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

The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

dreamsongs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 351 posts

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#211

Post by jlarocco »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #206
Jach wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain level, sure, but C++ at least has definitely lost out. In the 90s it seemed like it might really take over all sorts of application domains, it was incredibly popular. Now and for probably the last couple decades it and C have only kept around 10% of the global job market.

My gut feeling is there are still the same number of jobs for C++ today as there were in the 90s. It's just that they're hard to find because the total number of programming jobs has exploded. The reason you can't see the C++ jobs is because the newer, non-C++ jobs are crowding them out on job boards. [This is a hypothesis, one I haven't (dis)proven.] For fun a few weeks ago I went looking for COBOL on VMS jobs. They…

> My gut feeling is there are still the same number of jobs for C++ today as there were in the 90s. It's just that they're hard to find because the total number of programming jobs has exploded. The reason you can't see the C++ jobs is because the newer, non-C++ jobs are crowding them out on job boards. [This is a hypothesis, one I haven't (dis)proven.]

I don't know anything about the total number of C++ jobs, but there's a huge filter bubble effect for job searching. If you don't mention a language on your resume or list it under your skills then you're very unlikely to see any jobs for it or have anybody contact you for a job using it, whether we're talking about C++, Python, Typescript, or even technologies like Docker.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#212

Post by OhMeadhbh »

foobarian wrote: post #157
fanf2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LDAP is “lightweight” compared to the X.500 directory access protocol. LDAP DNs are basically the same as X.500 DNs. SNMP is “simple” compared to X.711 CMIP. But SNMP also uses ASN.1 and X.660 OIDs.

I finally understand why OSI failed, it's the naming! Dear lord.

Oh no. The naming is simple compared to ASN.1/BER parsing.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#213

Post by OhMeadhbh »

hiatus wrote: post #179
pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, there's an entirely different feature-length article to be written/found about how packet switching beat circuit switching and the "Internet approach" beat the telco approach. The great innovation of being able to deploy devices at the edges without needing clearance from the center. I don't think very many people even remember X25. The one survivor from all the X standards seems to be X509?

X.25 is still used in ham radio with AX.25

I hate to tell you this, X.25 is still used ALL OVER THE PLACE. But thankfully hardly anywhere near data networking customers.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#214

Post by OhMeadhbh »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #73

Isn't "Worse is better" just a restatement of "Perfect is the enemy of Good", only slanted to make better\Perfect sound more enticing? >The right thing takes forever to design, but it is quite small at every point along the way. To implement it to run fast is either impossible or beyond the capabilities of most implementors. A deer is only 80% of a unicorn, but waiting for unicorns to exist is folly.

Yes and no. "Worse is Better" also implies you allow someone outside your problem domain to define abstractions you use to decompose the problem domain (and construct the solution domain.) So... I mean... that's probably not TOO bad if they're well-understood and well-supported. Until it isn't and you have to waste a lot of time emulating a system that allows you to model abstractions you want/need to use.

But at the end of the day everyone knows never to assume STD I/O will write an entire buffer to disk and YOU need to check for EINTR and C++ allows you to wrap arbitrary code in try...catch blocks so if you're using a poorly designed 3rd party library you can limit the blast radius. And it's common now to disclaim responsibility for damages from using a particular piece of software so there's no reason to spend extra time trying to get the design right (just ship it and when it kills someone you'll know it's time to revisit the bug list. (Looking at YOU, Boeing.))

I do sort of wonder what happens when someone successfully makes the argument that C++ Exceptions are a solution often mis-applied to the problem at hand and someone convinces a judge that Erlang-like supervisory trees constitute the "right" way to do things and using legacy language features is considered "negligence" by the courts. We're a long way off from that and the punch line here is a decent lawyer can nail you on gross negligence even if you convinced your customer to sign a liability waiver (at least in most (all?) of the US.)

Which is to say... I've always thought there is an interplay between the "worse is better" concept and the evolution of tech law in the US. Tort is the water in which we swim; it defines the context for the code we write.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#215

Post by adastra22 »

thfuran wrote: post #205
adastra22 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ion pumps enabled by the technology we are working on won’t have external effects. They basically just filter out certain small molecules from the ocean into crystal storage.

What kind of flow rate would be necessary to pull CO2 out of the ocean faster than it dissolves from the air, and is that achievable without affecting the surroundings?

CO2 wouldn’t be pulled out of the ocean. You’d have to liquify it from air in a different process. The molecular pumps are used to extract dissolved ions or solutes from sea water and only act as fast as diffusion.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#216

Post by raincole »

dkarl wrote: post #85
hammock wrote: post #43

There was an article posted on here[1] a while back that I only just found again, introducing the term "expedience." The idea was that we think we live in a world where people have to have "the best" sweater, be on "the best" social network, drive "the best" car, etc. But when you look at what really WINS, it's not the best, it's the most "expedient" - i.e. sufficiently good, with built-in social proof, inoculated of…

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

> if we solve climate change with geoengineering instead of by addressing thoughtless consumerism, corporate impunity, and lack of international accountability, many people would feel frustrated or let down

If some people feel frustrated or let down because we achieve a literal miracle (by today's technology standards) that saves millions of lives I'm willing to call them mentally unhinged.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#217

Post by capitainenemo »

KerrAvon wrote: post #136
dkarl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expedient" is a common (or at least not rare) English word that means something like "practical and effective even if not directly attending to higher or deeper considerations." For example, if two students in a class are having frequent confrontations that bring learning in the class to a halt, and attempts by teachers and counselors to address their conflict directly haven't been effective, the expedient solution…

I think this is misleading -- geoengineering + social change will be necessary. You're not going to Scotty your way out of climate change.

sun shields? There's some testing of those going on right now. You wouldn't need a huge reduction in sunlight either. Not enough to impact plants.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#218

Post by Blackthorn »

anthk wrote: post #193
Blackthorn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know someone knows lisp? They'll tell you. And tell you. And tell you... I like lisp for the most part, but holy shit is the enduring dialog surrounding it the absolute worst part of the whole family of languages by far. No, it doesn't have or give you superpowers. Please grow up.

Do either the book on Symbolic Computation + PAIP and/or SICP, and you'll understand.

Yes, I've done SICP. Lisp does not give you superpowers.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#219

Post by Blackthorn »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #48
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #11

I'll never understand the obsession with LISP. My guess is it just appeals to a certain type of person, sort of academic in my view. I'm not convinced that LISP was ever the-right-thing. The author didn't express anything about LISP vs C except to assert that C was a 50% solution and LISP was better. I agree though that for practical purposes, practical solutions are just going to be more successful.

Such a weird take on HN. Lisp should be experimented with if only to appreciate the profound beauty of a small, powerful, cohesive design. It is a wholly different feeling from industry standard languages which are constantly changing. In Lisp, almost all of the language’s power is in “user space.” The ramifications for that are deep and your beliefs as to whether that is good are largely shaped by whether you believ…

Nothing about Common Lisp is small or cohesive. Some schemes, maybe.

Re: The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)

#220

Post by [deleted] »

ahoka wrote: post #196
PhilipRoman wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the OSI layer system (even though using TCP/IP suite) has some merit in education. To most of us, the concept of layering protocols may seem obvious, but I've talked to people who are just learning this stuff, and they have a lot of trouble understanding it. Emphasizing that each layer is (in theory) cleanly separated and doesn't know about layers above and below, is a very useful step towards understanding abstr…

The problem is that this is not true. There are no such clean strictly hierarchical layers in most of the protocols that make up the internet.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN