Functional programming has a reputation for being hard to grasp. In this post, we’ll look at its core principles, abstractions, and building blocks - so that by the end, you can decide for yourself whether you really want to embark on a trip into this wonderland.

“Software design” can mean a lot of different things. It might be about the quality of the user experience, or the finer points of managing a project. But if you are facing more concrete questions, for example, “How should I divide responsibilities among these classes?” or “How do I design the API for my service layer?” - this post is for you.

Consciousness is a permanently hot topic in the philosophy of mind since Rene Descartes. Below we examine the most popular views on consciousness, encounter the famous explanatory gap that makes consciousness so elusive, find why the hard problem of consciousness is real, and point out a novel way for its solution.

Despite that there are gigabytes of writings on this topic, ranging from the recipes for managing a bunch of markdown files on GitHub to the manuals for setting up a local MediaWiki server, I will describe the solution that works for me.

This post discusses the creation of a non-trivial Enso Launcher custom command that allows to automate routine actions. Enso Launcher - is a text command interface developed by the design principles outlined by Jef Raskin, which allow to perform actions more quickly by eliminating the use of mouse and search of objects on the screen.

This post offers an example of a complex iShell command that might be practically useful. iShell is a UI tool that allows to perform various browser actions using text commands. The command below links Firefox and Emacs text editor, providing a way to conveniently save the text selected on a web page to your org capture files from a browser. Org - is a library which many Emacs users employ to keep their notes. The command uses a Windows Emacs distribution called RHO Emacs, that already integrates org interapp communication protocol into the operating system, so no additional setup is necessary.

If you have ever thought about the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, you have probably noticed such weird things as the temporal paradox, the wave-particle duality, and the Copenhagen interpretation. You may also have been puzzled by the question of why physicists cannot unify general relativity and quantum mechanics. All this has happened because quantum mechanics has gone astray, and no one wants to admit it. Although it is possible to construct a picture of the world without the strange things mentioned above, still no one gives a shift (a paradigm shift). Below, you may find a possible answer to the question of why quantum mechanics may be incomplete.

At first glance, Neon Genesis Evangelion looks like just another senseless sci-fi show. A second look, however, reveals that it’s not nearly so simple: a complex, profound, and beautiful story lies hidden beneath its seemingly superficial facade. The story doesn’t give itself up easily, thanks to the show’s extreme fragmentation and the tricks its creators use to deliberately mislead you. The powerful psychological drama on the surface may draw your attention and move you to tears. Unfortunately, all this may dim the supernova hidden in your heart - one that will blaze at full force once you grasp the whole story. The only way to uncover it is to watch NGE more than once (and probably more than twice, or even more) connecting scattered facts with the ones you already have in your memory. Even then, it’s hard to see everything, both because of how Evangelion is constructed and because some details are only available through certain third-party sources. Below, I’ll try to reconstruct the entire plot in a manner that’s concise yet complete. This is a massive spoiler, so please watch NGE at least once before reading further. The Rebuild of Evangelion movies are discussed in the final section.

There should be nothing too hard, especially if you have a good astronomical algorithm library. Nowadays we could do this using only plain JavaScript and HTML5 canvas.