Some "uber" programmers, in addition to the store of techniques, have the ability to see patterns in how things work. If they don't have the algorithm they need in stock, they can adapt similar algorithms that at first glance don't seem relevant.
Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" would be one example where an algorithm of sorts, one tied to architecture and city planning, was adapted to the programming world. Published in 1977, the book has been fairly influential in several areas. The Design Patterns movement mentions "A Pattern Language" in at least one of its core books.
Then you have GST or General Systems Theory. Predating pattern language by several decades, it looks at how things are similar at vastly different levels. For example, the chaotic flow of a simple candle flame and the explosion of a nova have a lot in common mathematically. If you were familiar with GST as an "uber" programmer, you might look at micro/macro examples for algorithm sources, especially if they are dealing with new territory.
As far as an "uber" programmer being able to remember everything they have done, said programmer might have a surrogate memory in the form of a database, with lots of descriptive keys, that touch on what they have done OR seen in the past.
"Lazy" programmers also put in more work front end to write easy to read code AND code that can be reused with minimal effort. They also document what they do so they don't have to puzzle out what the code does months and years down the line.
There is an anecdote in the business world about an efficiency expert that did an analysis for a company. The expert reported to the owner of the company that everything was optimal with the exception of a certain person in an office who appeared to do nothing other than sit in his chair with his feet on his desk, staring off into space.
The owner of the company mentioned that the person was in that position when he came up with an idea that made the company millions of dollars.
Sometimes thinking IS doing.
With regards to the "uber" programmer, is it better to start creating a new algorithm as fast as you can type or to find an existing algorithm that just needs a minor tweak to work? Starting from scratch means that you have to debug from scratch. Starting from an existing template that you know about and perhaps wrote means that you have most of the testing done ahead of time.
I worked for one company where the boss stated that working overtime to get something done was counter productive. The longer you worked, the more mistakes you made and the less productive you were in the long run.
I believe Patton had a similar approach. He would set the objectives and let his commanders handle the details. If there were problems holding things up, he would personally survey the situation and make suggestions.
There is a book titled "Patton on Leadership" that gives a lot of examples of his management style.
I've picked up several Nolo Press books over the years and have found them quite useful. Think of it as a tier one legal source that can help you navigate the convoluted in and outs of the legal profession.
For some things you may still need a lawyer that can review what you have and make suggestions as to whether it is legal in the state you are in. Since the lawyer would be reviewing the documents and not writing them, you could probably save billable hours.
I've been voting with my wallet regarding network TV for over twenty years now. While we have a couple of TVs in the house, one is dedicated to viewing DVDs and the other was demoted to console gaming during the transition to digital.
Even before then the TV wasn't on during prime time. I gave up watching prime time TV because of the loudness/stupidity of the commercials and the lack of decent programming. Why waste time I could spend being with the family, reading or playing on the computer just to see things that are fractured by obnoxious commercials.
For the handful of programs that interested me, it was easier to wait for them to come out in DVD.
Pop music, due to the vocals, would be a distraction to me akin to having people talking. If I don't know the lyrics, I'd listen harder. If I do know the lyrics, I'd sing along with them.
The researchers in the extrovert/introvert study need to do another study where they try instrumental music instead of pop music. Another version of the experiment would be to have the test subjects choose the type of music they prefer and have that running.
Note that having a test base of ten of each type, extrovert and introvert, does not provide a statistically accurate data set.
I tend to find the early hours of the morning to be the best time for creativity and writing. Everybody else in the house is asleep and I don't have to worry about lawn mowers, blaring radios, boom-box cars, or other distractions. I'm also fresh after a night's sleep.
I'm one of those people who needs to needs to have a certain amount of peace and quiet when dealing with words or programming logic. If I can't get that because I'm in Dilbert-ville, I'll use non-verbal background noise in the form of classical or New Age music.
I was wondering if someone was going to mention that the idea is an old one.
Now if they would only get into the mass production of gold business and better bots. We already have a much better version of Drafting Dan.
If a person falsely accuses me of violating a copyright, and the ISP shuts me down, could I claim damages from the ISP AND the person making the accusation? That could be a way to discourage ISPs from cutting someone off.
