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Comments for Josh the Outspoken

Comment on upb status and preliminary performance numbers by Buffalo

Posted: April 26th, 2011, 1:25pm MDT by Buffalo

Congrats Josh!
Comment on What’s the best way to visualize a parse tree? by Buffalo

Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:31am MST by Buffalo

Ok, I found the demo:

[flare.prefuse.org]
Comment on What’s the best way to visualize a parse tree? by Buffalo

Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:13am MST by Buffalo

A week ago we had a presentation from a real smart guy that talked about (among many,many other things) a framework he had built for flash for visualization apps. It included the capability to view trees in a variety of ways and dynamically switch between them (yes, including slick animation effects). The only bad news is that I can’t find his demo on the website.

[flare.prefuse.org]

…can’t speak to it personally, but it still might we worthwhile to check out.
Comment on Gazelle Manual by Buffalo

Posted: February 25th, 2008, 8:40am MST by Buffalo

Hey Josh -

I’ll have you know that if I get a bad grade on my upcoming AI midterm, I’m blaming you because I wasted a chunk of class reading about parser algorithms and not learning highly important logical inference type stuff. Parser stuff is just so fun (as I’m sure you well know)!

Two quick thoughs:

1. I was disappointed you didn’t include any of the stuff from your “Why Gazelle Matters” post in there. I think that really help motivates *why* a person ought to be considered with say stacks of DFAs and how they work.

2. If I had a vote for the next section get elaborated on, it would definitely be the “Introductory Tour” example. Exact specifics on how to run and use the system are what I’m looking for when I check out a new project for the first time.

It was very neat to hear about how all that parsing magic is going on!
Comment on Porting Gazelle from Lua to JavaScript by Buffalo

Posted: February 19th, 2008, 6:33am MST by Buffalo

So this is a tough question and I tried to give it a little mulling before I
chimed in. Take my advice with more than the usual salt.

I fall into the pro-lua camp, and I have two arguments neither of which has much
to do with technology. Both have to do with social issues, and as Paul will
tell you I am absolute social political genius which everyone should desperately
try to emulate. Also, I am graduate student in a school involving
human-computer interaction, where we learn all sorts of secret interaction
techniques that I can’t tell you about. Woooooo!

1. Seems to me that there are very few good reasons to take a technology that
you know works and you actually really like and replace it with a technology
that may turn out to be neither of those things. Considering that the payoff
we’re looking for here is your personal enjoyment in a lot of ways, that’s a
risk.

Of course, if this gets really popular you might be remembered forever
just like L.R. Grammer, Ichabald Von Regex, or many other of those famous parser
guys we would have all learned about if we had been paying any attention in our
compliers class. And if you had somebody who had came to you and said “your
thing is really cool and I can think of 100 specific ways to use it tomorrow if only it
was javascript”, I think I’d be on the other side. But just your intuition that
people might not be willing to go for a non-curly-brace language - I’m not
convinced it will be a bigger win than adding cool sexy features (which will
feel better in the neat language you already like).

2. Speaking of cool sexy features, it seems maybe a bit earily to be rewriting
from scratch. Let this current path get some play first, figure out what
features you really need and what features you don’t, let the source code get a
little uglier. However much you think you know now, after some real
applications you’ll know more and you’ll have brilliant new ideas. Then you can
write a new even better parser thing from the ground up.

PS. I dig the Outspoken blog’s fancy new do!

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Comments for Josh the Outspoken

Comment on upb status and preliminary performance numbers by Buffalo

Posted: April 26th, 2011, 1:25pm MDT by Buffalo

Comment on What’s the best way to visualize a parse tree? by Buffalo

Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:31am MST by Buffalo

Comment on What’s the best way to visualize a parse tree? by Buffalo

Posted: February 27th, 2008, 7:13am MST by Buffalo

Comment on Gazelle Manual by Buffalo

Posted: February 25th, 2008, 8:40am MST by Buffalo

Comment on Porting Gazelle from Lua to JavaScript by Buffalo

Posted: February 19th, 2008, 6:33am MST by Buffalo