
Destroy All Software relaunches - pg_bot
https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts
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scribu
I watched the introduction video and the author made a surprising claim: that
deciding if a string of characters is valid Python code is fundamentally
simpler than deciding if it's valid code in some other language.

In more precise terms, the assertion is that Python's grammar belongs to the
context-free class of languages in Chomsky's hierarchy.

Here's an interesting discussion about that and the more philosophical
question "what is valid code?" on comp.theory:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/comp.theory/nJzOyRnA...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/comp.theory/nJzOyRnAP3k/AInZxo48FNIJ)

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mikekchar
I don't really have time to watch a video at the moment, but I'm not really
sure what the significance is. If you allow look-ahead, I would think that
most popular languages can be parsed with an LALR(2) parser (e.g. yacc/bison).
I've even implemented the SIP protocol with an LALR(K) (antlr) parser and SIP
is insane :-). I often wonder about Ruby, especially with the leading period
that's allowed. But there are a lot languages with _really_ simple grammars
out there. I can't imagine that python is anywhere near the top of the list.
In practical terms, simple grammars make it easy to write tools. I suppose you
can also save stack space if you have simple grammars, which may be
significant in some situations. Other than that, I'm not sure why it matters.
Can you elaborate a bit more?

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scribu
I don't think there's any great significance behind it.

I guess I jumped at the idea because it seemed to provide a simple theoretical
explanation as to why Python is easier to grok than other languages which
don't have context-free grammars.

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gary_bernhardt
Yep, that was my motivation: to hint at deeper connections to programming at
large, rather than focusing on technical concerns that are confined to parser
implementation and therefore esoteric to an outsider.

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mkumm
Love the site, but $348 a year feels really steep. Glad I purchased most of
the library before the pricing model change.

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lojack
I think thats why he charges per month. Its pretty easy to go through an
entire seasons worth of videos in under a month. I found $29 for a seasons
worth of videos to be worth it. He used to charge per season with no
subscription, and before that it was subscription based.

I'm more curious about how frequently he's going to be releasing videos. If
its less than 2-3 a week, I'd probably just opt to wait until the season is
over.

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s_kilk
> If its less than 2-3 a week, I'd probably just opt to wait until the season
> is over.

Apparently it's going to be twice per month

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coldcode
This is basically an ad. Is this worth discussing?

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reustle
I was actually hoping this was about destroying the concept of
software/product "relaunches".

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PeterWhittaker
Yeah, that's how I read it, too. Given that there is no actual article, the
headline should be changed to "Relaunch of Destroy All Software" (which I
think I would have ignored).

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LukeShu
I agree on both counts; but the latter only because I wasn't aware of “Destroy
All Software” beforehand. Perhaps “Relaunch of "Destroy All Software" video
series"? It conveys more information, while being reasonably likely that I
would click it.

