Spolsky's such a nob. He simply relays the water-downed thoughts of truly original thinkers.
If you really want to learn about "leaky abstractions" and a bunch of other topics, including human cognition, complexity, economics, and engineering design, read Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial".
I remember that story like it was yesterday. Went home and tried to talk the wife into living in a fuselage 10 feet wide in an airplane mounted on a pole. She nodded along, knowing the obsession would pass in a few days. It took a bit longer than that, but she was right.
IMO, missile silo homes are no where near as cool. But I'd rather have an L-1011 or 747.
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.
In other words, they believe that without the availability of blank CD-Rs, they would have sold 463 million CDs last year. Which is to say that without piracy, the annual growth in CD sales over the past 3-4 years would have been between 20% and 30%.
I assume that they're correct because they're so smart and all. Perhaps the world economy would have skirted the current recession if it wasn't for those bad pirates stealing profits from helpless corporations?
Finally, I'd far rather see a picture of a pretty model than an ugly 40 year old woman - even if the former doesn't understand the concept of double clicking, let alone switching operating systems.
You want to see a pretty model? Buy a women's fashion magazine.
Education in the US and Europe is not about cramming the most information in at the youngest age. If this is your metric, average pre-college students in Japan, India, and other countries probably come out ahead of average pre-college students in the US. (I don't think there's any difference for elite students, but this is another matter.) Force-feeding and early specialization have drawbacks in the long-run, and I believe the success (as measured by innovations produced, not age) of the graduates of the top US technical school illustrates the wisdom of the slower pace.
We can agree to disagree, but you should know there is research in Math Education on this topic. Look up "TIMMS" on Google -- it's the survey that ranks the mathematical achievment of students of different countries. The US traditionally finishes towards the bottom of the pack. But follow-up research has documented what is lost in educational systems that emphasize early achievment over other, more long-term goals.
The IITs from India, IMHO, are the *best* set of engineering colleges in the world. I am not taking anything away from MIT and company, but i firmly beleive that given MITesque resources, IITs will probably produce better graduates.
(Disclaimers: I'm of Indian descent, and my father graduated from an IIT)
The best Indians are no better (or worse) than the best Americans or Europeans. You can't produce better graduates than MIT, CMU, Stanford, Caltech, etc. -- they're at ceiling.
People try to p-p-p-put us down
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 3, Funny
A year (or so) ago I attended a lecture given by Guy Steele (of Lisp/Java/ Crunchly fame) on his proposal to alter how IEEE floating point numbers are mapped to real numbers. It quickly flew over my head, but gave a great insight into the whole field.
Steele is God. He also invented Scheme, wrote the original Common Lisp manual, co-wrote with Harbison a classic reference manual for C, and wrote parallel languages for the Connection Machine.
On trying to do some "why didn't I get this stuff at college" reading, I found there wasn't a great deal of literature.
[sign on a closed-down movie theatre that reads: Yahoo Serious Festival] Lisa: I recognize all three of those words but that statement doesn't make any sense.
I thought the sign said "Yahoo Serious is Young Einstein" and Lise didn't say the word "three".
I was pretty disappointed that Fanning replied "It may be hurting the music industry at this point..." instead of pointing out that six months is not a large enough amount of time to gauge the real effect of p2p networks. That may be obvious to Slashdotters but Average Joes (and Janes, don't want to be sexiest now...) might be tempted to take the RIAA's word that p2p is obviously to blame.
Fanning is a businessman, not a messiah. His interest is in making money.
Let me put it this way: If he could get rich filming a three-way between him, Hilary Rosen, and Jack Valenti, and selling copies on the internet, then he would.
The telling statement is 'self proclaimed' whch means squat I can proclaim my self king of America, it don't matter damn until the law wants to dispute my claim.
Well, I suspect that he's going to finally finish his (long-term) development project for Intentional Programming, much as the article said.
Agreed. The other big guy at the company is Gregor Kiczales, the guy behind metaobject protocols and aspect-oriented programming. The latter is definitely a cousin of intentional programming.
