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patrickcollison.com

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Re: Questions

#361

Post by [deleted] »

dasmoth wrote: post #113
lisper wrote: post #106

> Why are programming environments still so primitive? Because we as an industry made a strategic decision in the late 20th century to value run-time efficiency over all other quality metrics, a decision which has manifested itself in the primacy of C and its derivatives. Everything else has been sacrificed in the name of run time efficiency, including, notably, security. Development convenience was also among the co…

I agree regarding the symptoms, but am less convinced that run-time efficiency is the sole (or perhaps even major) cause. If it were, I'd argue that we'd see less usage of, e.g. , Python. I don't know the true cause -- I wish I did. But I do do see a trend towards an ever more "hands-off" style of software development: large volumes of automated (especially unit) tests in preference to interactive approaches (or hybr…

[deleted]

Re: Questions

#362

Post by singularity2001 »

pchristensen wrote: post #327
singularity2001 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it takes 95% comprehension of the text in order to acquire new grammar and vocabulary strongly disagree. learning chinese by youtube. I comprehend 15% but I pick up new patterns and words all the time.

Any good sources you recommend for learning Chinese on YouTube? I’m just getting started with HelloChinese and Fluent Forever - watching video seems too deep for now.

Start with https://hooktube.com/watch?v=ZMsU9O7II1k songs https://hooktube.com/channel/UCJdwm0ut_GzVT5VzzylqDQA

then

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfAyWdGHnLdErys013Ysp... 走遍中国 Across China https://hooktube.com/watch?v=slFB9JhOTxk Homeland Dreamland 远方的家 no subs = better!

Re: Questions

#363

Post by pm90 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #352
____a wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you on mobile? Or something else might be breaking formatting for you. The chart linked does have numbers for the Panama Canal (408.12) and Burma-Siam Railway (385.45).

40% of workers died building the Panama Canal? That's nuts.

The history of the canal itself is pretty interesting. It was an effort started by the French, who lost too many workers to tropical diseases (specifically malaria). Then the Americans took over, and one of the reasons they succeeded was they made sure to take preventative measures to protect workers from malaria.

Re: Questions

#364

Post by tzs »

Mizza wrote: post #194
panic wrote: post #8

> What's the successor to the book? And how could books be improved? > Books are great (unless you're Socrates). We now have magic ink. As an artifact for effecting the transmission of knowledge (rather than a source of entertainment), how can the book be improved? How can we help authors understand how well their work is doing in practice? (Which parts are readers confused by or stumbling over or skipping?) How can…

This isn't for everybody, but I would say Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), where words are sequentially presented in place to the reader, which has significantly changed the way I read. I wrote my own implementation of RSVP, which has eBook reader support, and now it is absolutely my preferred method of reading, and I read at 1000WPM. Though normal books are still enjoyable, they feel tedious and slow. The pr…

Where I think this could be really useful is status messages. When a status message on some fixed layout display is too wide, the solution is often to have it scroll horizontally back and forth automatically, which can be very hard to read.

I think it would be more readable to put it in an area big enough for the longest word, and then RSVP through the message repeatedly.

If anyone wants a simple way to play around with RSVP, here's a little quick and dirty command line reader I wrote a long time ago to play with this: https://pastebin.com/zfq2eW4n

Put it in reader.cpp and compile with:

  $ c++ reader.cpp
To use:

  $ ./a.out N
where N is the number of milliseconds delay between words. It will then do the RSVP thing. It should compile with no problem on Mac or Linux.

If a word (which is really just a string of non-whitespace surround by white space) ends with a period or comma, the delay is doubled for that word.

There's a commented out check that sets a minimum line length. If you compile that check it can put more than one word on a line to make the line at least a minimum length.

PS: this aligns the words on their centers. To change it to left aligning them change where it sets the variable "pad" to use a small integer instead of basing it on the length of the word. If it is the same for all words, it becomes an indent for left alignment instead of a pad for centering.

Re: Questions

#365

Post by hexhex »

yread wrote: post #347
twblalock wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of places, such as western European countries and Japan, that have strong safety regulations and still manage to complete large-scale infrastructure projects quickly. Another way to look at this is to ask why the United States seems incapable of even maintaining existing projects. For example, look at the current state of the New York City subway. I suspect slowness in building new infrastructure, an…

lookup Berlin BER airport for a European project that's a complete disaster

Which is mostly due to safety concerns, the fire regulations are not met by BER due to a complete chaos in planning the construction.

