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Comment Re:Not really (Score 1) 177

Agree.
If you look at this triangle, topography is constant, weather (climate) is changing slowly, but there will always be some extremes.
Fuel (i.e. vegetation) has highest variability as it keeps growing constantly. So no matter what climate does, vegetation will grow and grow and then burn when next heat comes along. And then for next few years the probability of a big fire will be low no matter how extreme the temperatures go.
The biggest fires in Australia happened in 1851 - that was likely not linked to recent AGW.

Comment The Climate is balancing itself (Score 0) 63

Obviously the Earth has a feedback loop to keep itself in balance:

The more the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere,
the more the wind is blowing so that we get to use renewables instead of CO2.

I wonder if they included this fact in the models used to simulate and predict global warming...

Comment NoSQL movement... (Score 3, Interesting) 172

Golang is akin to the NoSQL movement.

Features most appreciated by Go's proponents are easy to learn and great compilation speed. Does that sound familiar: with NoSQL databases you didn't have to learn the clumsy SQL query language and they were fast due to lack of ACID guarantees.

But for years the top voted tickets on NoSQL databases were usually 1) SQL and 2) ACID compliance or 3) at least some sort of consistency guarantees (Json-schema or something).
Because initially, people weren't aware of that baby that they threw out with the bath-water, was called 'relational algebra' - a useful concept that some guy invented in late 1960ies, in times before these new kids were even born.

So have a look at Golang ticket tracker with top voted issues being:
1) generics
2) error handling
3) discriminated union types (ideally with pattern matching)

I personally don't think Go should add these features, because with those features added, it won't be fast to compile, nor will it be simple anymore. If you need these features, there are actually great programming languages already in existence. There is a space for a NoSQL programming language called Go. There will always be people who wish to screw things up out of their ignorance and they should have a language to Go to. There will always be moronic managers who think that having a simple language like Go is a the most important feature of the company, because you can always find stupid inexperienced programmers, who can at least learn Go. There will always be people who think that fast compile times lead to faster turnaround, more unit tests and faster bug squashing (as if such bugs are unavoidable). In short, there is a space for Go.

However, each time a proponent of Golang speaking of it as a 'means to everything programming language', it reminds me of people praising NoSQL databases, while having totally zero awareness of the theory of relational algebra or benefits of ACID compliance.

So if you like Golang, but would like to be objective, then first learn some 1960ies theory, like Curry-Howard isomorphism, Hindley-Milner type systems and similar things, then learn a language that uses them (the OCAML, F#, ReasonML group is a great starting point and show what languages can do for you), and then come back to praise Golang if you will.

Comment Re:A updated Lotus Elise please. (Score 1) 230

Sorry. I was unclear. I meant discriminated unions.
They let you write code with 90% less errors if you model your problem domain using discriminated unions.
Google for 'functional domain modelling' (yes it says functional, but it is not limited to functional languages - Rust has them too and is not necessarily a functional language).

Comment No power steering but a good car considering price (Score 5, Insightful) 230

Be mindful how Golang proponents hardly ever say that Go is a good language.
It is always good only relative to its simplicity. Think of:

This Tata car may not have power steering or air condition, but it is a lot of a car for the money.

Similarly:

This Go language does not have generics, error handling, union types, pattern matching, but you can get a lot of work done considering how simple the language is.

Now: would you prefer to drive Tata or Mercedes?

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