Re: language translator help

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: MJ Ray <address@hidden>
   Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 12:31:31 GMT

   No, I'd find someone who was there.  You're the only person in this
   case who I can be sure was there, but you don't want to provide data.

if you are looking for public data look in public archives, which do not
need to be provided by me -- they are there for review.

   Therefore, there is little possibility to gather data on this event
   and we are left working from prior beliefs.  My prior belief is that
   the events probably did not occur.  Am I a good Bayesian?  Probably
   not.

"there is little possibility" means "i have asked someone else to think
for me but they don't want to so i'm giving up".  too bad.

the possibility for you to reach some well-informed conclusion is always
there, but the probability is directly proportional to your personal
effort.  the alternative is that you hold to "i didn't see FOO so FOO
didn't happen" which means you don't believe in your own birth (unless
you were born w/ your eyes open :-).

   There's a reply to that, but it's not polite.

someday you'll be old and impatient like me and view certain forms of
politeness w/ disdain, but i understand if that's not the case now.
librarians have even more fun than pizza deliverators, i suspect (on the
other hand, shared-object librarians have a hell of a job :-).

   State the opinions before acting upon them, but I can't find that
   that has occurred.

people have opinions, but programmers have opinions expressed in code.

so before we get to far, this course of action that you have embarked
upon (researching 1.4.2 motivations), what is your underlying opinion?

   Do interfaces change?  ie, Do returns change for the same calls?  Are
   new calls introduced?  Are calls removed?

good questions -- so now you've posited some system of judgement, could
you apply this to code, specifically the tuples {guile, some-app} over
the set of versions available?  if you prefer to avoid the abstract,
choose some actual app that you find interesting or useful (that uses
guile).

   A genetic algorithm, most likely ;-)

what is the fitness function?

thi