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I'm glad to see someone getting the point, which is that we as scientists strive for simplified, unified explanations and systems, and that's a good thing. Lin

by wissler 14y ago

I'm glad to see someone getting the point, which is that we as scientists strive for simplified, unified explanations and systems, and that's a good thing. Linux is nice and practical, but try working with it as a systems programmer sometime. It's full of hacks and arbitrary complexity and all manner of nonsense that persists year after year.

shasta 14y ago
I hate all the existing OSes for this reason. Unfortunately, it's easier to crowd source a big pile of dung (sure you can help - just pick up a shovel!) than it is to build something elegant.
- adestefan 14y ago
  The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung to actually be useful in the real world. You get to the 80% point and then all of a sudden you realize that to do the next thing you need one little hack here. Now you get to 85% and you realize you need one more little hack, then at 88% you need another little hack to make it speedy, ...
  - wissler 14y ago
    The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung Until they don't. You don't know what who is going to come up with next.
    - adestefan 14y ago
      Way to hack off the end of my sentence which is the most important part.
- caf 14y ago
  The reason for this appears to be that elegant solutions do not survive contact with the real world. When someone comes to you with an inelegant hack that makes her database benchmark run 20% faster, you can either accept it and sacrifice some of your elegance, or your can reject it on elegance grounds and sacrifice some of your relevance.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Interestingly, Postgresql refuses to support query plan hints, a very popular hack on the Oracle world, because they insist if you can write a better query plan than the planner, you should teach the planner how to do it instead. Elegance in the long term over pragmatism of the moment.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Then write something better.

by wissler 14y ago

shasta 14y ago

I hate all the existing OSes for this reason. Unfortunately, it's easier to crowd source a big pile of dung (sure you can help - just pick up a shovel!) than it is to build something elegant.

adestefan 14y ago
The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung to actually be useful in the real world. You get to the 80% point and then all of a sudden you realize that to do the next thing you need one little hack here. Now you get to 85% and you realize you need one more little hack, then at 88% you need another little hack to make it speedy, ...
- wissler 14y ago
  The problem is that even the most beautiful and simple solutions end up turning into a big pile of dung Until they don't. You don't know what who is going to come up with next.
  - adestefan 14y ago
    Way to hack off the end of my sentence which is the most important part.
caf 14y ago
The reason for this appears to be that elegant solutions do not survive contact with the real world. When someone comes to you with an inelegant hack that makes her database benchmark run 20% faster, you can either accept it and sacrifice some of your elegance, or your can reject it on elegance grounds and sacrifice some of your relevance.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Interestingly, Postgresql refuses to support query plan hints, a very popular hack on the Oracle world, because they insist if you can write a better query plan than the planner, you should teach the planner how to do it instead. Elegance in the long term over pragmatism of the moment.

snowwrestler 14y ago

Then write something better.