gtycomb

Here in Nevada, my experience is that Walmart's online business and delivery is strongly superior. It has been a refreshing thing to see a massive global company turn around and do something very right.

So many there are. Starting with basic Probability, this lecture series is a good first intro.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articl...

Or starting from the basics, and learning how to actually do the number crunching, this is unusually good (Stewart, Introduction to numerical solution of Markov Chains):

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/5640.html

Robert Gallager's MIT lecture series, very well presented, titled Principles of Digital Communications, takes you on another train based on Markov Chains (Kalman filters, etc).

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...

There are lessons to learn from it. The dials, knobs, sliders, the whole shape of the thing -- the gravitas, speaks oodles of cash and it looks well worth it to a CIO. These days we have web pages. A web page with right look and feel can mint money too.

Any idea how the graphics gets rendered on the brower here? Is there a javascript library for this?

I see further interesting graphics from the author here: https://github.com/zalo/MathUtilities

> FORTAN

I have not thought of FORTAN as legacy because whenever I need to look at very old FORTRAN code I am looking at mathematical structures such as matrices and vectors. At that point I am not thinking of FORTRAN anymore but another language (such as linear algebra) which is few hundred years old but still so crisp in a world of numerical computing.

HOWEVER: I cannot say the same about ABAP or Java that initially began to take shape in an enterprise system 20 years back. Then I have to go through reams of code that is truly legacy, hard to navigate through years of modifications, dependent heavily on local contexts, personal perferences, etc.

You are looking at one of the great lost opportunites for hacker enterprenuers. Cities/state agencies depend on cio-purchasing managers to help maintain their IT, and this ends up in third-party handshakes i.e jobs run by very specialised outsourcing outfits who know how to market here. It takes a different type of management mindset to turn this around but things are entrenched firmly for change. The agencies will keep getting the '80s technology with no end in sight.

Basic plumbing may be picked up by almost anyone and by and large we call a professional plumber to fix the leak.

thank you, this helps. The question comes because I do not have a handle on react.js and I do know something about Vue.js.

How similar is this with Nuxt.js?

Between you and what OP is saying, I think there is this something thing else also. Core software development activity (UI, databases, messaging, web servers, configuring legacy systems, testing, release and delivery, etc) is helped by people sitting together on an agile track. However for some software development this also means architecting the product itself, an aspect that is crucial to a company's survival too. In a company building a demand management product, I need to learn and understand the market, consumers, sales processes, our internal systems that manged these before drafting the demand models, fine tune the methodology, etc before anyone really build the software product/services that reach the end-user. And there is a cycling back and forth between the two activities as we move ahead to get things right. I had no product manager or analyst who could really help with the product itself that the company wants. This latter part is where where I have a very hard time sitting in an open space with 10 people talking on the phone or getting pulled into frequent meetings.

Going along with the other two helpful comments, take for example math that C. F. Gauss deemed to be the "Queen of Sciences", i.e the basis of it all. Math as we know it comes to us through counting with numbers. What are numbers? We find that mathematicans rely on set theory as a foundation of numbers. What are sets? They use set theory to study numbers either through Zermolo-Farenkel set theory or the Neumann-Bernays-Godel set theory. You see what we are getting into -- we cannot depend on just one set theory foundation to explain numbers conclusively. We see two strands of set theory that stay separate. Philosophy poses questions beyond what mathemticians get into: Will there be numbers if the whole universe is just empty space with no "things" in it including human minds? Are numbers so fundamental that they have to exist?

a passing remark -- by all means read Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' because it is readable as the article says. In the metaphysical world it can be hard cut through the work of its great thinkers. A sensible way to approach Wittgenstein is to start with a college level introductory book on Metaphysics to get the foundational ideas, Categories and Forms of Aristotle and Plato. Some modern philosopher writers can walk us through this nicely (Michale Loux from U of Chicago, his introductory writings or some other perhaps). What might be modern now (Trope Theory, World of States of Affairs, Stage Theory etc), their instigators first came to reject the basics of the ancients but in the end they actually dissect the work of the ancients for us. Travel to Wittgenstein along this path, read him only towards the end. One needs numbers and algebra before calculus.

> Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though?

This comes to mind. In my early school years, a bunch of us kids were really close. We did so many things together at school and all summer in our neighborhood. However it is fascinating to me now that we didn't share anything about our Moms, Dads or Grandparents, the people in our background we were closest to. All of that was implicit, there were no need to discuss the daily lives of ones we knew intimately and loved us so much. So with Paul, I'd think. After all Paul studied under Gamaliel and he would have known how to research and share with the world the biographical details of a subject beyond what people just knew from the Gospels, or word of mouth, at least (they must have known more as they all lived closer to the events). What I am getting at is, he just preached what that really mattered for him.

Whenever I read an article like this one, this question is the one that remains.

I am truly moved by what this small (probably one, maybe two person?) team has accomplished here. Just look at their code and its organization, while noting how languages like Rust, Nim, and Go show us how to tackle the software complexity in various software domains. Having been in the enterprise field for a handful of decades, I am convinced that work such as this is signaling a brave new world of software development that is just ahead of us -- small teams, phenomenal productivity, which needs to combine with a grasp of architecture processes to taken on complex IT stuff. After having been in the SAP, Dessault PLM, and Oracle database-centric industries for some decades now, and I am convinced that a new generation of software software engineers with imagination and willingness to learn aspects of the businesses they serve, they will take on these sprawling legacy systems with much less effort than we think it should take right now. Exiting times are ahead for those who use these opportunities, I'd say.

