7 ms·

Sad news. Just recently Abraham Lempel [0] died, just days after I tasked my 16 yo daughter to implement an lzw compression as a part of her programming educati

Sad news. Just recently Abraham Lempel [0] died, just days after I tasked my 16 yo daughter to implement an lzw compression as a part of her programming education. I chose this particular task for her because many years ago I have implemented an lzw compression myself, years ago, learning a lot about bits, masks and gifs in the process. R.I.P. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lempel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lempel

qup 4y ago
> I tasked my 16 yo daughter to implement an lzw compression as a part of her programming education Kudos, to the both of you. I'm sad we're starting to rapidly lose so many of our titans.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  In other industries, the death of the inventor of a technology often marks the start of a further wave of innovation. For all kinds of reasons, the inventor (who is sometimes by now rich and/or powerful), may have a specific vision or path they want to proceed down. When they die, other people start investigating other paths, often with more success. I wonder if tech will see the same?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    No. In tech when the creator quits or dies they’re replaced by MBAs that squeeze every penny out of the creation. (Like authors whose grandchildren direct the trusts which own the copyright a century after the work was written) New creations in tech have to wait for patents to expire and the incumbents to crumble to the point where they don’t have the cash to buy out the competition any more.
    - qup 4y ago
      To be fair, Ayn Rand said basically the same thing about industry long before tech bros existed.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      A bit tone deaf considering the thread is about algorithms that are open.
      - londons_explore 4y ago
        Plenty of things are totally open, yet innovation is still directed by the inventor.
        kortilla 4y ago
        Still not at all relevant to this case. Algorithms have no such gate keeping because there is no barrier to entry. Algo developers aren’t fighting for some tiny pot of NSF money allocated to particle physics to build a 100 million dollar algorithm detector.
        adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        This is only partially true. A great example is Arithmetic coding in compression where research pretty much stalled for almost 40 years (from the mid 1970s until the 2010s) due to patent concerns.
      - pizza 4y ago
        Well, plenty of compression algorithms have been patented or attempted to be patented - e.g. arithmetic codes and Microsoft's rANS patent
      - vintermann 4y ago
        LZW was claimed by Unisys for many years. It wasn't Ziv's fault, it wasn't even Welch's, but it does highlight that compression has historically been a garbage fire of patent harassment. I certainly think it has held the field back. The patent harassment might even be a factor in the curiosity mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that a lot of practical progress in file compression has been published in a Russian web forum.
      - xxs 4y ago
        I personally wrote an implementation of lzw in Assembly in my late teens. It could deal with gifs... that was before 1999, when Unisys[0] claimed the patent (for all kind of uses) and had the patent for many a year, PNG was created not to use lzw since it was patented. The algorithm was patented for the encoding part but not decoding. [0]: https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Electrical_Engineering/Signal_Processing_and_Modeling/Information_and_Entropy_(Penfield)/03%3A_Compression/3.05%3A_Dynamic_Dictionary/3.5.01%3A_The_LZW_Patent https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Electrical_Engineerin...
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
I hope that an LZW compressor was something she would have naturally wanted to hack on herself, rather than something she’s only coding because she was “tasked” to. The most surefire way to kill a young hacker’s spirit is to force them to hack on things they don’t care about. This goes with anything, not just computing. To whit, a childhood friend of mine was a gifted pianist who really loved jazz. His parents forced him to study with a classical teacher. Guess who doesn’t play piano anymore?
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Well, she seems to be interested in programming and I don't force it on her. So far I think she does quite good. I have chosen lzw for her since my strategy is to give her quite a few diverse tasks to give her broad (albeit not very deep) understanding of general areas of development. I have covered this topic in more detail in a sibling comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318995
- serf 4y ago
  another anecdote to balance : as a kid who played chess, the kids who were 'forced' to play chess -- the ones who came from a long chess playing family and had different scenarios drilled into their head from the day they could talk -- were much more talented at chess than I. Their talent persuaded them to continue pursuing it far longer than I ever did, with many of them still involved. The most involvement I have now is a friendly lichess game every few months. It was their talent that allowed them to find more enjoyment within the pursuit than I ever did, and that talent was essentially forced by their immediate family. So, essentially, I am just saying that forced persuasion thing that parents' sometimes do is a double-edged sword; it can create animosity and bitter hatred but it can also create the drive and motivation for boundless talent and personal satisfaction.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    I’m pretty good at computers but had no real guidance. I now hire young people with a genuine interest, then gift them equipment and guidance that will last them their entire lifetime (Even if they get a career in something else). There’s such thing as pushing too hard, but nobody got buff without being pushed by those around them
copymoro 4y ago
[flagged]
- _sword 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - copymoro 4y ago
    [flagged]
jjice 4y ago
If you're daughter can knock out lzw at 16, she's going to be an incredible programmer. How do you go about teaching your kids? I don't have kids yet, but if they do have in interest in programming, I'd love to give them a strong head start like you have.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Thanks, I think she has a potential to become a great developer, unless we all aren't replaced by that chatGPT thing everyone's talking about. Regarding teaching, I understood early that while I can program, I have very little understanding on how to teach it. So first, she underwent two Python courses (basic and advanced) on stepik.org [0], which had automated tests and have her an understanding of the language. Then, I planned to start throwing tasks of increasing complexity at her until she solves them, giving her a more or less complete coverage of all things programming. So far, she has written such things as - Tetris, in the console, with keyboard input - Snake game, with competing snakes which use wave algorithm to find path - LZW algorithm to learn bits and compression and other things Next my plan for her follows roughly this path: - some GUI programming, using GTK and Windows Forms. Calculator or maybe Checkers or something. - some web programming, backend and frontend. Most likely Django / jQuery - maybe some neural networks since are all so hot now - some hardcore assembler stuff, like maybe some simple game or visual demo - some mobile development, Android or iOS Once she'll be done with all that, I think she'll have quite a clear picture of most general areas of development and will be free to pursue the area she liked the most. [0]: https://stepik.org https://stepik.org
  - userbinator 4y ago
    some hardcore assembler stuff, like maybe some simple or visual demo Demoscene/sizecoding might be interesting, especially if she also likes artistic stuff.
  - eointierney 4y ago
    You are awesome and your daughter is awesomer
  - 4y ago
userbinator 4y ago
I noticed your username after reading your comment, and was not surprised. For some reason, it seems the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms. RAR, PAQ, encode.su, etc. and of course Andrey Markov.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  Incidentally, the guy who wrote RAR (and an incredibly great file manager for Windows, FAR Manager), Eugene Roshal, has studied at the very same faculty/specialty as I did. However, he had graduated before I entered the university.
- xattt 4y ago
  > For some reason, it seems the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms. I’d take a wild guess that it has to do with making more with having less, such as access to larger storage volumes or broadband. Specific to compression, when you’re “tech poor”, the time you spend waiting for data to get processed is essentially free.
  - usr1106 4y ago
    At the time those algorithms where developed even computers / networks in the West were painfully slow, compression always had its use. zstd is developed at Facebook, not known for a lack of computing resources.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      Still, even if you can reduce data footprint on Facebook by 1%, that's the GDP of a small planet right there.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms And, which is quite odd, a lot of proprietary Windows software.
- tcmart14 4y ago

