linguae

46 ms·

481.
by linguae 3y ago
Let’s make a trip back to the early and mid 1990s when C++ was a young language and Java was under development (it was released in 1995). At the time the most popular object-oriented language was Smalltalk, Common Lisp was at its peak of c
482.
by linguae 3y ago
“Damn” is not a vulgarity unlike certain other words, but too many utterances of “damn” will make a movie’s rating PG instead of G, “damn” will get you in trouble for cursing at a private Christian school, and I wouldn’t use the word “damn”
483.
by linguae 3y ago
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" is a very old saying. The sentiment is similar to how many companies have blindly adopted FAANG-style Leetcode interviews even when their work is completely different from what the FAANGs do
484.
by linguae 3y ago
This is all opinion, but for me, it’s not that modern macOS has severely regressed from Snow Leopard, though I don’t like notarization and I also don’t like the flat design and iOS influences that have made its way to macOS in the past deca
485.
by linguae 3y ago
Speaking from a US-centric point of view (I don’t know the situation abroad), making a living and keeping up with inflating costs feels like being on a treadmill that goes faster every year, with more and more demands for productivity from
486.
by linguae 3y ago
Just a few of my opinions regarding why there’s so much low-quality software: 1. No culture of craftsmanship in software outside of niches such as native Mac software development. “Move fast and break things” was supposed to mean embracin
487.
by linguae 3y ago
1. How many software engineers are necessary for the federal government to build its own office software, or at the very least contribute to open-source projects such as LibreOffice? Depending on the size of the team, this may be a drop i
488.
by linguae 3y ago
I think this has to do with the BSD’s origins as extensions to AT&T Unix. AT&T Unix shipped with excellent documentation beyond man pages. In fact, some of this documentation was included with FreeBSD, alongside documentation writ
489.
by linguae 3y ago
Thank you for your response. As someone who leans more traditionalist in my computing preferences, this is one of the most thorough and thought-provoking defenses of the GNOME and modern Linux ways of designing systems I’ve read.
490.
by linguae 3y ago
For years I’ve wanted a FOSS macOS clone, but in recent years my interest has shifted away from that and toward what inspired NeXT (and the Mac) in the first place: the Smalltalk environment. I’ve dug down deep rabbit holes exploring Small
491.
by linguae 3y ago
I don’t disagree with you, but I believe I know why there is antipathy against GNOME. GNOME 3 isn’t directly inspired by iOS, but it came about during a time when some people thought that traditional Windows- and Mac-like desktops were out
492.
by linguae 3y ago
There are two projects that you may be interested in: - helloSystem ( https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ ) —- an OS inspired by macOS that uses FreeBSD as its base and uses the Qt toolkit for rendering UI elements. - r
493.
by linguae 3y ago
I love the Tiger through Snow Leopard era of Mac OS X, and I feel I could be productive on a G4, G5, or early Intel Mac for lightweight computing tasks, though I’d need to use another device for web browsing and for handling modern file for
494.
by linguae 3y ago
This is true; consumer hardware is crazy capable these days. Even less powerful hardware such as the Raspberry Pi enables various sorts of projects that can be done inexpensively. While it’s hard to find a Xerox PARC- or Bell Labs type of
495.
by linguae 3y ago
As a researcher, I concur. I’m a 80s/90s kid who got into computing through seeing the technological changes around me and who got inspired by the stories of Steve Jobs, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Alan Kay, and other pioneers. I w
496.
by linguae 3y ago
Even if you pivot to AI, the technology advances have been so swift that even AI practitioners need to keep up to not fall behind. While certain fundamental skills such as statistics, linear algebra, and elementary machine learning algorit
497.
by linguae 3y ago
I don’t think hacker culture is dead. Rather, computing entered its Eternal September; a career in software engineering, especially in the United States, now carries a similar cachet to being a doctor or lawyer, and the startup world has a
498.
The INTERNET on April 4, 1998(youtube.com)
4 points by linguae 3y ago|0 comments
499.
by linguae 3y ago
Have you considered why the cost of living is so high? If everyone in the community made a million dollars a year but the housing supply was artificially restricted so that way people had to pay six-figure monthly rents due to supply-and-d
500.
by linguae 3y ago
As a Californian I only eat out whenever I have to these days, such as while traveling, and even then it is more cost-effective to eat bologna sandwiches than to eat fast food. The prices are outrageous, and these minimum wage hikes will p
501.
by linguae 3y ago
If nobody can afford to buy the food, then the workers preparing and serving the food would be out of a job due to a lack of revenue from the restaurant. Pretty simple.
502.
by linguae 3y ago
Earning a PhD is about showing employers that you are capable of producing novel research results. You should earn a PhD because you are interested in deeply investigating a research problem, and also because you are interested in pursuing
503.
by linguae 3y ago
In my opinion, the motivation for functional programming begins with the following problem: how do we manage the complexity of programs in such a way where we can reason about them more effectively? In your programming education, you may ha
504.
by linguae 3y ago
The problem with this analysis is that Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg did make efforts within Xerox to commercialize Smalltalk and related technologies. When Xerox fumbled, they went elsewhere: Alan Kay to Atari and then Apple, and Adele Gold
505.
by linguae 3y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. We live in a world where the value of everything must be justified on a regular basis. The fundamental challenge with research is that it’s inherently risky, yet research institutions are expected to demonstrate “i
506.
by linguae 3y ago
1. Development and research are two different skills. Not all developers are good researchers, and not all researchers are good developers. With that said, there are people who are good at both; Dennis Ritchie and Jeff Dean are great exa
507.
by linguae 3y ago
You brought up something very interesting that I wish more people emphasized when discussing PARC. Alan Kay and his colleagues were not indifferent to business, far from it. In fact, they actively tried to get Xerox to commercialize their
508.
by linguae 3y ago
I’m away from home right now so I can’t verify this, but if I remember correctly from reading Dealers of Lightning , Xerox PARC researchers were paid the equivalent of six figures when adjusted for inflation. When considering the much low
509.
by linguae 3y ago
$200,000 net ROI from a $1.2 million sale of Apple’s pre-IPO shares in 1979 or 1980 dollars, though it could’ve made much, much more had Xerox held on to those shares: https://livingcomputers.org/Blog/What-Really-Happen
510.
by linguae 3y ago
As a researcher, it would be wonderful if there were an industrial research lab again that doesn’t demand immediate ROI (like how most industrial research labs sadly demand) and also avoids the “publish or perish” pressures of academia. Ra

More ›