What is the weirdest translation you have encountered from Google translate?
Firstly, pretty much any language that has a different word order than English will get weird translations. Take two of those, translate between them, and, because of the method of translation used (described in answers to other questions on Google Translate), you get total jibberish.Secondly, words expressing inferred meaning, but that can have other meanings as well. Google has a knack for completely missing the boat there. Mind you, getting that right requires a human brain, full command of colloquials, and life experience. Also, sentences that are complicated may cause (sometimes extremely funny) incorrect translations.Lastly, languages, like Dutch, that are not widely spoken, yield weird results in the meaning of words department, as not all the ways a word can be used are definable, not all of them have been found, or they just are not logical.Google Translate tries what it can, but perfecting it will take time, and lots of it… Nothing beats a human translator, yet (says the human translator).
What are some problems encountered when learning Haskell and how are they overcome?
I am in the process of learning Haskell, and I think one of the major problems is a lack of documentation suitable for beginners to the language. Or, perhaps, suitable for not-quite-so-rank-beginners. There are a decent number of “Intro to Haskell” books and websites out there, but once you get into libraries and how to actually design and write your own code, it quickly comes to a morass of which library do I use, how do I use it, why am I having incompatibilities, why is this paper seemingly describing to use a library I can’t find a version more recent than a decade old, etc.Another difficulty for a beginner is the theoretical relationship between Haskell and Category Theory. I took an undergraduate course in Category Theory 20 years ago, so I thought I’d get this stuff, but the Category Theory in Haskell and the Category Theory in the rest of the world don’t quite match. What I think happened is that in 1991 a paper came out describing the use of Category Theory (and specifically, monads) to model computation, and the Haskell community latched onto it. This has lead to the Haskell base library defining lots of type classes in terms of category theory (Functors, Monads, Alternatives, Oh My!), in ways which don’t quite match.Which brings to the quintessential difficulty: monads. Nobody can explain what a monad is, apparently. The excellent website What I Wish I Knew When Learning Haskell 2.3 ( Stephen Diehl ) has, as 2 paths in its “eightfold path to monad satori” to not read monad tutorials (and a 3rd path is to not write a monad tutorial). But monads are presented as key to how Haskell does a lot of things, most crucially I/O. They are an important bridge between the underlying mathematical theory and programming, so you must know them, but no one can explain them. Crucially, the category theory definition of a monad (a monad is an endofunctor [math]T[/math] on a category [math]C[/math] with two natural transformations, [math]\eta : Id_C \to T, \mu : T^2\to T[/math] that satisfy certain commutation relationships) doesn’t match up with the Haskell definition (a Monad is a Functor m with function return :: a -> m a and bind :: m a -> (a -> m b) -> m b that respect certain identities). Anyone trying to understand Haskell Monads by looking at category theory monads are just going to be confused.
Is it better to live in Germany or America?
The choice between Germany and the US depends on what you want in life. Both countries are equally high developed (US being number 4 and Germany 10) but there are some significant differences in the degree of freedom, politics, culture and geography. In the US you have more freedom: You can buy guns in a supermarket, teach your kids at home, live like the Amish, make a lot of money and pretty much say and write what ever you want. In Germany (and many other European nations) many things that US citizens consider their rights are strongly regulated: You can't own firearms or even long knifes, you have to send your kids to schools which teach an official government sanctioned curriculum (so you can't prevent your kids from learning about evolution, even if you don't believe in it), health-care and unemployment insurances are mandatory (contrary to popular believe they are not free which means you have to pay for poorer people if you make more money) and there is some censorship to free speech (mostly concerning Nazism, hate-speech and violence in games and movies). Politics seems to be a lot more emotional in the US that in Germany. I always watch with amazement US politicians and protesters who are accusing their opponents of being Nazis, Communists or both only if they want to raise or lower this or that tax. This is unthinkable in Germany, just as well as it is unthinkable that a German politician would say "I believe the earth is only 6000 years old" (Chancellor Angela Merkel for example has a PhD in Chemestry and is married to a Professor of the University of Berlin). And elections in Germany are publicly funded and not only with donations as in the US which means that German politicians don't have to be rich or spend an awful amount of time with lobbyists. I myself am living in Germany and am working as computer programmer with a masters degree at a medium sized IT company. I get payed well but I could almost earn double of what I'm making now if I moved to the US. But I went to college for free so I don't mind to pay higher taxes now and also help out the less fortunate. Plus everyone gets a minimum of 24 days of paid vacation a year which I would miss dearly. In conclusion I like to live in Germany because that country corresponds with my own ideals. The only thing I envy the US about are their always sunny beaches in California and Florida, Germany is rather cold and rainy...