stiff

51 ms·

421.
by stiff 14y ago
Single best is difficult, here are some favourites of mine: "You and your research" by Richard Hamming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw "How to design a good API and why it matters" by Joschua Bloch: http://www.youtube.com/wat
422.
by stiff 14y ago
Repost from 7 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5506093
423.
by stiff 14y ago
Just compare what has been achieved in science in, say, 2000 years before the invention of calculus, with just the 100 years after its invention. As almost always, the author is extrapolating what is true in his field (biology) to "the worl
424.
by stiff 14y ago
My gut feeling, based on years of experience in making unsubstantiated claims, is that the best developers are e^(i*pi) more productive than the worse ones. The measure I have chosen is the number of bugs per square centimetre of screen cod
425.
by stiff 14y ago
Whole galaxies die, what to say about us poor humans, please do not offend basic physics with this "other option" thing, if there is a single certain thing in the whole universe it is the certainty of change and, as a consequence, death. We
426.
by stiff 14y ago
I think too that this was his point, it only might make sense in very specific scenarios though, for day-to-day web-dev this is terrible advice as others have said.
427.
by stiff 14y ago
Ngrep is another awesome tool that is a networking equivalent of a common UNIX utility (although a more loose one in this case): http://ngrep.sourceforge.net/ Also +1 for socat as a netcat replacement, having SSL there when needed is real
428.
by stiff 14y ago
Did you mean something else then with done more harm than good for the industry ? I don't know much about crypto or Schneiers work, I am just curious what you meant if what you said wasn't in reference to people choosing to hand code thei
429.
by stiff 14y ago
_Applied_ is a broad survey of cryptographic techniques that was good for its time but has aged terribly and probably done more harm than good for the industry†. Do you blame Cormen for all the people that don't use library sorting functi
430.
by stiff 14y ago
I first learned some programming being 8 year old and typing BASIC programs in an editor. Somewhat surprisingly, I think it was easier to get started then than it is now, BASIC was then included among the initial program set of the computer
431.
by stiff 14y ago
The biggest problem with professional programmers entering the field is in my opinion precisely the lack of ability to reason about how given code meets the criteria you mentioned and how different versions of the code score using those cri
432.
by stiff 14y ago
I think people basically carry over their Windows habits, treat each distro as a completely separate OS offering a certain look & feel and app selection.
433.
by stiff 14y ago
http://9fans.net/archive/2008/08/134
434.
by stiff 14y ago
I remember some poor guy asking about syntax highlighting in Acme and the reaction was pretty similar...
435.
by stiff 14y ago
I read that too, it is supposedly invented by some great designer, which is, well, controversial, when you actually look at it ;)
436.
by stiff 14y ago
I was semi-joking in reference to the comment, the Plan9 and suckless communities are famous for being very hard-headed about programming being the only way to customize their software. For example, I use dwm - http://dwm.suckless.org/ a
437.
by stiff 14y ago
The so-called Plan9 way of providing customizable features.
438.
by stiff 14y ago
I think your argument doesn't hold up all that well, you said that the improved architecture of the individual cores improved single-threaded performance (despite, I assume, the decreased clock rates), so I think Dr. Armstrongs point that t
439.
by stiff 14y ago
What about things like data structures, general understanding of programming language semantics, basic problem decomposition for data hiding and abstraction, ... ?
440.
by stiff 14y ago
I don't think anyone is saying it is completely uncorrelated with the real thing, sure if you split the chart in half the languages on the right will mostly really be less expressive, but this we know without having the chart anyway and the
441.
by stiff 14y ago
If you only validate research via checking if it "agrees with experience", then what's the point of doing it in the first place?
442.
by stiff 14y ago
I don't think it's the community that makes up for the bias, more importantly it's not normalized with respect to the size of the project, sure CoffeeScript won't have much lines per commit since 90% of the time the commit will be something
443.
by stiff 14y ago
I think the lesson we should all reflect on here is that when designing very critical systems one should not try to be too clever or optimize to the point of the correct working of the whole system being dependent on a single assumption. Ol
444.
by stiff 14y ago
Schenker does quite nice generic laptops: http://www.mysn.de/ You can do a custom configuration and for not so much money you can get a powerful CPU, fast SSD drive, lots of ports etc., and most importantly an IPS screen. The finishing qu
445.
by stiff 14y ago
I agree with your reasoning, but you assume that the outcome of the research on a given plant will very quickly lead to a total understanding of its ingredients and effects and that it will always be feasible to develop a technological proc
446.
by stiff 14y ago
Thanks for all the downvotes, aggressive trolling, comments on "pixie dust", "spirit of the planet", "poultices" etc., very constructive discussion, very scientific...
447.
by stiff 14y ago
The "spirit of the plant" wasn't a straw man? What I mean is that _in cases where plants could have advantage over modern medicine_, they often do so because of their complex chemical constitution that can produce those kinds of synergies,
448.
by stiff 14y ago
It isn't even a loose correlation. It is no better than random. It depends what you mean by natural, I guess. Please read this in context, I am mostly talking about early adopting radical lifestyle changes vs. sticking to the status quo y
449.
by stiff 14y ago
I was thinking we are talking about all plants in existence, this is a study of 1000 most commonly used herbs, still, I learned something new, so thanks. Still it doesn't prove your more bold claim that somehow all the potential benefits of
450.
by stiff 14y ago
You are very aggressive while you clearly do not know what I am talking about and doing a complete straw men. In fact the very same page referenced in this post confirms what I said: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/scientific

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