4 ms·

So is this a joke? The readme reads like satire, but it serm somewhat useful and interesting. Is this some guy's toy project where he just makes fun of academia

by adrusi 12y ago

So is this a joke? The readme reads like satire, but it serm somewhat useful and interesting. Is this some guy's toy project where he just makes fun of academia in its documentation? I'm confused.

krazydad 12y ago
I am relieved that I am not the only one that suspects this may be horse shit. If it's not, then it's extremely poorly presented.
- petar 12y ago
  Time is my only limited resource. Which is why it is poorly presented. Don't forget to notice that along-side Escher (which took 2 years to invent) I am maintaining https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit Which is a major piece of software that earns me my salary. if you kickstart what I want to be a non-profit software research foundation, gocircuit.org and escher.io, then the doc would be brilliant and interactive in no time flat :)
tmcb 12y ago
It doesn't look like a joke. The use of unconventional terms seems to be justified by the vast coverage seen on the references: arts, linguistics, cognitive sciences, just to name a few. It even looks a bit non-academic, in the best sense of the term: it departs from the classical aggregation of buzzwords backed by a properly chosen set of bibliographical references.
- petar 12y ago
  That's correct. For instance, I discovered the link to Choiceless Computation AFTER I invented Escher. It is a real mathematical connection, and I only bothered with it, because academics will not look at my work unless you shove some terms of their own into it. So I do, and it is real, because you can go and verify that Shelah's paper exactly matches the sematics of Escher. And the conclusion is that Shelah's paper wasn't necessary for my invention. It was necessary to convince an audience of a specific kind. (Not that this is accomplished yet. But it will. With time.)
  - msutherl 12y ago
    I say this out of genuine concern for your project: you would do well to never say "my invention" again. See: reactions to Stephen Wolfram.
    - petar 12y ago
      I will definitely consider your comments on "speech grandiosity"! They are good points. Thank you.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Academics might look at your work, but you'll have to make lots of effort in explanation and providing context via comparisons with existing and previous work. It may or may not be worth it to you, but we aren't as unapproachable as you think; we even have a conference called Onward! for these kinds if ideas.
  - dgreensp 12y ago
    You never actually explain the semantics of Escher. I think this is why reading the README feels like a great setup with no payoff. Or maybe it's there, just not explained well enough. For example, there's no comprehensible relationship to me between the "inputs" and "outputs" (if that's even what they are) in the diagrams labeled "project" and "Generalize." It looks a little like a spoof, like saying we combine {animal: cat} and {tail: orange} to get {animal: orange} and have a syllogism. Well, what is mechanically going on? Also, you should be able to situation the programming paradigm of Escher among the vast universe of programming paradigms that have been explored. Otherwise, programmers are lost. For example, if there's no directionality to the "circle" gates, is that because they are relations, and the connections between the circles are joins? Or are they perhaps declarative constraints? There are many existing programming languages that you could be describing, most of the time, and drawing things as nested circles or giving them wacky names doesn't explain how Escher differs from other programming languages. So it reads like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" -- this is "A New Kind of Programming," but reading it doesn't give me a new way to look at programming, the way it promises to.
petar 12y ago
I am the guy. And this is not a joke. And the fact that I am making fun of academia is not co-incidental. The point is that I am using academia's own insights to bridge a major gap. Academia (say Theoretical Computer Scientists) don't take their next-door neighbors (the Linguists) seriously. This is why they can never invent what they want: the mind. If they ever collaborated, the singularity would be long behind us.
- theoh 12y ago
  Please don't take this the wrong way, but you are coming across as a bit of a crank. Exaggerating the significance of your work is a marker for crankiness, second only to incomprehensibility.
  - petar 12y ago
    I apologize, if it's a little over the top. But being over the top is the only way to get people to really think: out of anger to prove you wrong. It's just true. But I have no intention to offend anyone.
  - padobson 12y ago
    ...second only to incomprehensibility Which is also here in spades.
  - msutherl 12y ago
    I, for one, maintain that those we call "cranks" serve a vital role.
- throwwit 12y ago
  I'd say it's a clever approach... but it has scaling/UI issues. Nice to see some research dealing with the forest instead of the trees!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- smutticus 12y ago
  It looks curious. Perhaps if you published a longish commented program in Escher it would become more clear to me. Now it simply appears as a curiosity.
zaptheimpaler 12y ago
He presented an earlier version of this, Circuit[1] at GopherCon[2] explaining it more. Probably not fake. [1] https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit [2] http://confreaks.com/videos/3421-gophercon2014-the-go-circuit-towards-elastic-computation-with-no-failures http://confreaks.com/videos/3421-gophercon2014-the-go-circui...
- judk 12y ago
  How does Gophercon decide which presenters to host?

