nbouscal

57 ms·

481.
by nbouscal 13y ago
I had the same problem just now, when I clicked the download link. I went back and clicked it again and it worked fine the second time.
482.
by nbouscal 13y ago
So in this case, 'what you believe in' is not following the instructions as to which size of paper to use? This is what my mom always referred to as 'cutting off your nose to spite your face.'
483.
by nbouscal 13y ago
The post was not really referring to a gap like that between systems programming and web development. It was referring to a gap like that between developing web applications in Ruby or Python. Drop a Django guy into a Rails project or vice
484.
by nbouscal 13y ago
A refinement of that analogy is that Apple gives you one particular type of bread, and you damn well better like exactly that kind of bread. This is mostly okay, because it is really tasty, but if you happen to want sourdough instead, too b
485.
by nbouscal 13y ago
There very well could be. The most likely difference between someone who tries gambling and gives up after 30 seconds and someone who becomes a gambler for life is that the latter is far more likely to have done well in their first game. Th
486.
by nbouscal 13y ago
Readability is not subjective. Small font sizes, low contrast, bad kerning, and many other things objectively decrease readability. It sounds like you think the web should be a collection of RSS feeds and APIs. That's interesting and all,
487.
by nbouscal 13y ago
I understand what you're saying, I simply disagree with you. Typography is the most important design decision that a content site makes. Leaving something that fundamental to the browser simply strikes me as an exceedingly poor choice. (One
488.
by nbouscal 13y ago
And then you get a completely inconsistent viewing experience across browsers and operating systems. The whole point of having a designer work on content presentation is that they can actually know what type is appropriate for the content t
489.
by nbouscal 13y ago
You and I are using the same word, 'design', to mean two completely different things. To me, design is all about disseminating information to users. That's why designers should care so much about typography - readability is absolutely key
490.
by nbouscal 13y ago
> The point is that websites should not specify a font. Seriously? One of the most important aspects of your design, and you want to leave it up to the browser? Web design is 95% typography. If your website doesn't specify a font you ar
491.
by nbouscal 13y ago
I think you're right that we treat it that way, and I think that it's a problem. If you missed out on learning something about game art design, the worst that can happen is the game art isn't quite as good as it could have been. If you miss
492.
by nbouscal 13y ago
I think you're dead on, and I think the reason for it ends up being pretty simple once you dissect it. Programming is an umbrella that covers a huge number of other skills to varying degrees. Many of them we don't even think about day-to-
493.
by nbouscal 13y ago
I've also run into people who don't know what a transaction or foreign-key constraint is, and who don't know what big-Oh notation even means. I agree that web development doesn't require a CS degree, and I agree that CS degrees don't teach
494.
by nbouscal 13y ago
It's not necessarily a bad decision. Many people would say it's a practical one. However, it limits your thoughts about programming to one very narrow style, and not a particularly good one. There are many other styles of programming that a
495.
by nbouscal 13y ago
This is not necessarily a good thing for the web development field. This is how you end up with people with large gaps in their knowledge responsible for parts of your codebase. To be clear, it is entirely possible to be self-taught and lea
496.
by nbouscal 13y ago
Honestly, I'm chalking this up to Poe's Law at this point. Take care.
497.
by nbouscal 13y ago
Or, you simply have not learned enough yet to understand the language. Programming languages are not designed to be easy to pick up with no prior knowledge, they're designed to be powerful when used by professionals who actually know what t
498.
by nbouscal 13y ago
You are simultaneously arguing that we should be using a natural language and that the language of mathematics is too ambiguous. I think you have not looked very closely at natural languages.
499.
by nbouscal 13y ago
No. The math notation that is used across all branches of mathematics is consistent and unambiguous (the notation of formal logic, naive set theory, etc). The only ambiguity typically comes from traversing different branches of the discipli
500.
by nbouscal 13y ago
There are two very different types of arguments typically made as to why to learn the more esoteric languages (Haskell, Lisp, Forth, others). The first is the more common: learning these languages exposes you to other ways of programming, w
501.
by nbouscal 13y ago
Functional programming is really more than first-class functions. A lot of languages have support for first-class functions (including Ruby's procs) that are not really functional languages. Functional (like all paradigms) is a bit nebulous
502.
by nbouscal 13y ago
The really inspirational part, to me, is the follow-through. A lot of people pay lip service to openness, but very few actually commit to it. I really love the idea behind Gittip, but I'm even more impressed with the way they're doing it.
503.
by nbouscal 13y ago
When you're playing a small stack your Nash equilibrium actions do not extract as much EV as the actions you would make with a large stack. In other words, the best choices you can make with a small stack are poorer choices than the best ch
504.
by nbouscal 14y ago
I've listened to and read quite a few commencement speeches, and DFW's is the only one that made an actual impact on my life. I think to myself "this is water" at least once every day or two and it helps me to realign my perspective.
505.
by nbouscal 14y ago
> Once the old substances patent expires, any drug company can produce generics. Except for when the company makes a tiny modification to the drug that doesn't change its effectiveness and files for a renewed patent, like in the Novar
506.
by nbouscal 14y ago
Asimov was an atheist. You misunderstood the story.
507.
by nbouscal 14y ago
> Else, we might as well say "IBM's entire product line is built on top of the discovery of electricity". Which while true, it doesn't mean we celebrate Maxwell and Tesla for IBM's work. Yes we do. We celebrate Maxwell and Tesla, alon
508.
by nbouscal 14y ago
Window manager doesn't necessarily imply menubar. For example, with xmonad, you don't have a menubar unless you install xmobar. This could be an alternative to that, though admittedly that's a really obscure use case. For me, most of this I
509.
by nbouscal 14y ago
Whether someone starts a new company to do their work or works within an existing one is completely irrelevant to the significance of their work. You're focusing on the companies rather than the people, which makes no sense considering that
510.
by nbouscal 14y ago
Ritchie's work not so much? Are you joking?!

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