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Build Impossible Programs

jvns.ca

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Re: Build Impossible Programs

#121

Post by yesenadam »

AJRF wrote: post #82
yesenadam wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohh I was about to reply to your next comment, but it was deleted. I couldn't agree more. That comment was downvoted, but not the 2 replies preceding it containing bizarre and far-fetched accusations. Shameful. What kind of society is it where you can't say: [sorry for quoting at length] I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumptions about your level of technical…

Just to comment; I deleted the comment because I don't want to waste any time on arguing against that particular line of insanity. I wasted my time writing it, but I realise its not worth engaging or even having it open to engaging with further. It's appalling that it devolved to this point. There is something happening with us all, it's as if any form of online discourse has to be bucketed into some form a political…

Sure. Well, I didn't think you wasted your time writing it; it was a thoughtful explanation of how there should be nothing offensive to anyone in what you'd said. But sure, life's too short. I don't think you had to delete it though! But being downvoted for trying to communicate like you did is very frustrating, I imagine!

I don't see this happening on here much, though, thank goodness. It did make me think of the documentary The Red Pill, and although this wasn't directly a 'men's issues' matter, you see the same blind—to use that word—SJW mania. So sure they're on the side of right that they don't need to check if they actually are. (I don't fully understand all this, maybe no-one does.) It's much easier/more exhilarating to join a crusade or lynch mob than to put the time in to judge for yourself - thinking is hard work and people don't like doing it.

Anyway, I'm glad you stuck up for yourself, it's a shame you deleted that comment though; it was admirable.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#122

Post by tim333 »

speps wrote: post #23
xaranke wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/290376045

Thanks but that doesn't work for me, I can't figure which extension is blocking me. I get this when opening that link: TypeError: "play" is read-only player.js:2:3975 VimeoPlayer https://f.vimeocdn.com/p/3.3.17/js/player.js:2:3975 https://f.vimeocdn.com/p/3.3.17/js/player.js:2:260 TypeError: VimeoPlayer is not a constructor 290376045:1:9150 https://player.vimeo.com/video/290376045:1:9150

I had problems and it was "Disable HTML Autoplay" in my case.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#123

Post by Mahn »

meuk wrote: post #80
mikekchar wrote: post #48

If I'm reading that correctly, Segment was (is?) providing some people $8K per month for 3 months to work on open source projects. That's amazing! Here's a link to their 2017 application page: https://open.segment.com/fellowship

Wow, $8K per month is a crazy amount of money (for a developer in Europe), especially to work on a project of your choice.

Yep, to put it in perspective this kind of money in Europe is pretty much a VP/CEO level of salary for a medium size company. Or just about enough to cover ramen and rent in Silicon Valley I imagine.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#124

Post by mikekchar »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #119
meuk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, $8K per month is a crazy amount of money (for a developer in Europe), especially to work on a project of your choice.

Not really- it’s a decent amount but not crazy. You would have to be a contractor to take this up, and that’s quite a bit less than a contractor on say 500 EUR/day would make.

I'm a contractor and if someone offered me $8K per month for a 3 month contract building open source software of my choice, I would leap at it with both hands. Normally I do the same thing, but I don't actually get paid. ;-)

I suppose I should be spending more time looking out for this kind of thing. It's possible there is more money in open source development than I had previously considered.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#125

Post by Serow225 »

afarrell wrote: post #101
brrt wrote: post #79

I just wanted to share that everything jvns is saying here is true. In 2014, for the Google Summer of Code program, I applied to build a JIT compiler for the MoarVM virtual machine. (It is actually more correct to speak of my work as a JIT backend than a full-fledged compiler - the 'frontend' of the compiler was already under development when I started). At the time, I knew just short of nothing about compilers, let…

I would like to know, when you run into the situation that you don’t know was is going on with what you are building and feel a sense of confusion, do you: 1) Stop and spend time trying to get a clear mental model of what you are confused about 2) Push forward and try to build despite not understanding In the past, when I tried doing super-ambitious things, I used the second strategy. Many sleep-deprived (tip: “sleep…

The Feynman Algorithm: 1) Write down the problem. 2) Think real hard. 3) Write down the solution.

http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#126

Post by Serow225 »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #112
georgecalm wrote: post #78

One thing that caught my attention is Julia’s value of work / life balance and the humanization (if that’s the right word) of programming. She very deliberately didn’t work on this in her spare time (underlining that coding isn’t the only important thing in her life) and when she did build the prototype she explicitly wanted to do it at a weekend coders retreat with other “wonderful” people around (as opposed to secl…

Same here. I had to do a double take when she mentioned that. She is a pretty accomplished individual and I always assumed that a lot of her personal time was taken up doing programming related activities. Now I know you don't necessarily need to sacrifice all your personal time to become HN famous.

I'm glad she mentioned that too, sometimes it feels like there's cultural pressure thag if you aren't hacking in every non-work hour then you're a slacker…

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#127

Post by DanielBMarkham »

phaedrus wrote: post #109
z3phyr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rosy, but there are actual theoretical limits (like the halting problem) which act as a bedrock in that magic. Eventually we might find a way around, but we cant be sure of it now.

Even something like the Halting Problem does not rule out as much as people impute it to. It just proves you can't write a program that can analyze all programs, but doesn't mean you can't analyze some programs. However I disagree with your concluding sentence - the whole point of a proof is that we are sure of it now, there is no way around. I would instead phrase it as, we may in the future find that the things we'…

Yep. Want a program to halt? Put a timer on it.

I thought the comment was both interesting and illustrative. Sure, in CS there's a ton of things still to do. But my comment wasn't about CS, it was about programming -- making things for people. The programs don't have to be provably correct or even consistent. That kind of stuff is the science part of programming which is completely different from the applied philosophy that is programming computers to make stuff people want.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#128

Post by amirouche »

hinkley wrote: post #94
amirouche wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At last someone speak up about that very subject "doing impossible things" without being negative about the fact the community (of haters) forbids that behavior. Innovation is NIH somewhat, somehow and that is a Good Thing.

I don’t want to work for a company that only bolts together off the shelf components, although talking to me a few times you might get the idea that this is precisely what I want. I hate working at a place where people are so busy being clever that they reinvent everything. You steal from the younger devs an opportunity to learn, and you externalize the cost of your poor documentation and interface consistency onto y…

> The 80/20 Rule seems to work quite well here, when I see it applied, which is not often enough.

That is 20% of the effort can deliver 80% of the features?

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#129

Post by hinkley »

amirouche wrote: post #128
hinkley wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to work for a company that only bolts together off the shelf components, although talking to me a few times you might get the idea that this is precisely what I want. I hate working at a place where people are so busy being clever that they reinvent everything. You steal from the younger devs an opportunity to learn, and you externalize the cost of your poor documentation and interface consistency onto y…

> The 80/20 Rule seems to work quite well here, when I see it applied, which is not often enough. That is 20% of the effort can deliver 80% of the features?

The other side. We spend 80% of our time on the last 20% of the code. Make it count for something. Do something that differntiates you from competitors.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#130

Post by eneveu »

Jyaif wrote: post #120
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really- it’s a decent amount but not crazy. You would have to be a contractor to take this up, and that’s quite a bit less than a contractor on say 500 EUR/day would make.

That's also less than what a contractor on say 10000 EUR/day would make.

Of course, but 500€/day is what you'd get in Paris as a Java developer with 3-4 years of experience. Which amounts to 10000€/month (counting 20 days).
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