How important is knowledge of history when it comes to building a startup? What are the most important periods of time to learn about?
Start with 1995 - 2001.
PG's Rarely Asked Questions
81–90 of 221 posts
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#82[deleted]
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#83What should I read to learn more about history? I used to consider my knowledge of history better than at least 95% of the population, but while reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I realized how sketchy my view of history really was. So at the ripe old age of 35 I set off on a course of study centered on two series of books, The Story of Civilization , by Will and Ariel Durant, and Timeframe , a Time-Li…
This is a good program. It reminds me of the curriculum of St. John's College: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(United_St...
Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but it seems plausible to me that there's a subreddit out there for people just like you.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#84Couldn't you add something equivalent to Lisp macros to languages like Perl or Python? Yes, see Io: http://iolanguage.com/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/64mgk/why_io_ha... http://web.archive.org/web/20090427182332/http://hackety.org...
Also see metalua.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
For web development, you don't need any of that. And anyone taking up pg's suggestion should not be using anything from Microsoft.
"For web development, you don't need any of that." For Web development on Windows, that is a good list of a minimal list of EXACTLY what is needed. Web development on Windows is JUST what I'm doing, and that list of topics is JUST what is centrally involved. What are you going to leave out? T-SQL? OS backup and recovery? Good skills with an IDE or editor? Yes, learning most of, say, Visual Basic by itself is easy. Th…
> For writing code, need to learn either an integrated development environment (IDE), e.g., Visual Studio, or get good with a powerful text editor (I use KEdit) and its macro language (I have about 150 such macros)
All you need at first is something you can type text into that knows how to highlight syntax. You don't even need to know the features of that particular editor, aside from stuff like "save" and "open".
> and a scripting language.
For what, exactly?
> And need to get good with Windows, e.g., have traversed much of the obscure tree of things to click on. And need to be good at software installation
Why? How does this actually help? How is this actually difficult?
> Should learn some Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
None of that has anything to do with programming. And how is this actually difficult?
> Should learn some T-SQL, HTML, CSS, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET.
Well, you need HTML and CSS for sure, and you need SQL. And I think you're going about it the wrong way if you try and comprehensively read and memorize the API documentation for every single framework call you make. Any programmer looks up what he needs on a case by case basis and over time comes to remember the stuff he uses a lot.
But I think you're just making it harder on yourself using the Microsoft stack. There are, believe it or not, entire web development frameworks where you don't actually need to manage the TCP/IP sockets yourself.
> Also need to be good at backup and recovery, ESPECIALLY of the operating system and boot drive.
This is part of owning a computer, not programming. It's also not difficult.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#86Re: philosophy, I think understanding the difference between representing the world in language and representing it in logic is critically important to programmers. It has implications for natural language processing as well as artificial intelligence. I personally recommend to anyone endeavoring to understand Wittgenstein's transition from Tractatus Logico Philosophicus to Philosophical Investigations . In fact, Goo…
I disagree with pg about the use of philosophy. If nothing else, Plato should disabuse anyone of the notion that what's obvious to them isn't really that solid. Aristotle at least demonstrates your point about just how hard it is to think systematically about this stuff. The humility gained from those encounters would do a great deal to open people's minds that "there's more on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in…
I agree. Philosophy is great for exposing how uncertain we are about things we believe we know for sure. He are some simple games that help demonstrate this:
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
For web development, you don't need any of that. And anyone taking up pg's suggestion should not be using anything from Microsoft.
"For web development, you don't need any of that." For Web development on Windows, that is a good list of a minimal list of EXACTLY what is needed. Web development on Windows is JUST what I'm doing, and that list of topics is JUST what is centrally involved. What are you going to leave out? T-SQL? OS backup and recovery? Good skills with an IDE or editor? Yes, learning most of, say, Visual Basic by itself is easy. Th…
> Web development on Windows is JUST what I'm doing
Surprise, there are more environments that you could do web development on and quite a few of them are a lot easier to master than the one you describe.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#88What should I read to learn more about history? I used to consider my knowledge of history better than at least 95% of the population, but while reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I realized how sketchy my view of history really was. So at the ripe old age of 35 I set off on a course of study centered on two series of books, The Story of Civilization , by Will and Ariel Durant, and Timeframe , a Time-Li…
This is interesting.
Re: a generation of intellectually crippled intellectuals--One of the lessons I've drawn from history is that people have always been pretty ignorant about topics outside of their immediate need, and many people simply don't ask questions. I think what we're seeing today--news as entertainment, few people taking the time to read primary sources themselves, 4chan, etc--I think all of this is more of a spotlight that makes it harder to ignore just how many ignorant and/or unintelligent people are out there. It's not new, just more visible.
But the flip side is there has always been the "smart and well read intellectual bore at cocktail parties who is convinced that this generation is by far the stupidest and society as we know it is going to collapse" type, every time has them, and the rationalization for their aloofness/smugness always seems to be the same (I'm surrounded by idiots and I've read a ton of books!)
My point being--I enjoy intellectual masturbation as much as the next guy and share your opinion that a lot of people are ignorant about lots of stuff but I see that as an opportunity to educate rather than judge (and I'm entJ). You're probably not as rare a bird as you might think and I'd urge you to not write people off so quickly.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I meant painters, sculpters and the like." I don't believe there's a difference. All the good graphic designers I know don't only do applied design for clients, they also create "static visual art that is created for the sake of being art". On the other hand, most sculptors I know mostly create statues for banks and local governments. Having attended art school, I can tell you there is little art free from commerce…
Once again I think my wording rather than my point is the problem - by "created for the sake of being art" I didn't mean in terms of whether there was monetary gain for the artist, I meant how it is to be used. You create a website, your aim isn't generally to have people stand around and admire the art, that's a side effect. (And sure, sometimes maybe it's the strongest influence when a designer is making a website,…
Not to make this into a long debate, but I don't think your wording is the problem.
Plenty of websites have no commercial goal, they're just meant to be gawked at. All the major contemporary art museums have websites, photos and posters in their collections.
Also, many sculptures found in museums weren't made to be used as art - they were meant as tools or status symbols, for communication, sexual arousal or worship.
To be a 'real' artist isn't determined by the medium one uses, but by the quality of the work created. I enjoy the work of Dieter Rams, Saul Bass and Dick Bruna just as much as that of Vincent van Gogh and Jackson Pollock.
Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions
#90Interesting, now that I think of it, I have never met someone (except pg) who is a painter and programmer. I've met several programmers who are writers, musicians, carpenters, etc, but never painters. I draw cartoons/caricatures (examples here: http://www.smileecards.com ) and have painted a few times, but I don't quite call myself a painter. About teachers, I totally agree that good teachers earn the respect of the…
I guess I do both. While I haven't been doing a lot of real painting recently (working on other projects) I certainly do. I have some paintings on Picasa (https://picasaweb.google.com/105616061675197682498) but I'm working on some sculptural work currently that lets me both program and make art (building some cellular automaton related stuff, see https://github.com/Wollw/Automaton-AVR).