More like “I am the wellspring from which you flow,” which is, let’s face it, infinitely cooler.

Spooks (governmental, NGO or the companies who have convenient offices nearby) are always interested in hiring mathematicians.

As long as they’re not missing a critical faculty, sure.

Really? I know. So either you’re using that word wrong or your first principles are lacking.

Erlang wasn’t the first implementation of CSP.

Clojure has it’s own set of idioms; it comes with some small surprises for old lisp hands. There are some things it’s really brought into the mainstream: performant persistent data structures in particular.

As well as excellent tooling and pedagogy, the principle attraction of Racket is the macro system. There’s a great book about this (this is true of just about all aspects of Racket). Racket’s focus is on building a tower of languages via macro extension. Metaprogramming is thematically FP-adjacent but neither sufficient or necessary; but if you’re looking for a fun learning experience it’s really worth a look.

In terms of employment opportunities - I know of several Clojure shops (on the JVM it has the bonus of being able to take advantage of the hole ecosystem), but I’m not aware of anywhere that’s using Racket outside of the academic sphere.

Another great avenue into this world is Racket. The tooling is fantastic and the documentation culture is first-class.

I’d go with Erlang over elixir, but it sounds like you already have an interest in gleam.

FWIW: just pick one and get started. There are some major axes to consider: pure versus impure, lazy versus strict, static versus dynamic typing, but to kick off if you’ve done no FP before it’s probably better to just go for it.

There are some really intriguing “next steps”: SICP, the ML module system, the Haskell ecosystem, the OTP approach to state, but to begin with it’s just worth getting used to some basics.

Yes. And “Lego” is the collective noun.

The neighbours’ seven-year-old suggested using a VPN to get around age checks. I don’t know if he knows what one is, but he’s definitely seen adverts for them.

Unsolicited “good morning message” - is that what it’s called now?

I’m primarily transfixed, not by the example in your comment, but that you don’t voice the “th” in “with”.

I’m surprised their response wasn’t, “you’re all on the side of predators; it’s as simple as that”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/29/peter-kyle-nigel-farage-extreme-pornographers-online-safety-bill

Even the standard formulation of newtonian dynamics admits nondeterminism. (This requires a non-Lipschitz setup to work; and in any case it doesn’t describe the world we live in. Also it’s a mathematical description, not the real thing.)

I’m not quite sure why you fetishise a bit-for-bit over semantic equivalence. Doesn’t it turn “it works on my machine” into "it works on my machine as long as it has this sha: … "?

I am no messenger.

But I do bring you a message:

the message - of death!

Some of the GoF patterns over-emphasise inheritance, but by-and-large, you don’t build large systems without either using or rediscovering software patterns, whether they’re OO, FP, or what-have-you.

No, it didn’t.

The point of Java is to be a language for 90% of programmers. The vast majority of software development is not sexy, doesn’t require a PhD. Java was intended to be a commoditising language and in that it succeeded wildly.

(The canonical example of a photo like this is a Matt Cardy* one of a student passed out in Millennium Square.)

• I have no idea if she signed a release or if it was staged. Quite possibly neither.