ideas or drive to write instead of other stuff. with a company blog, i'd use something shared, maybe something in dropbox. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | tstegart: I write them as email drafts, since I know its the only thing I'll usually always have access to. |
Writing DSL in Python | apgwoz: Study up on context managers, decorators, and meta-classes, which will assist in creating DSLs. However, you don't really need to use these features to build DSLs.The use of method chaining (think jQuery) can lead to interesting languages.Or, take Django's chaining for making queries. User.objects.filter(first_name='Andrew').order_by('last_name')Or, you can get more complicated and do something like described at: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/534150/EDIT: s/be vital/assist/ on line 1. |
Writing DSL in Python | jlc: I ran into this a while back:http://blog.brianbeck.com/post/53538107/python-dsl-i |
Writing DSL in Python | ivank: You could look at SQLAlchemy, Storm, Schevo, or Nevow Stan. Or even BeautifulSoup's element-finding. |
Writing DSL in Python | nuclear_eclipse: I still haven't quite grasped the concept behind what a DSL really is, and what makes your code a DSL versus any other program or API. Any insight that can be offered, especially in the context of something other than Ruby and Lisp? I just want to know what all the hubbub is about, and why it matters to me? |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | mlLK: Keeping track of something that hasn't yet happened (at least in terms of blogging) sounds a little frivolous. Maybe you just don't have anything to say? Try approaching it as PG does, post an extrapolated anecdote. (aka an essay, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369141) Otherwise start from square one, pick up a good book on the writing process and don't even worry about blogging, and instead focus on writing as a craft in it's own. |
Writing DSL in Python | tocomment: I think it just means writing a programming language but a little one. So use pyparsing as your parser. The May 2008 Python magazine has a good article on making an interpreter/compiler for brainf*ck using PyParsing. |
What are your goals for 2009? | brentr: I plan to learn Galois Theory and Quantum Field Theory. |
Where does Trulia get its listings? | conorh: This page explains most of it:
http://www.trulia.com/submit_listings/Listings are either: individually entered by agents, fed to Trulia in an XML format by real estate firms (or other aggregators) or screen scraped by Trulia. They also I think have deals with some MLSs to bulk send them listings for member firms.I work for http://www.streeteasy.com we do this for NYC. |
Writing DSL in Python | cabalamat: I have implemented two languages in Python, one a DSL, the other a general-purpose language. Both times I used the SPARK parsing framework http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~aycock/spark/ which I recommend. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jsyedidia: You should read "The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach," by Caltech professor Christof Koch, which is a book about this subject. |
How do you keep track of blog posts you keep meaning to write, but don't? | smountcastle: I use MarsEdit (http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/), though I'm probably not a good reference as I haven't updated my blog in awhile and I have over 20 draft blog posts (some have been sitting around for more than 10 months). |
Where does consciousness come from? | jogaun: The unknown is vast in all disciplines, especially neuroscience. |
Writing DSL in Python | bayareaguy: I would recommend taking a quick look at how SCons and Conary use python. You may also want to consider implementing your DSL using a python parser generator such as Ply.SCons - http://www.scons.org/doc/HTML/scons-man.html#lbBBConary - http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:Recipe_StructurePly - http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/NBN/parsing_with_ply... |
Writing DSL in Python | nostrademons: I used yapps2 for the DSL parts of GameClay. It's probably not the best Python parser generator out there, but it was installable via apt, simple to use, and familiar to people who have used Antlr. Had a simple DSL written in 2 days.Also, if it's just a quick-n-dirty hack, don't underestimate the power of regexp/split() parsing. Yeah, everyone says you shouldn't do it, and you probably shouldn't if you're planning on maintaining things for a while, but you can get going really fast without learning any additional tools. And for maybe 80-90% of the things you'd use a DSL for, it's perfectly adequate. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | pavelludiq: Vim for the win!I'm not a vim expert, I actually know the minimum you need to do work, and I've found it very good, but I hove almost no experience with other editors or IDEs. I do mostly python and I don't really need an IDE for that. Despite its learning curve, I've found vim to be really easy to use, once you get used to it, your muscle memory does all the work for you. Considering the time you work in an editor/IDE, i suggest just sticking to the one that makes your hands hurt the least. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | donw: I'll put in another vote for Vim, but I'm biased, as I'm a systems guy by trade. Losing my skills with vim would be death, because it's often the only working editor on a truly hosed machine. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | urlwolf: I use vim and do R, ruby, and python mostly.
