I was speaking a tad facetiously here: those feature requests come from myself. Seriously, I am an avid user of this thing who cannot live without it, and there are missing features that I absolutely want.
I have what is probably a zombie company. Here's the dilemma: I'm doing this alone, I really, really want this thing for my own personal use, and I have a ton of feature requests. So now on the one hand, I enjoy working on this thing and I'm delighted to see the next feature being added. On the other hand, I'm condemned to look at my failed startup every day. How do I deal with that?
The author describes the old, pre-revolutionary way of doing mathematics as "relying on intuition and physical experience." In certain fields, such as algebra and number theory, the old way of doing it had another important trait: to prove the existence of something, such as the greatest common divisor or the unique factorization of a polynomial, one had to give an algorithm to construct it. The new, axiomatic way of thinking, by contrast, is content with showing that the assumption of non-existence leads to a contradiction. The rise of symbolic computation over the last few decades (Mathematica, Maple, etc.) can therefore be seen as a comeback of the old style of mathematics. I call it Kronecker's revenge. With respect to math education, well, considering the importance of computing, I am inclined to think that we should pay more attention to the 19th century way of thinking rather than less.
Thank you for mentioning the case of implementing algorithms. I could not agree more. Without comments, it can be excruciatingly difficult for a reader to map (thanks for using that word, spot on!) the code to the high-level description of the algorithm. Comments provide that mapping. This gets more important as the algorithms become more complex, as in higher mathematics.
The way I understood the original submission was that "100%" indicates the point where the thing is ready to be released to the world at large. Before that, one may well do iterations involving users and potential customers. That will of course make the actual release, or launch, less of a traumatic event. And yet, perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but to me, release is still an important milestone, sort of a finish line, or a goal I'm working towards. That "first 90% vs. last 10%" really resonates with me.
I feel much the same way about finishing and releasing. What I find interesting is that once I put something out there, opinions will vary wildly on the question whether it's way overdone and should have been released much earlier, or whether it's nowhere near ready to be released. I'm beginning to think that there is no such thing as the "right time" to release. What matters is that I have a clear vision of what I think is a great achievement that's not overdone. That vision gives me a finish line and provides me with a work rhythm. That "last 10%" that charlieirsh describes is part of that rhythm.
It is perhaps worth pointing out that sometimes, a good way to redefine a problem is to "widen" it, that is, to consider another problem of which the original one is merely a special case. That's been called "the power of abstraction," and it's pretty much what accounts for the amazing success of mathematics. And it seems to work in a broader, less scientific sense as well: for the longest time, I couldn't find a todo-list on the web that I didn't hate. Along came the Trello guys and created a collaboration tool with task lists. And bingo, for the special case of a single user, they (perhaps involuntarily, I don't know) created the most awesome todo-list website.
Compilation time is of course only one of many things to be taken into consideration when choosing a programming language. What always surprises me is how many people in commercial software engineering underestimate the consequences of slow compilation: it has a dramatic impact on productivity. A modern IDE for a language like C# or Java or what have you is like a spellchecker. Your compile-time errors are pointed out to you as you go along. Compare that to sitting around endlessly waiting for your C++ source file to compile. (C++ IDEs have just started to do a little bit of that "spellchecking," but it's not the same. And besides, you still have to compile to be able to run your program.)
Jeff Atwood just blows me away with the way he combines information, entertainment, and insight in his articles. What I like most about this one is that he brings in Steve Martin's take on good vs. great, thus showing us that the whole issue is by no means limited to the world of software development. (Just like the poster of the parent of this reply said, this is to reinforce and complement the original submission.)
I think it's a bit disingenuous to write that Linux uses C++.
I like the civility in this sentence, yet I'm inclined to say that it's more than just "a bit disingenuous." Is there anybody who has not read this post by Linus Thorvalds on C++:
True, Java has primitives, but I believe it is pretty much decided that they will be discontinued beginning with Java 8. (The fact that the wrapper classes like Double and Integer are immutable makes them behave sort of as if they had value semantics, but that's really an orthogonal issue.)
