Dear Esther was funded by the Indie Fund. One of the founders of the Indie Fund is Jonathan Blow. http://indie-fund.com/about/
Duplicate values that should be unique is such a common problem if you don't use constraints. This is a good example of why ACID and declarative constraints are a very good idea for data management.You can do a bad…
ACID isn't a banking issue, it's an issue in any database where data integrity is important. Having written administration software for life insurance companies, you can be sure that we designed our software to rely on…
Caring about branding things NoSQL isn't just not useful, it's harmful because it replaces really understanding things (like how a particular method works, and what it's good for) with a useless shorthand. Reminds me of…
I believe they are using SQL server, which keeps statistics on the most longest total runing, and longest per-run queries. It's a good idea to monitor this list and take a very close look at every execution plan that…
The name relational model is quite unfortunate, as it leads to confusion about what the model is (not much to do with 'relationships'). The key concepts are using sets to store data (making you think about your data in…
At least most of the time people stick to the Turing incomplete subset of the language.
One of the joys of working in F# is how the stronger type system combined with the type hover-overs allows for a sort of debugging-as-you-type that allows you to think with the help of the type system. It really helps…
Oh I agree they are both very bad. Putting NULL in a non-NULL field is totally wrong. However I really do think that inserting an unexpected default value is worse than inserting NULL into a NON-NULL field. The NULLs…
Inserting a default value is even worse than inserting NULL. Now you can't tell what data was wrongly inserted if you tried to clean up the mess later.
I find that F#'s (close to OCaml) type system helps me think through problems and lets me get correct programs faster, that somehow just seem to work correctly the first time. Usually when writing a program in F# I…
This is true only if we accept that AI trading is actually making the market more efficient. The 'wisdom' of crowds is often foolishness, and this could be even more true for a crowd of computers. It is very possible…
The pipe operator in F# |> is used in this way. When combined with currying it is especially effective: let double_then_sum a_list = a_list |> List.map ((*) 2) |> List.fold (+) 0
I recently was tutoring a high school student who was instructed in their data-management course to create several graphs from the same set of data, comparing rainfall in different Canadian cities. Unfortunately this…
The key question is "Why" that needs to be asked. A customer may think they want to sort, select, and aggregate the data, but fundamentally "get the data" is very rarely the real reason for doing something. That data is…
So what happens when you create the follower but not followed index then realize you need it. Is there a way to create that new ColumnFamily without writing a object-by-object program that must traverse all the data? I…
In an interview between Miyamoto and Iwata the genius of this first level is discussed http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp "But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above you, a…
What is the source of this? If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline and search for subprime you'll see many cases of Freddie and Fannie buying or guaranteeing subprime activity. - In…
If found working in a ML language like Haskell or F# puts a really tight straight-jacket on code style, and is wonderful at forcing you to adopt a new paradigm. When you go back to coding in other languages, you…
The question that this story raises is "Can we solve these hard problems of aging, thinking, and feeling if we had intelligence far greater than we do today?" Are we meant to read the narrator's idea that they can even…
Your criticism of this article is off the mark (though it may apply to other articles). The entire point of this article is that he is trying to replicate the exact same problem that Digg was reporting using a different…
A great point, and it's important to remember that this effect also maps to public choice theory in government or excessive compensation of management in the non-profit sector (though statistically I believe it is lower…
It is possible that more interesting articles are posted in the afternoon due to the work habits of the people who actually create the content that is being linked, and posts linking these articles happening in a short…
The fact that a system requiring ad-hoc attributes wouldn't work so "hot" in a relation isn't a problem with the relational model. This difficulty comes from the application of the relational model bringing to light…
Anti-pattern one was critiquing using values in table definitions, the second was using attributes in table definitions. These are not the same thing. There isn't a similarity between values and attributes in the…
Dear Esther was funded by the Indie Fund. One of the founders of the Indie Fund is Jonathan Blow. http://indie-fund.com/about/
Duplicate values that should be unique is such a common problem if you don't use constraints. This is a good example of why ACID and declarative constraints are a very good idea for data management.You can do a bad…
ACID isn't a banking issue, it's an issue in any database where data integrity is important. Having written administration software for life insurance companies, you can be sure that we designed our software to rely on…
Caring about branding things NoSQL isn't just not useful, it's harmful because it replaces really understanding things (like how a particular method works, and what it's good for) with a useless shorthand. Reminds me of…
I believe they are using SQL server, which keeps statistics on the most longest total runing, and longest per-run queries. It's a good idea to monitor this list and take a very close look at every execution plan that…
The name relational model is quite unfortunate, as it leads to confusion about what the model is (not much to do with 'relationships'). The key concepts are using sets to store data (making you think about your data in…
At least most of the time people stick to the Turing incomplete subset of the language.
One of the joys of working in F# is how the stronger type system combined with the type hover-overs allows for a sort of debugging-as-you-type that allows you to think with the help of the type system. It really helps…
Oh I agree they are both very bad. Putting NULL in a non-NULL field is totally wrong. However I really do think that inserting an unexpected default value is worse than inserting NULL into a NON-NULL field. The NULLs…
Inserting a default value is even worse than inserting NULL. Now you can't tell what data was wrongly inserted if you tried to clean up the mess later.
I find that F#'s (close to OCaml) type system helps me think through problems and lets me get correct programs faster, that somehow just seem to work correctly the first time. Usually when writing a program in F# I…
This is true only if we accept that AI trading is actually making the market more efficient. The 'wisdom' of crowds is often foolishness, and this could be even more true for a crowd of computers. It is very possible…
The pipe operator in F# |> is used in this way. When combined with currying it is especially effective: let double_then_sum a_list = a_list |> List.map ((*) 2) |> List.fold (+) 0
I recently was tutoring a high school student who was instructed in their data-management course to create several graphs from the same set of data, comparing rainfall in different Canadian cities. Unfortunately this…
The key question is "Why" that needs to be asked. A customer may think they want to sort, select, and aggregate the data, but fundamentally "get the data" is very rarely the real reason for doing something. That data is…
So what happens when you create the follower but not followed index then realize you need it. Is there a way to create that new ColumnFamily without writing a object-by-object program that must traverse all the data? I…
In an interview between Miyamoto and Iwata the genius of this first level is discussed http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/nsmb/vol1_page4.jsp "But if you avoid the first Goomba and then jump and hit a block above you, a…
What is the source of this? If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline and search for subprime you'll see many cases of Freddie and Fannie buying or guaranteeing subprime activity. - In…
If found working in a ML language like Haskell or F# puts a really tight straight-jacket on code style, and is wonderful at forcing you to adopt a new paradigm. When you go back to coding in other languages, you…
The question that this story raises is "Can we solve these hard problems of aging, thinking, and feeling if we had intelligence far greater than we do today?" Are we meant to read the narrator's idea that they can even…
Your criticism of this article is off the mark (though it may apply to other articles). The entire point of this article is that he is trying to replicate the exact same problem that Digg was reporting using a different…
A great point, and it's important to remember that this effect also maps to public choice theory in government or excessive compensation of management in the non-profit sector (though statistically I believe it is lower…
It is possible that more interesting articles are posted in the afternoon due to the work habits of the people who actually create the content that is being linked, and posts linking these articles happening in a short…
The fact that a system requiring ad-hoc attributes wouldn't work so "hot" in a relation isn't a problem with the relational model. This difficulty comes from the application of the relational model bringing to light…
Anti-pattern one was critiquing using values in table definitions, the second was using attributes in table definitions. These are not the same thing. There isn't a similarity between values and attributes in the…