Same here... back in 2011 or so. We needed something much more performant than WURFL. My efforts eventually became a feature/product at Akamai known as "Edge Device Characterization" (EDC) using algorithms not dissimilar to how LLMs are trained today.
I can't speak to how good the actual product is today (or even when it launched, but that's a whole 'nother story), but during development it was capable of processing 100K RPS in a footprint of ~30MB RAM with ~98% accuracy compared to WURFL as a baseline.
I've had great success with a parser-generator known as "Marpa" [1]. One of the things I particularly liked about it is how simple it made to emit accurate and useful error messages when parsing complex languages. In addition, it can handle anything that can be expressed in BNF, and it's quite fast.
I agree, as I've missed a dose here and there over the years and experienced the intense paresthesia and headaches and nausea from withdrawal.
Background: I've lived my entire adult life (and most of my teens) with severe chronic depression. In my early 20's I started taking pharmaceutical treatment, and once I found the right drug (after trying many over the course of years) my life became manageable. SSRIs helped but I experienced severe nausea on most of them, or worse. It was only when I tried SNRIs like Effexor that things started to get better. YMMV, IANAPsychiatrist, etc, etc.
A few years ago I switched from Effexor to Cymbalta. Same class of drug - The Effexor simply wasn't helping as much as it used to and the switchover was done with a long taper-down and replace period. I even bought a lab-grade scale to measure out the contents of the capsules so I could cross-over smoothly.
All that said, Cymbalta has the same withdrawal effects, on about the same time scale - a single missed dose. But I wouldn't give it up unless something better comes along. I still struggle with my depression and the SNRI is just one tool in my toolbox for managing it.
I have been taking Effexor for more than 10 years. Two years ago I thought it was no longer being effective for me so I tried to taper down and stop taking the mediation. Over a period of weeks I dropped down from 150 mg to 37.5 mg. I could not drop from 37.5 mg - I experienced complete insomnia and terrible anxiety and I started to experience tinnitus. I went back to see a psychiatrist who initially didnt believe that everything I was experiencing was due to withdrawal - I had to fill one of my old scripts and prescribe myself my original dose of Effexor to get back to some semblance of normality. My anxiety and sleep levels returned to normal but although the tinnitus lessened its still there today. I worked with my doctor and eventually decided to increase the Effexor dose and it has helped greatly with my anxiety and depression. Apparently there arent many people who have reported tinnitus as an Effexor sessation side-effect. My doctor says it must just be coincidence - anyone else experience the same thing ? Just a word of caution to anyone thinking of stopping their medication - do it slowly and with the support of a doctor. I thought I knew what I was doing but I probably reduced my dosage too quickly and maybe this ringing in my ears is the price I pay.
I experienced tinnitus when I started either Celexa or Lexapro. It started on the second day. It was pretty bad and I quit it the next day. My doctor said that she had never heard of that happening.
It's a pretty impressive process. The cable is indeed hoisted up, after being "hooked" by a device dragging along the ocean floor. I think I saw a video of this once, here's one on youtube (not the same one I saw, but seems to have the same info): https://youtu.be/m6qTk5WNq9E
Smalltalk is definitely underrated. It can be an extremely productive language, and has built-in capabilities you won't find in any "mainstream" language that make coding in it very pleasant. :)
This depends on your definition of "underrated" but I'd definitely throw Perl 5 into the ring here.
Edit: Specifically, Perl 5 + CPAN is what makes it so much better than many people think. The language itself is insanely flexible, which lends itself to extensions that greatly increase its expressiveness. IMO, if you start with Moose (from the CPAN) as part of your "core library" Perl 5 becomes a very powerful tool for writing very nice code, at any scale.
I hope that at least Cloudera will profit and thrive. Having used plain Apache components, then Hortonworks, then Cloudera... They are far and away the superior distribution, regardless of whether or not you are an "enterprise" customer.
My $employer paid Hortonworks for a support contract and I have no qualms declaring publicly that it was a total and utter scam. (We are a Java shop and know our shit)
If I go into too much detail I'll write countless pages like my internal report on why we needed to switch, but the bottom line is that Cloudera's products are well and honestly documented, while, as of last year, Hortonworks' products are simply one land-mine after another.
Their management platform (Cloudera manager) being closed-source is barely a mark on the comparison analysis when you compare it to Ambari in practice. Ambari is a bad joke and I'd rather do without it after spending significant time using it and trying to extend it.
And I could go into excruciating detail as to how Hortonworks abuses the Apache License to try and force lock-in. It's disgusting and pathetic.
I have no experience with Hortonworks, but Cloudera certainly tries hard, even though it too has plenty of issues, but then the whole "Hadoop Echosystem" is in such fast-moving flux, it's understandable.
Cloudera also makes (Apache Licensed) Impala, which IMHO is a pretty cool product.
Another company worth mentioning is Databricks, which leads Apache Spark development.
While Perl 6 was designed with English method and object names, it's a fully-Unicode-enabled language, with the ability for identifiers and even operators to be defined in any language one may desire. The name of the (currently) primary implementation is a Japanese word, "Rakudo", which is also a pun in Japanese depending on how you say and/or interpret it. Larry specifically wants Perl 6 to noy be limited by English as much as is practical (or even impractical, if you know him you'll understand - to him, code is just as much poetry and art as it is engineering!)
I can't speak to how good the actual product is today (or even when it launched, but that's a whole 'nother story), but during development it was capable of processing 100K RPS in a footprint of ~30MB RAM with ~98% accuracy compared to WURFL as a baseline.