BaronSamedi

13 ms·

91.
by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I think the most important part, especially for people who do not intend to be mathematicians, is how to apply math to solve problems. The math courses I took in high school and college were all about theory and nothing about application. T
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
When reading anything about Ethereum, the problem I've encountered is that the authors describe the supposed potential of the technology but never practical use cases. They never talk about successful, working applications. The questi
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I don't know if I would agree that there are countless ways to measure quality. I think the standard one is: the ability of the software to meet its design specification. Depending on your spec this could be more or less objective.
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Exactly. Terrible city design is the underlying problem. Electric cars, nice as they are, mostly treat the symptoms.
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I agree with you. I wonder if the best use case for ethereum scripts is actually with private block chains. For private chains the trust problem with external input to the scripts (which is needed for any serious dapp) would be minimized. I
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
It is true that Ethereum has a more powerful scripting language. The real question, however, is if that feature has practical value. I think the jury is still out on that question but I personally lean towards no. If and when there are prof
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
The term "smart contracts" is highly misleading. It is feeding the hype and deeply confusing people. "Smart contracts" are neither smart nor contracts. They are instead very limited scripts triggered by blockchain events
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I think concentration of power is a bigger problem than "mob rule". If certain people or groups are able to acquire the majority of the power in the system, then the egalitarian ideals of decentralization are lost. You have just t
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I think this is a really good idea. Would it be worthwhile to have a neutral party also maintain a node? Would that give the evidence more weight in court for example?
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I wonder what a protocol might look like based on more cynical assumptions? Let's call it the House protocol because it assumes that everyone is hostile--lying and trying to cheat you. Sadly, I think this a more realistic assumption fo
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
As a rule, people tend to support the status quo--even when the status quo is problematic. I would argue that there are good reasons for thinking that the current widespread use of JS is problematic. How, for example, is allowing the execut
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Even some commercial software has poor documentation. Still, open source software has almost universally very poor documentation. I don't know if it hurts free software but it certainly hurts those who use it. If a project is reasonabl
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Even when we credit individuals, and rightly so, as we do, for example with Einstein, ideas don't spring ex nihilo into existence. Rather, as I like to think of it, they grow and emerge out of a certain intellectual environment. There
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
The author of the article tries to identify "who" coined a particular slang word. Some researchers believe this question is mistaken because, they posit, these words evolve through a process similar to biological natural selection
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
"the shared empathy which DevOps fosters". I haven't heard it described like this before but I like it a lot. The way you phrased it emphasizes the "put yourself in other people's shoes" philosophy. An attitude
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I wouldn't call these "management" topics. I would call these the difference between a professional developer and a mere coder.
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Imagine having hundreds of languages with only trivial difference in syntax. Consider the fragmentation and effort wasted on re-inventing the same low level libraries again and again (here is the hundredth version of unit test library). Sur
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I view the GPL as a form of DRM. It may be DRM for a good cause but it is still DRM. DRM is about control and I don't think that imposing controls is ultimately compatible with the notion of "free software". I get the argumen
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I like the text only version a lot. The top icons could still be graphics as they are more gauges than icons. The cognitive load of a million different icons, mostly different per application is too much in my opinion. I would include this
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Well, you can try to make people smarter (good luck with that!) or you could focus on something you can actually control such as delivering better software. Three things we as software developers normally do poorly that could help a lot: 1.
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
How about coding a song instead? With the right language or DSL it should be possible. Substitute a Music IDE for the DAW, maybe keep some visualizations (synced to the code of course). I suppose musicians are more comfortable with a visual
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I agree that the fear of "super AI" is overblown, vastly in my opinion. Discussion on this topic is tantamount to arguing over the attributes of imaginary entities. Simple artificial life of some kind seems much more likely in the
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
What if your development team is made up of mediocre programmers? What works for the most talented programmers isn't necessarily going to work for your team. In my experience the choice of the right tech is primarily a business decisio
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
I agree that hard data is difficult to come by. Without it though, people should not be claiming that X style of programming is better than Y. As much as I like the functional style, it could be that Pascal-style structured programming is a
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by BaronSamedi 9y ago
Or even better, how about empirical research to back up the claim that functional programming is "better"? Does the use of functional language result in fewer bugs at less cost? Compared to what (C, Java, Ada, Lisp)? I don't
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by BaronSamedi 10y ago
Funding is a necessary but not sufficient condition. They were the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Off all of those, the time period, i.e, the beginning of the computer revolution, is the most important factor in my vie
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by BaronSamedi 10y ago
Not my field but I don't understand the rationale behind choosing Rust. Given the performance and security concerns wouldn't Ada be the natural choice here? It may not be the most fashionable language but it seems I read about sec
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by BaronSamedi 10y ago
I often see these as well. I would even go so far as to say these problems are the rule rather than the exception. Why is software development still so high risk? I don't know the answer but it seems to me that software development is
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by BaronSamedi 10y ago
Are you sure about this? Have you seen what the Xerox Star could do in 1981 ( http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html )? Or how about Symbolics Genera? Both of these systems had UI functionality in some ways more advanced t
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by BaronSamedi 10y ago
As if that isn't already happening under the current system. But, hey, why even think about change? The US educational system is already so good at improving, not letting institutional inertia block new ideas, offering better value for

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