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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
I think Elena Kagan will be an outstanding Justice, not just because of her outstanding (and underrated) technical abilities—as I’ll mention shortly, I think the Court as a group is […]
Emily Yoffe, aka Slate advice columnist Dear Prudence, has evidently been driven to distraction by the prospect of an Islamic cultural center/mosque two blocks from the former World Trade Center. […]
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The famous developer of Perl talks about his work set-up, how he works best, and why he sometimes procrastinates.
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“But when good taste becomes mandatory, then it’s not really good taste any more—it’s just manners,” says Wall.
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The “Lord of the Rings” characters embody what Wall sees as the three virtues of good programmers: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
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Programmer Larry Page offers language suggestions to amateur programmers who might not know exactly where to start.
Our Sun has been asleep for a while, but now it’s starting to wake up. You’ve probably read or heard about the recent solar storms that sent plasma towards Earth, […]
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Computer programming is a lot like writing a recipe. If you’ve read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is and you can copy the format to […]
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“Perl culture is a culture of fun; we really encourage that and do not think that it is in any way counter to the notion of doing good work,” says […]
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Wall’s background in linguistics helped him to create a programming language that borrows bits from other languages, much like English.
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Perl developer Larry Wall says that, like a human language, you can use Perl in many ways—for baby talk, grownup talk, writing poetry or plays, and even cussing.
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A conversation with the founder of the Perl programming language
"When life is being led in public, every word and gesture is open to criticism." A new book explains how social media recall the dating games of Jane Austin's provincial England.
Harvard psychologist Gene Heyman says what while people may have predispositions to addiction, evidence shows people consciously choose to break their addictive habits (or not).
MIT scientists have found string theory useful in explaining the behavior of superconductors; applying that theory to other phenomena could move physics in a positive direction.
David Mamet's new book 'Theatre' confirms the playwright's exeunt from 'brain-dead liberalism', a move to the right which he originally announced in the Village Voice.
"We assume that more rational analysis leads to better choices but, in many instances, that assumption is exactly backwards." Being too analytic confuses our value judgments, say new research.
"Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well." The Economist says patrons are offering big prizes like the Ansari X to motivate inventors.
"A car that runs on methane gas produced by human waste has been launched and its makers claim drivers cannot tell the difference." The Telegraph reports on an alternative to electric vehicles.
There is much more to the stock-market than meets the eye: highly complex and sometimes secretive trading methods, known as "dark pools", manipulate the market in power's favor.