Mitochondrial evidence just tracks the surviving lines of descent. There could easily be lines of modern humans that have recently died out that could have been traced to Neanderthals.
Think of Europe during the Black Plague. A substantial portion of the population died during that time.
"One man's magic is another man's engineering.." (Heinlein)
They are the same with the exception of what drives the 'technology'. Fantasy uses magic to get things done. SF uses technology. But both explore 'what if' conditions.
Does anyone know how closely this MMO corresponds to the book based RPGs by the same name? I seem to recall that the character power creation scheme was interesting.
There are some ecologies where fire is essential to the overall health of the ecology. Tallgrass prairie, the home turf of the American bison, is one example. Lodgepole forests, the kind that burned in the 1988 Yellowstone fires, are another.
Now while Native Americans didn't have rifles or horses, they did a pretty good job of hunting buffalo through the use of fire and buffalo jumps. I would say that a lack of horses forced them to be a bit more careful about their environment, because of lack of transportation. That lack of transportation would also keep the population low.
It is amazing what decent graphics, adequate grammar and well designed social engineering can get people to do.
This is yet another variation of a series of malware packages I've seen over the last few years. You get to them through compromised websites or links. They attempt to scare you into downloading and paying for a package to 'solve' the problem. Because the graphics look 'real' and the grammar/spelling is decent, some people wonder if there machine IS infected.
I ran into one of these when a coworker on a MAC called to say that his machine was infected. They had been doing a Google search and found a link that brought up a very scary 'You are infected' screen, complete with 'scan' results. I made a lot of screen prints of the warning messages that popped up when I tried to close the screen using 'normal' means of ending the program. Somebody had a lot of 'fun' coming up with a web page that opened windows when you tried closing them.
Every few days I go to the Symantec site and look under the ThreatCon section for 'Misleading Applications' to get an idea of the current threats. They usually have screen prints of the windows.
It makes a nice toy cannon, though Civil War reenactors might laugh it off the field.
If you want to make a real cannon, one that could have fought at Gettysburg, it would cost a lot more. You would probably do the barrel out of stainless steel, for safety's sake. The carriage and wheels would be made out of high quality wood, because, even just firing powder, the cannon kicks back.
I'll have to find the web site of a person that I know that made a Civil War cannon. It is one that our local reenactors recognize by its distinctive 'bark' and the pressure wave associated with it.
Decades ago, while playing around with a scientific calculator, I determined that you could calculate the volume of the Milky Way galaxy in angstroms on it and not overload the limits of the calculator, at least as far as powers of ten are concerned.
*****
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 100,000 light years
1 light year = 9.5 E 15 meters
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 9.5 E 20 meters
1 Angstrom = 1E-10m
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 9.5 E 30 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy radius = 4.75 E 30 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy area = PI * radius squared = 7.1 E 61 angstroms squared
Milky Way galaxy thickness = 1,000 light years = 9.5 E 28 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy volume = Area * Thickness = 6.9 E 90 angstroms cubed
*****
Given the above, you might need to know PI to more than 90 digits if you want to be able to do accurate positional calculations of each atom in our little galaxy, using polar coordinates. You would need a lot more digits to cover the known universe. (Ignoring, of course, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.)
I'm a readaholic who was trained to avoid spelling errors because they would affect my grades. Of course, there are a few words I mess up on a consistent basis.
I think that I make more typing errors than spelling errors, so having spell check allows me to catch them before they go out. So the 'new' tech is useful.
It can also be annoying if your spell check can't handle words like 'readaholic'.
Is the 'creativity' industry 'industrializing' creativity or is it attempting to help people develop and enhance their creative abilities? Or does it depend upon who is doing the teaching and what methods they teach?
I consider myself to be an optimist who believes that almost anybody can learn to be creative. But then I'm someone who has no problems being creative in quite a few different areas. And I'm always open for ways to further enhance my creativity.
Slashdot Mirror
Some "uber" programmers, in addition to the store of techniques, have the ability to see patterns in how things work. If they don't have the algorithm they need in stock, they can adapt similar algorithms that at first glance don't seem relevant.
Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language" would be one example where an algorithm of sorts, one tied to architecture and city planning, was adapted to the programming world. Published in 1977, the book has been fairly influential in several areas. The Design Patterns movement mentions "A Pattern Language" in at least one of its core books.
Then you have GST or General Systems Theory. Predating pattern language by several decades, it looks at how things are similar at vastly different levels. For example, the chaotic flow of a simple candle flame and the explosion of a nova have a lot in common mathematically. If you were familiar with GST as an "uber" programmer, you might look at micro/macro examples for algorithm sources, especially if they are dealing with new territory.
As far as an "uber" programmer being able to remember everything they have done, said programmer might have a surrogate memory in the form of a database, with lots of descriptive keys, that touch on what they have done OR seen in the past.
"Lazy" programmers also put in more work front end to write easy to read code AND code that can be reused with minimal effort. They also document what they do so they don't have to puzzle out what the code does months and years down the line.
There is an anecdote in the business world about an efficiency expert that did an analysis for a company. The expert reported to the owner of the company that everything was optimal with the exception of a certain person in an office who appeared to do nothing other than sit in his chair with his feet on his desk, staring off into space.
The owner of the company mentioned that the person was in that position when he came up with an idea that made the company millions of dollars.
Sometimes thinking IS doing.
With regards to the "uber" programmer, is it better to start creating a new algorithm as fast as you can type or to find an existing algorithm that just needs a minor tweak to work? Starting from scratch means that you have to debug from scratch. Starting from an existing template that you know about and perhaps wrote means that you have most of the testing done ahead of time.
I worked for one company where the boss stated that working overtime to get something done was counter productive. The longer you worked, the more mistakes you made and the less productive you were in the long run.
I believe Patton had a similar approach. He would set the objectives and let his commanders handle the details. If there were problems holding things up, he would personally survey the situation and make suggestions.
There is a book titled "Patton on Leadership" that gives a lot of examples of his management style.
I've picked up several Nolo Press books over the years and have found them quite useful. Think of it as a tier one legal source that can help you navigate the convoluted in and outs of the legal profession.
For some things you may still need a lawyer that can review what you have and make suggestions as to whether it is legal in the state you are in. Since the lawyer would be reviewing the documents and not writing them, you could probably save billable hours.
I've been voting with my wallet regarding network TV for over twenty years now. While we have a couple of TVs in the house, one is dedicated to viewing DVDs and the other was demoted to console gaming during the transition to digital.
Even before then the TV wasn't on during prime time. I gave up watching prime time TV because of the loudness/stupidity of the commercials and the lack of decent programming. Why waste time I could spend being with the family, reading or playing on the computer just to see things that are fractured by obnoxious commercials.
For the handful of programs that interested me, it was easier to wait for them to come out in DVD.
Pop music, due to the vocals, would be a distraction to me akin to having people talking. If I don't know the lyrics, I'd listen harder. If I do know the lyrics, I'd sing along with them.
The researchers in the extrovert/introvert study need to do another study where they try instrumental music instead of pop music. Another version of the experiment would be to have the test subjects choose the type of music they prefer and have that running.
Note that having a test base of ten of each type, extrovert and introvert, does not provide a statistically accurate data set.
The "flow" can also apply to creative writing.
I tend to find the early hours of the morning to be the best time for creativity and writing. Everybody else in the house is asleep and I don't have to worry about lawn mowers, blaring radios, boom-box cars, or other distractions. I'm also fresh after a night's sleep.
I'm one of those people who needs to needs to have a certain amount of peace and quiet when dealing with words or programming logic. If I can't get that because I'm in Dilbert-ville, I'll use non-verbal background noise in the form of classical or New Age music.
It is good to see some additional research confirming the hypothesis that too clean an environment is hazardous for the health of kids.
I was wondering if someone was going to mention that the idea is an old one. Now if they would only get into the mass production of gold business and better bots. We already have a much better version of Drafting Dan.
If a person falsely accuses me of violating a copyright, and the ISP shuts me down, could I claim damages from the ISP AND the person making the accusation? That could be a way to discourage ISPs from cutting someone off.
Mitochondrial evidence just tracks the surviving lines of descent. There could easily be lines of modern humans that have recently died out that could have been traced to Neanderthals.
