1,463 karma · joined May 9, 2016
I am not an expert in this field though.
https://www.imagesco.com/magnetism/graphite-levitation-kit.h...
https://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/magnets/pyrolytic_graphi...
One of Go's core missions is to keep the number of concepts users need low. Multiple returns encompass the error use case and others.
There have been some studies, and while all methodologies have tradeoff's go and clojure sit near the bottom of this list in bugs/committ: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.10220.pdf
Which is fascinating because they are very different languages whose unifying theme is simplicity.
But this actually fits well if you know another important fact: bugs occur along organizational lines. https://augustl.com/blog/2019/best_bug_predictor_is_organiza... If you've been around long enough, you realize a lot, if not most bugs, come from not understanding someone else's code. Type systems arn't going to help you, when you don't understand what the code they are "protecting" is doing.
> The parent poster wasn't saying no one uses go, but that people use go despite its systematic problems, and tbh your comment mostly doesn't argue against that thesis, just arguing that it's successful
But if go has so many problems why do people use it? Javascript, bash, and go have a unifying trait. They are useful, they solve a problem. But unlike javascript and bash, go wasn't and isn't integrated anywhere. No ecosystem forced people into go. They choose it, writ large. Why? Well because languages are more than there type systems.
I find comments like this illustrate perfectly the gap between these focused on language theoretics, and those focused on building software.
Go is successful because it strikes a strong balance between what practical software engineering organizations need from a language, of which safety is only one constraint.
Languages also need to be: * Easy "enough" to learn * Easy to read * Easy to write * Performant * Compile quickly * Have strong tooling * Have a strong standard library * Provide good solutions for it's problem domains * Support large code bases with many dependents ... * And be "safe*
Easy here is also influenced by what people already know, syntax and basic working methods need to be familiar to the vast majority of software engineers.
Go is successful because for many engineers it provides enough of all of the above with *enough" safety.
P.s. complex, difficult to understand languages incur more bugs then simple ones, even with additional safety.
PPS: If you think multiple returns and sumtypes solve the same thing, you've not thought very hard on the subject...
The important part of microservices isn't just API boundaries, it's lifecycle management. This CAN be done with a DLL or JAR, but it's MUCH harder today.
> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce _a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure_.
Organization is the primary method by which we organize communication (indeed, that's its only point). That's why architecture follows organization. It is possible to "break" that boundary by organizing other forms of communication, for example the feature teams of SAFE (not a proponent of safe, just an example).
> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.
It doesn't matter WHO defines or does the work (the coders themselves in a team or the manager). It matters how communication is arranged. And communication naturally aligns itself along organizational and team boundaries.
When a group/person/whatever writes an API they are MOSTLY writing a document for other human beings. That is an act of communication. If you meet with someone everyday in a stand-up you're likely to put a less structured API between yourselves than if you meet with someone once a month, or once a year. You're also going to create a finer grained subdivision of the API for them as you're likely working on closely related posts of the problem.
Organization creates communication, and communication creates architecture. Therefore organization creates architecture.
> Plus conway is just a ... neat idea, not a bound fate
It is in fact bound fate. Code is written to communicate with others.
People come together, they decide to solve a problem. They divide up that problem and create functions (an API), objects (an API), modules (an API), and services/microservices (an API). At each later they've written something that communicates with others. The structure of that code reflects the necessary communication to the other parties for their part of the problem. This the code is structured following the lines of communication in the organization.
Organization is how we structure communication (that's it's primary point) and thus organization = architecture + some wiggle room for communication paths defined outside that (say a SAFE feature team).
This is a misunderstanding of Conway's Law. Your code _will_ reflect the structure of your organization. If you use microservices so will their architecture. If you use modules, so will the modules.
If you want a specific architecture, have your organization reflect the modules/microservices defined in that architecture.
Trees are an incredible renewable resource. Most homes today are built with trees from managed, sustainable forest and LVL's (laminated veneer lumber) from the same sources. The LVL's replace "big beams" for old growth. The "frame" of an average house now looks like this: http://www.joneswholesale.com/products/images/ROS-RFPI-Solid...
Anysort of concrete/hempcrete/whatever is actually going to be a terrible thing for the environment compared to... wood.
Between LVLs, Glulam beams, and CLT what you should be asking is why arn't more midsize buildings built of wood instead of environmentally disastrous concrete. See this for example: https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/worlds-most-advanc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
Only very large bombs, such as the Tsar Bomba (97% from fusion) ever where primarily fusion, and those are not in modern arsenals.
> Turning dumb heat into electric power is expensive. Nothing that depends on doing that can ever compete with wind and solar, anymore.
This isn't even strictly true today when focusing on current "dumb heat sources":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...
"cost of extension of operations of existing nuclear power plants (LTO, long-term operations) has the lowest LCOE of low-carbon energy sources; "
I'm going to go with the OECD and NEA on this one.
> Tritium doesn't grow on trees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_blanket
Saying that there are unknown engineering challenges is kind of a "duh", otherwise we wouldn't be researching we would be implementing. As you also mentioned there are other alternatives which we could consider than tritium.
> Fission is not competitive, and gets less so by the day.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062... yeah that's not true
> Fusion is nothing but a money pit (with the just barely-possible exception of D-3He).
