4/04    Is there a good way to diff 2 files that consist of columns of
        floating point numbers, such that it only tells me if there's a
        difference if the numbers on a given line differ by at least a given
        ratio?  Say, 1%?
        \_ Use Excel.
           1. Open foo.txt in Excel.  It should convert all numbers to cells in
	...

12/18   Happy 25th birthday Perl, and FUCK YOU Larry Wall for fucking up
        the computer science formalism that sets back compilers development
        back for at least a decade:
        http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/print-happy-25th-birthday-perl
        \_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by it.  Maybe scripting
           lanauages have to be like that in order to work well?
	...

12/23   In Python, why is it that '好'=='\xe5\xa5\xbd' but
        u'好'!='\xe5\xa5\xbd' ? I'm really baffled. What
        is the encoding of '\xe5\xa5\xbd'?
        \_ '好' means '\xe5\xa5\xbd', which is just a string of bytes; it has
           length 3.  Python doesn't know what encoding it's in.  u'好' means
           u'\u597d', which is a string of Unicode characters; it has length 1,
	...

4/16    Whoa, I just heard that MIT discontinued 6.001 (classic scheme)
        to 6.01. In fact, 6.00, 6.01 and 6.02 all use Python. What the
        hell? What has the world become? It's a sad sad day. SICP forever!
        \_ old story, they've ditched that shitty book and lang for a while.
        \_ I used to think scheme was cool, then I saw Ka Ping Yee's
           "Beautiful Code" class aka 61a in python, and converted.
	...

2/24    Go Programming Language.  Anyone here use it?  It kind of
        reminds me of java-meets python, and well, that is fitting given it's
        a GOOG product.  What is so special about it?
        \_ as I understand it, it's a suitable OOP-y systems language with more
           structure than C, less complexity than C++, and less overhead than
           Java/Python.
	...

3/20    Has anyone here had success in using python 3.0?  Any gotchas
        to worry about? I've got an entire set of apps in python 2.x
        and am wondering if it's worth it to upgrade?
	...

8/8     Trying to make a list of interesting features languages have
        touted as this whole PL field comes around, trying to see if they
        have basis in the culture of the time: feel free to add some/dispute
        1970 C, "portability"
        1980 C++, classes, oop, iterators, streams, functors, templates
             expert systems
	...

8/12    Ruby coders, do you mostly DIY your stuff or use the ruby libs out
        there?   How is their quality compared to other libs you have used
        for other langs?  Thx.
        \_ I use Ruby for hobby stuff, etc.  I use libraries for system stuff
           (web access, process, etc.) but that's about it.  Perl libraries are
           much better/more complete.  I assume because of the maturity and
	...