mkramlich

I'm the author of a book about a space pirate so I got a particular thrill about that moment in the book/movie. (The Dread Space Pirate Richard.)

What if it contains secrets Man was not meant to know?

George Clinton quote? rang a bell. won't google, more natural.

if this is who I think it is, Dan Bricklin, I want to chime in to say thank you for VisiCalc, sir! I was a user and big fan of your work.

for the kids/newbs: effectively the (co)inventor of The Spreadsheet. and consider that spreadsheets were easily the killer app for the first PC's, thus giving them much more business value, in turn causing more money to flow in, helping to create many more paying jobs, etc, in a happy snowball effect which leads to Linux, Google, AWS...

here's where you might say, "sorry, different Bricklin." oops

good point. reasonable. the making of generalizations does not outlaw other generalized groups or categories.

an entire side discussion about Bayes predictions could be entered here. where having a few rough rules would yield a 90% beneficial prediction. add a 2nd rule or exception boosts your yield to 95%. add a 3rd rule/exception boosts your yield to 97%. and so on...

observation of reality. not theory. not wish/want/should/ought. actual reality.

trust me, if you're smart and wise then the older you get you should be getting more and more reality-based in your decisions. not theory. not ideal. not PC. reality.

Google seems perfect for two kinds of programmers/engineers:

1. you are 20-something, white or Asian, fresh out of college, Jewish/Stanford/Ivy/otherwise-2nd-gen-pampered-background, male, maybe still in college or 1st startup AND you are willing to move anywhere they want, do anything they tell you, you have no spouse, no kids, no ill parents, no local geo investments, no major illnesses, not multi-careered, you're still impressed by Shiny/Words, etc.

2. you are 30/40-ish but now established as a Major Name (Linus, Vint, Guido, etc.) and/or owner of a company Google wants to buy, and therefore $M+ talks loudly

if you don't fit (approximately) into one of those two boxes, then Google is a non-ideal fit for you

META: downvote me all you want HN, I do not care what the GroupMind's Allowed Opinion algorithm here thinks anymore

one word. or 4 letters. understand them and you understand everything else about this issue:

MITM

ie. they have such an extreme scale that often what's best for them is also unique to them, so doesn't really work/apply/be-appreciated anywhere else. They want sharp folks. But because so many, and because folks at top are so sharp, and because their scale is so gigantic, they want sharp drones. Color inside the lines, just really really really fast and perfect. Getting something 1% wrong costs them millions more than otherwise. Which is different than the mindset of the vast majority of other companies where getting something even 91% right means making millions of dollars more for the shareholders, than otherwise. The rest is details.

I awake. It is dark.

Therefore when I awake it is always dark.

Problem. Mismatch.

Turns out that if I awake between the local hours of 5am and 7pm then it is light. Otherwise it is dark. Problem. Mismatch. Turns out, it depends on the "time zone". Also turns out, depends on whether I'm sleeping inside or outside. In a hotel room or tent. Whether in a tent or in a building room with blinds. Etc. Etc. Each devil-in-the-details helps refine the case even further. But the "bet" to make is always the most "correct" bet to make, based only on the evidence observed to date, at hand. Thus Bayes.

Thus the Turing award.

It's just as perfect and reliable as that. And just as imperfect or vulnerable as that.

Bayes is perfect but also painfully bloodily sharp-edged. Best description I have.

I'm in the middle of designing and building a system which uses Bayesian models.

One thing that struck me early is that while Bayes itself is rock solid, like arithmetic, when you go to apply it the results live or die on the quality of the models, and the relevance/realism of the evidence used to train them. GIGO.

But once you do have a good, relevant, signal-producing model, then, using it is a bit like doing a multi-dimensional lookup, or function call. Conceptually easy to understand, and, in many cases (depending, of course, on the details) cache-friendly.

> There really is no excuse. I should get off my ass and make something.

please don't make a Bitcoin exchange/bank. or anything that will take enduser's private PII or money.

the mindset to "just go make something" is admirable in some cases. on others it's not. scratching your own itch and then monetizing it is admirable. picking up a knife and thinking therefore that one can be a neurosurgeon now, is not.

too many people do the latter. the former is fine. ;-)

two words: survivorship bias

I agree that complexity is far up there. But also risk. Also long term thinking. And net cost or net profit. The more years I have under my belt, I think more and more not only about complexity, but also risk, cost, profit. Code and hardware is just a means to an end. Not the end itself.

But yes, seek the minimum amount of complexity to materialize the inherent, necessary complexity. But don't allow a drop of complexity more than that. Architecture astronauts, pattern fashionistas, I'm looking at you. KISS. Spend your complexity dollars where it gives you something you truly need or want. Don't do things Just Because.

seeing this comment on HN, made my PG, a Lisp book author, is amusing. I have to admit that while I don't do Lisp day-to-day probably my favorite Lisp book(s) were written by him. The practical hacker in me prefers Python, Java and C.

