Mona Clark ⚧ @mona@computerfairi.es

@tindall@cybre.space Oh, it was not a serious comment exactly! But I am a classicist, and I like my synthetic languages to have some scholarly weight to them. Also I just like to needle Kel sometimes.

@kel @tindall@cybre.space You will pay for that, dragon

@BigFatFae @Ulfra_Wolfe @Oneironott *gives you a Pearl / Mona Point* Well said, my dear.

@Elizafox I suddenly wonder if there are movies purportedly set in Florida that have hills in the background of inconvenient shots

@kel I grasp vainly, ineffectually, at the words of great writers that have given me a taste of just such hope. But I don't know if it does any good.

@kel I see a friend hurting and I do not know how to help...I see despair and I want to turn it into hope, just as I have done, but I do not know how to communicate it.

@Ulfra_Wolfe

"It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico; in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico; for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico; to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason." (G. K. Chesterton, _Orthodoxy_)

@Ulfra_Wolfe Even if the world that you wish to see does not exist, the only hope of changing the world as it _does_ exist is to love it. Nothing else will work. Heed the words of G. K. Chesterton

"Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing – say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne of the mystic and the arbitrary." (1/2)

@Elizafox And it is some "homeopathic" garbage as well

@Elizafox or certain rock bands (e.g. classic Fleetwood Mac)

@tellio You pass the Voight-Kampff Test with flying colors.

@LottieVixen Looking very charming my dear *blows a kiss*

@pnathan @alyx@icosahedron.website We have heard of Haskell, anyway. Why would you not recommend it to someone who has been known to solve differential equations for fun?

@alyx@icosahedron.website @pnathan *laughs* you are flashing back to days of Martin Gardner and "Computer Recreations" from old Scientific American magazines. That's not a bad omen.

@pnathan @alyx@icosahedron.website I take the "one man's whims" charge at least a little seriously; that's one of the problems I have with CS in general, that bad ideas can root themselves and persist as long as there's a bit of cult fervour behind them. There's no feedback mechanism to eject ideas, the way that falsifiability must eventually slay all bad scientific ideas (*gives string 'theory' a hard glare*).

@pnathan @alyx@icosahedron.website That sounds like something to run very far and fast away from, then--ubiquitous or not.

@pnathan @alyx@icosahedron.website It is hard to argue against the ubiquity of Python. Why, by the way, do you dislike it? I rather suspect it is for different reasons than our largely aesthetic displeasure.

@alyx@icosahedron.website @pnathan believe me, I _have_ considered it. Give me Fortran with a simple graphics package and I'd be a happy horse.

@pnathan @alyx@icosahedron.website Whereas I am forty-two years old, and while I did grow up with computers, I grew up with Commodores running BASIC. No tinkering, no fiddling--you just _used_ the thing. I've never succeeded in getting used to the modern world, any more than my father who never succeeded in learning much beyond his belovéd Fortran (he was a biologist who ended up programming simulations of fish populations.)