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Always bet on text (2014)

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Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#71

Post by jumploops »

> Text is the oldest and most stable communication technology

Minor nit: complex language (i.e. Zipf’s law) is the oldest and most stable communication technology.

Before text, we had oral story telling. It allowed us to communicate one generation’s knowledge to the next, and so on.

Arguably this is present elsewhere in the animal kingdom (orcas, elephants, etc.), but human language proves to be the most complex.

Side note: one of my favorite examples is from the Gunditjmara (a group of Aboriginal Australians) who recall a volcanic eruption from 30k+ years ago [0].

Written language (i.e. text) is unique, in that it allows information to pass across multiple generations, without a man-in-the-middle telephone-like game of storytelling.

But both are similar, text requires you to read, in your own voice, the thoughts of another. Storytelling requires you to hear a story, and then communicate it to others.

In either case, the person is required to retell the knowledge, either as an internal monologue or as an external broadcast.

Always bet on language.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budj_Bim

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#72

Post by derriz »

textnotalwabest wrote: post #18

Text is not the best medium for the following situations: - I want to learn how to climb rock walls - I want to learn how to throw a baseball - I want to learn how to do public speaking - I want to learn how to play piano - I want to make a fire in the woods - I want to understand the emotional impact of war - I want to be involved in my child's life

I don’t see the relevance to the topic. I could preface your list with something like “The monkey wrench is not the best tool for the following situations:”. It’s kinda vacuously true in a meaningless way but without expansion adds nothing to a discussion about the relative merits of monkey wrenches versus other similar tools like pliers or vice grips.

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#73

Post by godelski »

smj-edison wrote: post #12

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I agree: text is infinitely versatile, indexable, durable, etc. But, after discovering Bret Victor's work[1], and thinking about how I learned piano, I've also started to see a lot of the limitations of text. When I learned piano, I always had a live feedback loop: play a note, and hear how it sounds, and every week I had a teacher coach me. This is a completely diff…

Working in any science should also make this argument clearer. Data as text is hard to read and communicate. Even explanations of results. But graphs? Those are worth a thousand words. They communicate so much so fast. There's also a lot of skill to doing this accurately and well, just as one can say about writing. A whole subfield of computer graphics is dedicated to data visualization because it's so useful. Including things like colors. Things people often ignore because it feels so natural and obvious but actually isn't.

I think it's naïve to claim there's a singular best method to communicate. Text is great, especially since it is asynchronous. But even the OP works off of bad assumptions that are made about verbal language being natural and not being taught. But there's a simple fact, when near another person we strongly prefer to speak than write. And when we can mix modes we like to. There's an art to all this and I think wanting to have a singular mode is more a desire of simplicity than a desire to be optimal

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#76

Post by ffuxlpff »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #45
Ferret7446 wrote: post #31

Text is just bytes, and bytes are just text. I assume this is talking about human readable ASCII specifically. I think the obsession with text comes down to two factors: conflating binary data with closed standards and poor tooling support. Text implies a baseline level of acceptable mediocrity for both. Consider a CSV file will millions of base64 encoded columns and no column labels. That would really not be any fri…

> Text is just bytes, and bytes are just text. I assume this is talking about human readable ASCII specifically. Text is human readable writing (not necessarily ASCII). It is most certainly not just any old bytes the way you are saying.

And machine readable. You can parse csv file more or less easily but try the same with some forgotten software specific binary.

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#77

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Is it noteworthy that arguments against text by HN commenters are made using text

Reminds me of when HN thread comments about articles pertaining to the negative aspects of web advertising refer to the publisher's, e.g. a newspaper website's, use of web advertising, e.g., ad auctions, trackers, etc., as a point of significance

Would arguments against text be more convincing if made using something other than text

Is it appropriate to use text to make an argument against text. If yes, then why

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#78

Post by ffuxlpff »

tombert wrote: post #33
didip wrote: post #30

I agree. As a simple exercise, look at all software tools that’s GUI only. They become a large walled garden unable to be penetrated by LLM. Tools that are mostly text or have text interfaces? Greatly improved by LLM. So all of those rich multimedia and their players/editors really need to add text representations.

People make fun of it, but I think the fact that Unixey stuff can use tools that have existed since the 70's [1] can be attributed to the fact that they're text based. Every OS has its own philosophy on how to do GUI stuff and as such GUI programs have to do a lot of bullshit to migrate, but every OS can handle text in one form or another. When I first started using Linux I used to make fun of people who were stuck o…

And when everything is a text file you have (optimally) a human readable single source of truth on things... Very important when things get complicated and layered. In GUI stuff your only option is often to start anew, make the same movements as the first time and hope you end with what you want.

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#79

Post by nimih »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #47
dkarl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the downside, at least near-term, or maybe challenge would be the better word, is that anything richer than text requires a lot more engineering to make it useful. B♭ is text. Most of the applications on your computer, including but not limited to your browser, know how to render B♭ and C♯, and your brain does the rest. Bret Victor's work involves a ton of really challenging heavy lifting. You walk away from…

> B♭ is text. Yes, but musical notation is far superior to text for conveying the information needed to play a song.

For complex music, sure, but if I'm looking up a folk tune on, say, thesession.org, I personally think a plain-text format like ABC notation is easier to sight-read (since for some instruments, namely the fiddle and mandolin, I mainly learn songs by ear and am rather slow and unpracticed at reading standard notation).

Re: Always bet on text (2014)

#80

Post by makeitdouble »

socketcluster wrote: post #9

I've also become something of a text maximalist. It is the natural meeting point in human-machine communication. The optimal balance of efficiency, flexibility and transparency. You can store everything as a string; base64 for binary, JSON for data, HTML for layout, CSS for styling, SQL for queries... Nothing gets closer to the mythical silver-bullet that developers have been chasing since the birth of the industry.…

The text based side of protobuf is not base64 or json. We'd be looking at either CSV or length delimited fields.

Many large scale systems are on the same camp as you as their text files flow around their batch processors like crazy, but there's absolutely no flexibility or transparency.

Json and or base64 are more targeted as either low volume or high latency systems. Once you hit a scale where optimizing a few bits straight saves a significant amount of money, self labeled fields are just out of question.

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