Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits • Hacker News Board

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#21

Post by derleth » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 9:18 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #17

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Fun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.

Depends on the variety of English. What you said is true for the prestige dialect, certainly.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#22

Post by rpdillon » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 10:36 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #2

While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.

I think I'm prone to cascading realization more than most. I often watch (or read) things multiple times, each time seeing it in a new way. For me, it's not so much the process of getting a principle intellectually, but a long process of internalization, often of simple ideas, and putting them into practice in my everyday work. The colloquial term for this is 'stupid', I think, but I prefer to think of it in a more positive light. =) It actually makes me think of my favorite T.S. Eliot quote:

'We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.'

I often return to basics and understand them in a new way after some time away, and Rich's talks evoke that phenomenon for me more than most.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#23

Post by derleth » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 12:02 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #21

tedunangst wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.

Depends on the variety of English. What you said is true for the prestige dialect, certainly.

Downvoting linguistic knowledge doesn't make it any less true.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#24

Post by mtinkerhess » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 12:13 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #23

derleth wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the variety of English. What you said is true for the prestige dialect, certainly.

Downvoting linguistic knowledge doesn't make it any less true.

I'd be curious to see an example of a dialect in which "to affect change" is more correct than "to effect change"?

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#25

Post by wicknicks » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 12:53 AM UTC

Rich Hickey is a genius. I love how he connected music to software engineering [1]. He should write a book on some of these topics. He has a lot more than 45 mins talks to offer to the world.

[1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Design-Composition-Perfor...

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#26

Post by tedunangst » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

mtinkerhess wrote: post #24

derleth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoting linguistic knowledge doesn't make it any less true.

I'd be curious to see an example of a dialect in which "to affect change" is more correct than "to effect change"?

Some people seem to like pushing descriptivism too far. "Somebody said it, therefore it's correct."

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#27

Post by chongli » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff.

I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dramatic change in culture (particularly office culture).

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#28

Post by shuzchen » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:19 AM UTC

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

My favorite quote (from "Are We There Yet?") is "I'm just trying to program without going crazy".

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#29

Post by aero142 » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:38 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #27

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. I hate to be cynical in a thread about a very optimistic and insightful speaker but I think that it will always be the case that people will trade off easy work early on for more pain late in the game. This is called hyperbolic discounting and it's an extremely common cognitive bias in humans. The only way we'll overcome this is through extensive education and a dr…

I'll ask a question. Have you seen a correlation between companies that have simpler code bases and are more successful in the long run? Personally, I've never seen it. The most successful companies have horrible code bases that are eventually replaced by well written modular architectures if the become successful. I personally love the idea and value of simple code but I can't say I've seen a lot of evidence for it.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#30

Post by dominotw » Tue, Sep 17, 2013, 1:51 AM UTC

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Very nice quote. But I think I am having a hard time seeing the genius of it. There was voice in my head saying 'Duh..' as I finished reading it.