Think of Europe during the Black Plague. A substantial portion of the population died during that time.
"One man's magic is another man's engineering.." (Heinlein)
They are the same with the exception of what drives the 'technology'. Fantasy uses magic to get things done. SF uses technology. But both explore 'what if' conditions.
Does anyone know how closely this MMO corresponds to the book based RPGs by the same name? I seem to recall that the character power creation scheme was interesting.
There are some ecologies where fire is essential to the overall health of the ecology. Tallgrass prairie, the home turf of the American bison, is one example. Lodgepole forests, the kind that burned in the 1988 Yellowstone fires, are another.
Now while Native Americans didn't have rifles or horses, they did a pretty good job of hunting buffalo through the use of fire and buffalo jumps. I would say that a lack of horses forced them to be a bit more careful about their environment, because of lack of transportation. That lack of transportation would also keep the population low.
It is amazing what decent graphics, adequate grammar and well designed social engineering can get people to do.
This is yet another variation of a series of malware packages I've seen over the last few years. You get to them through compromised websites or links. They attempt to scare you into downloading and paying for a package to 'solve' the problem. Because the graphics look 'real' and the grammar/spelling is decent, some people wonder if there machine IS infected.
I ran into one of these when a coworker on a MAC called to say that his machine was infected. They had been doing a Google search and found a link that brought up a very scary 'You are infected' screen, complete with 'scan' results. I made a lot of screen prints of the warning messages that popped up when I tried to close the screen using 'normal' means of ending the program. Somebody had a lot of 'fun' coming up with a web page that opened windows when you tried closing them.
Every few days I go to the Symantec site and look under the ThreatCon section for 'Misleading Applications' to get an idea of the current threats. They usually have screen prints of the windows.
It makes a nice toy cannon, though Civil War reenactors might laugh it off the field.
If you want to make a real cannon, one that could have fought at Gettysburg, it would cost a lot more. You would probably do the barrel out of stainless steel, for safety's sake. The carriage and wheels would be made out of high quality wood, because, even just firing powder, the cannon kicks back.
I'll have to find the web site of a person that I know that made a Civil War cannon. It is one that our local reenactors recognize by its distinctive 'bark' and the pressure wave associated with it.
Decades ago, while playing around with a scientific calculator, I determined that you could calculate the volume of the Milky Way galaxy in angstroms on it and not overload the limits of the calculator, at least as far as powers of ten are concerned.
*****
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 100,000 light years
1 light year = 9.5 E 15 meters
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 9.5 E 20 meters
1 Angstrom = 1E-10m
Milky Way galaxy diameter = 9.5 E 30 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy radius = 4.75 E 30 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy area = PI * radius squared = 7.1 E 61 angstroms squared
Milky Way galaxy thickness = 1,000 light years = 9.5 E 28 angstroms
Milky Way galaxy volume = Area * Thickness = 6.9 E 90 angstroms cubed
*****
Given the above, you might need to know PI to more than 90 digits if you want to be able to do accurate positional calculations of each atom in our little galaxy, using polar coordinates. You would need a lot more digits to cover the known universe. (Ignoring, of course, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.)
The main usefulness of PI to that many digits is to provide speed trials for computers.
A second reason is to provide mathematicians with more numbers to base papers on.
I remember seeing this or a related set of patterns in an encyclopedia from the late 50's. The Americana that my parent had featured it.
The Americana from the 80's dropped the equations from what I could tell. Perhaps calculators were a cause of the change.
I'm a readaholic who was trained to avoid spelling errors because they would affect my grades. Of course, there are a few words I mess up on a consistent basis.
I think that I make more typing errors than spelling errors, so having spell check allows me to catch them before they go out. So the 'new' tech is useful.
It can also be annoying if your spell check can't handle words like 'readaholic'.
Isn't that three weapons?
If you can industralize it, it isn't creativity.
Is the 'creativity' industry 'industrializing' creativity or is it attempting to help people develop and enhance their creative abilities? Or does it depend upon who is doing the teaching and what methods they teach?
I consider myself to be an optimist who believes that almost anybody can learn to be creative. But then I'm someone who has no problems being creative in quite a few different areas. And I'm always open for ways to further enhance my creativity.