The very first substantial order for the Digital PDP-1 was for use in ITT’s torn-tape messaging operation! https://www.eejournal.com/article/gordon-bell-1934-2024-gran...
Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#22There's 2 [dead] fairly anodyne comments here. Are they bots? And if so, how can people tell?
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#23Wow. The reactions here. So negative!
I skimmed various sections. I found the animations pleasant, the text readable, and the content clearly not slop.
The historical context of the telegraph was interesting, and the treatment of bandwidth vs. latency was thoughtful.
I think it’s too long; I don’t think many people who don’t already know most of this material will read it, but I enjoyed the parts I read. Nice work!
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#24Wow. The reactions here. So negative! I skimmed various sections. I found the animations pleasant, the text readable, and the content clearly not slop. The historical context of the telegraph was interesting, and the treatment of bandwidth vs. latency was thoughtful. I think it’s too long; I don’t think many people who don’t already know most of this material will read it, but I enjoyed the parts I read. Nice work!
Thanks. I am glad you liked it. I just wanted to help everyone understand the concepts in detail. I felt the existing materials were either way too textbook like or very high level. This is just my attempt at explaining things in a more interesting way.
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The text is also pretty clearly AI-generated. I guess there's now a market for "I asked an LLM so that you don't have to", but the funny thing is that it's such a wall of text that no one upvoting it will have actually read it. So it's vibe-writing, vibe-coding, and vibe-reading. Full end-to-end synergy.
Hi, author here. Sorry, you felt that way. I did put lot of effort in communicating my understanding, and used Claude only for review and visualizations.
I'd suggest splitting the content out into clearly defined sections, lead by the visuals.
Put the visualization and a short explainer, then have additional content show up if the reader drills in.
I don't think there is anything wrong with the content being run through an LLM. Networking is crazy complicated.
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#26i hope this was vibe coded, because I'd hate to think that tiny dark-gray text on a black background was a conscious choice
Hi, author here. I didn't vibe code this and have put considerable amount of effort in explaining the ideas. I have used Claude for review and help with visuals. My aim was just to help others understand these concepts easily. Thanks for your feedback, i'll improve the design and reading experience.
My thoughts on reading it (and looking around your site) was that you were building these explanations to help cement your own understanding of the topics and that you were just sharing the results because you thought it might be helpful to others as well. Knowing that you actually built it with the intent to teach just makes me think that it's nice of you to try to be a teacher even if there's a few folks who want to be jerks about your efforts. The world needs more teachers (and learners, too). Gaining, improving, and sharing knowledge is one of humanity's true super-powers. Without it, we'd all still be living like animals in the wild. Thank you for your efforts to contribute in a positive way. At least you're actually making stuff, unlike many of them what gotta always just complain about the things other people make and never actually make anything themselves.
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#27Wow. The reactions here. So negative! I skimmed various sections. I found the animations pleasant, the text readable, and the content clearly not slop. The historical context of the telegraph was interesting, and the treatment of bandwidth vs. latency was thoughtful. I think it’s too long; I don’t think many people who don’t already know most of this material will read it, but I enjoyed the parts I read. Nice work!
Being dismissive is one way to think yourself "better" than others. But on HN hastier reactions tend to be outright negative or out of context with long articles, as eyeballs actually evaluating the content will take some time before providing constructive criticism.
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#28I started something similar in 2021 while on paternity leave with my first kid.
I got about half way through, then I had 2 more kids. Then AI happened, and I started questioning the whether there was too much slop out there to bother writing a book.
I’ll still probably finish it when the new baby is a little older.
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#29I found this article very well written, as a comparison
Re: Networking and the Internet, from First Principles
#30I don't understand. Even if this post is long and has some repetitive parts, isn't it still written by a human? There are way too many comments acting like everything is bad just because one animation widget was made with AI.
I actually like this post. It looks good, the explanations are clear, and the AI-generated animation widget actually helps me understand things. What's the problem exactly? Is using AI for visualization considered a bad practice?