Still, recently I've spent more time with IDEs and now I can appreciate them. Netbeans is a very good RoR IDE. I'd prefer it over Vim. for Python, the IDE that I like (and current favorite) is IDEA. Basically it's a matter of how big your project is; with 10s of thousands lines of code, I prefer an IDE, and also when you are learning the language or reading someone else's code.Often, I don't have but a terminal, and there vim shines. |
What are your goals for 2009? | donw: To get back on the horse.To be unusually frank on the Internet: 2008 and 2007 have been incredibly bad years for me, in a way that I'm just not willing to detail on a public forum. The goal for 2009 is to keep plugging away at my startup, hopefully for our January launch, and to try and enjoy life -- something that hasn't been possible for a few years. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mechanical_fish: First: If you think you want to write your own editor, you've answered your own question. You need to learn emacs, vi, or TextMate immediately, because these are editors that make it very easy to change their behavior by writing your own custom extensions.I wouldn't write my own editor until I had learned all three of those editors. After that... I still wouldn't write my own editor. ;) Spend your energy on a problem that urgently needs solving.Now to your question: First, I can't answer it, because I'm not really a user of any IDE. Second, I think it is ill-posed. It's like asking which is more productive: using emacs, using Ruby, or using Excel. If you're an expert in one of these tools, you can use it to replace the others to some extent (I just encountered a programmer who was using Excel to compose hundreds of SQL queries. I have to admit that it works, although it would never occur to me to do this; I'd reach for emacs instead or, failing that, Ruby or Perl.) But, in general, these three tools are designed for different problems, and each tool has its sweet spot.There are languages for which the vast majority of programmers use an IDE. (I'd probably use one if I had to do any Java programming; Mac development in Objective C might tempt me to use XCode to write code; I'm pretty sure .NET programmers use Microsoft tools.) But you become a different kind of programmer when you use something like emacs instead. For one thing, your text editor can be used to edit anything that is made of text: Python, PHP, Javascript, SQL, C, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, Java, shell scripts, config files, HTML, CSS, LaTeX, directory listings, version-control logs, long emails, documentation, outlines, to-do lists, blog entries, Wikipedia articles... ad infinitum. If you improve your emacs skills, your skill at editing all of these things increases. If a new language comes along, or a radical new way of using an old language, you needn't be one of those tiresome people who sits on the sidelines, complaining, because the New Thing lacks IDE support: You've got an editor that works fine with the New Thing, and which you already know how to use, and you can incrementally improve that editor by teaching it some New Thing macros, and before long someone (maybe you!) will write some emacs modes to support the New Thing.Meanwhile, emacs skills do not become obsolete. The editor is quite possibly older than you, and will almost certainly live as long as you. It's cross-platform and open-source. Because it is not tightly tied to one language, platform, version-control system, workflow, or vendor, it has transcended and outlived all of these things. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | travisjeffery: I always bounce around between Emacs, Vim and TextMate I've tried IDEs but their typically not native code, have shitty keybindings, are slow as dog crap and need to be custmized with entire plugins rather a few lines of elisp, python or whatever.If I had to choose between the 3 I'd go with Emacs and I don't know how much more productive but well in the range of "enough". We code everyday in mostly the same place so learn your tool and enjoy it. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mdasen: It depends on the language. With Java, I get a huge return because the IDE can take care of so many mundane things like getters and setters. Java also sometimes has odd names used in its standard library (for example, you use queue.offer() and queue.poll() to add and remove things rather than something like 'enqueue' and 'dequeue' or the standard push/pop. An IDE prevents me from having to deal with looking it up constantly.With Python and Ruby, I find a text editor sufficient and usually I'm doing web work with those languages which is perfect for vim/emacs over SSH.PHP tends to have a huge library of builtin functions and it uses positional arguments (you can't call a function with arguments out of order denoted by keyword like python). I've found an IDE to be helpful for PHP in the past. SQL isn't a big language. As such, I can't see an IDE helping. JavaScript, with libraries becoming the preferred way to code, doesn't seem like an IDE could do much unless it understood the library. |
