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He reiterates many of the things he 's been saying for a while and written in his book. It's worth reiterating them, probably because things have not changed.

by return0 10y ago

He reiterates many of the things he 's been saying for a while and written in his book. It's worth reiterating them, probably because things have not changed. He makes a distinction of computers as the "one field that has progres", but, is it really true that IT is not stuck in a rut as well? What are the new paradigms developed recently? Computer vision, machine learning were established in the 80s , despite only becoming commonplace nowadays. There is little progress in theory since then. Engineers obsess over the rediscovery of functional languages, a relic of the 50s. Commercial success should not be taken as an indicator of real progress.

deleted 10y ago
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virmundi 10y ago
I agree that there doesn't seem to be much advancement over the 80s (I'm trying to learn emacs for Clojure right now). I don't agree that commercial success is not an indicator of real progress. For example, LISPs did not run well on 80s computers. The Japanese, amongst others, had to create special computers to control their trains. Rules based programming performed poorly too. May other such paradigms and tools fall into this category. For the most part the old, neat tools of now have the hardware necessary for them to be useful. The JVM provides great performance for Clojure. Over the last 30 years, multi-threaded concepts coalesced too. Now they're built into mainstream languages. Provided people stop trying to solve already solved problems like task management, we could possibly be on the verge of productivity improvements.
internaut 10y ago
Progress can be a rather nebulous word. It can mean breaking new ground or on a lower level: a continuation in effort. Replace progress with 'vital energies'. New ground is what we all want (new nuclear systems) but when there isn't even a continuation of effort (no old style nuclear plants being built) it's even worse. Computer science is in a rut. It's just that other things have even lost the energy to cycle through old accomplishments. I'd say the Art world is one of those areas that has lost all vitality.

by return0 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

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virmundi 10y ago

I agree that there doesn't seem to be much advancement over the 80s (I'm trying to learn emacs for Clojure right now). I don't agree that commercial success is not an indicator of real progress. For example, LISPs did not run well on 80s computers. The Japanese, amongst others, had to create special computers to control their trains. Rules based programming performed poorly too. May other such paradigms and tools fall into this category. For the most part the old, neat tools of now have the hardware necessary for them to be useful. The JVM provides great performance for Clojure. Over the last 30 years, multi-threaded concepts coalesced too. Now they're built into mainstream languages. Provided people stop trying to solve already solved problems like task management, we could possibly be on the verge of productivity improvements.

internaut 10y ago

Progress can be a rather nebulous word. It can mean breaking new ground or on a lower level: a continuation in effort. Replace progress with 'vital energies'. New ground is what we all want (new nuclear systems) but when there isn't even a continuation of effort (no old style nuclear plants being built) it's even worse. Computer science is in a rut. It's just that other things have even lost the energy to cycle through old accomplishments. I'd say the Art world is one of those areas that has lost all vitality.