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I just don’t know about hiking with a laptop. Down time is also productive time. That said, it is interesting how he organizes the digital assets of his life.

I just don’t know about hiking with a laptop. Down time is also productive time. That said, it is interesting how he organizes the digital assets of his life. A little off topic: I subscribed to use the Wolfram Language a couple of years ago and really liked the integrated documentation, and the capabilities built in for just about everything. What was a turnoff was the very slow cycle time between entering code to be evaluated and seeing results. I signed up for a less expensive level of service (about $20/month) and that may have been the problem. I would like the speed of, for example, Common Lisp repl development with the power of the Wolfram Language.

5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago
Rather than throwing even more money at Wolfram, it would be even better to put up a fund (maybe a crowdsourced campaign) to buy the rights to Macsyma and PDEase to release them under the GPL.
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  Except the Wolfram Language provides access to vast information about the world. I worked with the Knowledge Graph at Google and Wolfram Language seems like an easy to use personal version of that. I would be happy to pay for it, forever, if it were more responsive.
  - 5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago
    > Except the Wolfram Language provides access to vast information about the world. Which is mostly pulled in from public data sources, such as the CIA World Factbook, US census and economic data, US Geological Survey data, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, etc. Knowledge Graph was based on Freebase, which in 2016 transferred its database to the Wikidata project (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page). So once again, instead of throwing more undeserved money at Wolfram for appropriating other people's work, the better alternative is to work on integrations of Wikidata into Common Lisp, SciPy, Org mode, etc. and contribute to Wikidata itself.
    - mark_l_watson 8y ago
      You have a good point! Something to consider starting. A quicklisp library that caches wikidata, etc. and provides a uniform interface.
alanbernstein 8y ago
Isn't it at least conceivable that there are a small number of people who can just be mentally productive all the time? Considering what he has accomplished in his life, if such a person could exist, wouldn't he be one of them?
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> Down time is also productive time ...or maybe it's not productive and not being productive all the time is a good thing for your mental health.
- SZJX 8y ago
  I think it depends on person. Also Cal Newport, though advocating the concept of "stopping the work day at 5 p.m.", also strongly advocates that one should not mindlessly spend the time "after work", but should engage in other types of productive activities such as reading books. He quotes Bennett, who said that the human mind doesn't tire except for when sleeping, and all it needs is switching to a different type of intellectual activity, which I find to be very reasonable. My personal experience has been that whenever I'm varying the type of productive activities throughout the day, I get a lot done, feel satisfied, stay sharp and productive. Whenever I do too much mindless entertainment such as playing too much of one video game or browsing reddit, I end up not feeling very well the next day whatsoever. So in the case of Wolfram maybe he checks email or does some type of activity that is not the same as the type of activity he does while at the desk, which I think can be totally conceivable and productive.

5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago

Rather than throwing even more money at Wolfram, it would be even better to put up a fund (maybe a crowdsourced campaign) to buy the rights to Macsyma and PDEase to release them under the GPL.

mark_l_watson 8y ago
Except the Wolfram Language provides access to vast information about the world. I worked with the Knowledge Graph at Google and Wolfram Language seems like an easy to use personal version of that. I would be happy to pay for it, forever, if it were more responsive.
- 5166cc9c39fa61 8y ago
  > Except the Wolfram Language provides access to vast information about the world. Which is mostly pulled in from public data sources, such as the CIA World Factbook, US census and economic data, US Geological Survey data, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, etc. Knowledge Graph was based on Freebase, which in 2016 transferred its database to the Wikidata project (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page). So once again, instead of throwing more undeserved money at Wolfram for appropriating other people's work, the better alternative is to work on integrations of Wikidata into Common Lisp, SciPy, Org mode, etc. and contribute to Wikidata itself.
  - mark_l_watson 8y ago
    You have a good point! Something to consider starting. A quicklisp library that caches wikidata, etc. and provides a uniform interface.

alanbernstein 8y ago

Isn't it at least conceivable that there are a small number of people who can just be mentally productive all the time? Considering what he has accomplished in his life, if such a person could exist, wouldn't he be one of them?

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

> Down time is also productive time ...or maybe it's not productive and not being productive all the time is a good thing for your mental health.

SZJX 8y ago
I think it depends on person. Also Cal Newport, though advocating the concept of "stopping the work day at 5 p.m.", also strongly advocates that one should not mindlessly spend the time "after work", but should engage in other types of productive activities such as reading books. He quotes Bennett, who said that the human mind doesn't tire except for when sleeping, and all it needs is switching to a different type of intellectual activity, which I find to be very reasonable. My personal experience has been that whenever I'm varying the type of productive activities throughout the day, I get a lot done, feel satisfied, stay sharp and productive. Whenever I do too much mindless entertainment such as playing too much of one video game or browsing reddit, I end up not feeling very well the next day whatsoever. So in the case of Wolfram maybe he checks email or does some type of activity that is not the same as the type of activity he does while at the desk, which I think can be totally conceivable and productive.