[HN Gopher] Lambda the Ultimate is now running in a new, more st...
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Lambda the Ultimate is now running in a new, more stable
environment
Author : ingve
Score : 220 points
Date : 2022-08-31 11:31 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lambda-the-ultimate.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lambda-the-ultimate.org)
| synu wrote:
| Seems to be down, I wonder if it is visitors from HN.
| lproven wrote:
| Let me guess... they junked the Lisp codebase and replaced it
| with some PHP and Perl?
|
| _DARFC..._
| paganel wrote:
| Afaik they were running on Drupal? Meaning PHP. But maybe I'm
| remembering wrong.
| lproven wrote:
| I was actually making, or attempting to make, a joke.
| Replacing arguably the greatest programming language with the
| undisputed worst.
|
| Ah, well...
| FraaJad wrote:
| Yeah, it's Drupal (PHP)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| For some reason, I feel that name crops up very frequently
| in the discussion of sites keeling over to a HN death-hug.
| cweagans wrote:
| Drupal is a heavy application for sure, but it's also
| used in a lot of very high-volume places (sometimes in
| ways that you might not expect - for instance, va.gov is
| (sorta) built with Drupal. As of a few years ago, all of
| the NBCUniversal sites were as well). It takes some TLC
| to get it running properly. The ancient version that this
| site is running (Drupal 4.6 it looks like - released in
| 2007) probably just can't handle it.
|
| (full disclosure, I occasionally contribute to Drupal +
| work/worked on the sites mentioned above)
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Because I didn't know: DARFC = Ducking And Running For Cover
| lproven wrote:
| Indeed so. :-)
| xyst wrote:
| Reminds me of browsing the web in the early 2000s. No TLS. Very
| simple design layout. User forums. Random calendar on front page
| gryn wrote:
| I guess we're part of the testing team ? /s
|
| The page doesn't load for me. I thought LtU was static content +
| comments and that kind of content was mostly a solved problem
| nowadays.
| k_roy wrote:
| > I guess we're part of the testing team ? /s
|
| Why the /s? Video games companies have been doing this long
| enough now that it's gotta be considered standard practice and
| just not tongue-in-cheek
| throwthere wrote:
| > LtU has experienced a long period of downtime recently. Its
| software infrastructure was outdated enough that it became
| difficult to maintain when problems arose. It has now been
| migrated to a brand new environment. It should be much more
| stable from now on.
|
| So after 20 years of the old site they ended up with an
| unmaintainable ball of code. Not too bad in my opinion
| considering the evolution of the web during that time.
| zimbatm wrote:
| For those who don't know; LtU is a programming language design
| treasure trove. It has been around for 20(?) years.
|
| It's a great place for curious minds that like to explore and
| discuss new ideas and go down less trotthen paths.
|
| Highly recommend, especially if you're considering to design a
| language of your own.
| nextos wrote:
| Yes, along with the C2 wiki it is one of the best places to
| discuss classic but currently untrendy ideas in PLT:
| https://wiki.c2.com
| JHonaker wrote:
| Not really a place for discussion, but https://okmij.org/ftp
| is hands down the best place on the internet if you're into
| PLT.
| earleybird wrote:
| Oleg's tarpit is awesome. Some of my best value in learning
| has come from going down rabbit holes there.
| nextos wrote:
| Sure, Oleg Kiselyov, the owner of that site, is a very
| frequent poster at Lambda the Ultimate and entries on his
| site are frequently discussed there.
| eru wrote:
| At some point we were joking at ICFP that we might as well
| rename it into Oleg fan club. (I think that year he had
| contributed either directly or indirectly to a particularly
| large number of papers.)
| amelius wrote:
| ... for functional programming languages, I suppose.
| howinteresting wrote:
| The vast majority of the interesting PL research in the last
| few decades has been in the FP domain. It's no surprise that
| Rust, which borrows many ideas from functional languages, is
| loved year after year.
