| --- Log opened Wed Jul 20 00:00:31 2011 |
| 00:04 | | shade_of_cpux is now known as cpux |
| 00:19 | < ToxicFrog> | jerith: most of us just pass the lambda to itself o.O |
| 00:20 | | celticminstrel is now known as celmin|away |
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| 00:44 | < Kazriko> | jerith, *slow clap* the absolute best, worst thing I've seen today. :) |
| 00:56 | < McMartin> | jerith: That is wrong~ |
| 00:56 | < McMartin> | The right way, as TF says, is to use a Y combinator. |
| 00:57 | < McMartin> | (I'm not sure if you can express it outright in Python, though) |
| 00:57 | < McMartin> | Also, I have had my own madness moment. |
| 00:58 | < McMartin> | A 2D sprite-based game engine is basically a set of independent physics updates, followed by a systematic blitting of each object in Z-order, right. |
| 00:58 | < McMartin> | that's a map-reduce problem |
| 00:58 | < McMartin> | Now I want to write a monadic 2D game engine |
| 00:58 | < ToxicFrog> | :cthulhu: |
| 01:04 | < McMartin> | Hm. The real problem with doing factorial as a single lambda in Python is Python's lack of a ternary operator. |
| 01:04 | < McMartin> | Otherwise, it would be: |
| 01:04 | < McMartin> | fact = lambda x: (lambda f: f(f, x))(lambda (g, i): i < 2 ? 1 : g (g, i-1)) |
| 01:05 | < Derakon> | Where's the ternary operator there, the ?: bit? |
| 01:05 | < ToxicFrog> | Yes. |
| 01:05 | < Derakon> | You should be able to use "foo if x else y", I think. |
| 01:05 | < ToxicFrog> | Can't you abuse boolean operators to do that in python? |
| 01:05 | < ToxicFrog> | Or that, yes. |
| 01:07 | < McMartin> | Success! |
| 01:07 | < McMartin> | fact = lambda x: (lambda f: f(f, x))(lambda g, i: 1 if i < 2 else i * g(g, i-1)) |
| 01:08 | < Derakon> | Yep, that works. |
| 02:03 | < celmin|away> | Python does have a ternary operator. :P |
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| 04:04 | | * McMartin looks at hssdl, :science:s. |
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| 11:36 | | * TheWatcher ponders GD, wonders why it uses 0 to 127 for alpha rather than 255 |
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| --- Log closed Wed Jul 20 19:16:16 2011 |
| --- Log opened Wed Jul 20 19:16:27 2011 |
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| 19:54 | | * gnolam headdesks repeatedly. |
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| 20:06 | < gnolam> | What the fuck kind of person doesn't type out the metastability symbol when compiling decay data? >:E |
| 20:10 | < McMartin> | I didn't even understand that sentence =( |
| 20:12 | < Namegduf> | That's just inconsiderate. |
| 20:16 | < Derakon> | Sounds to me like Gnolam found a dimensionless number when a dimensioned one was expected. |
| 20:16 | < Derakon> | One of my physics profs back in college would helpfully supply the units of erg-second per cubic foot-candle when that happened. |
| 20:16 | < Derakon> | Then he'd take off points for having incorrect units. |
| 20:19 | < Tamber> | FPA: "take off pants for having incorrect units" |
| 20:20 | < Tamber> | To which I say, yes, that'd make people put units on pretty quickly~ |
| 20:32 | | * Vornicus eyes that unit |
| 20:32 | < Vornicus> | that's a little ridiculous |
| 20:33 | < Vornicus> | = 3.53146667e-6 m^-1 kg s^-1 cd^-1 I mean seriously |
| 20:34 | < gnolam> | It's like this... y'all know about isotopes, right? Same number of protons, but different number of neutrons (giving different nuclear properties). |
| 20:34 | < gnolam> | There are also isomers. |
| 20:34 | < Vornicus> | Which have the same number, etc, but a different internal structure? |
| 20:35 | < gnolam> | Same number of protons, same number of neutrons, but different configuration. |
| 20:35 | | * Vornicus always wondered how that worked, thought the nucleus was a bit too fuzzy for that. |
| 20:36 | < Vornicus> | --I mean it's usually fuzzy enough that it doesn't, you know. Matter that much. |
| 20:37 | < gnolam> | These metastable states are labelled 'm' (or m1, m2, etc, if there happen to be more than one). E.g. Ba-137m, which decays to the otherwise stable Ba-137. |
| 20:38 | < gnolam> | So anyway. |
| 20:38 | < Vornicus> | How can you tell the difference between them? |
| 20:39 | < Derakon> | ...man, I have no idea how atomic nuclei are arranged. |
