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Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

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Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#61

Post by jacquesm »

mercer wrote: post #58
grayrest wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also vote Simple Made Easy above Are We There Yet. I've talked about it at length with a bunch of other programmers and get consistently better responses from starting people with Simple Made Easy.

If this is the talk I think it is, I can say it helped me greatly as a programmer. I'm one of those 'homegrown' programmers with no formal education, and I'd probably horrify some of you with my work. But I'm learning, and very aware of my deficiencies. What I loved about this talk is that it seemed more a 'philosophy of programming' thing, where a lot of what he said applied even to my shitty programming, and (hopef…

For me the biggest change was 'structured programming', Niklaus Wirth and K&R changed the way I looked at code completely. Pascal was never my favorite language but after 'Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs' I became a much better programmer pretty much overnight.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#62

Post by espeed »

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…

Run upstairs...

"Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him." -- PG

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#63

Post by KevinEldon »

kriro wrote: post #48
KevinEldon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to reply to myself to clarify my harsh words. It is very easy to say something sucks. Windows sucks. Linux sucks. Lisp sucks. Apple Sucks. Google Sucks. It doesn't mean anything to say it. It is not useful to say something sucks, you cannot fix "sucks". Saying what is wrong with something is useful. Saying Rich's talks are "simple" is something, except most people don't seem to agree, so it would be much mo…

Your comments suck.

Have a blessed day.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#64

Post by KevinEldon »

klibertp wrote: post #43
KevinEldon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

Hey, stop it. Grandparent presented his opinion about the talks. It's perfectly possible that for him they are not new or interesting. He's not shitting on anything, he's just presenting his feelings about some things. While it's somewhat off-topic, it doesn't deserve a response like yours. Personally I like Rich talks very much, they were eye opening for me, although I agree that they focus on simple things. That's…

After re-reading my initial comment a few times I agree that my language wasn't helpful in communicating my real frustration with the GP's comment. My intent was to call out a dismissive, superior and mostly unhelpful comment, but my intent was lost in my presentation. Your approach to me would have been a more effective choice. Thanks for replying.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#65

Post by KevinEldon »

Sandman wrote: post #42
KevinEldon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

I really wish this is the last time I see a comment like this on HN. This is nothing but an angry, sarcastic rant by somebody who, I can only presume, had a really bad day. There is absolutely nothing civil in this comment. While I completely disagree with the grandparent comment, I understand that that's his/her opinion, nothing more. What Hickey talks about may seem obvious, but only in hindsight, at least to me. I…

I had a pretty good day and I'm not an angry person. I was very uncivil in response to what I understood to be a dismissive comment wrapped in civility. Comments tearing down someone else's real work without offering alternatives or constructive criticism are easy to make and damaging, but my tone and choice of language didn't communicate my message. I'm sorry that it bothered you. I generally do not post w/ this tone and will be more careful in choosing the right tone to communicate my meaning in the future. Thanks for your feedback.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#66

Post by KevinEldon »

KevinEldon wrote: post #32
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.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

@zerr: Sorry for my language and insults in response to your comment. I don't agree w/ your comment, and I chose a contradictory tone to express my disagreement, but that tone and my choice of words was not helpful to any discussion. Regardless of my intent I apologize for how I responded to you. I owe you a beer.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#67

Post by mercer »

jacquesm wrote: post #61
mercer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the talk I think it is, I can say it helped me greatly as a programmer. I'm one of those 'homegrown' programmers with no formal education, and I'd probably horrify some of you with my work. But I'm learning, and very aware of my deficiencies. What I loved about this talk is that it seemed more a 'philosophy of programming' thing, where a lot of what he said applied even to my shitty programming, and (hopef…

For me the biggest change was 'structured programming', Niklaus Wirth and K&R changed the way I looked at code completely. Pascal was never my favorite language but after 'Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs' I became a much better programmer pretty much overnight.

Haha, yeah, that's pretty much the single most useful thing I learned.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#68

Post by FkZ »

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"?

Neither one is more correct in isolation as they mean different things.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#69

Post by zerr »

KevinEldon wrote: post #66
KevinEldon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

@zerr: Sorry for my language and insults in response to your comment. I don't agree w/ your comment, and I chose a contradictory tone to express my disagreement, but that tone and my choice of words was not helpful to any discussion. Regardless of my intent I apologize for how I responded to you. I owe you a beer.

It's OK Kevin. We all make mistakes, but when one acknowledges and honestly apologizes, it deserves appreciation. So thank you and take care.

Oh, and, the world is not that big, so I'll keep in mind that beer ;)

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#70

Post by Kaizyn »

derleth wrote: post #56
Kaizyn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English. In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong.

> There ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English. I sincerely hope this is sarcasm. > In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong. Cite?

Hello derleth:

"Effect. As noun, means result; as verb, means to bring about, accomplish (not to be confused with affect, which means "to influence")." http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html

Affect vs. Effect: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sullivan/CommonWritingErrors.html#...

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