Interesting Links for 20-04-2026

[andrewducker]

1. Looks like later kids get sick from their older siblings giving them diseases, decreasing their achievements in later life

(tags:family disease achievement )

2. Putin has sailed 121 tankers off Britain's coastline. None of them were seized

(tags:UK Russia shipping )

3. The seven programming ur-languages

(tags:language programming history )

4. Plans for huge new Edinburgh neighbourhood south of the Royal Infirmary

(tags:Edinburgh housing )

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I am pointing and laughing at my younger siblings, neither of them are as smart as I am.
(my brother thinks he is smarter, but only at math)

[channelpenguin]

I think my 2.5 yrs younger sister is perhaps cleverer than I am. Hard to say. Definitely at maths-y things (I am IT-necessary-level capabale, but she was a professional statistician before going management). But she was (and I think is) more often sick (I am almost never sick. Like a cold maybe once every 5 years if that)

3.

[channelpenguin]

- I am well practiced in the ALGOL family + OOP.
- I LOVE SQL (also very experienced).
- I did a bitta LISP at Uni, ditto FORTH (also did final year project in Postscript because I hated LaTex and we had to submit it in a neat printed document!).
I believe we did Prolog too, but I can't recall any of it.
- ML-type stuff from lambdas in C# or the js/ts equivalents nowadays. I also wrote a few state machines in my time (to the utter bemusement of my then-colleague who bore a striking resemblance to Wally from Dilbert [back then, Dilbert was still just funny and harmless]).
- I absolutely lack any history with APL-family languages. Huh. Never encountered K, and I worked with quants in investment banks in the City back in the day...

Re: 3.

[jducoeur]

I'm mostly bemused by looking at the list of ur-languages, and noting that I can argue Scala as belonging to the families of Algol, ML, Self, Prolog and arguably Lisp, depending on which aspect you are talking about -- they're all prominent influences of various parts of the language and ecosystem.