| 20:39 | < McMartin> | I'm not sure anyone else does either, beyond "strong nuclear force lol" |
| 20:40 | < Derakon> | And do we have any idea how that particular force works? |
| 20:40 | < McMartin> | We can describe its effects. |
| 20:40 | < gnolam> | So I have this data set with electron energies. Mostly beta decay, but there are a bunch of other more obscure ways in which atoms can fling electrons at innocent bystanders. |
| 20:40 | < Derakon> | Seems like it's basically "whang some neutrons in there and protons get over their innate dislike for each other." |
| 20:40 | < gnolam> | And it comes in the form of a huge excel file. |
| 20:40 | < Vornicus> | jhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer |
| 20:41 | < gnolam> | Ok, fine, I can copy & paste the relevant bits and convert it into a big CSV or whatever. |
| 20:41 | < gnolam> | Alas, the data has apparently been entered by hand. And badly. |
| 20:41 | < Derakon> | Goody. |
| 20:41 | < McMartin> | SCIENCE :( |
| 20:41 | < Derakon> | Oh look, stable for at least a nanosecond! |
| 20:41 | < McMartin> | I usually hear stories like this from bioinformaticians. |
| 20:42 | < gnolam> | And it makes no difference whatsoever between different isomers - they're all just listed as [mass number][Element]. |
| 20:43 | < gnolam> | And, naturally, in a random order. So I can't assume that the first mention is the main isotope and the next the isomer. |
| 20:45 | < gnolam> | Joy. |
| 20:53 | < Vornicus> | Clearly this is an opportunity to get credit for fixing this oversight. |
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| --- Log closed Wed Jul 20 22:05:17 2011 |
| --- Log opened Wed Jul 20 22:05:30 2011 |
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| 22:20 | < AbuDhabi> | http://jboriss.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/user-testing-in-the-wild-joes-first-comp uter-encounter/ |
| 22:28 | < Namegduf> | "Fascinating. As someone who does UI design I keep insisting that we simplify and build with the assumption that people like Joe will be our end users. Of course I'm a lost voice in the wilderness." |
| 22:28 | < Namegduf> | This man is my enemy. |
| 22:29 | < Namegduf> | It's an interesting post, not very surprising. |
| 22:29 | < Tamber> | I tend to get very irritated by software that assumes I'm Joe, and provides no way for me to change this. |
| 22:30 | < Namegduf> | I see no reason every piece of software needs to be aimed at every audience. |
| 22:30 | < Tamber> | Indeed. Things like web browsers or mail clients, I could understand, but otherwise? |
| 22:31 | < Namegduf> | Even web and mail clients really don't try for Joe. |
| 22:31 | < Tamber> | I didn't say they necessarily did, just that I could understand them aiming at Joe. |
| 22:32 | < Derakon> | Frankly there's becoming less and less point in targeting Joe. |
| 22:32 | < Derakon> | Well, in the developed world anyway. |
| 22:33 | < Vornicus> | I would actually say that there's lots of point in targeting Joe. There is a reason I never got into, say, Blender. I may be a professional computer guy. I may have lots of knowledge of graphics and 3d. But I couldn't figure out how to draw a line. The interface assumed I already knew how to get what I wanted. |
| 22:34 | < Namegduf> | That's not even vaguely close to the same problem as targeting Joe. |
| 22:34 | < Derakon> | Software that targets Joe has to start literally from scratch. |
| 22:34 | < Namegduf> | Right. |
| 22:34 | < Derakon> | You want software that targets people who aren't familiar with 3D modeling, which is different. |
| 22:34 | < Derakon> | (Or alternately, software that doesn't hide 75% of its functionality behind hotkeys and context menus) |
| 22:34 | < Namegduf> | IMO it's perfectly fine that Blender is not such software. |
| 22:34 | < Namegduf> | And is instead optimised on its job. |
| 22:34 | < Namegduf> | It means there's an audience it isn't aimed at, but that's fine. |
| 22:35 | < Namegduf> | Do One Thing Well can apply there, and IMO should if it boils down to maintaining two interfaces. |
| 22:35 | < Derakon> | Blender is basically written by and for people who already know how to use it. Everyone else watches videos or logs onto #blender. |
| 22:35 | < Derakon> | A bit like learning to use vim, say. |
| 22:35 | < Vornicus> | A tutorial would have helped me. Or joe. I don't care if you call it elementary. |