Thanks for this post; the importance of Alan Kay's work can hardly be overstated. Here's another quote by him that I find interesting:
I invented the term Object-Oriented and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
Whether or not you share the disdain for C++ that is implicit in this quote, I believe it is important to understand the difference between the way OO was originally conceived of and the way C++ interprets it. I believe the best way to understand the difference is to look at object-variable binding. Smalltalk and almost every other OO language that followed it uses reference semantics: the assignment
x = y
causes the variable x to release its binding to whatever object it is currently referring to, and to refer to the object that y is referring to instead. C++, on the other hand, is pretty much the only OO language that uses value semantics: the intended meaning of the assignment
x = y
is to copy the state of the object to which y is referring over to the object to which x is referring. The older and wiser I get the more I am inclined to believe that this attempt to marry OO and value semantics was an experiment that has failed. Even if you do not believe this, you'd have to admit that the collective amount of time and effort that the C++ community has spent on dealing with the assignment operator is simply staggering. (I would have made that last statement even two years ago, and now we have rvalue refereces.)
Don't schlep until you've got evidence that the destination will be worth the trip.
I see what you're saying. I just think that this leaves unresolved the one crucial question: what constitutes "evidence that the destination will be worth the trip?"
The day you had problems with customs trying to pick up a boat is probably not a good day to reflect on the United States of America as a whole. A better thing to focus on would be the fact that you can afford to buy a boat overseas and having it shipped to the US, and that you will receive it soon, a minor bureaucratic snag not withstanding.
Good point. I've always felt uncomfortable with the lean startup mantra "If it's not working out, pivot." If something's not working out, it could be for one of two reasons: either you're doing the wrong thing, or what you're doing needs more time and hard work, that is, you just met the schlep. Deciding which one of the two you're looking at is incredibly hard. I don't think that there are any rules. The pivoting mantra just kinda glosses over that whole problem. The best advice I could distil from it would be, "If it's not working out, don't cling to it at all cost, consider pivoting." Ok.
On a similar note, one must wonder to what extent those who tweet are even local. For Napa, CA, which is mentioned in a comment, that would probably not be the case. Another example is Nevada, which, according to their map, must be something like the second happiest state in the union. I live in Nevada, and I am indeed very happy, but that's because I live in Tahoe, a rather atypical corner of the state. For Nevada as a whole, I am sure the result is due to things like tourists in Vegas going ga-ga over all Das Blinkenlighten, or gamblers tweeting when they win but not when they lose, the latter being the default.
I'm never going to achieve my dreams and accomplish what I want to accomplish
Stephen Stills famously said, or rather sang, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." Similarly, there are many dreams one can pursue, many things one can accomplish in life. If one dream turned out to be too far out there to reach, wait for the pain to pass (and trust me, it will), then go looking for a closer one. More often than not, it's right in front of your eyes. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
I always think of Tim O'Reilly as an inspiring example of a Maker. Will I ever be anywhere close to being up there with him? No. Will I consider myself a failure if I'll never be a true Maker? No. But it doesn't hurt to go through life with the aspiration to be a little bit like Tim O'Reilly. Perhaps that will make me spot an opportunity that I would otherwise have overlooked. This quote by the man himself never ceases to inspire me: “Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.”
I believe that Tim O'Reilly is a shining example of a "maker" as described in Jason's blog entry. I won't claim that I myself am a maker rather than a taker, but this quote by Tim never ceases to inspire me: “Pursue something so important that even if you fail, the world is better off with you having tried.”
The article starts out with these words (copied and pasted, emphasis mine): "It’s now common practice for colleges to require instructors to discuss with their students, on the first day of class each semester, the fundamental PRINCIPAL of academic integrity". As a non-native speaker and naturalized American, I'll have to ask: do we really care that little about the integrity of our language?
In my book, a fanatic is someone who unleashes diatribes on people with whom he/she is pretty much in the same camp, apart from minor differences that outsiders don't even understand. I am reminded of "The Life of Brian" and the People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front.
It seems that a lot of applicants didn't have their demo sites looked at. This together with what I've seen on PG's Office Hour videos leads me to believe that YC is somewhat idea-centric: if we like your idea, we'll look at your potential for execution. Else, you're out. Needless to say, there is nothing wrong with that. If that method works for YC in terms of success rate vs. time and effort spent, then that's how they should be doing it. Still, it might be worth considering the following example. Suppose that 25 years ago, someone would have come to you with this idea: I'll start a furniture store chain. But instead of shipping the furniture to people's homes, I'll give them a cardboard box with the pieces, a couple of nuts and bolts, and a wrench inside. There can be little doubt as to how that idea would have been rated: ludicrous. But if you had visited a model store and looked at all the neat furniture, not to mention the fancy bedspreads and tableware and what not, then took home a chair in pieces, assembled it, sat in it... You may not have predicted that there were going to be newspaper headlines like "IKEA will continue to hire off-duty Sheriff's deputies to help with traffic control for several more weeks." But you may well have predicted some measure of success for this offbeat idea.