Anything serious, production-kind software should *not* be written in Perl. Perl was never designed as a production quality languages. It went through rather radical change of syntax several times. It allows to accomplish the same task with gazillion different ways, no doubt members of Church of St. Larry Wall rejoice, but those who are to maintain the obfuscated and obsoleted Perl code do not. I had that experience maintaining set of tools written in Perl for First-Tier Internet provider.
My revenge: I re-wrote large chunks of code using *my* idioms and then completely bailed out from the project, and subsequently from the company. Let someone else maintain my code and cry.
so they outsource jazz musicians to India too?
on
My Job Went To India
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Yes, I've thought of that as well. Except in Soviet Union people didn't line up in hope that may be there will be something for sale they are after. They lined up in hope that there may be something for sale *at all*, not necessarily they are after, but may be something decent, and if they don't need it they can sell it. Lived in Moscow in 70s, know that phenomena quite well.
Jokes aside, after trying many free and commercial LaTeX editors, I ended up running Auctex under Emacs. Beats anything else. That's my main usage of Emacs (and I use LaTeX a lot, to typeset math staff).
What does "software engineering" have to do with engineering? I guess just as much as 'computer science' has to do with a science. Can you imagine an airplane or a bridge or a building designed and constructed by someone with skills and professionalism of software engineer? A scary thought, isn't it?
the students. Those academics can be compared to sewer rats, leaving in the damp corridors of Universities, their world has very little connection with reality. Here is my personal encounter with one of those, while I was working for BBN. The guy was from Harvard U and also hold a 'scientist' position at BBN. We had a group meeting, don't remember what was the conversation, but I remember making rather ironical remarks of Soviet Union.
The guy said, rather thoughtfully: I don't understand why those Russian Emigres are so critical about the Soviet Union.
(I emigrated from USSR in 1978, at the peak of Brezhnev-era idiocy and revival of Stalinist cult.)
So I wanted to tell him: because they have some first-hand experience, you idiot. But then I realized I would be taking to the wall.
in the long run. Many years ago I worked for BBN and our group was experimenting with the first ever cable modems, that become a "Roadrunner" (still have a t-shirt). At the same time we were looking at DSL (ADSL). Both technologies had their share of problems. In case of cable modem the major issue was the fact that the bandwidth is shared among what's called "Neighborhood Area Network" (NAN), so so protocol had to be in place to insure fair share of bandwidth (as well as user's satisfaction in general). I think at that time that protocol was not the part of DOCSYS, so different vendors had their own protocols (i'm not sure if anything like that is a part of DOCSYS 3.0, or it still leaves the room for competetive advantage). But that was only one showstopper with cable modems. With ADSL things were much worse. Highly sensitive to noise on a line, distance, anything you can think of. Just read about DSL and you'll see why. The best results we had with 'rate-adaptive' modems, those that vary the rate depending on line conditions, so connection was stable, but the throughput was - BLAH. So I remember saying that seems from technical perspective cable modem technology should be more stable vs DSL. Then someone else, more experienced in business of communications that myself said: you may be right, but the cable companies are going to screw it anyway because they have no experience with broadband communications, whereas phone companies do. The guy was right, at least for a while. I still hope cable companies will take advantage of better technology/media they have in place.
(PS. My brother switched from Verizon DSL to COMCAST data over cable a few months ago. He told me the throughput is much better and the connection is stable. He got the whole enchalada from COMCAST: cable, internet connectivity, and voice. Voice is the worst part of the package. He even changed his greetings on answering machine to: "Hello! If you can't get through within the next 30 minutes, call 1-800-COMCAST and complain!")
There is an excellent story by Stanislaw Lem (not sure if it's translated into English), "Non Serviam" (I will not serve). In this story he describes the VR experiment. The universe is created and then populated by some creatures. The creatures evolve and eventually reach the level of intelligence where they start asking fundamental questions such as the existence of their Creator. They come to conclusion that since Creator does not manifest itself in any way, the best they can do is to live and to act *AS THERE IS NO CREATOR, and THEIR WORLD IS REAL*.
The final words are from the experimentator who's monitoring their exchanges. "Well, he says, I can certainly announce my existence as the creator of this world, but for what sake? It will only show my limitations, not that I'm all-powerful being. The experiment will come to end, the program will stop running, the computer will be shut off and their world will disappear." So he decides to let them live thinking that their world is real. "Non Serviam" means in this context "I will not serve the unknown God".
Well, clearly enough, we are exactly in the same situation. The Creator didn't clearly manifest itself, and the best we can do is to affirm our believe that our world is real and our lives are real and have some meaning. That's why claiming that our universe is VR is a crap. Not because it's not possible but because that renders our lives utterly meaningless. So that's ideology, or religion, or whatever. Our most fundamental system of beliefs, if you wish.
the article quotes one mathematician from MIT who says that maths is a universe - which is quite correct. yet all maths universes are quite different from the 'known universe as we percieve it' in one important respect: the main goal of any maths structure is to be sufficiently rich yet consistent and non-contradictory. capturing some (or may be none) of the features of the ''real world as we perceive it'' is merely a side-effect, quite useful indeed so maths has some practical implications, but by no means this utilitarian aspect is the goal #1 of maths. so far there is no single model available that can consistently describe our universe - and that fact has nothing to do with maths. I'm a bit surprised someone from MIT can say anything of that kind. we are not part of any mathematical universe. what we are part of is something we'll never know for sure, we'll be attempting to describe the known universe with whatever models and concepts are available at this point (just we did the same thing hundreds and hundreds years ago), and that may or may not increase our knowledge of the universe.
otherwise, not sure. as has been pointed out several times in this thread, there many theorems whose proofs - if addressed to the audience with the minimal math background - are ill motivated, difficult to follow, in general quite long. you wouldn't even want to read them. the alternative proof can be literally two-liner by requires more advanced background. The simplest example I can think of is proving the Lebesgue conditions for integrability of Riemann integral. And many more examples like that. Worse yet, there are many theorems whose proofs - even on advanced level - are still quite complicated, like Jordan Curve Theorem. so the key question: unless the proof is short, sweet and kind of trivial, which version of the proof would you want to put online?
Not, really. I still remember the announcement that Dell will be putting Ubuntu on its laptops, immediately followed by the flood of messages from KDE fans: Not Kubuntu? We won't touch that!
Slashdot Mirror
objects all the time. Functional analysis, anyone?
Anything serious, production-kind software should *not* be written in Perl. Perl was never designed as a production quality languages. It went through rather radical change of syntax several times. It allows to accomplish the same task with gazillion different ways, no doubt members of Church of St. Larry Wall rejoice, but those who are to maintain the obfuscated and obsoleted Perl code do not. I had that experience maintaining set of tools written in Perl for First-Tier Internet provider.
My revenge: I re-wrote large chunks of code using *my* idioms and then completely bailed out from the project, and subsequently from the company. Let someone else maintain my code and cry.
It's all fault of John McLaughlin!
Indiana Jones and the Beowulf of those.
Dude, can't you read? He said he can't program. No programs. No automated scripts. Nada. Cinch. His clear-cut career path is becoming PHB.
the project was doomed from the start.
Yes, I've thought of that as well. Except in Soviet Union people didn't line up in hope that may be there will be something for sale they are after. They lined up in hope that there may be something for sale *at all*, not necessarily they are after, but may be something decent, and if they don't need it they can sell it. Lived in Moscow in 70s, know that phenomena quite well.
how many times I've passed by the parked policy car, only seeing the policeman player solitair on his PC.
well, now they can keep their hands on a wheel *and* play solitair too.
Bourbaki ribs with aleph-1 sauce tastefully served in Klein's bottle.
Abelian-grape and Zorn-lemon pi.
who want to download more pr0n.
Yes. We are bloodsuckers and we want your blood.
Signed: Microsoft.
you, insensitive clod.
Jokes aside, after trying many free and commercial LaTeX editors, I ended up running Auctex under Emacs. Beats anything else. That's my main usage of Emacs (and I use LaTeX a lot, to typeset math staff).
make it 'refuse'.
Shall we call them 'amorlline' and 'crystphous'?
What does "software engineering" have to do with engineering? I guess just as much as 'computer science' has to do with a science. Can you imagine an airplane or a bridge or a building designed and constructed by someone with skills and professionalism of software engineer? A scary thought, isn't it?
the students. Those academics can be compared to sewer rats, leaving in the damp corridors of Universities, their world has very little connection with reality. Here is my personal encounter with one of those, while I was working for BBN. The guy was from Harvard U and also hold a 'scientist' position at BBN. We had a group meeting, don't remember what was the conversation, but I remember making rather ironical remarks of Soviet Union.
The guy said, rather thoughtfully: I don't understand why those Russian Emigres are so critical about the Soviet Union.
(I emigrated from USSR in 1978, at the peak of Brezhnev-era idiocy and revival of Stalinist cult.)
