4 ms·

> else we'll endlessly repeat ourselves rewriting the same programs over and over again Doing this is ok. We are also rewriting the same books all over again.

by jupp0r 6y ago

> else we'll endlessly repeat ourselves rewriting the same programs over and over again Doing this is ok. We are also rewriting the same books all over again. Knowledge is forgotten and reinvented and rediscovered. You see this in computer science and programming all the time, but also in other fields. Rather than the programs themselves, preserving the concepts and learnings is much more important. Don’t get me wrong, I think vintage computing is great, but we shouldn’t necessarily solve todays problems with it.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
Knowledge being lost and reinvented is a bug, not a feature. Some lessons have been paid-for in blood (like the Therac 25, if you're looking at software development). There is value in understanding how things work and what knowledge came from specific lessons, but starting over again simply invites making the same mistakes all over. I wish we could aspire to be better than that.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  Isn't this kind of like wishing that we could apply the lessons of the fallen Roman Republic to present-day America? It has the same problems: the historical context is imperfect and very tedious to understand (for those who even try). Reinventing the wheel is always easier, cognitively (perhaps while being vaguely cognizant of how there was a Roman Republic that fell to dictatorship that then fractured into hundreds of apocalyptic Christian fiefdoms and how there was an incident with this thing called Therac-25 [and maybe crystallizing that cognizance in proper government standards for medical software]). Also, since the bottleneck is brain bandwidth, it's not helpful that old code is written in old languages which were formulated in a time where the most salient bottleneck was memory/processing speed.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    I wish we'd just try to do better. It won't be perfect, and it'll probably never even be good. The worldview that espouses an inevitable loss of the products of human toil fills me with crushing sadness. Why bother doing anything then?
    - striking 6y ago
      Because we live in the present and not the future?
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Knowledge being lost and reinvented is a bug No because most knowledge is tacit in nature. Things needs to be practised to be really understood. We're not living in the matrix where you can upload knowledge into your brain, you need to actually practise something to understand how it works. Not to mention that all knowledge is contextual and dependent on its environment. Doing the same things over again in a different environment may yield different results, old failures, through tiny changes may turn out to actually work now. That's what makes constant experimentation and repetition necessary to rebuilt robust systems. that's why markets are more effective than central planning, and why evolution is the most robust mechanism on earth. Having twenty companies build the same product is more wasteful than having one committee do it, but only competition, incremental change, and reinvention really are able to explore the entire space.
babypuncher 6y ago
The equation is different with video games, but I generally agree with you on everything else. There isn't much value in using Word Perfect 5.1 today beyond historical preservation.
- samatman 6y ago
  My mother edited four or five academic books on Word Perfect 5.1, and the easiest way to generate offset copy for them would be to boot it up and print them again on an HP LaserJet 4000, just like last time. These will most likely never see another printing, granted. But generalizing across all books published this way, I'm sure this situation will actually arise in the future.
  - babypuncher 6y ago
    I think I wasn't very clear in my comment. I think that for things like Word Perfect 5.1, the better solution for longevity would be new open source software that recreates it's functionality in a non-hardware dependent manner. Your mother being able to open Word Perfect files in LibreOffice and print them out with the correct formatting on a modern printer would be easier (and more useful) than relying on the original hardware and software.

by jupp0r 6y ago

EvanAnderson 6y ago

Knowledge being lost and reinvented is a bug, not a feature. Some lessons have been paid-for in blood (like the Therac 25, if you're looking at software development). There is value in understanding how things work and what knowledge came from specific lessons, but starting over again simply invites making the same mistakes all over. I wish we could aspire to be better than that.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Isn't this kind of like wishing that we could apply the lessons of the fallen Roman Republic to present-day America? It has the same problems: the historical context is imperfect and very tedious to understand (for those who even try). Reinventing the wheel is always easier, cognitively (perhaps while being vaguely cognizant of how there was a Roman Republic that fell to dictatorship that then fractured into hundreds of apocalyptic Christian fiefdoms and how there was an incident with this thing called Therac-25 [and maybe crystallizing that cognizance in proper government standards for medical software]). Also, since the bottleneck is brain bandwidth, it's not helpful that old code is written in old languages which were formulated in a time where the most salient bottleneck was memory/processing speed.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  I wish we'd just try to do better. It won't be perfect, and it'll probably never even be good. The worldview that espouses an inevitable loss of the products of human toil fills me with crushing sadness. Why bother doing anything then?
  - striking 6y ago
    Because we live in the present and not the future?
Barrin92 6y ago
>Knowledge being lost and reinvented is a bug No because most knowledge is tacit in nature. Things needs to be practised to be really understood. We're not living in the matrix where you can upload knowledge into your brain, you need to actually practise something to understand how it works. Not to mention that all knowledge is contextual and dependent on its environment. Doing the same things over again in a different environment may yield different results, old failures, through tiny changes may turn out to actually work now. That's what makes constant experimentation and repetition necessary to rebuilt robust systems. that's why markets are more effective than central planning, and why evolution is the most robust mechanism on earth. Having twenty companies build the same product is more wasteful than having one committee do it, but only competition, incremental change, and reinvention really are able to explore the entire space.

babypuncher 6y ago

The equation is different with video games, but I generally agree with you on everything else. There isn't much value in using Word Perfect 5.1 today beyond historical preservation.

samatman 6y ago
My mother edited four or five academic books on Word Perfect 5.1, and the easiest way to generate offset copy for them would be to boot it up and print them again on an HP LaserJet 4000, just like last time. These will most likely never see another printing, granted. But generalizing across all books published this way, I'm sure this situation will actually arise in the future.
- babypuncher 6y ago
  I think I wasn't very clear in my comment. I think that for things like Word Perfect 5.1, the better solution for longevity would be new open source software that recreates it's functionality in a non-hardware dependent manner. Your mother being able to open Word Perfect files in LibreOffice and print them out with the correct formatting on a modern printer would be easier (and more useful) than relying on the original hardware and software.