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The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

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Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#11

Post by EvanAnderson »

tptacek wrote: post #9
EvanAnderson wrote: post #4

Anything written by James Mickens is worth your time.

I like him a lot. He's kind of doing a Dave Barry thing, right?

I've never read Dave Barry so I don't know. If you're seeing a similarity, though, that's enough of a recommendation to make me give Barry a look.

The magic of Mickens, for me, is his weaving in Comp-Sci (or Comp-Sci adjacent) elements in dense prose causally, punctuating it with absurdity, and then running with that absurdity. Knowing that he's bringing knowledge and experience I'll likely never achieve while making it look effortless makes me really respect his ability.

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#12

Post by CobrastanJorji »

isaacdl wrote: post #6

If you enjoy this essay, you might also enjoy another classic, "Typing the technical interview"[0] by Aphyr (a.k.a. Kyle Kingsbury, the person behind Jepsen[1] distributed systems tests.) [0] https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview [1] https://jepsen.io/

Ah, I've never seen this, but I instantly related it to its predecessor, https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview, which now I see is linked to and is by the same person.

“Magic numbers.” You are, after all, a witch. “Every class begins with a babe, in a cafe.”

I like writing that is still fun and interesting to read even when you don't understand what is being done, and then if you do understand what is being done, it's even more entertainingly weird.

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#13

Post by dang »

Related. Others?

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41219779 - Aug 2024 (1 comment)

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34522845 - Jan 2023 (35 comments)

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19289353 - March 2019 (10 comments)

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188538 - Jan 2018 (1 comment)

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954077 - March 2017 (33 comments)

The Night Watch [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490689 - Sept 2016 (2 comments)

The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671020 - June 2015 (21 comments)

The Night Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6741804 - Nov 2013 (3 comments)

The Night Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6735980 - Nov 2013 (3 comments)

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#14

Post by dunham »

isaacdl wrote: post #6

If you enjoy this essay, you might also enjoy another classic, "Typing the technical interview"[0] by Aphyr (a.k.a. Kyle Kingsbury, the person behind Jepsen[1] distributed systems tests.) [0] https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview [1] https://jepsen.io/

Therein I learned that "Haskell is a dynamically-typed, interpreted language".

I've seen it said that Haskell type class resolution is essentially prolog, but this drives the point home well.

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#15

Post by pjmorris »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like him a lot. He's kind of doing a Dave Barry thing, right?

I've never read Dave Barry so I don't know. If you're seeing a similarity, though, that's enough of a recommendation to make me give Barry a look. The magic of Mickens, for me, is his weaving in Comp-Sci (or Comp-Sci adjacent) elements in dense prose causally, punctuating it with absurdity, and then running with that absurdity. Knowing that he's bringing knowledge and experience I'll likely never achieve while making…

I was introduced to Dave Barry through his 'Year in Review' parody of the year's events (back when it came in print in the 'Tropic' magazine included in the Sunday Miami Herald.) I laughed and laughed, the way a Bill Bryson book might make you laugh.

He once borrowed the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile [1] to pick his son up from school.

And my wife is so used to my using one of his tropes, 'That would make a great name for a rock band', [2] that she has started predicting when I'm about to say it ('Feral chihuahuas' was the subject, but that's TMI.)

[1] https://www.oscarmayer.com/wienermobile/

[2] https://www.davebarry.com/gg/rockband.html

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#16

Post by whatshisface »

dmoy wrote: post #10
EvanAnderson wrote: post #4

Anything written by James Mickens is worth your time.

His one about threat models[1] was hilarious and also scarily prescient. Specifically > If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone, and when you die of tumors filled with tumors, they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US,” and then they’re going t…

The Mossad/Not Mossad duality is a funny idea, but it isn't true. The NSA doesn't send replacement cellphones to millions of US citizens, they scrape unencrypted data.

They're not going to use a quantum computer on you, if they have one. They're going to embed your emails into a vector space that they can project your sentiment out of.

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#18

Post by flir »

thefaux wrote: post #8

> The systems programmer has read the kernel source, to better understand the deep ways of the universe, and the systems programmer has seen the comment in the scheduler that says “DOES THIS WORK LOL,” and the systems programmer has wept instead of LOLed Chef's kiss.

> Pointers are real. They’re what the hardware understands. Somebody has to deal with them. You can’t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis.

Yessssss.

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#19

Post by dmoy »

whatshisface wrote: post #16
dmoy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His one about threat models[1] was hilarious and also scarily prescient. Specifically > If the Mossad wants your data, they’re going to use a drone to replace your cellphone with a piece of uranium that’s shaped like a cellphone, and when you die of tumors filled with tumors, they’re going to hold a press conference and say “It wasn’t us” as they wear t-shirts that say “IT WAS DEFINITELY US,” and then they’re going t…

The Mossad/Not Mossad duality is a funny idea, but it isn't true. The NSA doesn't send replacement cellphones to millions of US citizens, they scrape unencrypted data. They're not going to use a quantum computer on you, if they have one. They're going to embed your emails into a vector space that they can project your sentiment out of.

I mean it's not literally mossad / not-mossad

It's /

Mossad is just a particular type of the first set

Re: The Night Watch [pdf] (2013)

#20

Post by p_l »

flir wrote: post #18
thefaux wrote: post #8

> The systems programmer has read the kernel source, to better understand the deep ways of the universe, and the systems programmer has seen the comment in the scheduler that says “DOES THIS WORK LOL,” and the systems programmer has wept instead of LOLed Chef's kiss.

> Pointers are real. They’re what the hardware understands. Somebody has to deal with them. You can’t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis. Yessssss.

meanwhile common lisp: "actually has concept of pointers, just called differently", "invites low-level assembly reading by integrating disassembler and compiler" :V
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