Would be great to be able to reconstruct the whole story in the style of the images as a comic book or animation. Might be a nice job for the generative models of the future.

It's true that pipes are more readable, and for many cases they will be the better option, but the example of nested functions just doesn't hold.

That's like saying someone would use this:

   $result = $arr |> fn($x) => array_column($x, 'tags') |> fn($x) => array_merge(...$x) |> array_unique(...) |> array_values(...)

which is harder to reason about than the nested functions.

   array_values( array_unique( array_merge( ...array_column($arr, 'tags') ) ) );

or

   array_values(
     array_unique(
       array_merge(
         ...array_column($arr, 'tags')
       )
     )
   );

It is more readable and better option — you have to parse it from the innermost function to the outermost just to understand what it's doing. With the pipe, it's more straightforward: you read it step by step — do this, then that, then the next — just like how you'd naturally read instructions.

Why didn't you format the pipes, too?

  $result = $arr
    |> fn($x) => array_column($x, 'tags')
    |> fn($x) => array_merge(...$x)
    |> array_unique(...)
    |> array_values(...)

vs

   array_values(
     array_unique(
       array_merge(
         ...array_column($arr, 'tags')
       )
     )
   );

With pipes you have linear sequence of data transformations. With nested function calls you have to start with innermost function and proceed all the way top the outermost layer.

Because they were already formatted that way to begin with.

The pipe syntax is much more readable than nested function calls when you need additional arguments for intermediate functions. With nested functions it becomes hard to see which functions those arguments belong to even if you try to help it with formatting.

> so they are more memory efficient

They can be. It depends on the language, interpreter, compiler, and whether you do anything with those intermediate variables and the optimiser can get rid of them.

I thought we are talking about PHP8.5:)

Ah, I thought we were talking more generally about PL constructs that let you avoid intermediate variables, apologies :)

Good point. I would refer to another (similar) metric, which could be called "IDE-search-ability): it extends greppability, by adding some more conventions which work well with your (your company's) IDE.

There is a huge difference between game theoretic optimal strategy and actual profitable strategy due to the human nature of the players. I imagine a professional poker player as someone who certainly knows the odds (math of the poker game in general), but is also very good in interpreting his opponents behavior (which would minimize the information revealed by them, but could they do it completely?). There are so many biases which even professional players have to overcome, that in my opinion poker is strongly psychological game. Also because of that I think that online poker and live poker are slightly different games.

Well, what came to my head pretty quickly when reading this was "there should be separate tables";) Thank you for the article, I didn't know about the statistic configuration in postgres. I can use your lesson straight away, as I'm desining a database for online gaming platform and now I'm sure that there should be separate tables for currently running and finished games:)

Also: very clear and easy to follow language, props to the author. Cheers.

Good intuition and thank you! :) Not sure if this is a good fit for you, but you could consider using the partitioning built into Postgres to split one large logical table with all your games into a "hot" partition containing the currently running games and a "cold" partition containing your finished games.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/ddl-partitioning.htm...

I will take a look, thanks :)

lovely

I don't understand something: I was taught that mutations are random, not even predictable (the latter comes from Stuart A. Kauffman book that I've read recently). How did they construct the set of "all possible mutations"? Do we even know enough on chemistry / physics level to make such claims?

Human DNA has ~3 billion base pairs, and each base pair could be switched to one of the other 3, so there are 9 billion possible single-change mutations. With 8 billion people, most having multiple mutations, most mutations exist.

So it's not the set of all possible mutations, just single base pair ones.

>With 8 billion people, most having multiple mutations, most mutations exist.

Not saying that this isn't the case, but the conclusion doesn't derive from those premises alone though.

The fact that number of people > possible mutations, or even that people have more than one each, is not enough. There could be a trillion people and still the total sum of mutations seen be a tiny subset of the 9 billion possible mutations.

The missing element is about the distribution of the mutations, whether all are equally likely or at least or are possible to arrive at, and so on. E.g. the premises could very well hold, but some compounding factor could push towards a subset of them appearing, etc.

Good point. Some mutations cause the sperm, egg, or fetus to be unviable, so those are definitely underrepresented in the population.

Perhaps it's still a useful heuristic for the purposes of rejecting a claim like "Some single mutation might cause 200 IQ and super-strength".

>How did they construct the set of "all possible mutations"?

Just a note, the outcome of a dice roll is also random, but the set of all possible roll outcomes of a dice is known, it's: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...

But "mutation" includes adding genes (or extending a gene) as well, doesn't it?

As a complete amateur I was wondering if it could be possible to use that property of light ("to always choose the most optimal route") to solve the traveling salesman problem (and the whole class of those problems as a consequence). Maybe not with an algorithmic approach, but rather some smart implementation of the machine itself.

If somehow you can ensure that light can only reach a point by travelling through all other points then yes.

It's basically the same way you could use light to solve a maze, just flood the exit with light and walk in the direction which is brightest. Works better for mirror mazes.

Google up 'soap film steiner tree' for a fun, well-known variant of this.

Then follow it up with https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf . While reality can "solve" these problems to some extent it turns out that people overestimate reality's ability to solve it optimally.

Sounds like some of the trendy analogy computing approaches, like this one for example:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2023/0...

This is pretty likely, it's been done with DNA: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15555757/

Physics contains a lot of 'machinery' for solving for low energy states.

This sounds a bit like LIDAR implementations, I assume you mean something similar at a smaller scale, where physical obstacles provide a "path" representation of a problem space?

Yup, something like that came to my mind first: create a physical representation (like a map) of the graph you want to solve and use physics to determine the shortest path. Once you have it you could easily compute the winning path's length etc.

That's why I use to claim that for me everything is a priori natural. Additionally I disagree every time I hear that "culture is the opposite of nature" (not sure where it comes from, but seems to be a well-grounded philosophical concept). For me it can't be so by the rules of logic alone.

On the other side: we have a lot of taboos in the language/culture and not all of them are bad in terms of social well-being or happiness of individuals (the very simple example is that we sometimes lie to our kids). And I think that what we hide behind those taboos tends to emerge as "unnatural" or rather usually "supernatural". I also usually don't agree that we don't need a revolution in physics, but I understand it is so successful in creating all those working machines and we have to maintain them... ;)

It could be a great introduction to the metaverse. Imagine adding the interior spaces by making the doors and windows openable. Then allow for more and more interactions. A lot could be done by algorithms (image recognition, etc.), but I think a lot of users would be interested in "building this new world". Adding procedurally generated spaces through portals would be a great next step. We are not far away from being able to "create a castle described by X in Y mixing painting style of Z and sculpture style of Ź". Maybe transforming between these styles and others in time.