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What Is Code?

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 368 posts

Re: What Is Code?

#52
post #24
post #7

I like the idea, but is there really no way to mute the audio? Sadly I did not finish the article because of that.

What audio? There shouldn't be any sound unless you activate the konami code easter egg.

Well now you've got me to investigate. There seems to be a video in the article. However, it is only displayed as a white box in my browser (Safari), without any controls. I can't stop it, I don't even know it's there, except it it playing audio. Strange...

Re: What Is Code?

#53
post #41

Part of me looks at this and thinks, "This is preaching to the choir"...because while the engineer in me appreciates all the layers and explorations...It must be incredibly bewildering to anyone who is not a coder, which is the ostensible audience given that the story starts off with, 'We are here because the editor of this magazine asked me, “Can you tell me what code is?”' But then I see the interactive circuit sim…

One of the few worthy things I felt I got out of school was the moment I grokked the whole stack from sequential logic to the program counter and control logic from a cpu, how each clock tick formed a new circuit. That was really mentally expanding. I got it from reading a prescribed book for a class I wasn't taking from a professor who was a tool, so it is possible to learn these things outside of class. In fact, that's where the real learning, IMO, happens.

Re: What Is Code?

#55

I had to switch to view/source to read the article. Halfway through there was a shopping cart on wheels obstructing the text (ironic). * BPlayer(null, {"id":"P4_i7PihRGiWcPh3gdNMhg","htmlChildId":"bbg-video-player-P4_i7PihRGiWcPh3gdNMhg","serverUrl":" " rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/api/embed","idType":"BMMR","autopla... * Also - I have no CPU activity at all, so presumably some plugins that are running for…

Sounds like a better experience than on Firefox, which fails to load anything, even text, past the first video.

Re: What Is Code?

#56
post #30

I've always wanted to attempt this piece: to take all the many layers of abstraction that we deal with, parse them, convert them, and render them through my formidable linguistic talents into one elegant, beautifully constructed piece of prose that magically makes it all comprehensible to lay readers. I haven't yet attempted it, but I give props to Mr. Ford for trying. I'm not surprised he ended up with a novella. Oh…

Worth noting -- it is roughly 38k words and is the longest piece ever published by Bloomberg.

A quick google search showed that about 300 words per minute is average for an adult reading pace. I'm a slow reader so I'm probably right around there. So that's ~127 minutes to read all of this, not including time spent playing with the great animations. Probably better for me to get a bit more work done before I tackle the rest of this one (only read section 1 so far).

Re: What Is Code?

#57
post #25

Holy CPU time! That site consumes 100% of my CPU (presumably 100% of one core) whenever it is in the front tab (Firefox/OS X). Anyone else experiencing that or is it just my laptop running wild?

I've heard tales of AdBlock Plus consuming huge amounts of CPU, especially on large and complex pages.

Re: What Is Code?

#58

> There have been countless attempts to make software easier to write...Decades of efforts have gone into helping civilians write code...Nothing yet has done away with developers, developers, developers, developers. I still believe. Someday, somewhere, something incredible will emerge for the right-brained bourgeoisie and literati.

Taken to the extreme, could you not consider raising a child the ultimate programming exercise for humans?

Perhaps the "right-brained" are already very good at programming other people, working with faulty, non-deterministic, somewhat chaotic computing environments where "left-brained" patterns of software development fall short....

Re: What Is Code?

#59
post #57
post #25

Holy CPU time! That site consumes 100% of my CPU (presumably 100% of one core) whenever it is in the front tab (Firefox/OS X). Anyone else experiencing that or is it just my laptop running wild?

I've heard tales of AdBlock Plus consuming huge amounts of CPU, especially on large and complex pages.

I'm only using Ghostery. Disabling it doesn't help though.

Re: What Is Code?

#60
I kind of like my answer better: http://qr.ae/7NEnT9

The whole post is just a stream of consciousness brain dump that a layman would never understand. I believe it's possible to explain these things without circular reasoning.

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