Where do you go for hacking help? | KevBurnsJr: http://letmegooglethatforyou.com |
IDE versus Text Editor? | tsally: The bottom line is that you need to work with something that you can extend. To suggest that the IDE/Editor designer is going to be able to anticipate all of your needs is silly. Instead, learn something like Emacs which you can extend with Emacs Lisp. Heck, Eclipse is fine if you take the time to learn how to write Eclipse plugins. Eventually you will reach a point where you start running into unique situations for which you require a unique solution. Being able to code your own is the only way to go. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | jason: I use IDE's that have vi keyboard mappings so I get the best of both worlds. Visual Studio and Eclipse both have vi plugins. |
Where does consciousness come from? | jhp: I believe that consciousness is the ability for a computing system to continually maintain and update several simultaneous contexts. These contexts may run highly detailed simulations (including the core "where I am") or more abstract thinking (including the current conversational or semantic context). For a human being, the "primary simulation" results in a powerful feeling of self, perhaps because the here and now that you are feeling is also the here and now that you are simulating.While sustaining these contexts, the system is able to explore related information and can choose to break focus on a certain context, or to open a new context. Usually, a discarded context can be quickly restored, such as in the case of restoring an interrupted thought. Perhaps, then, contexts are continually run, stored, and restored. I don't know. What I do know is that the primary world simulation (with its continual sensory update) is rarely broken without the system electing to do so.That would be "losing consciousness" :)Whether received through sensory input or through memory in the form of stored simulations or related concepts, the constant exploration of related information influences the context that spawned it (and often the other contexts as well). This allows the computing system to update its assumptions as represented in simulation or conceptual frame, and then begin anticipating and exploring possible future contexts.- JHP |
IDE versus Text Editor? | hs: to increase productivity, you may need to 'do without'do without mouse and hard-to-reach keys (F1-12, arrows, numpads)i found ide is about using mouse and using those keys (like F5? to run) etc ... but i didn't use much ide shrugin vim, you can take those keys plus backspace, alt and even esc (i map it to ^C because ^] hurts, not because of emacs) ... also xmodmap caps to ctrlemacs still requires at least a meta key so that adds complexity. vim cheats by using modes :Dwith fewer keys, the intensity = (strokes / #key) is high and that may lead to higher productivityoh and of course, touch typing really helps especially the often untrained part like numbers and symbols.i used 'typing tutor for mac' and trained streams of letters, numbers and symbols ... like 'aJ8@9)x|W,~2' |
IDE versus Text Editor? | gcv: If you are interested in text editors, you should read The Craft of Text Editing (available at http://www.finseth.com/craft/). In spite of its Emacs-centric seeming subtitle, it discusses a lot of the basics of representing text and implementing an editor. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | keefe: I used to develop in emacs/jbuilder now I am fully in eclipse. I miss multiple copy buffers and good keyboard shortcuts. To me, the value added by the IDE - autocomplete, extra method, generate getters and setters, find references completely, utterly and totally blow text editors out of the water. I wouldn't waste my time reinventing the wheel on a new text editor. If I were super motivated, I'd write eclipse plugins to do whatever I needed. However, I work on an eclipse RCP based project to pay the bills so I already had the learning curve financed by my job. That being said, I find vanilla eclipse sufficient for most of my needs. |
Where does consciousness come from? | KevBurnsJr: The first thing a psychedelic experience will teach you is the absurdity of such a question.Edit: Genuinely surprised to see that nobody else has mentioned the psychedelic experience in their search for a solution to satisfy this line of questioning. |
Writing DSL in Python | intellectronica: You can customize the behaviour of Python objects in ways which may allow you to implement DSLs (for example, by responding to arbitrary messages, or by constructing callables).A good example to look at might be https://storm.canonical.com/ which utilizes every trick in the book to allows you to write SQL-like queries in Python. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | st3fan: I am 10x more productive developing Java using IntelliJ IDEA versus anything else :-) |
IDE versus Text Editor? | lallysingh: Two main issues come to mind:1. Project size. It's usually easier to get an IDE to build your project, parse any errors, and show the right lines of code in a debugger, than it is to get a good compile/fix/debug cycle setup in Emacs.2. Language complexity. There's a lot of variance between languages on what your text editor will support in terms of parsing, symbolics browsing (e.g. a class browser, function popup, etc.), and what you need for that language. |
