Bold statement: A top 1% Operations Research practitioner will lose against a top 10% programmer in a hackathon. Unfortunately, I don’t have any emperical evidence to back this up, but my own humble hunch. Nothing to be ashamed of, since an OR degree is multi-disciplinary, hence diluted across the many facets of the field — … Continue reading
Ruby on Rails is becoming a respectable standard for building web applications, for all the good reasons: It is a powerful and fun language, it has a great community and it’s easy to deploy to Heroku. While I was taking SaaS-class, I missed the parentheses and as always, I got curious: how would Common Lisp … Continue reading
Common Lisp is not getting the attention it so deserves. Last month, I posted a poll on the INFORMS LinkedIn group with the title: “What language do you use for prototyping in OR?”. The results are telling — it’s almost embarrassingly funny: Yes, I am a loner. The more the reason for me to stick … Continue reading
“Common what?” is a common reply I get when I mention Common Lisp. Perhaps rightly so, since Common Lisp is not all that common these days. Developed in the sixties, it is one of the oldest programming languages out there. In its heydays it was used mostly for Artificial Intelligence research at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie … Continue reading
The pungent smell of burning plastic hit us when we were approaching Gran Via from Arc de Triomf. Fire trucks and policemen on standby, guarding every diamond of Barcelona’s grid. We were famished and in anticipation of some really nice Tappas with seafood, but were instead met with garbage bins ablaze, melting the plastic hull … Continue reading
“Could you explain your experience with Qi? I’d like to hear why you believe it exists, and why your belief definitely isn’t a result of immersing yourself in a situation where everyone around you believes and acts as though it exists for several months,” James asked on the Why I love Common Lisp and hate … Continue reading
The fact that you are reading this epitomizes the insatiable force of Curiosity. It is the intangible emotion that you are experiencing right now. It is that same underestimated force that drives humanity’s discoveries and innovations — the very same ‘thing’ that forces you to the end of this sentence. To be exact, being curious … Continue reading
Macros are for lazy people. If you are a relentless data-monkey who diligently punches away and like to keep yourself mechanically occupied while scoffing down your lunch behind your desk — and you don’t mind it — that’s great, keep it up; macros are probably not for you. A powerful tool, once mastered might leave … Continue reading
This is a sequel to my previous post where I urged those who gave up on programming — probably because of the spoon-fed association with Java and stress — to give coding another chance with a whole “new” (read: different) approach: Common Lisp. The purpose of this sequel is to address the open-minded skeptic, unconvinced yet unafraid … Continue reading
This is my first blog-entry. Ever. Today marks the birth of my digital voice. I have been procrastinating setting up a blog for about 10 years. Why? Probably because 10 years ago I was a kid, pretending to understand the world, fragging away on de_dust and making Chinese-labeled fried rice and noodles in a Chinese … Continue reading
Piece of mine 