nur0n

You seem like the perfect person to ask: what is a format that is close to the (apparent)simplicity of CSV, but is actually consistent?

The best visualization I could find is on pg 14 of the pdf on this page: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.10378v1

I think the phrase 'You can do what you will. But you can't will what you will.' is the correct perspective.

People are repulsed by the idea of having no free will because of their biology; meaning seems to be what drives our conscious thought. I think Terence's argument can be made simpler: You don't have the free will to choose whether the absence of free will bother you.

That being said, I hope this argument nudges you in a better direction: Trying to 'will what you will' only leads to pointless frustration(you can't change the laws of the universe). Accept this, and allow yourself to 'do what you will'. Somehow, we have the power to do this.

Give up on free will; the rest of the universe doesn't seem to be bothered over it. Best of luck, fellow lifeform.

I think 'groundbreaking AI' was used as an example of something which is (1) new and (2) requires efficient use of hardware. Of course you will need domain experts. But if the new idea requires infrastructure which has not been built and places high demands on the machine, then the project will require above average developers.

I have just started looking into Ada and it is cool to see up there with C. Does anyone know a good resource for writing fast Ada?

Can someone elaborate. I always thought that the compiler was optimized for the architecture, not the other way around. Why would an architecture be optimized for a specific compiler?

mins = 0; while(true) { wait(60); clear; print numPeople*(mins++);}. Run on a terminal hooked up to a big screen. Not exact, but it will get the point across.

Very cool! Does anyone know how this is implemented? I was thinking of doing similar by using 'dtach'. Essentially the plan was to start the terminal with dtach, and whenever I wanted to change the settings I would detach, update, and then reattach with a new terminal. Of course, my approach would add overhead if you weren't already running dtach for some other reason.

As a young person trying to build things which change the world, I appreciate the wisdom found in the link. Thanks!

How to Design Programs. It helped make explicit the very concept of mental models.

can you recommend any other blogs like this?

I think we agree on the basic point: you can't decide what the most cost effective solution is until analysis is carried out. But an effective performance analysis can't be executed without an understanding of the machine.

Lacking low level knowledge can only create blind spots in the analysis.

I agree with you for the most part. Writing poor code is fine if the code will only be run for a limited use case. But much of the power of software comes from its potential to be easily reusable and extendable. This potential is thrown away when people write poor code. At some point, it becomes detrimental to keep reusing poor code and there is no choice but to rewrite it. So writing poor code is productive work in some sense, but it is useless(almost always, in my experience) in constructing higher levels of abstraction.

The complete disregard for good design I have seen troubles me as a software engineer. When I've had to rewrite code, usually its not because I disagree with its design, but because there is no design to disagree with! IMO code design should be taught better (or at least taught at all...). Only then can someone make the judgement call of what parts can be poorly written and which parts require more care.

This next claim is anecdotal: the people which don't bother to learn even the basics of how actual machines work tend to be the same people which don't bother to properly design their code. Good design necessitates some understanding of how the machine works, it can not be accomplished through brute force pattern matching. I understand that code is becoming increasingly common and that some people have no choice but to interact with it. But if a significant portion of your income is generated through work in software, then I don't really think a valid excuse exists; you should do your job correctly. I'm not saying everyone needs to be an expert. The culture of apathy for the most basic computing principles is what troubles me, and it should trouble anyone who has to read code written by others.

Such blatant security holes are why Google resorts to measures like this: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/08/Titan-in-depth-...

best source I could find for the 'understimulation' claim was this: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/39/2/370/684049/Bored-t.... although they attribute boredom as a proxy and not a direct cause of poor health.

Basically the animal analog of the turing test?

Would "The user may delete the file at a later date" fix the issue and still remain passive? What would be the best way to word this?

But in WYSIWYG editors, you can only search for raw text correct? For instance, if I want to search for all bold text, its trivial to do so using a markup language, but I don't think there is really a way to do that with conventional word processors.

Isn't that Musk's (with Boring + Tesla) whole game plan? The demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI, I think is pretty explicit about that. The difference is that you own the 'cab' and you don't have to time any 'transit sync moment'.

If I'm not mistaken you are basically thinking of a circuit-based network (with ad-hoc 'datagrams') while Musk seems to be going for a completely datagram based network. It's an utterly genius idea, at least from a theoretical standpoint (I have no knowledge of the economic aspect).

Hmm, I disagree with some of the recommendations on this list. Even if people could agree on the overall quality of books, it is not the only factor which should be considered when choosing a book. For example, one might choose a book which is lower quality(however that might be defined) in order to use a book whose goals more closely align with those of the reader.

Not really an issue for me. Almost all of my work can be done through the terminal and through Emacs. For maximum visibility, I run a full screen terminals with large font and good contrast. I really wouldn't have it any other way, as I'm not a fan of GUIs. Of course, I still retain the ability to spin up a GUI if I am forced to do so. The only effect the screen has is that it does not entice me to watch videos (which is a great feature for a work machine).

pdf is my prefered format of storing information, after markdown and source code, of course. It allows me to portably crystallize visual information without resorting to images which completely wipe out textual information.

Thanks, I read the book some time ago. This is an excellent summary.

Not sure why this was downvoted. I don't see anything in the design which shows that the language is designed for math. The math functions included in the standard library seem basic, even when compared to general purpose languages. I don't mean to rag on someone's work, but why would I use this over Sage/MATLAB/R?

I was looking through the comments hoping to find a tool like this. You did not let me down, fellow HNer! I try to use the command line whenever I can. Somehow there is a command line tool for just about everything, except for the obvious cases where it not useful like visual media and graphs.

Shouldn't it be: Half of the US's _farming_ jobs vanished in one lifetime?

Code and blog posts are just two ways of crystallizing ideas. In the same way that not everyone can write good code, not everyone can translate ideas clearly into blog format.

Thanks for the link, I try to study math on my own, but it easy to lose sight of the big picture without a mentor. I found high quality advice in the blog. Cheers!