Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#251

Post by sedachv » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:40 AM UTC

blihp wrote: post #97

lenticular wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematica is literally the worst PL I've ever used, especially since you effectively have to use their built-in editor that doesn't even have multiple undo. Of course, it is the least-worst symbolic system out there currently. But, it's not like lisp wouldn't have developed similar capabilities if Mathematica didn't come around.

You mean like Macsyma, now Maxima, where he probably got some early ideas from?

Mathematica (SMP) started out as a Macsyma clone. Here is a anecdote of how Wolfram went about this with his usual humility:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/BUxXH76CYdc/I...

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#252

Post by dagw » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:47 AM UTC

qes wrote: post #235

sidcool wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

You may find it pleasant to have people around and water cooler conversations, but many others do not and have no need or desire for work to double as a social outlet.

It's not (just) about social outlet, it's about growing and learning professionally. Unless your job is to blindly implement features someone else adds to a spec sheet it's always worthwhile to get professional input from people from different fields. Often they'll have unique ideas and insights that comes from having a different background and different experiences.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#253

Post by sedachv » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:49 AM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #26

What’s HN’s opinion of Stephen Wolfram? Is he legit? Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading?

> Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading?

The best thing about ANKOS were the footnotes. The footnotes/appendices could have made a good popular book on the history and relationship of computation and physics, except for all of the gag-reflex-inducing Mathematica self-promotion. Here is an example from the first footnote I clicked on just now:

"But in the so-called lambda calculus of Alonzo Church from around 1930 what were instead used were pure functions... of just the kind now familiar from Mathematica."

https://wolframscience.com/nks/notes-11-12--lambda-calculus/

The whole book is full of things like that.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#254

Post by evanb » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:51 AM UTC

nevi-me wrote: post #193

Stephen mentions that his mouse is on the left because he's left-handed. I'm left-handed, and I don't think I've ever seen someone put the mouse on the left. How much difference would it make to accuracy, or does the other hand eventually learn to compensate?

I'm left handed but when I have had a physical mouse (or... trackball) it's always on the right. My left hand, at this point, is essentially incompetent at mousing. That's partly because in the computer lab at school the mice were on the right side and often the cables were too short to be moved to the left with easy use. In other shared environments it's good to be able to just sit down at any machine and use the mouse there---the same reason left-handed people often want to still learn right-handed guitar.

If I'm on my laptop I use the trackpad mostly with my left, but on the few occasions I've used a separate trackpad device I've put it on the right.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#255

Post by kalleboo » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #182

levesque wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself, it's not going to be as efficient. Audio and delay are big issues, as not everybody can talk at the same time. But the point is that it is doable, and some companies have good success with that. They are usually small-medium companies though, my guess is we won't be seeing any 100% remote unicorns popping up.

It continues to amaze me that most businesses use worse conferencing tools than the average e-sports clan. High-quality, low-latency conferencing and screen sharing is essentially a solved problem if you don't use completely crappy tools.

We changed our voice conferencing to Discord since it worked better than anything else we had tried

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#256

Post by detaro » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

nevi-me wrote: post #193

Stephen mentions that his mouse is on the left because he's left-handed. I'm left-handed, and I don't think I've ever seen someone put the mouse on the left. How much difference would it make to accuracy, or does the other hand eventually learn to compensate?

I (also left-handed) got the impression that I'd probably be a bit more accurate using my left, but found right-handed overall more practical, since you can't really switch all the random PCs you use around, especially nowadays where many have non-symmetric mice you can't really hold with your left, and for me consistency wins then. I use laptop touchpads with my left though.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#257

Post by duado » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

It is always great to see what an utterly incorrigible dweeb (and I use that term affectionately) does with power and money. I just fucking love that instead of a Learjet he has basically a large ecosystem of software built specifically for his personal needs.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#258

Post by vonseel » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

What the heck... this guy just wrote more words on his personal infra than I have probably written in my lifetime.

In all seriousness, everything said in the top ranked comment by chubot - ditto here. The article was too long for me to finish, though.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#259

Post by melling » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

“Twenty years ago I imagined doing it with an augmented reality display and a one-handed (chorded) keyboard.”

The idea of being more productive away from my desk has always been appealing.

I hope he explores this further. This would be an improvement to the computer strapped to you.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#260

Post by vonseel » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

seanp2k2 wrote: post #215

sidcool wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

I feel like some people get a lot out of it, and others not so much. As in, if someone has the type of personality where they work best with lots of "heads-down" time on projects (and frankly many of the best engineers I know are like this), give them that space to do their best work without being interrupted by That One Person Who Always Comes Over to Chat. Most offices and even most orgs / teams have THAT DUDE. If…

Sometimes Dude is also one of the best engineers you know when he can just get some “heads down” time to himself, but when forced to be in an environment with many easy distractions, he acts like a kid on the playground. Or something.