For the first half of the summer, I took the online Functional Programming Principles in Scala course on Coursera. I should probably point out that I didn’t take the $50 official I’d heard good things about the language, mostly from Dick Wall on Java Posse podcasts, and it seemed like a good way to try functional programming again after a brief, rather unpleasant, introduction to Lisp in college. Overall, my main goals were to a) re-acquaint myself with functional programming and b) get a basic, can-start-on-some-code-now understanding of Scala.
Month: August 2014
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It’s not the money
A couple of months ago, Mayday.us launched a big crowdfunding push to raise a crapton of money to form their own Super PAC, meant to fund and support candidates who would run on campaign platforms of reducing the influence of Super PAC money in elections. The overall goal, reduce corruption in federal politics, is a great agenda, but a SuperPAC built around limiting how much money people can spend in elections isn’t actually solving problems with American democracy. (more…)