michaelfeathers

81 ms·

31.
by michaelfeathers 4y ago
> it's just that more blood goes through them so they have to be constructed a certain way I agree but the same could be said about decision-making.
32.
by michaelfeathers 4y ago
It's important to realize as well that humans didn't invent hierarchy. It's a structure that occurs naturally when the costs of direct connection are too high in a system with many parts. This is why networks are federated an
33.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
> In a good analogy, both sides should have significant shared structure. The more that’s shared, and the deeper the structure, the better. The alternative to analogies is to name the shared structures.
34.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
A term I use to recenter on Ward Cunningham's concept is 'Design Lag' - How far is the code behind your current understanding of the problem?
35.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
> APL is a write-only language. [1] I've never seen an argument against APL that wouldn't also apply to Kanji and Chinese script - notations with billions of readers.
36.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
Such a great band. I saw them in Los Angeles last month. Exquisite and energetic musicianship despite several of them being in their 70s now.
37.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
“The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information.” - Alan J. Perlis
38.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
This is a lesson in incentives. The reason any of these procedures are not eradicated is that no one wants to be the person who does that and then have the next terrorist attack use a technique that would've been caught. It's inte
39.
Gateway Teams – First experiences of your organization matter(michaelfeathers.silvrback.com)
6 points by michaelfeathers 5y ago|0 comments
40.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
> It's a horrible moniker for the concept and most people who use it don't really mean piecemeal growth at all. What they do talk about is usually design where some shortcut allows you to quickly accomplish a short-term goal wh
41.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
Author of the post here. There's a lot that one can argue about with my choices. A thing that might help is that I selected the papers that led me to see things in a different way. One could argue that _Reflections on Trusting Trust_ i
42.
by michaelfeathers 5y ago
> The fundamental tool of cloud scaling is coordination avoidance. Having many systems rather than one is the ultimate scaling hack.
43.
by michaelfeathers 6y ago
Assuming GRON is short for "grep json", it seems like the tool could have a better name. It looks like it is useful beyond just the grepping case.
44.
by michaelfeathers 6y ago
Separate files make sense if you consider typing a form of coupling. I pitched the idea for something like RBS in Ruby back in 2006. The reasoning is here: https://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=155
45.
by michaelfeathers 6y ago
Another fun one.. Selenium was given its name because that element is used to treat mercury poisoning. (Mercury was a testing tool of that time).
46.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
Configuration files are globals and they are lousy for the same reason globals are lousy when they are in a program. If you use a programming language, you had least have a way to scope.
47.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but can't all of the cases covered by conditions be handled in an OO language by providing an object that one can register conditions with and call signals upon? I'm trying to imagine library support f
48.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
This is a way you can approach it. https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/characterization-testi...
49.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
When an area of engineering is new we make products better than the market will eventually pay for. Over time, we learn how to make them just good enough to reach an equilibrium in a market. This is an idea that is explored in _The World Wi
50.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
It looks like a great base for a refactoring exercise.
51.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
Great article. It should add Technical Debt as a sign.
52.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
It's a decent goal, though. For all else, there's Erlang.
53.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
Good article but it is tangential to a basic design issue. Error handling should be done at the edges of systems rather than in the center. If you do that, it doesn't matter whether you use exceptions or error monads, you have a pure c
54.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
The easiest way to escape AI hype-thinking is to replace "AI" with "computer program" in your mind whenever you see "AI" in an article.
55.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
The thing I love about JetBrains is their ethic. - Started by making refactoring plugins for IDEs. Became irritated by those IDEs. Wrote their own IDE. - Supported various programming languages. Became irritated by those languages. Made the
56.
Scaling and the Friction of Dimension(michaelfeathers.silvrback.com)
12 points by michaelfeathers 7y ago|0 comments
57.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
I thought the implication was clear. When everything becomes "one thing" there's no need to communicate using spectrum.
58.
The Simulation Argument and the Simulation Barrier(michaelfeathers.silvrback.com)
80 points by michaelfeathers 7y ago|116 comments
59.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
I dug into this topic in this talk in 2017. 'Moving Past the Scaling Myth' The core observation is that minimal spanning trees have less edge cost than fully connected graph - if you pay for the difference you can have decentraliz
60.
by michaelfeathers 7y ago
Last year, I was at a conference giving a talk about error handling and Joe Armstrong was in the audience. I went through a bunch of strategies for mitigation and handling of errors and Joe yelled from the back "just let it crash! just

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