Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research. – Albert Einstein.
For years I’ve tried to articulate the notion of it’s not about the money but you have to pay people well and give them autonomy and failed. And today I came across the following video and it all made sense. To put it into Daniel Pink’s words: When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system–which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators–doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. And that presentation I linked to earlier? Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube and the coolest presentation I’ve seen in a very long time. Wish I could draw that well and explain concepts that eloquently.
Charlie Munger on who to blame for the crisis we may be just exiting: The academic elites failed us with their utterly asinine ideas of risk control. It was grounded on the idea that all risk took Gaussian distributions, which is just totally wrong. Very high IQ people can be completely useless. And many of them are. And this might well apply to IT security, too, where all too many academics figure we can actually control risk.
I’ve been enjoying the 1997 OOPSLA Keynote by Alan Kay, The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet, and a few choice paraphrased quotes popped out of him. The main point of doing any programming work is that there must be some exquisite blend between beauty and practicality. There is no need to sacrifice either one of those. And people who are willing to sacrifice either one of those don’t really get what computing is all about. I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. HTML has taken us back to the dark ages wherein it presupposes a browser that understands its formats. This has to be one of the worst ideas since MS-DOS. Objects can act like anything! The most pernicious thing about languages like C++ and Java is that they think they’re helping the programmer by looking as much like the old thing as possible but they’re hurting the programmer terribly by making it difficult to understand what’s powerful in this new metaphor. A language that essentially forces you to develop outside of the language, requires you to compile and reload, is a dead end for building complex systems. The Internet
Well, the title from Business Insider is actually “15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid” but I like my title better. And to show you they’re stupid questions, here are my answers to these interview questions. 1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? Why would you care. You’d have to buy them and then get them in there and then clean up afterwards, which would result in opening the door and having all the stupid balls fall out going all over the freaking place. And I’m not even going to get into short bus, medium sized bus, long bus. Thus, the correct answer is “None” since only an idiot would even contemplate how many golf balls can fit in a school bus. 2. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle? To paraphrase Dr. Evil, One Trillion Dollars. Why? Because I don’t do windows and besides, it’s always raining in Seattle so what would be the point of washing the stupid windows. 3. In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they