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Another thing: this is why we (tech) need to engage with politics. If there's one thing we really understand, it's complexity: why it sucks, how to avoid it, a
by eldavido 11y ago
Another thing: this is why we (tech) need to engage with politics.
If there's one thing we really understand, it's complexity: why it sucks, how to avoid it, and how piling on rule after rule can make the legal code "unmaintainable" (sound familiar?)
- stcredzero 11y agoCalifornia once had a "Legislative Data Center" whose entire purpose was to ensure that California laws do not conflict. Not sure if they still do. They wrote their own search software.
- specialist 11y agoMy state has that too. I think that's the norm.
- matt4077 11y agoIt's also the reason why tech people shouldn't be so dismissive of politicians, lawyers or the social sciences: they've been wrangling this shit for hundreds of years.
- quanticle 11y agoYet somehow despite wrangling with it for hundreds of years, they manage to do a worse job than most entry-level programmers.
- phinnaeus 11y agoThe nice thing about programming is it usually doesn't require a literal vote to change each line of it.
- MaulingMonkey 11y agoYou don't have mandatory code reviews...?
- ep103 11y agoI challenge you to interview more entry-level programmers : )
- superuser2 11y agoCan you find even one example of an entry-level programmer governing a city, let alone enough data to generalize about "most"?
- jdmichal 11y agoLet's see how well any programmer, much less an entry-level one, handles an indeterminate execution environment... It's like C++, except every line has potentially undefined behavior.
- humanrebar 11y ago> It's like C++, except every line has potentially undefined behavior. ...but you repeat yourself. How many production C++ programs have absolutely zero undefined behavior?
- dntrkv 11y agoOr a better explanation is that you just don't understand how difficult it really is.
- Paul-ish 11y agoMost programs designed by committee probably don't come out so well.
- burkaman 11y agoHow many software projects do you know that have survived and thrived for hundreds of years?
- eldavido 11y agoI agree and actually think code-wranglers and lawyers have more in common than people realize. I almost became a lawyer but decided to write code instead.
- tshannon 11y agoSo the law should really be one giant program that legislators should "commit" code to, after code review of course. Neat idea.
- bduerst 11y agoTrain a neural net on all previous court data, and use it to preside over the bulk of redundant court cases. Call it De jure Recursive Engine Driving Decisions, or Judge D.R.E.D.D.
- selimthegrim 11y agoI always loved how the Judge DREDD video game went batshit crazy with acronyms.
- alistairSH 11y agoIsn't it already? State code can be published as a single tome. Committees write and review updates. In a bicameral legislature, there are usually review processes between the houses (QA?) The legislative body votes (commits) the changes. Then the governor acts as a final QA step before pushing to production.
- tshannon 11y agoTo a point, but if you look at most laws, especially tax laws, you'll see a completely lack of logic in many of them, so much so that they literally could not be put into a program.
- specialist 11y agoMy first exposure to Robert's Rules of Order was "OMG! Wait til gamers hear about this! It'll be like crack for them."
- tracker1 11y agoOne of the reasons I appreciate how Arizona's statute revision system works... as new laws come in they effectively replace a given section of the statutes to reflect the new version of the statute... this doesn't help much when a local ordinance conflicts with a broader one, but is a nicety all the same. At least it makes the law as it stands now, easier to reason with.