| 22:35 | < Namegduf> | (Or 500 options to build interfaces) |
| 22:36 | < Namegduf> | A tutorial could have helped. Or some software aimed at you could have worked. |
| 22:36 | < Namegduf> | It not being available doesn't make Blender bad, it just means you weren't in the target audience. |
| 22:37 | < Namegduf> | And it wasn't providing tools to become in it. |
| 22:37 | < Derakon> | Reminds me, though -- one of the computers my dad bought way back in the day (MacOS 6 or 7, IIRC) had a program specifically designed to introduce people to basic computing tasks. |
| 22:37 | < McMartin> | The issue here is that there isn't anything targeting your hoped-for target audience. |
| 22:37 | < Derakon> | Things like moving the mouse, clicking, typing into boxes, clicking on buttons, dragging things around, etc. |
| 22:37 | < McMartin> | And once nobody's doing it, you get to bitch at all of them because Nobody's Doign This. |
| 22:37 | < McMartin> | Derakon: Heh. Back in the day, those were almost Mac-Unique. |
| 22:37 | < McMartin> | But yes |
| 22:37 | < McMartin> | Mouse Usage Isn't Automatic, Goddamn It. |
| 22:38 | | * Namegduf prefers an efficient interface to an easily learned one for something he is going to use |
| 22:38 | < Derakon> | Those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, though. |
| 22:38 | < Namegduf> | They *aren't*, but that's a very weak statement. |
| 22:38 | < Derakon> | Blender's problem, I suspect, has more to do with them having no UI designers and millions of features they need to include than anything else. |
| 22:39 | < Vornicus> | I looked at blender and I said "this tool appears to be the preferred one for creating things that I wish to create" and downloaded it and found that I could not actually get it to do anything. |
| 22:39 | < McMartin> | Vornicus: See, it's your fault for wanting to create something you don't already know how to create. |
| 22:39 | < Tarinaky> | Vornicus: I recently started learning how to use Blender. |
| 22:39 | < McMartin> | Namegduf: I would point out that "discoverable" is more important to me than 'easily learned' |
| 22:39 | < Tarinaky> | There are a lot of very good free resources on the internet. |
| 22:39 | < Vornicus> | This was, I freely admit, five years ago. |
| 22:40 | < Derakon> | Yeah, the interface is completely different now. ?.? |
| 22:40 | < Tarinaky> | Blender is like vim. |
| 22:40 | < Namegduf> | I'll agree there, but both are to me way less important than efficiency. |
| 22:40 | < McMartin> | And I take as an article of faith (well, with some logical backing) that discoverable can coexist with arbitrary levels of efficiency. |
| 22:40 | < Derakon> | Anyway, my advice stands: log onto #blender (on Freenode). The people there are surprisingly friendly and helpful. |
| 22:40 | < Tarinaky> | There's no learning curve but everything makes sense and is easy to remember once someone shows it to you. |
| 22:40 | < Namegduf> | "can coexist" is *also* a really weak statement. |
| 22:40 | < Namegduf> | Yes, you can sometimes have both to a varying degree |
| 22:40 | < Namegduf> | And at other times choices will play off one vs the other in different ways |
| 22:40 | < Namegduf> | This does not invalidate prioritisation |
| 22:41 | < Namegduf> | It makes it more complex than an either-or, yes. |
| 22:45 | | * TheWatcher readsup, notes that while blender's UI is completely different, it still has a long way to go before it's a Lightwave, or even a 3DSMax or Maya. |
| 22:45 | < Derakon> | I'm mostly just annoyed that they seem to have taken away the mouse gestures for basic transforms. I liked those. :\ |
| 22:51 | < McMartin> | Namegduf: Well, "discoverable" is the opposite of "efficient" or, indeed, "easy to learn" |
| 22:51 | < McMartin> | It means that you can do the adventure-game thing with it - every action you can take is reachable via some kind of state-preserving exhaustive search. |
| 22:52 | < Namegduf> | Hmm. |
| 22:52 | < Namegduf> | I think I'm comfortable with said kind of "exhaustive search" consisting of "read the damn manual"> |
| 22:53 | < Namegduf> | Or other external facilities, and thus don't care much about discoverability in the software itself. |
| 22:53 | < Namegduf> | Vim and bash and XMonad are basically the enemies of discoverability. |