I feel the pain as I read your line. One great disaster in my career early on was my going into Haskell, and also Prolog, after frustration with Java (remember Java Beans etc?) in an enterprise project. Whereas Perl5 (this was in the biotech/genomics industry) and later Python did the real work. Still I cannot forget the impressive functional power while coding Ocaml.

> The biggest impediment I see is that these language communities are more concerned about the abstract mathematical properties of the language and things like tooling get neglected

Is it really so. I am only asking. A mathematical model allows deeper insight on structure (backed by hundreds of years of prior mathematical thought), and we then sugar it appropriately for users. Just like civil engineers who learn Strength of Materials etc mathematically before they design the bridges we drive over daily.

Tooling is one of my gripes also. There was a time decades ago when I couldn't go beyond compiling the simple hello world example. This has gotten much better after many years. Same with Haskell. Is this due to difficulties in getting the necessary financial support.

> there’s no difference between ridiculously shitty code ...

I side with you on this because of something I see often: At the end of the day what the CIO (a purchasing manager or the budget signer) asks about is who killed the fire for the day. When you are the good fireman, no one wonders about the quality of hose you used ..

The last paragraph has something lovely to take home:

"Stravinsky, in discussing ''the art of combination which is composition'' quoted the mathematician Marston Morse: ''Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and in which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth.'' Morse, Stravinsky says, could as well have been talking about music. It is not only in the clarity of things, but in their beauty and mystery that the two arts join."

Thank you to you also. I had read Hesse only because someone gave me the used books too. A fine gift it is.

Those were the days. When Hess wrote The Glass Bead Game, Mann gave us The Magic Mountain, Camus had The Plague, and Kafka ...

Yet what remain closest to me from my days of enjoying their writings is just an essay by Herman Hess titled "Thou Shalt not Kill". Hess, the man and his times, seems to unravel its depth and mystery here. (And Mann's short story, "A Man and his Dog" has a similar staying power for me)

R's tidyverse, along with the numerous R packages/documentation developed and tested over a long period of time, are efficient too. Thankful to see both Python and R thrive.

After I used ESS with Emacs starting many years ago, I haven't opened RStudio. I know RStudio is very very nice, and ESS is a very complete option too.

I use Fedora Linux on my laptop. What does this mean for the Fedora Project? Any thoughts on an alternate OS with a lesser memory footprint than Fedora? It takes about 1 GB to boot up Fedora 27 now.

And what's the future for CentOS?

Thanks for saying it right. This will help me remember.

Only a data point here -- after I read about this license change on HN, it took me about 2 hours to struggle over the issue, discuss with my team, and switch from MongoDB to PostgreSql. We are very lucky in that we were into this project for only two months, prototyping and learning the ropes with MongoDB schema. With PostgreSql now, everyone feels secure in a familiar territory. Yes, we have to make changes and its not rocket science to move over.

The issue is not about having to buy a license here. The problem is the uncertainty with a product whose license agreement is being switched over mid-stream. It makes me weary of what else might happen with their license structure further down the road.

About Bach's involvement and contributions in organ building technology of his age, the point of view comes from here discussed at length:

"Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven" by John Eliot Gardiner. He is a reliable source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eliot_Gardiner

A detailed comparison with modern music comes from a recent author whose name slips my mind. He taught at Columbia University, a journalist, his entire book is on the relationship of Bach with all kinds of recorded music in digital age.

The Bach Cantata here is marvelously moving, so let me put in my $0.02. When Bach wrote his music, he was also at the cutting edge of the technology of his age. The pipe organs were great accomplishments of that mechanical age. The churches then embraced the technology and music as new wave churches of our age (and with similar resistance).

Bach was an ultimate nerd, adept in technology of his generation. He knew about organ construction like few did and he earned an income as consultant from pipe organ construction projects that required much risk taking and investment. One has to be technical enough to know a lot about the physics of sound producing, metallurgy (look into the tin/copper content of the pipes to make sure the builder hasn't taken shortcuts etc. ), inspect bellows, air controllers, and suggest design changes, etc.

To the ordinary towns people this might have looked like Moog synthesizer or Hillsong innovations of today. Lets not forget that Bach faced significant career threatening opposition on the musical structure of these very Cantatas that were composed when he was Cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig where he taught music. His music was too new for most of them too...

I stumbled on this (--user flag) only the other day and it simplified things immensely. Too much information, various ways of doing things explained in bits and pieces over the decades makes it look confusing.

Often there is a very simple way, even in Python packaging and deploying. In my situation the easiest way began along these lines --

1. Install python3 for the local user from the source distribution (make sure you have compilers etc that the configure check lists out)

2. After compiling the sources and finishing with 'make install', make Python available in your local search path

3. And use pip with this magical --user flag as needed. No virtual env, conda, etc etc.

4. Leave HOMEPATH etc alone as this conflicts with the setup of the admin's system wide installs (when you su)

Things can go smoothly with pip alone.

"... Popular Electronics. It featured a new computer called the Altair 8800, which ran on a powerful new chip. Paul looked at me and said: “This is happening without us!” That moment marked the end of my college career and the beginning of our new company, Microsoft. It happened because of Paul."

What a magical moment, those youthful fancies. I know that very spot they stood and it still is the same I guess -- all the traffic on either side of the newsstand, street singers, students running to their classes, eating places to decide upon, bookstores ... and the ideas that bloomed from there are so many.

Bye, Mr. Allen.