Spacemacs[0] with its F# layer enabled is also painless to set up, if that's more your cup of tea:

http://blog.nikosbaxevanis.com/2015/04/25/fsharp-on-emacs-wi...

[0] http://spacemacs.org/

> [static typing] feels like it's in the way between components and results in some boilerplate, verbosity, and overly tight coupling

Just curious, is this with regards to Elm / ML-style static typing specifically, or were you talking about it in combination with languages like C#/Java/etc?

I'm an elm noob, but I've been using F# for a good while, and its ML style of static typing is almost like the exact opposite experience of working with things like Java. Significantly less code, less boilerplate, and more expressive[0][1]. For example, one of the coolest features of F# that really showcase this, are type providers:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Seth-Juarez/Type-Providers-i...

With them, you can leverage F#'s type system to automatically infer the structure and type of any external data source. Which means practically zero boilerplate or "ORMs" needed for things like reading-from/writing-to databases, making web api calls, parsing json/xml, or even interfacing with packages from entirely different languages like R [2].

So static typing can definitely have a lot of cool/practical benefits besides just catching bugs that make life easier, while still maintaining the flexible/lightweight feel of languages like python. However languages like C++ and Java have definitely seemed to have given it a bad name for a while, and haskell's whole tie-in with abstract math hasn't historically made it very accessible for us average programmers to notice all the tricks it has up its sleeve.

Elm is still young and I'm a total novice to it, but after working in F#, I'm definitely sold on it and like where it's going.

[0] https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/series/why-use-fsharp.html

[1] https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/4971-domain-driven-desi...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BOST3W88-Y

I haven't directly compared them to atom recently, but I've found these emacs themes to be pretty comparable:

https://github.com/jonathanchu/atom-one-dark-theme

https://github.com/NicolasPetton/zerodark-theme

https://github.com/nashamri/spacemacs-theme (not really an atom/dark-one clone, but pretty good nonetheless)

The F# support is what got me to try vscode at all. Before that, I was skeptical about all js-based editors (being an emacs guy), but I was pleasantly surprised at how well this vscode+ionide setup works.

Visual Studio is still a bit nicer with regards to handling all the .fsproj stuff, and visually showing you the order of your files, but the editing itself on vscode is definitely on-par with it.

I bought a kobo ereader over a kindle not too long ago, precisely because it supported this font. I tend to prefer Comic Sans[0] over it a bit though, and use Pointfree[1] on all my code editors. None of those make reading completely smooth experience of course, but they do provide a noticeable improvement over traditional serif text.

I'd say having a large line spacing, an unjustified text layout, and a darker/lower-contrast[2], all help more than the font choice itself, but any tiny optimization is helpful.

[0] as a former graphic designer, it actually took me a while to get comfortable with the idea that I found Comic Sans useful for anything, lol

[1] http://www.dafont.com/pointfree.font

[2] https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11

I was responding to the parent who said:

I wish there were (more?) people who feel about software like Steve Wozniak feels about hardware. Because it is an art, a pursuit of perfection.

Didn't mention anything about shipping popular software, so I'm not sure where you're getting that metric from, but it's completely irrelevant to what OP was describing, and uncle bob fits OP's description perfectly. His talks show how passionate he is about code as a craft, and how he wants to strive for perfection. The popularity of his code doesn't take away from that (not to mention that Jobs played a significant role on Woz's end for that, so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison either). The fact that Martin has good rationales to support his ideas is just an added bonus in that regard. I get the impression that he's disliked more just because people have a fear of falling into the 'java culture' than because of his actual arguments.

Also, Linus is nothing like Woz other than their shipping of popular products. Nothing against the guy, I'm sure we're all grateful for his work, but he doesn't seem to display the same kind of childlike wonderment of his craft like woz does.

Check out the guys over at 8th light: http://blog.8thlight.com/

Uncle Bob in particular (the author of Clean Code[0], The Clean Coder[1], and the Clean Coders videos[2]) is a lot like Wozniak.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsman...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Clean-Coder-Conduct-Professional-Progr...

[2] http://cleancoders.com/

Dart only looks like java (this was a deliberate design choice to increase familiarity and ease learning/adoption), but it works a lot more like ruby and go.

I've been wondering, has there been any research directly comparing the effects of tDCS with modafinil and/or any other nootropics like piracetam?

Agreed. Up until recently, I too used to prefer working with raw HTML... then I started working on a couple large apps, tried polymer/angular, and ended up gaining a new-found appreciation for frameworks like react/mithril/mercury.

The cost of abstracting away the DOM isn't as much as I would've expected compared to the cognitive overhead of switching back and forth between languages, making sure everything is linked up nicely, as you normally would. There are a few times when that abstraction can lead to annoying hidden bugs, but overall I've found the workflow to be much nicer.

This has already been added to Lollipop:

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/exclusive-android-l-lo...

> I think I'd miss patterns like `if (arr.length) { ... }`

At least for this particular example, dart supports an 'isNotEmpty' property on all iterables[0], so it'd just be this:

    if (arr.isNotEmpty) { ... }

The core libraries support a lot of useful properties like that.

[0] https://api.dartlang.org/apidocs/channels/stable/dartdoc-vie...

Been using optional typing for almost a year now with Dart, and it's pretty awesome. Really hoping this comes to python!