When I saw a presentation about 8 years ago, it was quite reminiscent of a Lisp system with programmable unparsers to render the source tree (it's NOT a flat representation) in almost any source language you chose (e.g., Pascal, C, C++, or VB).
Well, if Lisp is consigned to the programming language ghetto, at least Lispers (like Kiczales) keep trying to educate the unwashed masses.
MS did some shitty stuff, but they also made PC's the popular item they are today.
Silly newbie...
Go learn about the Apple ][and its creation of the home computer market.
Learn also about Visicalc and its legitimization of microcomputers for business use. Finally, learn about IBM, Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar and WordPerfect, and how they made PCs ubiquitous in the business world.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Microsoft was just one of a number of purveyors of things technicals -- the OS for the PC and two applications for the Mac. That's it. It was the appearance of Windows 3.0 in 1990 and the migration of their GUI-based Mac applications to the PC market that put them in a monopoly position by the mid 1990s.
And this is when their tactics, always on the grey side relative to their competitors, came to greatly harm the overall computer industry.
Probably, yes. The only mainstream competitor to Windows in terms of windowing systems is X windows. X is based on a similar underlying technique, that of queueing messages that are passed between windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Spolsky's such a nob. He simply relays the water-downed thoughts of truly original thinkers.
If you really want to learn about "leaky abstractions" and a bunch of other topics, including human cognition, complexity, economics, and engineering design, read Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial".
Those that really can, teach.
Those that can, do.
Those that can't, teach.
Those that can't teach, teach gym.
3. Dedicate at least 10% of your "work" time to professional development, even if you have to pay for it. Go stale = out of job.
Does reading Slashdot count?
You are a stud!
I remember that story like it was yesterday. Went home and tried to talk the wife into living in a fuselage 10 feet wide in an airplane mounted on a pole. She nodded along, knowing the obsession would pass in a few days. It took a bit longer than that, but she was right.
IMO, missile silo homes are no where near as cool. But I'd rather have an L-1011 or 747.
From the letter:
There are 250 Million blank CDRs and tapes bought and used this year for copying music in comparison to 213 Million prerecorded audio media. This means the owners are only being paid for 46 per cent of the musical content. For a comparison: In 1998 almost 90% of all audio media was paid for.
In other words, they believe that without the availability of blank CD-Rs, they would have sold 463 million CDs last year. Which is to say that without piracy, the annual growth in CD sales over the past 3-4 years would have been between 20% and 30%.
I assume that they're correct because they're so smart and all. Perhaps the world economy would have skirted the current recession if it wasn't for those bad pirates stealing profits from helpless corporations?
heh Couldn't resist, sorry :>
No need to apologize. You're not funny.
If anything, Democrats and liberals are just as much a part....
Then why is the list 80% Republicans and 20% Democats?
Certain Slashdotters don't know the difference between rational discussion and cheerleading... Larry Wall
There is no difference. Maybe Larry isn't as postmodern as he'd have us believe.
...Ever.
Finally, I'd far rather see a picture of a pretty model than an ugly 40 year old woman - even if the former doesn't understand the concept of double clicking, let alone switching operating systems.
You want to see a pretty model? Buy a women's fashion magazine.
Our debate turns on the definition of "better".
Education in the US and Europe is not about cramming the most information in at the youngest age. If this is your metric, average pre-college students in Japan, India, and other countries probably come out ahead of average pre-college students in the US. (I don't think there's any difference for elite students, but this is another matter.) Force-feeding and early specialization have drawbacks in the long-run, and I believe the success (as measured by innovations produced, not age) of the graduates of the top US technical school illustrates the wisdom of the slower pace.
We can agree to disagree, but you should know there is research in Math Education on this topic. Look up "TIMMS" on Google -- it's the survey that ranks the mathematical achievment of students of different countries. The US traditionally finishes towards the bottom of the pack. But follow-up research has documented what is lost in educational systems that emphasize early achievment over other, more long-term goals.
Soon dead people are going to be writing in to say that they switched from Mac to Windows.
Only in Chicago and Utah.
