In this podcast I discuss Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-five. I then talk a little about Erlang, the computer language. As always, I end with an attempt to reconcile and compare these apparently dissimilar concepts.
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In short, postmodernist literature takes everything with a large grain of salt, and the stories are often a commentary on the story itself. (like a recursive function) (e.g.: "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book.")
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his.
As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever clocks said -- and calendars.
All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet.
The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty
"There's more to life than what you read in books," said Weary.
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
One scout hung his head, let spit fall from his lips. The other did the same. They studied the intinitesimal effects of spit on snow and history.
Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of raspberry sorbet.
Rosewater told a psychiatrist: "I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living."
So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.
"That's the attractive thing about war," said Rosewater. "Absolutely everybody gets a little something."
"I'm afraid I don't read as much as I ought to." said Maggie.
"We're all afraid of something," Trout replied. "I'm afraid of cancer and rats and Doverman pinschers"
And then Russians came on motorcycles, and they arrested everybody but the horses.
So it goes. (appears 106 times in the novel)
There used to be a dog named Spot, but he died. So it goes.
The champagne was dead. So it goes.
The water was dead. So it goes. Air was trying to get out of that dead water. Bubbles were clinging to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.
based on a one day training session with Kevin Smith @kevsmith designed by Ericsson in 1986 to support big fault-tolerant applications, released open source in 1998. Stands for Ericsson Language.
All this happened, more or less. spawn(Module, Function, Args) -> pid
Pack a lot of meaning in a few lines: He said that everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky. "But that isn't enough anymore."
1> A = [1,2,3,4,5]. [1,2,3,4,5] 2> [X || X <- A, X rem 2 == 0]. [2, 4]
immutable variables - Billy Pilgrim - we find out more about him (and in the process ourselves). This consistency allows us to depend on the narrator more, as we depend on an erlang program more that state will not change in the middle.
functional - jumping in history, future, and dreams, which can all live on their own and can be used independent of one another.
"He is in a constant stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he's going to have to act in next." that's like Inboxes and message passing in Erlang.
So it goes. The ending of an Erlang line could be , ; or .
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