qup 4y ago

> I tasked my 16 yo daughter to implement an lzw compression as a part of her programming education Kudos, to the both of you. I'm sad we're starting to rapidly lose so many of our titans.

londons_explore 4y ago
In other industries, the death of the inventor of a technology often marks the start of a further wave of innovation. For all kinds of reasons, the inventor (who is sometimes by now rich and/or powerful), may have a specific vision or path they want to proceed down. When they die, other people start investigating other paths, often with more success. I wonder if tech will see the same?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  No. In tech when the creator quits or dies they’re replaced by MBAs that squeeze every penny out of the creation. (Like authors whose grandchildren direct the trusts which own the copyright a century after the work was written) New creations in tech have to wait for patents to expire and the incumbents to crumble to the point where they don’t have the cash to buy out the competition any more.
  - qup 4y ago
    To be fair, Ayn Rand said basically the same thing about industry long before tech bros existed.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    A bit tone deaf considering the thread is about algorithms that are open.
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      Plenty of things are totally open, yet innovation is still directed by the inventor.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        Still not at all relevant to this case. Algorithms have no such gate keeping because there is no barrier to entry. Algo developers aren’t fighting for some tiny pot of NSF money allocated to particle physics to build a 100 million dollar algorithm detector.
        adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
        This is only partially true. A great example is Arithmetic coding in compression where research pretty much stalled for almost 40 years (from the mid 1970s until the 2010s) due to patent concerns.
    - pizza 4y ago
      Well, plenty of compression algorithms have been patented or attempted to be patented - e.g. arithmetic codes and Microsoft's rANS patent
    - vintermann 4y ago
      LZW was claimed by Unisys for many years. It wasn't Ziv's fault, it wasn't even Welch's, but it does highlight that compression has historically been a garbage fire of patent harassment. I certainly think it has held the field back. The patent harassment might even be a factor in the curiosity mentioned elsewhere in this thread, that a lot of practical progress in file compression has been published in a Russian web forum.
    - xxs 4y ago
      I personally wrote an implementation of lzw in Assembly in my late teens. It could deal with gifs... that was before 1999, when Unisys[0] claimed the patent (for all kind of uses) and had the patent for many a year, PNG was created not to use lzw since it was patented. The algorithm was patented for the encoding part but not decoding. [0]: https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Electrical_Engineering/Signal_Processing_and_Modeling/Information_and_Entropy_(Penfield)/03%3A_Compression/3.05%3A_Dynamic_Dictionary/3.5.01%3A_The_LZW_Patent https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Electrical_Engineerin...

