Fantastic post about what building an ML system feels like.

Peter Norvig:

[Programming] language choice is not as important as all the other choices: if you have the right overall architecture, the right team of programmers, the right development process that allows for rapid development with continuous improvement, then many languages will work for you; if you don’t have those things you’re in trouble regardless of your language choice.

Backwards compatibility is pain sometimes:

# We need backwards compatibility with code which spells it this way:
#   def my_view(): pass
#   my_view = cache_page(my_view, 123)
# and this way:
#   my_view = cache_page(123)(my_view)
# and this:
#   my_view = cache_page(my_view, 123, key_prefix="foo")
# and this:
#   my_view = cache_page(123, key_prefix="foo")(my_view)
# and possibly this way (?):
#   my_view = cache_page(123, my_view)

Yes, it’d be nice if contractors kept up to date on the progress of the various building codes. They don’t. There are a lot of people who asked about the building codes in the 1970s and were told (right or wrong) what they were. So they went ahead and learned their trade, build their homes, and chose watching a DVD or spending time with their kids over watching city council do battle over asbestos insulation. Now all of a sudden they’re told that their work isn’t up to code any more. Some waiting and gnashing of teeth is to be expected. What’s needed is less “boy, aren’t I smarter than them” snideness and more “Hey, here’s what’s up.”

It frustrates me when I hear people dismiss the differences between computer languages. There really isn’t any difference between languages, the argument goes, because “all Turing complete language differ solely on syntactic sugar.”

That’s a direct quote from part twelve of Michele Simionato’s excellent The Adventures of a Pythonista in Schemeland, but I’ve got no beef with his articles. Like I say, they’ve been an excellent introduction to Scheme for me. However, I’ve seen this particular assertion – “all programming languages are the same because they’re all Turing complete” – used repeatedly as long as I’ve been a programmer. It drives me nuts.