The IITs from India, IMHO, are the *best* set of engineering colleges in the world. I am not taking anything away from MIT and company, but i firmly beleive that given MITesque resources, IITs will probably produce better graduates.
(Disclaimers: I'm of Indian descent, and my father graduated from an IIT)
The best Indians are no better (or worse) than the best Americans or Europeans. You can't produce better graduates than MIT, CMU, Stanford, Caltech, etc. -- they're at ceiling.
Just because the N-N-N-NASDAQ's down.
A year (or so) ago I attended a lecture given by Guy Steele (of Lisp/Java/ Crunchly fame) on his proposal to alter how IEEE floating point numbers are mapped to real numbers. It quickly flew over my head, but gave a great insight into the whole field.
Steele is God. He also invented Scheme, wrote the original Common Lisp manual, co-wrote with Harbison a classic reference manual for C, and wrote parallel languages for the Connection Machine.
On trying to do some "why didn't I get this stuff at college" reading, I found there wasn't a great deal of literature.
This is widely considered a good introduction.
[sign on a closed-down movie theatre that reads: Yahoo Serious Festival]
Lisa: I recognize all three of those words but that statement doesn't make any sense.
I thought the sign said "Yahoo Serious is Young Einstein" and Lise didn't say the word "three".
I was pretty disappointed that Fanning replied "It may be hurting the music industry at this point ..." instead of pointing out that six months is not a large enough amount of time to gauge the real effect of p2p networks. That may be obvious to Slashdotters but Average Joes (and Janes, don't want to be sexiest now...) might be tempted to take the RIAA's word that p2p is obviously to blame.
Fanning is a businessman, not a messiah. His interest is in making money.
Let me put it this way: If he could get rich filming a three-way between him, Hilary Rosen, and Jack Valenti, and selling copies on the internet, then he would.
The telling statement is 'self proclaimed' whch means squat I can proclaim my self king of America, it don't matter damn until the law wants to dispute my claim.
Long live the king!!!
Well, I suspect that he's going to finally finish his (long-term) development project for Intentional Programming, much as the article said.
Agreed. The other big guy at the company is Gregor Kiczales, the guy behind metaobject protocols and aspect-oriented programming. The latter is definitely a cousin of intentional programming.
When I saw a presentation about 8 years ago, it was quite reminiscent of a Lisp system with programmable unparsers to render the source tree (it's NOT a flat representation) in almost any source language you chose (e.g., Pascal, C, C++, or VB).
Well, if Lisp is consigned to the programming language ghetto, at least Lispers (like Kiczales) keep trying to educate the unwashed masses.
Calling X86 assembly "baroque" is like calling the Grand Canyon a "ditch".
Okay, how about "rococo"?
MS did some shitty stuff, but they also made PC's the popular item they are today.
Silly newbie...
Go learn about the Apple ][and its creation of the home computer market.
Learn also about Visicalc and its legitimization of microcomputers for business use. Finally, learn about IBM, Lotus 1-2-3, WordStar and WordPerfect, and how they made PCs ubiquitous in the business world.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Microsoft was just one of a number of purveyors of things technicals -- the OS for the PC and two applications for the Mac. That's it. It was the appearance of Windows 3.0 in 1990 and the migration of their GUI-based Mac applications to the PC market that put them in a monopoly position by the mid 1990s.
And this is when their tactics, always on the grey side relative to their competitors, came to greatly harm the overall computer industry.
In a Communist country, everyone would just keep using Wordstar.
Wordstar! Bah! It was only with extreme reluctance that I recently upgraded from my IBM Seletric to Electric Pencil.
D'oh! Thanks for setting me straight.
A funny quote from von Braun:
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
And one that's less than funny:
I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.
Unless von Braun was sarcastically mocking Oscar Wilde's comment:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
The author writes:
Is this just a Win32 problem?
Probably, yes. The only mainstream competitor to Windows in terms of windowing systems is X windows. X is based on a similar underlying technique, that of queueing messages that are passed between windows.
Are Macs susceptible to such an attack?