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sbensuon A room temperature Li2O-based lithium-air battery enabled by a solid electrolyte

If you are interested in alternative lithium chemistries, Ouros is developing and commercializing one:

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

That last point is super interesting: these diagrams never tell you much about the implementation or how it would perform.

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

The distinction you are making is right. All those examples are examples of visualization, not of direct programming.

But why can't we use what today are visual representations of the programs as the actual programs? Can't we have the state transition diagram that today is a visualization of the code _be_ the definition of the state transitions? That is the question the post is asking

In other words, elevate the visualizations that we already use into programming, instead of programming with visualizations we don't use.

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

[post author] You are right. Any "language" visual or other wise used for communication has to include the level of detail trying to be communicated. In the Rust memory layout example, Rust syntax doesn't spell out its memory layout in Rc<T> definitions.

The point though is that the two users of the language _decide_ to communicate in a visual representation! Why is that?

They could spell it out in text, adding that lower level to the text, and yet they don't. That is a sign the users are thinking about it visually and the visual representation maps better to what they hold in their head.

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

You are right. You can see the data first, charts, even dependencies. And yet nobody is drawing `IF(ACTIVE[A1:A4]=E$1)`

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

Amazing, thank you for taking the time

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

That is an interesting framing. I think the "maker vs taker" label is great. Creative Inc[0] uses "suitcase handles" to describe something similar but more generic.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Expanded-Overcoming-In...

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

Nice!

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

That sounds super interesting!

Did I understand correctly that the additional complexity came because you needed to emit optimal assembly? Or was implementing the logic from the state machine complicated enough?

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

You are right. The diagrams are used as explanations not as the source of the program. But wouldn't it be neat if when you sketch out the state transition in a diagram (how I think about the state transitions), _that diagram_ was the source of truth for the program?

That is the implied point: let's go to places where we already draw diagrams and check if we can elevate them into the program

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

[post author] I am familiar with those and have used a couple. There are similar examples in music, where visual programming dominates.

The implied audience of this post (not clear) is people writing business applications, web dev, etc. The examples are picked to reflect what could be useful to those developers. In other words, all the examples you mentioned are great but they are not how a "software engineer in a software company" does their job.

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

Those two are both primarily for real time signals and music right? That is a great domain for wires, transforms, and pipelines.

Have you ever seen them used in a different context?

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

It is certainly possible and that is how most of these visual languages do it. But is that how _you_ want to program that logic?

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

Thank you! Should be fixed in a minute

sbensuon We need visual programming. No, not like that

[post author] I agree. On many domains you can find a great mapping between some visual representation and how the developer (beginner or not) wants to think about the problem.

I personally don't see any one pictorial representation that maps to a general programming language. But if someone does find one, in the large and in the small, that'd be great!

sbensuon Show HN: We built the fastest spreadsheet

I've found that while people don't want to change out of Excel they are forced to by the size of new files. The more data is generated by computers, the less likely it is to fit in Excel

I imagine many professions won't be able to use Excel in 10 years based on this trend.

sbensuon Incompetent but Nice

And to answer the question directly:

If you are operating under the "sports team" analogy, you should fire them. If you are operating under the "we are a family" analogy, you should find reduced roles where they are useful. Different organizations choose different base analogies but it is easy to tell which one you are in.

sbensuon Incompetent but Nice

[self-promotion]

This is very related, but not at all the same, as this essay I just published:

Team-oriented, outcome-oriented

https://blog.sbensu.com/posts/team-oriented-vs-outcome-orien...

Summary:

Some people are more motivated by caring for their teams, others are by achieving outcomes.

sbensuon Stripe CLI

Hi! I'm Sebastian and I work at Stripe.

We would love to understand what went wrong so that we can keep improving the integration experience. If you are interested in talking to us, please email me at sebas@stripe.com

sbensuon WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

Wow, I thought you were making that up to fit the mood... until the Wikipedia article. This is bananas.

sbensuon Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

Related recommendation: this podcast episode[1] was very good, covered many solutions to the Fermi Paradox, and discussed the OP's article.

[1] http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-203-stephen-web...

sbensuon Counterintuitive Properties of High Dimensional Space

One of the first chapters of The Art of Science and Engineering (Hamming) covers this beautifully.

sbensuon Macro-Lisp, a Lisp-Like DSL for Rust Language

From this project, I gather it wouldn't be hard to remove the need for calling `lisp!` on every form.

Then you'd have a lisp syntax on Rust that is not embedded. Is that correct?

sbensuon Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned Jose Valim yet.

sbensuon Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?

That impression goes away quickly when you meet him since he is a tremendously empathic person and clear speaker. The difference, in my opinion, is that he expects another level of effort/investment from the consumers of his work than other open source contributors.

That mismatch often causes frustration from people that are not used to it. In my case, it quickly went away once I understood the implicit contract.

sbensuon What Makes a Senior Software Developer?

Another essay answering the same question: https://hackernoon.com/senior-engineers-reduce-risk-5ab2adc1...

sbensuon Feynman’s first paper (1939)

Thanks!

sbensuon Feynman’s first paper (1939)

I'm not familiar with capillarity but if you are, and you have the time, I'm sure that fermat's library would love to add it with some historical remarks and annotations

sbensuon Examining How the Great Firewall Discovers Hidden Circumvention Servers (2015)

Did you provisioned an Azure VM while you were in Hong Kong or an Azure VM that was hosted in Hong Kong?

sbensuon Which countries are mentioned the most on Hacker News?

Here[1] are the countries sorted by stories per capita which shows which countries are over represented.

If you want to play with the script that fetches the population numbers, go to Tools > Script Editor and add your Wolfram Alpha API key.

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UX3OvN6MXDkuCiLpKPW2...