| 22:53 | < McMartin> | This requirement is trivial, though. "If anything is a menu option, everything is a menu option. It doesn't have to be a *convenient* menu option, it just has to be one *somewhere*" completely meets this criterion. |
| 22:53 | < McMartin> | bash at least has apropos. So it *tries*. |
| 22:53 | < McMartin> | But yeah, CLIs are intrinsically nondiscoverable. |
| 22:53 | < McMartin> | If you have a menu bar, though, there is literally no excuse. |
| 22:54 | < Namegduf> | My XMonad setup is awesome as regards discoverability and learnability. |
| 22:54 | < Derakon> | I wish my boss would let me add menubars to our software. :( |
| 22:54 | < Namegduf> | It has no buttons and no menus. |
| 22:54 | < Namegduf> | It is entirely controlled by hotkeys- none of which match any other XMonad setup. |
| 22:54 | < McMartin> | Namegduf: In entirely unrelated news, I've been playing Might and Magic 1, the DOS version. |
| 22:54 | < Namegduf> | (Mostly because I moved the modifier key it used, but there's other additions) |
| 22:55 | < McMartin> | Remind me what XMonad is |
| 22:55 | < Namegduf> | Tiling window manager. |
| 22:55 | < Namegduf> | Powerful one. |
| 22:56 | < Namegduf> | Emphasis being on describing desired layout and having it done for you in a reliable and reproducible manner when you open and close software, rather than doing it manually. |
| 22:56 | < Namegduf> | I hit Win+P, new terminal opens and other windows resize to compensate. |
| 22:56 | < McMartin> | Is it implemented in a pure functional language or something? |
| 22:56 | < McMartin> | The name is a bit odd |
| 22:56 | < Namegduf> | Yes, it's written, and configured using, Haskell. |
| 22:56 | | * McMartin nods |
| 22:56 | < Namegduf> | Layout modifer things can be stacked in a... way. |
| 22:56 | < Namegduf> | I don't really know how to program in it. |
| 22:57 | < Namegduf> | So my configuration is a bit of a hack. |
| 22:57 | < McMartin> | I have a bee in my bonnet where I want to implement the basic Game Maker physics engine in Haskell + SDL |
| 22:58 | < Namegduf> | Physics calculations seem like something it'd be good at. |
| 22:58 | < Namegduf> | I had to do horrible stuff to make it autostart programs, though. |
| 22:58 | < Namegduf> | I managed to make it reliably autostart my IRC client and browser on the right workspace. |
| 22:58 | < McMartin> | Well, GM8 is really just a stock 2D sprite thing with forward kinematics. |
| 23:01 | < Vornicus> | GM8 also is pretty discoverable, but I'd prefer if you could hop back and forth quickly between graphical and text-shaped code types |
| 23:02 | < McMartin> | I'd *really* prefer if the mindstorms interface were auto-translated to code. |
| 23:02 | < McMartin> | But yeah, the Mindstorms bit is pretty discoverable because they have a palette of Everything You Can Do. |
| 23:03 | < McMartin> | So if you know you can do something but forget how, you flip through the tabs and look at the tooltips until you Find It. |
| 23:03 | < gnolam> | Re: Blender: "Anytime anyone says "once you get used to it, it is really powerful," that almost always translates to, "The interface was clearly designed by retarded monkeys; is poorly, and cryptically, documented; and you'll never use most of that power anyway."" |
| 23:05 | < McMartin> | At least people no longer take for granted that any interface not designed *by* retarded monkeys was instead designed *for* retarded monkeys |
| 23:05 | < gnolam> | That people can eventually work fast in something does not mean that the interface in fact is designed for efficiency; it's just a testament to human adaptability. |
| 23:06 | < gnolam> | Efficiency and intuitivity are not mutually exclusive. |
| 23:06 | < McMartin> | Indeed |
| 23:08 | < McMartin> | Intuitiveness isn't always a goal, though, or not always the overriding one. |
| 23:08 | < McMartin> | Automatability has a tendency to trump it once you get into the, ahem, enterprisey space |
| 23:08 | < gnolam> | That said, there is often a bit too much focus on Joe. You only use a system for the first time /once/. |
| 23:08 | < Namegduf> | Like almost every other UI concern, they're compromised against each other when making design decisions. |
| 23:09 | < McMartin> | Right |
| 23:09 | < McMartin> | The enduring principle is "common tasks should be easy to do" |
| --- Log closed Thu Jul 21 00:00:46 2011 |