5 ms·

You're probably capable of something more interesting than a "middlebrow dismissal..."

by yarvin9 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago
I think Urbit spends a lot of time framing overlay networks in obscurantist and obfuscatory terms, tightly coupling the simple, useful idea of layering a more flexible network on top of restrictive IPv4 networks with less useful ideas like a series of new programming environments with their own ASCII pronunciation guide. I'm not sure what I gave was a middlebrow dismissal; it was just terse. I find Urbit unserious. I think that's unfortunate, because someone should do a serious, pragmatic overlay network.
- yarvin9 11y ago
  We'll call it a terse highbrow dismissal, then. My terse highbrow dismissal: separating the programming environment from the protocol results in serious, pragmatic problems. For instance: protocols specified in English, in which messages are validated by hand and not by a type system.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The notion that Urbit believes it can solve all the problems, rather than tackling a single important problem, is one of the things that makes it unserious to me. The inflexibility of the Internet service model is a serious problem. Poor formal methods for verifying protocols is a serious (albeit not lucrative) problem. Programming languages that make it difficult to express correct programs: serious problem. It is not clear to me how the solution to all three of those problems is the same startup.
    - yarvin9 11y ago
      At a certain scale, it's often a lot easier to build one system that solves all the problems. Building a building: hard problem. Building 1/3 of a building: impossible problem. Building a cow: hard problem. Building 1/3 of a cow: impossible problem.
      - Detrus 11y ago
        Well, some types of buildings are designed to be modular. Cows are not. I'm also in favor of a single system that solves a bunch of problems than a hodgepodge nightmare. That was the vision behind NLS, the Mother of All Demos, SmallTalk, Plan9 etc. And Doug Engelbart can be found favoring the easy to master but complex at first glance approach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM instead of the easy to get started approach of Mac GUIs that won out. The problem arises when the system makes too many weird decisions and people fork it to make their own all encompassing systems. Then it takes forever for crippled versions of these system to be adopted. It doesn't help when even the niche audience is divided. Things that can be disagreed on should be minimized. So there is no technical need to throw the complex at first glance syntax at new users these days. You could convert it to a more verbose syntax and back again. Terse syntax looks clean and easy to scan when you use it daily. But what if you don't? Then it's not self documenting, you have to look up commands to read code. If I don't use command line for a few months, I remember the basics like mkdir, ls, cd but I forget the nuances like ls -a and the billion other options. So it becomes a chore of looking things up constantly. Could be fixed with natural language autocomplete for writing code, but not reading. If you considered such use cases, you wouldn't be so sure about the terse syntax. So many made up words are also asking too much. They'll certainly be worth learning if the system is proven. Haskell has it's own way of doing things, does a lot of things well, but seems to make many things difficult in practice. So it remains a niche that very few learn beyond the surface curiosities. Same for APL, J and K. And I wrote most of this before seeing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280348
      - KingMob 11y ago
        Without addressing the merits of Urbit, these examples aren't valid. A third of a building is just a building in progress (foundations laid, i-beams installed, etc.) A third of a cow is a calf. It might be the case that you will get synergistic effects and/or Urbit's vision isn't possible without solving multiple problems. But it could equally be you've bitten off more than you could chew by choosing to work on multiple orthogonal problems.
        11y ago

You're probably capable of something more interesting than a "middlebrow dismissal..."

by yarvin9 11y ago

You're probably capable of something more interesting than a "middlebrow dismissal..."

I think Urbit spends a lot of time framing overlay networks in obscurantist and obfuscatory terms, tightly coupling the simple, useful idea of layering a more flexible network on top of restrictive IPv4 networks with less useful ideas like a series of new programming environments with their own ASCII pronunciation guide. I'm not sure what I gave was a middlebrow dismissal; it was just terse. I find Urbit unserious. I think that's unfortunate, because someone should do a serious, pragmatic overlay network.

yarvin9 11y ago
We'll call it a terse highbrow dismissal, then. My terse highbrow dismissal: separating the programming environment from the protocol results in serious, pragmatic problems. For instance: protocols specified in English, in which messages are validated by hand and not by a type system.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The notion that Urbit believes it can solve all the problems, rather than tackling a single important problem, is one of the things that makes it unserious to me. The inflexibility of the Internet service model is a serious problem. Poor formal methods for verifying protocols is a serious (albeit not lucrative) problem. Programming languages that make it difficult to express correct programs: serious problem. It is not clear to me how the solution to all three of those problems is the same startup.
  - yarvin9 11y ago
    At a certain scale, it's often a lot easier to build one system that solves all the problems. Building a building: hard problem. Building 1/3 of a building: impossible problem. Building a cow: hard problem. Building 1/3 of a cow: impossible problem.
    - Detrus 11y ago
      Well, some types of buildings are designed to be modular. Cows are not. I'm also in favor of a single system that solves a bunch of problems than a hodgepodge nightmare. That was the vision behind NLS, the Mother of All Demos, SmallTalk, Plan9 etc. And Doug Engelbart can be found favoring the easy to master but complex at first glance approach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeSgaJt27PM instead of the easy to get started approach of Mac GUIs that won out. The problem arises when the system makes too many weird decisions and people fork it to make their own all encompassing systems. Then it takes forever for crippled versions of these system to be adopted. It doesn't help when even the niche audience is divided. Things that can be disagreed on should be minimized. So there is no technical need to throw the complex at first glance syntax at new users these days. You could convert it to a more verbose syntax and back again. Terse syntax looks clean and easy to scan when you use it daily. But what if you don't? Then it's not self documenting, you have to look up commands to read code. If I don't use command line for a few months, I remember the basics like mkdir, ls, cd but I forget the nuances like ls -a and the billion other options. So it becomes a chore of looking things up constantly. Could be fixed with natural language autocomplete for writing code, but not reading. If you considered such use cases, you wouldn't be so sure about the terse syntax. So many made up words are also asking too much. They'll certainly be worth learning if the system is proven. Haskell has it's own way of doing things, does a lot of things well, but seems to make many things difficult in practice. So it remains a niche that very few learn beyond the surface curiosities. Same for APL, J and K. And I wrote most of this before seeing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10280348
    - KingMob 11y ago
      Without addressing the merits of Urbit, these examples aren't valid. A third of a building is just a building in progress (foundations laid, i-beams installed, etc.) A third of a cow is a calf. It might be the case that you will get synergistic effects and/or Urbit's vision isn't possible without solving multiple problems. But it could equally be you've bitten off more than you could chew by choosing to work on multiple orthogonal problems.
      - 11y ago