[HN Gopher] Lambda the Ultimate is now running in a new, more st... ___________________________________________________________________ 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 Its | software infrastructure was outdated enough that it became | difficult to maintain when problems arose.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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-31 23:00 UTC)