Comments for Peter's Work Journal http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work In which I pretend to accomplish things Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:23:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Comment on Study Break by Owen http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=349&cpage=1#comment-87 Owen Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:23:58 +0000 http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=349#comment-87 hurray for KDE! hurray for KDE!

]]> Comment on “Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?” by Casey http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=201&cpage=1#comment-17 Casey Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:42:38 +0000 http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=201#comment-17 This discussion is getting quite a bit of coverage in the astro blogosphere (that is, I saw it mentioned by two other people). One analysis I found convincing was that research and faculty funding in the US are somewhat decoupled. Faculty jobs are largely tied to state university funding and static; research (and hence, phds and postdocs) is more tied to federal funding and is growing rapidly. In this sense, the "overproduction problem" is a problem of having too much funding! So maybe a solution is to connect the state and federal funding somehow...? This discussion is getting quite a bit of coverage in the astro blogosphere (that is, I saw it mentioned by two other people). One analysis I found convincing was that research and faculty funding in the US are somewhat decoupled. Faculty jobs are largely tied to state university funding and static; research (and hence, phds and postdocs) is more tied to federal funding and is growing rapidly.
In this sense, the “overproduction problem” is a problem of having too much funding! So maybe a solution is to connect the state and federal funding somehow…?

]]> Comment on The Python Standard Libraries: Not Very Good by Peter http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=174&cpage=1#comment-3 Peter Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:56:25 +0000 http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=174#comment-3 Yeah, it would've made me very happy if part of Python 3000 was a massive reengineering of the standard libraries. Given the finite resources involved and their approach to the project, I'm not at all surprised that this didn't happen, but it's a shame that there won't be a chance to improve things for a long time. Maybe someday there will be a Python 4000 ... Yeah, it would’ve made me very happy if part of Python 3000 was a massive reengineering of the standard libraries. Given the finite resources involved and their approach to the project, I’m not at all surprised that this didn’t happen, but it’s a shame that there won’t be a chance to improve things for a long time. Maybe someday there will be a Python 4000 …

]]> Comment on The Python Standard Libraries: Not Very Good by Owen http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=174&cpage=1#comment-2 Owen Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:15:43 +0000 http://www.newton.cx/~peter/work/?p=174#comment-2 There was a similar post along these lines recently here: http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-05-29.html Python isn't perfect, and launching subprocesses is definitely one of its weaker points. One would hope Python 3000 would've cleaned up a lot of this junk, but I don't get the sense that it has. print is now a function, though! Still, I think Python has nailed the balance of neatness and messiness better than any other language I've used. It's better than perl at writing large apps, and it's better than C for writing quick-n-dirty hacks. There was a similar post along these lines recently here: http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-05-29.html

Python isn’t perfect, and launching subprocesses is definitely one of its weaker points.

One would hope Python 3000 would’ve cleaned up a lot of this junk, but I don’t get the sense that it has. print is now a function, though!

Still, I think Python has nailed the balance of neatness and messiness better than any other language I’ve used. It’s better than perl at writing large apps, and it’s better than C for writing quick-n-dirty hacks.

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