IDE versus Text Editor? | mdakin: emacs's "keyboard macros" feature is something I've not seen in any IDE and when you master it and start getting creative with it you can save insane amounts of time. Basically any time you need to make a bunch of changes of the same pattern to a file you can teach emacs how to make the change and then tell emacs to make the change X more times to the file. When you are accustomed to this feature and you need it and it's not there it's INSANELY frustrating! But then you remember you can just start up emacs so it's not really a big deal at all. :) |
Places to see in Netherlands ? | Flemlord: I've been there a few times and can comment on Amsterdamn from a tourist perspective.Counterculture: This is the best part of Amsterdam. The red light district and the coffee shops are both a must see. Go at night.Museums: The Van Gogh Museum was good. But the Rijksmuseum and Anne Frank House were disappointing.Other: Heineken was fun afternoon.We also rented a car for a few days and drove up the coast, which was a lot of fun. Lots of little villages, some touristy, some not. Edam was my favorite (where they make the cheese); lots of people in traditional dress, cute cheese girls everywhere. But we were there on the same day the Queen visited, so it may not always be that fun.Don't forget you can take trains to other cities on the weekends. Look into getting a Rail Pass--you have to order it in advance and it saves you lots of money on the trains.I'm trying to think of something geeky for the HN crowd. But I can't. Sorry. |
Writing DSL in Python | gruseom: Although I got excited about it at first, I've come to the conclusion that this DSL stuff is seriously overrated. I've seen few successful examples and many silly ones.There are certainly good little specialized languages -- Common Lisp's LOOP is an example, as are regular expressions -- but these are for programmers, not domain experts. |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | brianlash: Try http://getharvest.com for time-tracking + invoicing. Plans are cheap (the $12/mo starter plan should suit you) and you can easily interface with services such as Basecamp and QuickBooks should your business grow into the need for it. |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | bstadil: We use Blinksale http://www.blinksale.com/home for invoices and TikTrac http://tiktrac.com/ for time sheets. Very cheap and easy to work with.
You can try both for free. |
How do you invoice - especially you freelancers out there? | woodsier: In the quest of self-research I've come across http://www.curdbee.com and http://www.invoicejournal.com/ and http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/index.htm - has anyone had any experience with these services? |
Places to see in Netherlands ? | czcar: Amsterdam is amazing and it is possible to spend days just wandering around and exploring all the markets, fresh meats, cheeses etc, it is a short trip on the ferry (behind the train station) to some of the inter-connected islands with large parks etc. And I recommend visiting Rotterdam which is only a train ride away. |
Does programming make you happy? | draco: I had a number of other jobs before I got to programming in my thirties. The big difference is, you keep coming up against totally novel problems for which there are no ready-made solutions. It's very challenging, and it places programming as a job in a league of its own in terms of creative problem-solving. It doesn't make me happy, but it makes me look forward to my work every day, and that's saying a lot. It's also given me the liberty to change job and even business sector as often as I please (typically every couple of years) which again is unusual and refreshing. |
Writing DSL in Python | thorax: No joke: take a look at the LOLpython source for an example of creating a variant language that can compile to Python bytecode. It's one of many methods to create a DSL, though you often don't need access to all of Python in the DSL itself. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | parenthesis: Take some naps. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | st3fan: I don't. I think it is extremely unhealthy and unproductive to stay awake and work for such long periods of time. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | gtani: goog polyphasic sleep instead: 2-4 hours/day |
Saving time in sysadmin | davidw: Try and automate the repetitive bits. Python is a great language for that kind of thing. |
Saving time in sysadmin | Harkins: Check out puppet: http://reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet/I sort of want to build a startup around making a distro that maintains itself. |
What are your goals for 2009? | lionheart: Grow my company. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | cmos: fear tends to work well. |
How do you pull all-nighter+dayers | viggity: booze, lots of it |
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