Jörg W Mittag

10,662 reputation

41752

bio	website	StackOverflow.Com/users/2988
	location	Karlsruhe, Germany
	age	34
visits	member for	2 years, 8 months
	seen	11 mins ago
stats	profile views	815

Not a software developer in the sense that I write software as part of my job or otherwise get paid to do so. Also, not a developer in the sense that I write software for others.

I write software for myself, often for no other reason than that I want to. (What I call recreational programming.)

Actually, I’m currently forcibly confined to recreational programming, as I’m looking for a job.

My current go-to language is Ruby, but I’m interested in all sorts of other languages as well: Newspeak, Seph, Ioke, Self, Io, Slate, Reia, Cobra, Fortress, Sapphire, Haskell, Scala, Clojure, Racket, Go, Fancy, Poison, and many more.

	10,662 reputation	bio	website	StackOverflow.Com/users/2988	visits	member for	2 years, 8 months
41752 badges		location	Karlsruhe, Germany		seen	11 mins ago

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Apr 18	comment	Is there any difference between pointers and references? @ionoy: In a functional language, it is impossible to distinguish pass-by-value vs. pass-by-reference. Using one or the other doesn't change the meaning of the program. Compilers and interpreters take advantage of this freedom and choose whichever one fits best for a certain context. E.g. for small objects that are not significantly bigger than a reference would be, it doesn't make sense to pass them by reference. For large objects, it doesn't make sense to pass them by value. You could also pass the reference to the large object by value as a third option. It doesn't matter.
Apr 16	comment	How can I say that programming language compiles to other languages? @Neil: transforming a program written in one language into another language is not interpretation. In fact, this is the definition of compilation.
Apr 16	comment	Why is String immutable in Java? This exact same argument applies to any type, not just to `String`. But, for example, `Array`s are mutable nonetheless. So, why are `String`s immutable and `Array`s not. And if immutability is so important, then why does Java make it so hard to create and work with immutable objects?
Apr 16	comment	Is a lambda expression something more than an anonymous inner class with a single method? @Philipp: That's wrong. The defining characteristic of syntactic sugar is that desugaring is purely local and does not change the global structure of the program. There are lots of features that cannot be implemented with just local transformations. For example, if you take a hypothetical language that is identical to Java but with proper tail calls, it would not be possible to desugar tail calls to "pure" Java without globally transforming the entire program.
Apr 11	comment	What methods are there to avoid a stack overflow in a recursive algorithm? This would probably be better solved with corecursion than recursion.
Apr 11	comment	What methods are there to avoid a stack overflow in a recursive algorithm? Obviously, Memoization only works when there actually is repeated calculation.
Apr 10	comment	What is the difference between Quantum annealing and simulated annealing? @JanHudec: There is a company called D-Wave that has physically implemented QA using actual quantums. The nice thing about implementing this algorithm is that it doesn't matter if there is some noise in the system, since it is only a heuristic anyway. Controlling noise is one of the biggest hurdles in building a workable quantum computer.
Apr 10	comment	How to close a bug that is no longer relevant @YannisRizos: Fixing meta-bugs using bugs. How cool is that!
Apr 9	comment	Is this a Proper “Rule” for Identifying the “Big O” Notation of an Algorithm? @GlenH7: Exactly. I would simply like to know, where exactly in the definition of the Bachmann-Landau notation it says that O(2n) is not allowed. I must admit that haven't thoroughly read the original 1894 and 1909 papers by Bachmann and Landau, but I have at least skimmed them, and I couldn't find anything that supports that claim.
Apr 9	comment	Is this a Proper “Rule” for Identifying the “Big O” Notation of an Algorithm? @ratchetfreak: So? They both denote the same set. By the same argument, you could say that there is no such thing as 0.5, because 0.5 = 1/2.
Apr 9	comment	Is this a Proper “Rule” for Identifying the “Big O” Notation of an Algorithm? @vartec: Of course, there is. Why wouldn't there be?
Apr 8	answered	Software Design and architecture from Scratch
Apr 8	answered	Self Debuggable systems
Apr 8	comment	What language is most similar to JavaScript? The OP asked for "most similar", i.e. `JavaScript + ε, where ε → 0`. And, when learning, that's really not useful.
Apr 8	answered	What language is most similar to JavaScript?
Apr 7	comment	What's the most interesting open source project for you? The Self VM still exists, except it is called Oracle HotSpot these days. The Klein VM inspired the [wikis.oracle.com/display/MaxineVM](Maxine Research JVM) , which focuses on architectural and design changes that can be enabled by the metacircular design, and the Squawk VM, both of which are also open source.
Apr 7	comment	What's the most interesting open source project for you? Yes. Unfortunately, even though Sun already had one of the best OO languages ever created (Self) and one of the best VMs ever written (the Self VM), they decided to create another language which is much worse and another VM which wass much slower, and completely cut the funding for Self. This is a management mistake that you actually can put a price on, since just a couple of years later, they bought back the company the Self VM developers had founded after leaving Sun to get access to their VM technology which they would have owned anyway if they hadn't let them go in the first place.
Apr 7	answered	What's the most interesting open source project for you?
Apr 7	comment	What's the most interesting open source project for you? This is a poll, which doesn't work well with the StackExchange Q&A format, which is designed and optimized for questions which have a single verifiably, objectively correct answer. Try asking in the chat room instead. Hypocritically, though, I am going to answer it anyway :-)
Apr 5	comment	What's the word for an operation that can be applied multiple times and never change state beyond the initial application? Basically, `f` is idempotent IFF `f(f(x)) == f(x)` FORALL `x`.