Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Always Bet on Text (2014)

graydon2.dreamwidth.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 349 posts

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#131

Post by mdiesel »

Ygg2 wrote: post #6
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #2

> Text is the most efficient communication technology. By orders of magnitude. This blog post is likely to take perhaps 5000 bytes of storage, and could compress down to maybe 2000; by comparison the following 20-pixel-square image of the silhouette of a tweeting bird takes 4000 bytes: Author is really excited about really old information technology. He makes some good points.

It's solid technology to be excited about. For example. Graphical programming languages are nowhere. Closest I had was either VHDL or backed by copious amounts of XML like Xtend. And both of those have a textual Component as well.

Text based programming is inherently 1d, so isn't well suited for the highly parallelised computing we have today. 2d programming would make much more sense.

The issues with graphical languages arethings like being much harder diff/merge and version control generally, being dependent on IDEs, and severely limited by mouse usage. I don't see any of those issues as being impossible to overcome, but instead graphical programming is held back by always being implemented as a DSL with no attempt to meet the requirements of a general purpose language.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#132

Post by systemvoltage »

The article is making a weird point and the comments here are talking past each other.

Author should be conveying the unique aspects of Textual media but also it’s shortcomings. Comments here should be discussing the benefits and shortcomings of all kinds of media.

Instead both are discussing which one is better - Text or something else. A lot of it is mutually exclusive. The Tianamen square tank man image is powerful and impossible to encode in text with the same effect, and Nabokov’s prose is impossible to paint a picture of or how we struggle to describe tasting notes.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#133

Post by dalbasal »

jbullock35 wrote: post #76
dalbasal wrote: post #71

Case in point: text messaging. Quoting the Spolsky ('Not Just Usability', 2004) speaking about "social user interfaces." Many humans are less inhibited when they’re typing than when they are speaking face-to-face. Teenagers are less shy. With cellphone text messages, they’re more likely to ask each other out on dates. That genre of software was so successful socially that it’s radically improving millions of people’s…

> Many humans are less inhibited when they’re typing than when they are speaking face-to-face. Spolsky was right about this when he wrote that passage in 2004. We should take seriously the idea that the lesser inhibition of textual communication has been a drawback on net, at least over the last 17 years.

It has been a factor, certainly. Probably both good and bad. Spolsky was a pioneer in his concepts of "social user interfaces," and that really showed when he did stackoverflow.

Lowering inhibitions is a broad statement. You can get more detailed. Inhibition is multifaceted, lots of flavours. We can be less inhibited about sending a quick "I love you," less inhibited about arguing, being mean, etc.

Over the last 17 years, all this stuff has experienced a massive multiplier effect. Both the positives and the negatives are multiplied and as culture grows around the technology everything gets more complex.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#134

Post by mark_l_watson »

While agree with the basic premise of the author, I find it amusing that I found the black background and font selection difficult to read. When I switched to reader view, I was experiencing pure text, and it was better for me.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#135

Post by robenkleene »

everdrive wrote: post #118
robenkleene wrote: post #88

The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology? Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle. But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle. This points to there bein…

A circle doesn't usually convey very many ideas, though. Words can.

Circles are building blocks of pictures, which can convey ideas, just like words are a building blocks of sentences.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#136

Post by dkersten »

dmingod666 wrote: post #117
numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

well, svg is text. The jpg/png icon will pixelate when zoomed, but svg will retain its quality no matter how much you zoom in... :)

> svg is text.

If SVG counts as text, then text is just binary. The encoding is not important, the final result (an image you see on a screen, in the case of SVG) is.

Besides, try reading out the actual SVG source text to someone and see if they can tell you what the image you are describing is. I dunno about you, but I find thinking in terms of paths and strokes to be rather meaningless.

Or another example, do you consider Wavefront .obj files text? They're ascii files, but I don't consider a series of "v 0.123 0.234 0.345 1.0" as something I would ever read in text form and have even the slightest idea of what the final 3D model actually is. I have to view it visually. Its "technically" text, but its no more useful as text (for a human text reader) than if it were binary data. Encoding isn't what makes text what it is, so non-text things encoded as text aren't really text.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#137

Post by mcherm »

fotad wrote: post #128
dmingod666 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, svg is text. The jpg/png icon will pixelate when zoomed, but svg will retain its quality no matter how much you zoom in... :)

Different SVG engines may show different result, that may not acceptable for logo.

Can you elaborate?

Outside of bugs, I was under the impression that SVG was actually pretty well specified and that (except perhaps for pathological examples created intentionally) the rendering of an SVG was quite consistent.

What am I not aware of?

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#138

Post by grumpyprole »

numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

Plain text is simple, elegant and has open-standards - it traces its origins back to telegraph codes that we have been using for hundreds of years - and still forms the basis of most of the internet now. So I am inclined to agree with the statement "text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period".

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#139

Post by dkersten »

koonsolo wrote: post #98
robenkleene wrote: post #88

The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology? Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle. But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle. This points to there bein…

Ah come on, this is not accurate at all. We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc. Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software. The tech is obviously here already. But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.

> Why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling?

This isn't universally true. I (unfortunately, for me, since I hate it personally) know plenty of people who prefer voice or video calls. I even have people who will reply with voice recordings to my text messages.

Many people prefer voice or video.

I prefer text because of two main reasons:

1. Its asynchronous. I can reply as needed while not being disturbed if I happen to be in the middle of something.

2. Its not real time. That is, I can take my time to form my response. I can proof read, edit, clearly form my thoughts etc. In a voice/video recording, editing is difficult, in a live setting, I'm under more time pressure to finish my sentences rather than thinking about them more.

I don't prefer text because of technology reasons, except those that make text more asynchronous and easier to proof read and edit.

But many people I know or have interacted with hate text and prefer voice or video.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#140

Post by dkersten »

cycomanic wrote: post #114
koonsolo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah come on, this is not accurate at all. We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc. Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software. The tech is obviously here already. But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.

Actually I would argue that people send texts despite it often being highly inefficient. It often takes an infuriating amount of text messages to agree on something that would only take a 2min call. It's just we're so used to sending chats.

This depends on the people involved. I find most of my programmer friends prefer text in most circumstances, but most people in sales, marketing, accounting, HR and management that I've worked with tend to prefer voice, video, face to face. As do people in other industries (eg my mother loves voice and video and while she does use text a lot, mostly to talk to me, often finds it tedious).
Post reply on HN