511–520 of 564 posts
We’re going to be so fucked when the people who develop things like the linux kernel die. There are no upcoming people with that level of knowledge.
I am not personally familiar with any of those OSes (other than reading about the...bizarre TempleOS), but many of them have last release dates within the last 5 years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that it takes a really long time until technology is so good and so reliable that you really don't need to understand it to be able to operate it. Take, for instance, the "Yes, let's all go back to coding in assembly!" line -- The thing is: For a really really long time after high-level languages had become mainstream, you really did still have to know assembly to be a programmer, even if you did most…
Pilots must still understand how planes work. That’s called aviation. Most software devs have absolutely no idea how their software platform works. Most are overpaid API monkeys.
Building a gas turbine engine without training? Forget it.
The only electrical engineering a pilot needs to know is the difference between volts and amps, and what it means when a breaker pops. The EEs who design the avionics are not so fortunate.
I support the notion of this post. In the last 6 years I’ve mostly been busy removing layers of abstraction in order to uncover the set of tools which is a good balance for me. In example, replaced clojurescript with Javascript and then eventually Typescript. Replaced Clojure with Java. Replaced docker with VMs. Avoided ansible in favor of simple bash scripts. Avoid all kinds of firewalls in favor of understanding an…
Whilst I agree with most of this: > Replaced docker with VMs This doesn't make sense to me, as Docker and VMs are not the same thing. Replace LXC with VMs, sure.
There was a point in the history of aviation where anyone who could fly a plane was also capable of constructing and designing one. I wonder if there were similar concerns at that time about a future where someone could be in a cockpit of a plane without truly understanding how the machine works from first principles? Today that type of concern would seem absurd, and we've gotten used to the idea that flying a plane…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I understand it, the 737 MAX issue was not because the pilots didn't know how their plane worked, but because they were lied to about a feature that was installed to try to reduce costs. Had they been told it was there, no the outcomes could well have been different.
Not sure I understand your point. I read "it's not that they did not know how to disable the feature, it's just that they were not told how to disable the feature". Or are you saying that they knew, but somehow did not do it?
Kids today don't get enough credit. A friend's son was so excited to show off the Roblox game him and his friends were making a couple of weeks ago. Was there for (Canadian) thanksgiving so there was some family friends and tons of people from his family there. He had already picked out something he thought each of us would be interested about it, and I was the "show him the Lua!" guy! People assume that because thei…
I think game-making is an underrated point of entry into programming and software development in general. It worked for me!
One thing to keep in mind is that software for a dialysis machine requires a different approach from some overly generic CRUD app exposing how many mansions you have or something. There is a lot of asinine software in the world and that’s fine. Lots of “real problems” are pretty asinine and don’t require heroic engineering feats. Just slapping some bullshit together is good enough in a frightening number of cases. Ha…
> Software for dialysis machines A sizeable percentage of which is made without source control, unittests, and just slapped together like the rest you described Hospitals don't check software quality when making purchasing decisions (much beyond "this button doesn't work")
In other words, cargo cult programming. I wrote about this two years ago [1] and received only polarised responses that either agreed with the point wholeheartedly, or attacked me viciously for gatekeeping. I wish there was a better way to cure this disease without triggering the professional immune systems of engineers who are highly vested in their favourite technologies. [1] https://medium.com/the-engineering-mana…
And 2 of the people did not understand his questions and he never even tried to clarify or consider that the problem was with his question.
“I asked a “React.js expert” to compare different SPA approaches such as direct DOM manipulation, MVC driven client side templating, component-based DOM manipulation and compile-to-vanilla-JS“
I honestly don’t understand what he is asking either. What is compile to vanilla js? Is he talking about compiling typescript to js? And what does that have to do with the dom? Also what is “MVC driven component based dom manipulation”? Like I feel like I am dealing with someone who read some design patterns book and dings anyone who doesn’t use the exact same terms he does. Not someone who has a superior understanding of development.
There was a point in the history of aviation where anyone who could fly a plane was also capable of constructing and designing one. I wonder if there were similar concerns at that time about a future where someone could be in a cockpit of a plane without truly understanding how the machine works from first principles? Today that type of concern would seem absurd, and we've gotten used to the idea that flying a plane…
Old man yelling at cloud vibes. Yes some people are experts and some are just adequate. Nothing new here. Not everyone can be a messiah like the author, who spends half of this short essay telling us how great he is. This article has almost nothing to do with abstraction. The author loses interest in his own thesis after the first two paragraphs.
Same feeling. How this article came up to the top? The example he gives is terrible "someone used a modern framework was hacked, but the performance was not caused by the hacking, but the frameworks was terrible slow" - Ok, which was the framework? How did you find it was slow just by looking at a diffs? What someone not knowing how to trim a tool for performance has to do with abstractions?