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

I hope that an LZW compressor was something she would have naturally wanted to hack on herself, rather than something she’s only coding because she was “tasked” to. The most surefire way to kill a young hacker’s spirit is to force them to hack on things they don’t care about. This goes with anything, not just computing. To whit, a childhood friend of mine was a gifted pianist who really loved jazz. His parents forced him to study with a classical teacher. Guess who doesn’t play piano anymore?

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Well, she seems to be interested in programming and I don't force it on her. So far I think she does quite good. I have chosen lzw for her since my strategy is to give her quite a few diverse tasks to give her broad (albeit not very deep) understanding of general areas of development. I have covered this topic in more detail in a sibling comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318995
serf 4y ago
another anecdote to balance : as a kid who played chess, the kids who were 'forced' to play chess -- the ones who came from a long chess playing family and had different scenarios drilled into their head from the day they could talk -- were much more talented at chess than I. Their talent persuaded them to continue pursuing it far longer than I ever did, with many of them still involved. The most involvement I have now is a friendly lichess game every few months. It was their talent that allowed them to find more enjoyment within the pursuit than I ever did, and that talent was essentially forced by their immediate family. So, essentially, I am just saying that forced persuasion thing that parents' sometimes do is a double-edged sword; it can create animosity and bitter hatred but it can also create the drive and motivation for boundless talent and personal satisfaction.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  I’m pretty good at computers but had no real guidance. I now hire young people with a genuine interest, then gift them equipment and guidance that will last them their entire lifetime (Even if they get a career in something else). There’s such thing as pushing too hard, but nobody got buff without being pushed by those around them

copymoro 4y ago

[flagged]

_sword 4y ago
[flagged]
- copymoro 4y ago
  [flagged]

jjice 4y ago

If you're daughter can knock out lzw at 16, she's going to be an incredible programmer. How do you go about teaching your kids? I don't have kids yet, but if they do have in interest in programming, I'd love to give them a strong head start like you have.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Thanks, I think she has a potential to become a great developer, unless we all aren't replaced by that chatGPT thing everyone's talking about. Regarding teaching, I understood early that while I can program, I have very little understanding on how to teach it. So first, she underwent two Python courses (basic and advanced) on stepik.org [0], which had automated tests and have her an understanding of the language. Then, I planned to start throwing tasks of increasing complexity at her until she solves them, giving her a more or less complete coverage of all things programming. So far, she has written such things as - Tetris, in the console, with keyboard input - Snake game, with competing snakes which use wave algorithm to find path - LZW algorithm to learn bits and compression and other things Next my plan for her follows roughly this path: - some GUI programming, using GTK and Windows Forms. Calculator or maybe Checkers or something. - some web programming, backend and frontend. Most likely Django / jQuery - maybe some neural networks since are all so hot now - some hardcore assembler stuff, like maybe some simple game or visual demo - some mobile development, Android or iOS Once she'll be done with all that, I think she'll have quite a clear picture of most general areas of development and will be free to pursue the area she liked the most. [0]: https://stepik.org https://stepik.org
- userbinator 4y ago
  some hardcore assembler stuff, like maybe some simple or visual demo Demoscene/sizecoding might be interesting, especially if she also likes artistic stuff.
- eointierney 4y ago
  You are awesome and your daughter is awesomer
- 4y ago

userbinator 4y ago

I noticed your username after reading your comment, and was not surprised. For some reason, it seems the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms. RAR, PAQ, encode.su, etc. and of course Andrey Markov.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Incidentally, the guy who wrote RAR (and an incredibly great file manager for Windows, FAR Manager), Eugene Roshal, has studied at the very same faculty/specialty as I did. However, he had graduated before I entered the university.
xattt 4y ago
> For some reason, it seems the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms. I’d take a wild guess that it has to do with making more with having less, such as access to larger storage volumes or broadband. Specific to compression, when you’re “tech poor”, the time you spend waiting for data to get processed is essentially free.
- usr1106 4y ago
  At the time those algorithms where developed even computers / networks in the West were painfully slow, compression always had its use. zstd is developed at Facebook, not known for a lack of computing resources.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Still, even if you can reduce data footprint on Facebook by 1%, that's the GDP of a small planet right there.
rbanffy 4y ago
> the former USSR is highly prominent in compression algorithms And, which is quite odd, a lot of proprietary Windows software.
tcmart14 4y ago