We genuinely don't know if fusion is a money pit or not, because we don't have any idea how much a successful form will cost. Tritium blankets may be easy or not. Maybe helion's D-3HE will have a breakthrough. Maybe it's ICF.
I've not seen suggestions by anyone that wind and solar build-outs stop, or get diminished. Indeed at this point because the cost are low, industry will continue to invest in them regardless.
However, we will need a lot more energy production than folks think. We need to decarbonize the atmosphere. And that's going to require a lot of power.
All that aside, solar and wind are not getting you to mars in a timely fashion. We have reasons to research fusion that escape large commercial power generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy
Give it a read. Intertial confinement fusion with a Q > 1 may very well point the way towards a realistic powerplant. Fusion is at a point it deserves investment. The NIF cost about the same as a single b-2 bomber.
For an actual look at the challenge of ICF i'd say look here: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.p...
and also consider that it might be used in combination with MCF for example: https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-para...
and
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE-1911_web.p...
actually layout some of the challenges. they are not as you state and there ARE tradeoffs between MCF and ICF. Most experts agree MCF is closer to realization, but that's a very well educated guess not a surity.
https://scientific-publications.ukaea.uk/wp-content/uploads/...
lays out some of the differences and tradeoffs
Even more interesting is to look at approaches which might combine the two: https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-para...
People are estimating how this result moves the equation for an overall system that is designed for power production. Most numbers I have seen still leave a theoretically optimal power plant producing around a 30% loss in power with this number.
Again, let's discuss what those challenges are. A bunch of talk about how hard it might be with no detail on what makes it hard isn't really informative to anyone.
> the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than shooting a static target in ideal conditions.
Please see my note #2 about EUV light sources and similar technology. My understanding is the timing and precision requirements are much higher here, but on the other hand the "rate" of fire would be necessarily much lower making something perhaps feasible.
From the presentation and panel today, one of the key drivers seems to be the purity of the capsules and the ability to correct for asymmetries in the implosion caused by them. The results announced today where not because of the purity of the capsule, but instead because of the correct prediction of the asymmetries in the implosion and the ability to counter that with modifications to the laser strength and timing.
The NIF isn't (as others have noted) necessarily focused on bettering these two factors.
What I'd like to understand is what are the major tradeoffs in ICF vs MCF that would drive pursuing the difficult engineering problems of one vs another.
Let's save some time out of discussion now:
1. The lasers at NIF are not designed to be efficient, and they are very old. Modern semiconductor lasers are 20x more efficient. The 300MJ wall plug conversation is stupid, stop pointing it out.
2. Dropping crystals and hitting them with lasers is not hard, we do it in semiconductors for EUV light source generation all the time. In fact EUV light sources do it at 100khz or more.
3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works.
Make no mistake there are a lot of engineering problems to solve. The "droplets" are enormously expensive, the "firing" itself creates debries which need cleared from the chamber, dt supply is not something that's readily available in large quantities, blah blah. I'd love interesting conversation about what stands between ICF and a real energy plant, not hot takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw
Probably the hardest part is making sure the droplet is cost effective enough that we care.
Again, to op's point, this is an incredibly shallow analysis. The question I would be pushing towards is:
What are the hardest remaining engineering problems? How likely are we to overcome them? At the end of that process will it be a cost competitive outcome?
Secondly, your attempt at being pithy about nuclear bombs is a complete loss. We previously only knew how to achieve an inertial confinement based fusion reaction with a positive Q factor by first setting off a fission bomb, and this was only done for the neutron generation to increase the amount of fissionable material exploded (which is why they are called fission-fusion-fission bombs).
We can now generate fusion energy in a way that is obviously confine-able. That's a major step, and it's not THAT hard to imagine many mechanisms of turning a hot droplet into energy. For example the hohlraum itself in an indirect system will obviously be heated by the reaction and could be used to generate steam. Engineering that makes no sense though if you can't get a high Q factor out of the ignition itself, hence the focus.
This four sentence post is a perfect example of OP's point. No insight, no though process, just a pithy negative reply.
That's utterly incorrect:
"Fast ignition and similar approaches changed the situation. In this approach gains of 100 are predicted in the first experimental device, HiPER. Given a gain of about 100 and a laser efficiency of about 1%, HiPER produces about the same amount of fusion energy as electrical energy was needed to create it (and thus will require more gain to produce electricity after considering losses). It also appears that an order of magnitude improvement in laser efficiency may be possible through the use of newer designs that replace flash lamps with laser diodes that are tuned to produce most of their energy in a frequency range that is strongly absorbed. Initial experimental devices offer efficiencies of about 10%, and it is suggested that 20% is possible."
You get more content out of a discussion with your neighbor in 30s than that. Those comments are genuinely worthless, they don't talk about things like:
1) What are the parts of an inertial confinement fusion based system which are difficult and which are missing today and would need serious investment
2) What is the likelyhood that the power output observed here could double, or more with other scale factors?
3) What's the net system costs once a plant is made. Is the fuel cheap or expensive?
Etc. It's fine to be contrarian, but most of the contrariness on this most internet forums is of the most basic, shallow kind that is defeated in a moment by any serious thinking.
The short answer to being better? Posts with more in depth content. I seriously think HN should consider banning pithy one or two sentence posts "they still would only get 1/4 the power" you find all over the place.
Because of the physics of fusion (or ICF) returns on power are non linear. It's very much possible research here results in a path to a "net gain facility".