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.
	...

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
	...

9/28    http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
        Java is #1!!! Followed by C, PHP, C++, Visual Basic, Perl,
        C#, Python, Javascript, then finally Ruby. The good news is
        Pascal is going waaaay back up!
        \_ C is still more popular than C++?  I feel much better about myself
           now.
	...