131–140 of 169 posts
I hate almost all software. I hate the IoT. I have a loaded gun by the printer.
I want to live in the woods. I only like software because it's kind of like doing math and there's interesting logic. Every extra feature is like killing a tree.
Now let me tell you how to make software, which I hate, and assume you also hate.
Like, are there any tech blogs by people who actually like the modern tech ecosystem?
Tech blog: I hate almost all software. I hate the IoT. I have a loaded gun by the printer. I want to live in the woods. I only like software because it's kind of like doing math and there's interesting logic. Every extra feature is like killing a tree. Now let me tell you how to make software, which I hate, and assume you also hate. Like, are there any tech blogs by people who actually like the modern tech ecosystem?
I think HN is a madhouse. Any article I click on, there's things I've never heard of that sound like made up techno-jargon, like programming languages which I've never seen used in a real job, let alone met anyone who uses them But I go to the comments and there's 150 people who all know every intimate detail of this technology already. Experts in the subject. I think most of you all are faking it
"There's no way humans are that smart" is the worst form of anti-intellectualism.
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In the same vein, I'd love to see more articles about recursion that don't even mention, let alone demonstrate, solving factorials. There's gotta be something else.
Trees or graphs would be great! Or arbitrarily nested objects. Those things have probably represented 90% of the recursive functions I’ve actually written
Who in their right mind would sincerely reach for a recursion to solve factorials or Fibonacci first?
Even the maths-minded people would write the sequence bottom-up, and stop when it reached their desired T(n); when programming it, they'd ask for a loop-esque construct that they could stop when a condition was reached.
In some respect being a software engineer today is really hard. OTOH you want to do the right thing, so you don't want to invent a solution yourself. So you look for available resources, you go online. There you're going to encounter either: 1. Spam from junior devs who started a blog so to build a name for themselves. 2. Spam from SEO mills peddling junior level wisdome so they can get ad money. 3. Spam from softwar…
Probably 20% of fake jobs generate fake content. Startups have long become the fashion of technology and not about tech itself, as it once was. Even PG does not post on this forum because of the unsolvable problem of the wrong/fake commentator. More and more politics and fashion in IT and less technologists. There are only 28 million programmers, and all the other billions of people do not even know how it works, but…
According to recent analysis, he does under pseudonyms.
Also PG Twitter is probably 90% marketing his investments, so he is complicit in this way
Tech blog: I hate almost all software. I hate the IoT. I have a loaded gun by the printer. I want to live in the woods. I only like software because it's kind of like doing math and there's interesting logic. Every extra feature is like killing a tree. Now let me tell you how to make software, which I hate, and assume you also hate. Like, are there any tech blogs by people who actually like the modern tech ecosystem?
There’s a happy medium between toxic positivity/ignorance and dismissive cynicism.
>modern tech ecosystem
The tech ecosystem is extremely vast. I hate npm and server side js, I think the entire paradigm is pants-on-head, so I ignore that kind of content. I like the “blogs” from people like Aphyr, Google project zero and also random hackers, technical SaaS companies like cloudflare and the myriad databases like cockroach.
Start by ignoring medium and sub stack for technical blogs, they’re filled with novices using it as a resume builder to get their first software job by regurgitating other tutorials they read.
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HN has decent technical discussions and some really good historical/personal anecdotes. Otherwise, it falls short and lacks in ideological diversity. And there is also bullshit here.
What wound proper ideological diversity look like? Or, which ideologies are underrepresented which would make this a better place, in your opinion? It doesn’t seem like a monoculture to me: depending on the topic there is usually at least two or three significantly different viewpoints. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have more, but it doesn’t jump out at me as a glaring deficiency.
> A third type of anti-intellectualism implied in Hofstadter’s analysis may be termed unreflective instrumentalism, defined here as the devaluation of forms of thought that do not promise relatively immediate practical payoffs. In its narrow conception of practicality, instrumentalism suppresses questions about the ends toward which practical and efficient means are directed...
> ...The hostility of an instrumentalist business culture toward intellect expresses not only an impatience with ideas that are deemed impractical or utopian but also a disdain for purely theoretical inquiry as a valuable activity in its own right. Theoretical scientists, for example, are called upon to demonstrate practical applications of their work, and esoteric research is held up to public ridicule with the award of the Golden Fleece. Scientists are sometimes provoked to argue for the value of their research on the grounds that it may eventually yield useful outcomes that are not immediately apparent, producing in their own behalf testimonial examples from the history of science. That such defenses are necessary in the competitive struggle for research dollars is indicative of the power of instrumental criteria to define the direction in which scientific and other kinds of knowledge will be allowed to grow...
> ...Likewise, liberal education is increasingly defended on instrumental grounds. The liberal arts graduate is presumed to possess skills in analyzing, synthesizing, organizing and communicating complex ideas, skills that are (as we now say) marketable in the corporate environment of the post-industrial society. The phrase “ivory tower” has become an almost universal term of contempt. Beyond the ivory tower, it seems, lies a university-industrial complex in which intellect is seen principally as a useful problem-solving tool.
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I think you're going a little bit far, but I tend to agree. My reasoning for this is, to look back on experts from the past. Unless it's a hard scientific fact, a law of physics, most things are really just opinions that people tend to agree with. Remember Leaded gasoline? How about DDT or Asbestos? How about Freud? Of the thing the bible likes to talk about, slavery. Even in the 25 years, I've been in programming, i…
> The only thing I follow is keeping stuff simple. Some other things I’ve kept around: - Complex systems must develop out of a simple system (there’s a clever quote I can’t find right now) - also known as “make it work, then make it better” - Bugs shall become test cases - Bug reproducibility should be maximized (crash tracking / good logs, sacrifice performance if necessary) - Fail fast - Composition over inheritanc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're going a little bit far, but I tend to agree. My reasoning for this is, to look back on experts from the past. Unless it's a hard scientific fact, a law of physics, most things are really just opinions that people tend to agree with. Remember Leaded gasoline? How about DDT or Asbestos? How about Freud? Of the thing the bible likes to talk about, slavery. Even in the 25 years, I've been in programming, i…
I wouldn't say that any of those are bullshit per se. Leaded gasoline reduced knocking/increased compression in contemporary engines, asbestos is a top-notch insulator, and DDT did kill a lot of bugs. Each just has really unfortunate side-effects, most of which were known at the time--if not appreciated widely enough.