3 ms·

None of the things you mention ended badly though. I think all of those approaches you list are incredibly useful and important concepts and I am very happy tha

None of the things you mention ended badly though. I think all of those approaches you list are incredibly useful and important concepts and I am very happy that I not only know them, but that because of how universal they are I can leverage my knowledge of one approach to learn or apply another approach.

thethimble 2y ago
Another angle on this is that there’s many formal axiomatic ways to define computing. Everything is just a Turing machine. Everything is just a function. Everything is the Conway’s game of life. The fact that all of these forms are equally expressive is quite a surprise when you first discover this. Importantly, it doesn’t mean that any one set of axioms is “more correct” than the other. They’re equally expressive.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Everything is just a Turing machine. That one ends in a tarpit where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
  - Animats 2y ago
    That's the generic problem with "Everything is a ...". Trying to force things into a paradigm that doesn't fit well complicates things.
    - brudgers 2y ago
      The generic problem is every generation thinks they invented sex. https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
    - grugagag 2y ago
      It is a simplification that makes easier to grasp a paradigm. Sure, it could be taken to extremes and pretend nothing else exists outside this ‘everything is a … “ bubble. Luckily we can learn from others’ mistakes and not fall into traps too often.
  - zahlman 2y ago
    >where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. Real development IMX is not much different. People just have low standards for "interesting" nowadays, and also have vastly increased access to previous solutions for increasingly difficult problems. But while modern programming languages might be more pleasant to use in many ways, they have relatively little to do with the combined overall progress developers have made. Increased access to "compute" (as they say nowadays), effort put into planning and design, and the simple passage of time are all far more important factors in explaining where we are now IMO.
hobs 2y ago
I would go further and say that each one of these were so useful that they presented entirely new sets of problems to attempt to solve, because of how many other problems they directly addressed. It's like being mad that hammer was so successful we invented screw to improve on it's greatest hits.

thethimble 2y ago

Another angle on this is that there’s many formal axiomatic ways to define computing. Everything is just a Turing machine. Everything is just a function. Everything is the Conway’s game of life. The fact that all of these forms are equally expressive is quite a surprise when you first discover this. Importantly, it doesn’t mean that any one set of axioms is “more correct” than the other. They’re equally expressive.

brudgers 2y ago
Everything is just a Turing machine. That one ends in a tarpit where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
- Animats 2y ago
  That's the generic problem with "Everything is a ...". Trying to force things into a paradigm that doesn't fit well complicates things.
  - brudgers 2y ago
    The generic problem is every generation thinks they invented sex. https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
  - grugagag 2y ago
    It is a simplification that makes easier to grasp a paradigm. Sure, it could be taken to extremes and pretend nothing else exists outside this ‘everything is a … “ bubble. Luckily we can learn from others’ mistakes and not fall into traps too often.
- zahlman 2y ago
  >where everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. Real development IMX is not much different. People just have low standards for "interesting" nowadays, and also have vastly increased access to previous solutions for increasingly difficult problems. But while modern programming languages might be more pleasant to use in many ways, they have relatively little to do with the combined overall progress developers have made. Increased access to "compute" (as they say nowadays), effort put into planning and design, and the simple passage of time are all far more important factors in explaining where we are now IMO.

hobs 2y ago

I would go further and say that each one of these were so useful that they presented entirely new sets of problems to attempt to solve, because of how many other problems they directly addressed. It's like being mad that hammer was so successful we invented screw to improve on it's greatest hits.