| acdha wrote:
| That's definitely the focus but they're not fundamentalists -
| even if you work primarily in non-FP languages you'll learn
| plenty from following along and as a community of serious
| users they're quite honest about areas where FP falls short
| or presents optimization or usability challenges.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Other paradigms have been discussed iirc. It's not closed
| minded.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| The content is amazing indeed but with a "that's out private
| club" feel to it. It's not very inviting to new comers, most of
| its links on the footer or get started are dead.
|
| All in all, charming in its way. I've been bumping into it
| every now and then for the past decades, being fascinated by
| the discussions, while never having consider to sign-up
| breck wrote:
| Excited!
|
| But I can't remember my password. The page http://lambda-the-
| ultimate.org/user/password
|
| is returning: user error: Duplicate entry ''
| for key 'name' query: INSERT INTO users (pass, created,
| changed, uid) VALUES ('[redactedByBreck]', '1661955449',
| '1661955449', '53004') in
| /home/ltu/www/includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66.
| warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in
| /home/ltu/www/modules/user.module on line 174. warning:
| Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by
| (output started at /home/ltu/www/includes/common.inc:384) in
| /home/ltu/www/includes/common.inc on line 192.
| nilsb wrote:
| At first glance this looks like a site that should be easily
| cacheable, at least for non-logged-in users.
|
| Also, I'm surprised this isn't using HTTPS.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Welcome to the web of 2004. It was a magical place full of
| uncached PHP applications, raw exposed MySQL servers, and nary
| an SSL cert in sight.
| cpurdy wrote:
| Yes, but it makes up for the lack of HTTPS by using plain text
| passwords.
|
| /s
|
| (Sorry, I initially forgot the sarcasm indicator.)
| maweki wrote:
| The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete
| your request.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I thought static typing was supposed to solve these issues!
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| they are using drupal and php, maybe it can be solved by
| static typing !
| goldenkey wrote:
| Just put a cat on a keyboard treadmill and supply a
| constant influx of sardines and tuna. The typing will never
| cease!
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Wouldn't that be dynamic typing?
| shahbazac wrote:
| Unfortunately most of the comments are about site reliability.
|
| This used to be an absolutely fantastic forum. I was a young comp
| sci graduate who somehow finished school without taking any
| programming language theory courses. I used to read this every
| single day. At one point I had every book ever written on ML
| (ocaml, sml, etc) and most written about various lisps. To this
| day I love how TAPL was written (Types and Programming Languages
| by Pierce). I loved the expansive nature of Concepts, Techniques,
| and Models of Computer Programming by Van Roy. Some books were
| discussed so often that they were simply referred to by their
| abbreviations.
|
| There were serious academics, PHD students, industry folks and
| newbies like myself who could not even understand most abstracts,
| much less the full papers.
|
| I once asked if a new forum could be created for novices like
| myself so I could ask my dumb little questions. I was instead
| encouraged to ask my questions in the main forum :)
|
| For a short while there was a related user group in NYC where
| people would discuss type theory at random diners.
| spindle wrote:
| It was SO good, and no doubt will be again in the future :-) I
| have so much respect for Ehud Lamm and the other people who run
| it.
|
| Sadly, two of its best commentators have died recently - John
| Shutt (famous in some circles for writing about fexprs, and
| also a brilliant mind on several other topics including quantum
| mechanics and history of mathematics) and Thomas Lord.
| numeromancer wrote:
| It finally came up but the links to older articles are dead.
| cpurdy wrote:
| It's just not the same if the home page appears within the first
| minute.
|
| I feel like we've lost something special here ...
| donw wrote:
| Does that mean the previous version was really Lambda the
| Penultimate?
| goldenkey wrote:
| Lambda the Antepenultimate ;-)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Considering half of the comments are listing the shortcomings of
| the current site, its design and anything related to badness of
| the site...
|
| Why not collaborate and re-implement the site from ground up, or
| at least improve iteratively, if it's _that_ easy?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Because they don't control the site.
| bayindirh wrote:
| However, there's a dedicated forum for such discussions.
| Maybe coordinate and offer help, no?
|
| [0]: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/forum/2
| pjmlp wrote:
| Bikesheding is easy, doing the work not so much.
| [deleted]
| mtnygard wrote:
| Great to see this return! I had assumed it was just dead for
| good.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Any writeup or details on the actual setup and environment?