So I wanted to tell him: because they have some first-hand experience, you idiot. But then I realized I would be taking to the wall.
in the long run. Many years ago I worked for BBN and our group was experimenting with the first ever cable modems, that become a "Roadrunner" (still have a t-shirt). At the same time we were looking at DSL (ADSL). Both technologies had their share of problems. In case of cable modem the major issue was the fact that the bandwidth is shared among what's called "Neighborhood Area Network" (NAN), so so protocol had to be in place to insure fair share of bandwidth (as well as user's satisfaction in general). I think at that time that protocol was not the part of DOCSYS, so different vendors had their own protocols (i'm not sure if anything like that is a part of DOCSYS 3.0, or it still leaves the room for competetive advantage). But that was only one showstopper with cable modems. With ADSL things were much worse. Highly sensitive to noise on a line, distance, anything you can think of. Just read about DSL and you'll see why. The best results we had with 'rate-adaptive' modems, those that vary the rate depending on line conditions, so connection was stable, but the throughput was - BLAH. So I remember saying that seems from technical perspective cable modem technology should be more stable vs DSL. Then someone else, more experienced in business of communications that myself said: you may be right, but the cable companies are going to screw it anyway because they have no experience with broadband communications, whereas phone companies do. The guy was right, at least for a while. I still hope cable companies will take advantage of better technology/media they have in place.
(PS. My brother switched from Verizon DSL to COMCAST data over cable a few months ago. He told me the throughput is much better and the connection is stable. He got the whole enchalada from COMCAST: cable, internet connectivity, and voice. Voice is the worst part of the package. He even changed his greetings on answering machine to: "Hello! If you can't get through within the next 30 minutes, call 1-800-COMCAST and complain!")
someone should nominate them for Darwin's award.
You feel free, yes, but how does your copy feel?
There is an excellent story by Stanislaw Lem (not sure if it's translated into English), "Non Serviam" (I will not serve). In this story he describes the VR experiment. The universe is created and then populated by some creatures. The creatures evolve and eventually reach the level of intelligence where they start asking fundamental questions such as the existence of their Creator. They come to conclusion that since Creator does not manifest itself in any way, the best they can do is to live and to act *AS THERE IS NO CREATOR, and THEIR WORLD IS REAL*.
The final words are from the experimentator who's monitoring their exchanges. "Well, he says, I can certainly announce my existence as the creator of this world, but for what sake? It will only show my limitations, not that I'm all-powerful being. The experiment will come to end, the program will stop running, the computer will be shut off and their world will disappear." So he decides to let them live thinking that their world is real. "Non Serviam" means in this context "I will not serve the unknown God".
Well, clearly enough, we are exactly in the same situation. The Creator didn't clearly manifest itself, and the best we can do is to affirm our believe that our world is real and our lives are real and have some meaning. That's why claiming that our universe is VR is a crap. Not because it's not possible but because that renders our lives utterly meaningless. So that's ideology, or religion, or whatever. Our most fundamental system of beliefs, if you wish.
whatever it means.
the article quotes one mathematician from MIT who says that maths is a universe - which is quite correct. yet all maths universes are quite different from the 'known universe as we percieve it' in one important respect: the main goal of any maths structure is to be sufficiently rich yet consistent and non-contradictory. capturing some (or may be none) of the features of the ''real world as we perceive it'' is merely a side-effect, quite useful indeed so maths has some practical implications, but by no means this utilitarian aspect is the goal #1 of maths. so far there is no single model available that can consistently describe our universe - and that fact has nothing to do with maths. I'm a bit surprised someone from MIT can say anything of that kind. we are not part of any mathematical universe. what we are part of is something we'll never know for sure, we'll be attempting to describe the known universe with whatever models and concepts are available at this point (just we did the same thing hundreds and hundreds years ago), and that may or may not increase our knowledge of the universe.
otherwise, not sure. as has been pointed out several times in this thread, there many theorems whose proofs - if addressed to the audience with the minimal math background - are ill motivated, difficult to follow, in general quite long. you wouldn't even want to read them. the alternative proof can be literally two-liner by requires more advanced background. The simplest example I can think of is proving the Lebesgue conditions for integrability of Riemann integral. And many more examples like that. Worse yet, there are many theorems whose proofs - even on advanced level - are still quite complicated, like Jordan Curve Theorem. so the key question: unless the proof is short, sweet and kind of trivial, which version of the proof would you want to put online?
Not, really. I still remember the announcement that Dell will be putting Ubuntu on its laptops, immediately followed by the flood of messages from KDE fans: Not Kubuntu? We won't touch that!