by adrusi 12y ago

So is this a joke? The readme reads like satire, but it serm somewhat useful and interesting. Is this some guy's toy project where he just makes fun of academia in its documentation? I'm confused.

krazydad 12y ago

I am relieved that I am not the only one that suspects this may be horse shit. If it's not, then it's extremely poorly presented.

petar 12y ago
Time is my only limited resource. Which is why it is poorly presented. Don't forget to notice that along-side Escher (which took 2 years to invent) I am maintaining https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit Which is a major piece of software that earns me my salary. if you kickstart what I want to be a non-profit software research foundation, gocircuit.org and escher.io, then the doc would be brilliant and interactive in no time flat :)

tmcb 12y ago

It doesn't look like a joke. The use of unconventional terms seems to be justified by the vast coverage seen on the references: arts, linguistics, cognitive sciences, just to name a few. It even looks a bit non-academic, in the best sense of the term: it departs from the classical aggregation of buzzwords backed by a properly chosen set of bibliographical references.

petar 12y ago
That's correct. For instance, I discovered the link to Choiceless Computation AFTER I invented Escher. It is a real mathematical connection, and I only bothered with it, because academics will not look at my work unless you shove some terms of their own into it. So I do, and it is real, because you can go and verify that Shelah's paper exactly matches the sematics of Escher. And the conclusion is that Shelah's paper wasn't necessary for my invention. It was necessary to convince an audience of a specific kind. (Not that this is accomplished yet. But it will. With time.)
- msutherl 12y ago
  I say this out of genuine concern for your project: you would do well to never say "my invention" again. See: reactions to Stephen Wolfram.
  - petar 12y ago
    I will definitely consider your comments on "speech grandiosity"! They are good points. Thank you.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Academics might look at your work, but you'll have to make lots of effort in explanation and providing context via comparisons with existing and previous work. It may or may not be worth it to you, but we aren't as unapproachable as you think; we even have a conference called Onward! for these kinds if ideas.
- dgreensp 12y ago
  You never actually explain the semantics of Escher. I think this is why reading the README feels like a great setup with no payoff. Or maybe it's there, just not explained well enough. For example, there's no comprehensible relationship to me between the "inputs" and "outputs" (if that's even what they are) in the diagrams labeled "project" and "Generalize." It looks a little like a spoof, like saying we combine {animal: cat} and {tail: orange} to get {animal: orange} and have a syllogism. Well, what is mechanically going on? Also, you should be able to situation the programming paradigm of Escher among the vast universe of programming paradigms that have been explored. Otherwise, programmers are lost. For example, if there's no directionality to the "circle" gates, is that because they are relations, and the connections between the circles are joins? Or are they perhaps declarative constraints? There are many existing programming languages that you could be describing, most of the time, and drawing things as nested circles or giving them wacky names doesn't explain how Escher differs from other programming languages. So it reads like Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" -- this is "A New Kind of Programming," but reading it doesn't give me a new way to look at programming, the way it promises to.

petar 12y ago

I am the guy. And this is not a joke. And the fact that I am making fun of academia is not co-incidental. The point is that I am using academia's own insights to bridge a major gap. Academia (say Theoretical Computer Scientists) don't take their next-door neighbors (the Linguists) seriously. This is why they can never invent what they want: the mind. If they ever collaborated, the singularity would be long behind us.

theoh 12y ago
Please don't take this the wrong way, but you are coming across as a bit of a crank. Exaggerating the significance of your work is a marker for crankiness, second only to incomprehensibility.
- petar 12y ago
  I apologize, if it's a little over the top. But being over the top is the only way to get people to really think: out of anger to prove you wrong. It's just true. But I have no intention to offend anyone.
- padobson 12y ago
  ...second only to incomprehensibility Which is also here in spades.
- msutherl 12y ago
  I, for one, maintain that those we call "cranks" serve a vital role.
throwwit 12y ago
I'd say it's a clever approach... but it has scaling/UI issues. Nice to see some research dealing with the forest instead of the trees!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smutticus 12y ago
It looks curious. Perhaps if you published a longish commented program in Escher it would become more clear to me. Now it simply appears as a curiosity.

zaptheimpaler 12y ago

He presented an earlier version of this, Circuit[1] at GopherCon[2] explaining it more. Probably not fake. [1] https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit https://github.com/gocircuit/circuit [2] http://confreaks.com/videos/3421-gophercon2014-the-go-circuit-towards-elastic-computation-with-no-failures http://confreaks.com/videos/3421-gophercon2014-the-go-circui...

judk 12y ago
How does Gophercon decide which presenters to host?