off-topic 2018-02-10 | Slack Archive

I guess Ponzi schemes find new participants with every new generation?

I fail to understand, with distributed ledgers, there need to be centralized exchanges.

I.e. can't one code up a "bid ask matcher" as an Ethereum contract

Yes, but every bid would have a gas usage, making the contract more expensive than an exchange. The problem of running any bit of code in ethereum is that it requires money to do so

qqq04:02:13

For JS/HTML and Canvas vs SVG, is there anything more insightful than "SVG is vector grahpics, Canvas is bitmap"?

burke10:02:08

If you use SVG, your elements are a real part of the html dom, with all the benefits (defining events "onmouseover" and css stylings). If you use Canvas, you can control everything you want, but therefore you also have to do all the logic by yourself (events etc.). When HTML5 Canvas were a new thing, I programmed a GUI-Webapp in Canvas without any framework (phaser, fabricjs, paperjs or what there is out there now). I think that was a huge mistake, would have been much easier to do that with svg

qqq13:02:36

One thing I find weird about Canvas, is that unlike WebGL< I'm not supposed to redraw the entire screen on every frame, but on the rother hand, when I move stuff, I need to repaint the old location.

burke14:02:37

in WebGL and 3D Computergraphics in general, everything is calculated based on vertices and the camera-view / perspective. So nearly every change in the system implies a recalculation of the whole scene. A HTML Canvas is more like a real painters canvas. If you draw on one place, its drawn and you can only paint over it

qqq14:02:12

@U1Q12R4F2: I uncerstand the Painter's canvas model, but in practice, it's this weird situation where the programmer needs ot keep track of rectangles that need to be redrawn (and also what to redraw to redraw a particualr rectangle)

orestis17:02:09

@qqq This is exactly how most windowing toolkits work - each “view” takes over a rect, and then when you want to repaint, you invalidate the rect (or part of it). Then the system will eventually call your “paint” function and draw over the stale rects.

kenrestivo05:02:29

there don't. there are atomic swaps

kenrestivo05:02:19

http://barterdex.io

justinlee23:02:00

i just stumbled across the lux programming language. is it possible to succinctly state what this means: “Unlike in most other lisps, Lux macros are monadic.”

qqq23:02:07

@lee.justin.m: is this the same Lux that tries to merge the type-checker power of Haskell w/ the flexibility of Clojure ?

justinlee23:02:15

yea

justinlee23:02:38

i always wondered what static type checking would look like on top of lisp

qqq23:02:02

I really hope it succeeds; the main reason I decided against using it was the lack of tooling / support / libraries.

justinlee23:02:17

my dumb-guy understanding of monads is the general idea that they are chainable under the constraints of a tyrant type system. but i would have thought that macros are already “monadic” in that sense

qqq23:02:42

There are a few 'macro in clojure' libraries, but I find that I make too many mistakes w/o a type-checker helping me out.

bronsa23:02:52

there's nothing monadic about clojure macros

qqq23:02:36

In practice, the only monads I really miss are: 1. state and 2. either (for error handling). for (2), I just use esceptions and for (1), I have functions that return a vec of 2 args, where the first it the updated state.

tbaldridge23:02:54

@lee.justin.m @qqq I'm not entirely convinced that Lux is what the author thinks it is.

tbaldridge23:02:40

some of the stuff here is just really strange: https://jaxenter.com/lux-jvm-series-133693.html

tbaldridge23:02:16

"One of the things that turned me away from Clojure was that much of its design felt like a hack. There are many things I forgive about it, since they are the result of ideas which probably sounded great when they were originally conceived, but didn’t turn out so well later. But a lot of the flaws of Clojure, I feel, are the result of negligence, lack of research, and favoring short term practicalities over good design."

tbaldridge23:02:50

I have my own complaints about Clojure...but that's just flat-out wrong, and it's the only time I've ever heard that argument made about the language.

joelsanchez23:02:35

it's like if he was talking about PHP

bronsa23:02:46

I've tried looking into lux a few times but the syntax is honestly just horrific, and the author has some pretty questionable opinions

bronsa23:02:06

it's got some cool stuff for sure tho

justinlee23:02:36

@tbaldridge luckily i don’t know what he thinks it is either so no biggie 🙂

2018-02-10

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