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Software Is Hard (2007)

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Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#21

Post by faned »

otakucode wrote: post #20
euske wrote: post #3

How timely. I was reading the Unicode Standard the other day, and realized how this seemingly simple project of "modelling a character with a number" has become a huge, sprawling behemoth over years because they tried to cover every aspect of human language; I'm sure it's going to be even more convoluted and politicized in future, and it will never be complete. And this brings me two sides of the argument: should sof…

That is a stupendously dangerous question to ask, and that the answer is not crystal clear from the outset is terrifying. When humanity and computers collide, the computer is always in the wrong. Every single time, forever. At no point is it acceptable to ask that any human being alter their culture, lifestyle, or thinking because it fits the boxes the developers were asked to put in place. Doing so would make stupid…

You believe strongly in this.

Why didn’t you use a larger font size to ensure everyone sees your message?

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#23

Post by bitwize »

egypturnash wrote: post #9

> once Epic's written Unreal, they never have to create a first-person shooter engine again. Instead, they just need to keep adding new features. Day 1 may need to write a first-person shooter engine, but only because we've never done that before. This is why programmers always want to rewrite everything. Most shipping software is the equivalent of a novelist's first draft. ...and Unreal had been licensing their firs…

Remember, Id is now part of ZeniMax. I don't think they actually license game engines anymore to studios outside ZeniMax. I know for a fact that they will not open-source anything beyond Id Tech 4.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#24

Post by j88439h84 »

zzo38computer wrote: post #16
twblalock wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unicode was invented to avoid the kind of thing you are suggesting, and that's why it is popular. ASCII doesn't even cover all of the characters and symbols that are normally used by English speakers.

Yes, although Unicode is still a mess. (One thing Unicode is good for though (if you removed the emoji and a lot of other stuff) is searching documents in multiple languages all from one interface. However, someone on IRC mentioned Duocode, and I think that would be even better for such purpose. But for other purposes it can be variously less good.)

Duocode seems to be a javascript compiler, not alternative to unicode.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#25

Post by zzo38computer »

j88439h84 wrote: post #24
zzo38computer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although Unicode is still a mess. (One thing Unicode is good for though (if you removed the emoji and a lot of other stuff) is searching documents in multiple languages all from one interface. However, someone on IRC mentioned Duocode, and I think that would be even better for such purpose. But for other purposes it can be variously less good.)

Duocode seems to be a javascript compiler, not alternative to unicode.

That is something else with the same name, and is not the same as the Duocode I saw mentioned on IRC.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#26

Post by sixstringtheory »

faned wrote: post #21
otakucode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a stupendously dangerous question to ask, and that the answer is not crystal clear from the outset is terrifying. When humanity and computers collide, the computer is always in the wrong. Every single time, forever. At no point is it acceptable to ask that any human being alter their culture, lifestyle, or thinking because it fits the boxes the developers were asked to put in place. Doing so would make stupid…

You believe strongly in this. Why didn’t you use a larger font size to ensure everyone sees your message?

I was able to increase the font size of the whole page in two taps in mobile Safari.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#27

Post by enjoyyourlife »

sutro wrote: post #10
dang wrote: post #2

A thread from 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=723605 All the way back to nickb: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62453

Whatever happened to nickb?

It's a pseudonym for someone

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#28

Post by tannhaeuser »

euske wrote: post #3

How timely. I was reading the Unicode Standard the other day, and realized how this seemingly simple project of "modelling a character with a number" has become a huge, sprawling behemoth over years because they tried to cover every aspect of human language; I'm sure it's going to be even more convoluted and politicized in future, and it will never be complete. And this brings me two sides of the argument: should sof…

Unicode (ISO/IEC 10646) is without doubt a hugely successful project. But like every huge project, it keeps nurturing itself ad infinitum, and is becoming absurd in the process (for example, Unicode has also captured emojis). As Unicode is covering more and more symbols all the time, it becomes less and less useful for its original purpose to communicate the character set encoding standard used in a document. Eg a basic info about a document is whether it can be rendered with a given font, but Unicode (or a character encoding information such as "utf-8") totally fails this basic use case, and one has to build small ad-hoc subsets within Unicode for this purpose instead.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#29

Post by alkonaut »

Simple software is simple. Complex software is hard.

In the choice between simple (and cheap and correct) vs complex (and expensive and buggy) customers and stakeholders with very few exceptions go for the latter.

Our software is exactly as buggy as we want it to be - a decision we make with the tradeoff of cost and complexity.

Re: Software Is Hard (2007)

#30

Post by alkonaut »

euske wrote: post #3

How timely. I was reading the Unicode Standard the other day, and realized how this seemingly simple project of "modelling a character with a number" has become a huge, sprawling behemoth over years because they tried to cover every aspect of human language; I'm sure it's going to be even more convoluted and politicized in future, and it will never be complete. And this brings me two sides of the argument: should sof…

Yes. It will happen whether it’s desireable or not. For example, I think it’s inevitable that the US will use an ISO date format eventually, and further down the line I think many Asian scripts will be replaced with western etc.
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