Nowadays, big projects in the West are far more complex since have to meet more demands and more stakeholders are involved. In authoritarian countries, this is not so much a problem, the new airport in Istanbul is built very fast, but concerns from citizens are not respected etc.

Re: Questions

#366

Post by PhilipDaineko »

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm?

I believe a cause of this is that Sweden market is pretty small, so companies tend to initially go to a global market and solve global problems.

Compare Stockholm to Berlin, Paris or Moscow for example. Domestic markets in these countries are huge, so people have no reasons to go global - they have lots of local problems to solve.

Re: Questions

#367

Post by tzs »

Mizza wrote: post #224
personlurking wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is 1000wpm: https://youtu.be/7i9fZvWyLfI?t=1m41s I wouldn't recall a thing at this speed, nor at 600 which is shown just prior to the time stamp above.

A few things here: This is a poor implementation of RSVP, as each word is being presented at the same speed. Longer words should be given longer presentation times, as should words with punctuation marks. The presentation of the words is also centered rather than aligned, which requires a saccade for each word, which defeats the whole point. It's also a difficult text to start out with, with no context. Even still, I…

> The presentation of the words is also centered rather than aligned, which requires a saccade for each word, which defeats the whole point.

Does it actually require a saccade?

Testing with a quick and dirty command line RSVP program I have, my speed and comprehension seem about the same with either centered or left aligned. But I'm mostly testing with fiction written for the average adult. The words are usually short enough that they are within the field of good visual acuity no matter where withing them the focus is.

I've not done a comparison using text with a lot of long word.

Re: Questions

#368

Post by lisper »

zbentley wrote: post #175
lisper wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This decision was made and become deeply entrenched long before Python came along. Python is pretty good, but even it is constrained by the decisions that went into the design of C, since Python is implemented in C. Its underlying data structures are C data structures. Its memory management is C memory management. The GIL is there because C.

> The GIL is there because C. That's not at all true. There are very, very few platforms/libraries/languages that both a) allow you to manage concurrent access to complex, arbitrary data structures in a sane, predictable, and not-dangerous way and b) provide the capabilities (including performance) necessary to implement a general-purpose programming language on top of them. Even fewer of those tools existed when Pyt…

I'm not saying that trading the GIL for the benefits of C was not a reasonable tradeoff. Nonetheless, it is simply a fact that the GIL is needed because of the constraints imposed by choosing to work in C.

Re: Questions

#369

Post by mariushn »

sakoht wrote: post #147

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Because we are lying about inflation. It's not a conspiracy, just a mutually agreed-to delusion. By pretending inflation is lower than it is, the poor feel like they are standing still instead of sinking ...though instinctively they know. And the people just keeping up get to feel richer. Since technology and efficiency improve, the people staying in the same p…

I have a different take. Healthcare, education, construction costs are all regulated by governments. Unlike companies, governments are systems of people who thrive from complexity. More complexity = more work, more power, more benefits (direct on indirect).

To give you an example from construction, a company producing a complex part is "giving away" 3 day training in fancy locations, with all hotel & meals paid by the company. As a government employee who gets a fixed salary no matter the results, would you prefer using a product which gives you to these free trainings (free mini-holiday), or using a cheap part which does the same thing, minus the fancy training sessions?

I think the root cause is having some people in charge of other's people money, without clear responsibilities (vs. evaluations which happen in private companies, with the possibility to getting fired anytime if you have a poor performance on result-oriented KPIs), AND having a monopoly. You can't simply start another healthcare or education system, without complying to all existing complex regulations & processes.

Re: Questions

#370

Post by novaRom »

petra wrote: post #112
elorant wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel doesn't have long dark winters and yet they're the pioneers of innovation and start-up culture.

I'm an Israeli and it comes from a few factors: 1. Israelis basically have no choice. If you want to make a good income, working hard in a technology startup(we have very few big tech companies) is one of the very few good options. 2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at…

>> and possibly higher intelligence

I heard that a lot of times from mostly uneducated people. All nations have equal level of intelligence. The difference might be access to education, environment, common wealth, and social inequality.

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