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@lazywithclass
Last active March 21, 2017 04:05
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[RC Diary] A bit of rest (-78)

[RC Diary] Project lamp, helping with tests, and the old lady from the mart (-78)

Why functional programming matters thoughts

As always, don't take my words for it, read the paper.

https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.pdf

In this paper John Hughes argues that the two main advantages on functional programming are

  1. high order functions
  2. lazy evaluation

You organise functions in modules, then glue them using 1., while you use 2. to glue modules together.

It's not really clear to me how would you go and glue modules using lazy evaluations, the examples in the paper are a bit too difficult, I've found that bit annoying, why explaining a new concept with a difficult concept as the base for it?

Project lamp

Chapter 2 and 3 are being done, we're also fixing small things here and there to make the experience more pleasant.

Old lady at the mart

So I was at the mart, queuing with new yorkers, with some groceries bought because of the incoming Stella blizzard, I started chatting with this old lady next to me, nice person, those kind of people always with a smile on their faces.

It was a solid 20 min chatting with a total stranger, I'm not that used to it, we spoke about what I'm doing in NY, about her love for James Brown, and about how Stella is going to be "just fine, I've seen way worse in ma life!".

At the end after paying for my stuff she just came out with a

...do something good for this world, Alberto.

I just looked at her for a short while, then smiled and went on my way after having mumbled something, half way through being embarassed and not really knowing what to answer.

I a saying this because it happened right in the moment when I am pondering exactly that: where should I work at so that my contribution would actually matter? I don't have any desire to build yet another product selling website or a slightly fancier version of yet another CRUD.

I am looking for a job where the likes of Chomsky and Snowden would be proud of what I will be doing. I know it's silly, but I now understand why I've left all of my previous jobs and grew bored of them: I wasn't actually contributing anything valuable for an extended period of time. I am building a list of companies where this could be possible.

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