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Tldr (and to prevent further HNing):
|
| > _LtU has experienced a long period of downtime recently. Its
| software infrastructure was outdated enough that it became
| difficult to maintain when problems arose. It has now been
| migrated to a brand new environment. It should be much more
| stable from now on._
|
| I would've enjoyed further details, but that's all there is in
| this post. The site still appears to render as three-column holy
| layout, even on mobile. Not that there's anything wrong with that
| apart from having to scroll. What's that red-orange XML button
| for btw when the remainder is lovely minimal, retroish black/blue
| and white?
| un_ess wrote:
| > What's that red-orange XML button for btw
|
| it's the very old logo for RSS feed
|
| https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/c.php?g=28298&p=174225 has a
| few generations of RSS logos
| brettermeier wrote:
| So stable it won't load... EDIT: Ahhh... nearly 30 seconds later
| something is happening
| exfalso wrote:
| I truly wonder, in the age of free CDNs and basically
| completely static content, why stability is even a question
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| I see people worry about technology replacing developers.
|
| I don't think it will ever happen because of how grossly
| incompetent most companies are. It would give big tech an
| advantage, everyone else will continue employing developers
| because they don't know any better.
| crubier wrote:
| People who like to program are gonna program
| dontlaugh wrote:
| In fact, generating static HTML for every comment may be more
| in the spirit of functional programming.
| jasode wrote:
| _> and basically completely static content_
|
| If one looks at the Wayback Machine's snapshot of this
| thread's blog post, the right sidebar of recent comments and
| links appear to be _dynamically generated_.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220831120513/http://lambda-
| the...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| a cron-job that hourly scrapes comments and pushes the
| sidebar as html to s3 would be just fine, thanks. Who needs
| minute-by-minute playback if it requires dedicated machines
| to admin, and slows down delivery of content when under
| load.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Seems a bit over-engineered to involve the cloud. Put it
| in a file on disk instead.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I normally think that. But I've really enjoyed hosting in
| s3. It's painless and fast.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Given the choice between running a few coherent scripts
| to host my niche community site and architecting a high-
| performance community content distribution platform with
| an AWS account and variable, uncapped costs, I too would
| choose the latter.
|
| But that's also why I don't stand up a lot of these
| sites. Maybe it's overkill?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It really seems people hate hosting in s3.
|
| It was way faster to push my html than it was to stand up
| a server, set up https, etc, and host it myself.
|
| But the point I wanted to make was that static content is
| painfully easy to host and almost infinitely scalable by
| itself
| smcl wrote:
| I think LtU is fairly low-traffic normally, so even though
| the content is (probably) relatively static other than the
| comments it might not make sense for them to design it for
| extreme volumes of traffic. And given that this link was
| probably submitted to HN, a few subreddits and possibly more
| sites it's easy to imagine they suddenly got that kind of
| volume.
| ebiester wrote:
| ...except that it fairly regularly gets an influx of HN
| submissions.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah it gets submissions, but it doesn't usually sit at
| the top of the front page for an hour (+ whatever other
| sites this news item got submitted to)
| wrycoder wrote:
| I'd imagine that the average load isn't heavy, so designing for
| the HN Hug would be overkill.
|
| Edit: loaded two seconds for me.
| exfalso wrote:
| was about to say
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| HN seems to have given it a hug of death and the page came back
| after 60 seconds completely mangled, oh the irony I guess!
| debugnik wrote:
| That's not (just) the hug of death, it's been loading this
| badly for years, at least to me. I think this change simply
| hasn't improved it that much.
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(page generated 2022-08-31 23:00 UTC)