Romania’s Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT) recently established the number of troops that the country will contribute to overseas operations and missions, making it the largest contributor of troops to EUFOR mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Romanian Army will be able to provide...
Romania's Supreme National Defence Council (CSAT) on Thursday discussed the project of creating a pilot training centre in the country to operate F-16 fighter jets, which can be used by NATO members and allied countries.
Inspired by @uncanny_kate’s discussion, I thought it was about time to rant about one phenomenon:
People shitting on “old” or “legacy” languages. It’s a long subject and I’d probably get close to the 65K limit my instance provides (nobody wants to read 65K chars anyway) so in the replies to this I’ll describe each such language that I’ve gotten hate for. I’ll try to make them as self contained as possible.
Lisp syntax is painful (and the classical Lots of Irritating Small Parentheses stab). For those who don’t know (and why I put this at #0), what other languages might write as 5*a+3 is (+ (* 5 a) 3). However, in spite of the fact that it may look initially a little funny to the unaccustomed, there are some sound technical reasons why Lisp syntax exists:
Easy to teach: grouping of operators and associativity is obvious. 5 * a + 3 is (+ (* 5 a) 3), while 5 * (a + 3) is (* 5 (+ a 3));
Easy to parse: you don’t have to bend the language to understand your new function, everything works the same;
Maps nicely to an underlying data structure: Lisp is a living and breathing AST. Having this syntax makes macros possible. When you teach someone about macros, it’s obvious what the internal representation of a Lisp expression is because it looks just like Lisp program data. You can thus fit Lisp to anything you want. Lisp programmers focus on the content, Lisp haters focus on the parentheses.
Lisp is old. No? There are modern dialects of Lisp such as #Clojure, #Racket and the myriad of R{5,6,7}RS #scheme implementations. We’re still going strong, thank you. If anything else, #AutoCAD is still a thing and that has AutoLISP, so it definitely lives on.
Lisp is slow. I have actually heard this from a teacher live (along with the Lots of Irritating Small Parentheses stab). I asked them when was the last time they’ve tried Lisp. He tried it 30 years ago. Before doing his PhD in #Haskell 98 (which was fresh in #Romania, nobody has heard of it, I still have great respect for him). When all datatypes are appropriately declared, a typical commercial (and even some non-commercial) Lisp compilers produce native machine code on par with C++. It was true back when Lisp ran on the IBM 704 because they could barely handle the GC, but over times the compilers improved a lot. To equate 1960s (or even 1980s) Lisps to modern Lisp compilers is like claiming C is slow because the only time you’ve tried it is with a C compiler on the PDP-11.
Lisp is big. First of all, I find this really funny because Scheme (a branch of the Lisp family) is minimalist yet powerful in its nature. This myth started around the 1980s when Lisp was indeed big (because it packed a lot of useful functionality and there was a limit to how small that functionality could be made). Lisp vendors noticed that and nowadays Lisp is one of the few programming languages in recent years that has not been allowed to grow in size by leaps and bounds with every release. At this point, this point is (excuse my Chinese) fucking bullshit, people are happily running Electron-apps and they don’t care at all about resource usages because they’re all running the latest and greatest hardware anyway. Languages are getting more and more bloated (ahemc++ahem) and so Lisp actually ends up looking like a compact alternative.
Lisp has no arrays. This is also BS, we’ve had an array datatype for at least 30 years. Even though the Lis of Lisp is from, shocking, List, it doesn’t mean that it’s the only data type. Lisp offers powerful support for single and multi-dimensional arrays, arrays of varying element type, and array access that provides transparent access to fixed size arrays, arrays displaced to other arrays, and arrays whose size is expected to dynamically grow and shrink.
Lisp has no compiler. It… does? Since its earliest days Lisp implementations have been variously interpreted or compiled, and often both. Much important work in the theory of program compilation has been done using Lisp and so Lisp benefited from that. All modern Lisps have a compiler (and also a REPL which allows for interactive debugging, thank us for that and much more at the end of this post).
Lisp is not standard. Let me present ANSI X3.226/1994 (first ANSI standard for any OO language btw) and RnRS (5 <= n <= 7 nowadays). The Common Lisp HyperSpec (CLHS) is a webbed adaptation of the ANSI Common Lisp standard made by LispWorks, heavily cross-indexed with a lot of indices.
Lisp doesn’t talk to other programs… Um, most serious Lisp dialects and implementations definitely have FFI, most even have easy access to TCP, CORBA, COM, databases etc. This is a really weird point that I’ve actually heard, people think Lisp is isolated from everything.
Lisp GC is slow. It may have been true in the past when computers could barely handle GC, but a lot of progress has been made since then and it’s now on par with other popular GC languages.
Lisp haters should give Lisp more credit. It pioneered a lot of features that people take for granted such as REPLs (which are trivial in Lisp, literally (loop (print (eval (read)))) (in Lisp-ish pseudocode), GC with mark-and-sweep, AST as a tree structure, if (yes, not even FORTRAN had conditionals), a function type, recursion, programs composed of expressions, a symbol type, a notation for code using trees of symbols and constants, and the concept of having the whole language there all the time. What I mean by the last point is that there’s no real distinction between read-time, compile-time, and runtime. You can compile or run code while reading, read or run code while compiling, and read or compile code at runtime). This lets you reprogram Lisp’s syntax; running code at compile-time is the basis of macros; compiling at runtime is the basis of Lisp’s use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea reinvented as XML.
My dear bubbe's favorite song was this ballad to the old country. The song is fun because of the heavy use of scat singing and a wide range of mouth noises. I don't know if it was ahead of its time or if that was common in Yiddish songs.
Sale totaling $105 million approved to #Romania of equipment and services to modernize 32 F-16 Mid-Life Update Block 10/15 jets to be procured through a third-party transfer from #Norway. Thttps://www.dsca.mil/sites/default/files/mas/Press%20Release%20-%20Romania%2023-21%20CN.pdf
European institutions are preparing to admit Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen this year.
According to sources in Sofia, Bulgaria has serious chances, if it exerts diplomatic pressure and shows a desire to continue reforms, to achieve full Schengen membership as early as October this year, by joining with its air borders, and the perspective for full membership with the land borders from January 2024.
Here is the damning piece from #Romania 🇷🇴 investigators regarding #AndrewTate pending trials (yes, as in plural):
“There are also separate charges still under investigation which could lead to a separate indictment, including money laundering and trafficking of minors.”
Andrew Tate charged with rape and human trafficking
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.
His brother Tristan and two associates also face charges.
Romania to become largest contributor of troops to EUFOR mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (www.romania-insider.com)
Romania’s Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT) recently established the number of troops that the country will contribute to overseas operations and missions, making it the largest contributor of troops to EUFOR mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Romanian Army will be able to provide...
Romania confirmed as training ground for Ukrainians on F-16s (www.pravda.com.ua)
Romania's Supreme National Defence Council (CSAT) on Thursday discussed the project of creating a pilot training centre in the country to operate F-16 fighter jets, which can be used by NATO members and allied countries.
Training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 jets may take place in Romania (www.pravda.com.ua)
A coalition of Western countries is considering Romania as a possible location to train Ukrainian pilots to operate F-16 fighter jets.
Union Square, Oradea, Romania
Romania recalls envoy to Kenya for 'calling Africans monkeys' (www.straitstimes.com)
The Romanian foreign ministry apologised and said racist behaviour is “absolutely unacceptable”.