But the elegant hacker in me? Prefers Lisp. And PG captured that in his writing.

reporting in. and I remember the time before Byte existed.

engineering good. abstraction bad. my rough rule of thumb.

I know that's too high level of a description. but what I'm saying is... that you always pay the price for poor quality, rushed work, whether you pay that price in an hour, tomorrow, next week, you always do, somebody does. so better to get quality right.

however, I see lots of astronaut architecture and too-much-abstraction -- especially in all-Java/enterprise shops -- where, I see folks spending lots of time on things which objectively don't have any business value and don't objectively increase quality (reduced failure rate, reduced bug rate, etc.) instead arguably seem to increase it, or increase the complexity and quantity of moving-parts which can fail or otherwise bite people later. Quality good, quantity bad.

Simple-but-perfect is better than bigger-but-shoddy.

because web forms are hard

-- the mid-90's Perl CGI scripts are calling and they're laughing at us all.

bingo

Google: Go

Microsoft: C#

Sun/Oracle: Java

almost all others: more on their own merits, from developers eyes (Python, Perl, C++, Ruby, Rust, D, Scala, LUA, JS, etc.)

a language should have innate merits, of course, but never discount the advantages of having a single corporate entity with lots of cash and focus and a built-in install base of eyes

The flip-side of this story? Imagine what the NSA is doing. Imagine how much information the NSA is slurping up, on everybody, 24x7. Now... assuming their databases are an even more attractive target to hackers/criminals. Now assume that the folks who design/build/maintain/operate the NSA's are just as human as you and I, and therefore, are still prone to making just that one "oopsie" kind of mistake in their defenses. When that happens? All that data they slurp up falls into the hands of the hackers, criminals, people who mean you harm, etc.

Only part of the danger of what the NSA is doing due to the "what if government turns evil" scenario.

The other danger is the "what if hackers/scumbags/criminals get hold of it" scenario.

Only one of those scenarios has to happen, in order for it to hurt you. And the NSA has the very biggest pot of gold at rainbow's end, PII/fraud/blackmail-wise, of any of these systems to date. Contemplate that. Fear that. Take political action. Make day-to-day choices based on that.

pre-order = I give you money, you give me nothing (but, hypothetical promises about a future)

gotta love cool new business models

fair points

wait til they hear that Linux has a stack-based architecture. that all C-based software has a stack based architecture. threads with stacks everywhere: surprisingly fast. it's usually things like higher-level architectural patterns and algorithm choices which make a MUCH bigger impact on latency and throughput, than whether you have stacks or not.

from the historical record I'm pretty sure that the USA gov has caused/allowed more drugs/chemicals/radiation/weapons to cause more harm/deaths to innocent/civilian people than Ross ever has. I don't see any US President or Senator, etc., in jail, because of that.

example: drop tons of Agent Orange on the lands/people of Vietnam? Just an oopsie! and they move on, wipe their hands clean. People dead and children deformed. Oopsie! Our mistake. Next meeting.

> There's a huge opportunity here to have a government public works program or some other major initiative to mobilize the underclasses, but it won't be taken.

agreed. but it won't happen. they clearly do not want to. you know what I mean when I say "they". I think what "they" are doing is instead now letting the USA enter a phase of milking and rundown. The truly rich, the truly powerful, already have homes anywhere they want to in the world. Whether that's in western/northern Europe, or modern Asia, or in a micro-nation. It is in those places and nations where they are ensuring they have the government investment and infrastructure to ensure a quality way of life. They -- you know who I mean -- have already marked USA as 'deprecated' and moved on, psychologically, at least medium/long term.

which is how the web worked originally, how it was intended to be. in some ways the ecosystem has gotten better than the 90's, in others its been getting worse. too many sites are getting too cluttered, too slow, with too many moving parts and unnecessary optional tangential things forced into your face at the expense of the main dish. Text, images, forms and links -- you can move mountains with those alone. We should bias to them wherever we can, keep things as simple as we can.

you have been both very kind and very constructive. email me at groglogic@gmail.com and I'll ensure you always have free copies of all the books and audio episodes. (I did not see your email in your profile otherwise I would have sent this privately.)

consider me forewarned. if in twenty years I'm retired living on a golden yacht sailing the icy seas of Europa I hope a non-trivial portion of my income is coming from the royalties on the sales of that T-shirt.

and/or from the earnings on my book series The Dread Space Pirate Richard. (srsly)

or... savings from my day job. a good strategy has several fallbacks. :-P

ha. your welcome!

maybe turn it into a C poem and wear as a T-shirt?

I once had the following printed on a T-shirt and wore to a Meetup.com event here in Colorado, and out of the crowd an early Bell Labs alumnus (C/UNIX era) emerged and tried to recruit me:

    while (!(success = try()));

perhaps:

    void whatever(params) {
        assert assume_im_not_an_idiot_kid_please_get_off_my_lawn_been_there_done_that_have_the_shirt_thanks(params);
        ...
    }