Xichekolas

So you'd be ashamed to be in grad school? (Or doing a startup right out of college?)

Often the insurance offered by a parent's plan blows away what can be had through the University. Of course, you can buy individual insurance fairly cheaply... unless you aren't in perfect health, or are a girl.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that part of the reason I'm such a huge fan of ING Direct is because they have Sharebuilder, which I think is the best platform I've ever experienced for managing my Roth IRA (and stocks in general).

Huh (just checked), it is indeed $25/$20 right now.

Even better. grin

I'm also a huge fan of ING Direct (have been with them since 2002) and would gladly send out invites to anyone that wants them (disclosure: you get $25 and I get $10 if you use my invite to open your account).

But my point was that the complexity matters. If you throw complexity out the window, everything in the Universe is probably 100% predictable (unless you presume a deity with a sense of humor, or some other layer of non-determinism).

The issue is that the state space for software is so much larger than the state space for bridge building that we just don't have the tools to effectively model and predict yet. I won't argue that software is somehow an art, because I'm hopeful that someday we will have those tools, but I will argue that it's not engineering yet. The Alan Kay quote about pyramids in the article hit it spot on. We are still piling blocks on each other and hoping it works at this point.

I totally agree with you in aggregate. If you take the entirety of the VC/Angel scene and figure out the overall return, it's probably not that much different than other investment vehicles (it's probably a bit higher, since there are barriers to entry, which prevents everyone from getting into the game).

But my point was for those upper echelon's of VC/Angels who actually make money. PG has pointed out in the past that there really are only a handful of VC/Angels that actually consistently make money (and more importantly in the case of VCs make money for their investors). You're right that my case was idealized, but investment losses can also be used to offset gains for tax purposes, and this is an industry of lawyers, so I doubt the tax effects are as clear cut as either of us paints them to be. And I still maintain my overall point that 3.8% isn't going to suddenly kill the startup scene. If it was that tax sensitive, it wouldn't be in California to begin with.

f = (+ 2)

(I'm not a huge fan of point-free, I'm just being facetious ;)

Wanking is a good word for it. I've never understood how people looking for upside measured in the hundreds to thousands of percent can complain about a 3.8% tax with a straight face.

If you invest $100k in a startup, it goes well and you walk away with a million ($900k profit), are you really going to cry when the tax man comes and gets his $34,200? I guess you might, but it didn't suddenly make the investment not worth it.

Then again, those people aren't likely the ones complaining. It's the people who have a hypothetical model in their head of what "investors" are like and want to use it as a talking point to attack health care reform.

> BTW, if you want, you could build a mathematical model of every program. 100% predictable

Have you ever tried to do this? Once you get past fibonacci functions, the amount of time and effort required is measured in PhD-man-years. And even then, all you have done is moved the risk from the code to the proof, because when you work on something that large, the risk that the model does not represent reality (either due to oversight, lack of understanding, or not correctly capturing the interplay between two aspects) becomes an issue.

> Since all engineers do this, why would developers do things differently?

Because, as arethuza said, programmers don't have the tools that other engineering disciplines have. Most notably, the equations that allow for predictive analysis and proofs of correctness.

A civil engineer that builds a bridge can be fairly certain it won't fall down even when it's still on paper, because he can reason about the forces and stresses and even environmental degradation via well known equations and models. This collection of predictive and proof techniques is what makes it an engineering discipline.

Programming doesn't have that, at least not yet. As you point out, the program is the input to the machine, not the predictive model. But at least if the machine acts deterministically, we can focus on proving things about its input, the program. There has been quite a bit of effort in the research community to come up with ways to prove correctness, but the state of the art is still a long ways from being something actually useful. Functional languages are (partially) a reaction to the prediction requirement. By not having side effects or depending on state, it's easier to make predictions about behavior. (Of course, lazy evaluation buys you a lot in expressive power and data structure efficiency, but offers a new hurdle in predicting performance).

And if you really look at it, Software Engineering is, well, not. Everything I have seen in the emerging Software Engineering field is really about managing people. It's about how to get 1000 developers on the same page (which is like herding cats) so they can crank out an operating system. Sure, there is a lot about testing and validation and change control, but it's still mostly from the angle of controlling the risk of a developer doing something stupid. The tools that would allow a software architect to write an exact specification of a project (bridge blueprints), prove it'll meet all requirements (not fall down), then turn it over to junior programmers (construction crew), just don't exist yet. Check out Rosetta for an ongoing attempt.

So maybe someday programming truly will be an engineering discipline, but right now it's more like having a million Wright brothers all building their own airplane, using whatever materials they are used to working with, rather than an established discipline like Aeronautical Engineering.

While the 8 hrs of just about any manual labor job is much more work than 8 hrs at school, at least you don't have to worry about it when you go home.

I worked several manual labor jobs during summer breaks in high school, and the freedom to think about whatever you wanted at night (instead of homework or activities) was at least mentally liberating, even if I was dead tired from moving boxes of tomatoes all day.

Well if you buy into the idea of doing productive work on it (which Apple bent over backward to push during the unveiling), then all day shouldn't be out of the question.

But personally, I just read a lot (research papers, online, and recreationally), so something that would get me from 6pm to 3am without running out of battery is a requirement.

I used to have mine set at two minutes, but recently changed it to one. I found that I edit pretty hard for the first 2-3 minutes after submitting, but all the major changes come in the first minute, and whenever I reconsider and delete it's almost immediately.

I was excited too until I saw the battery life.

To me, a tablet needs to have the stamina to last at least a whole day without being charged. Six hours isn't quite there.

I'd read it on anything without a backlight, it doesn't necessarily have to be e-ink. (Mirasol or Pixel Qi come to mind.)

I have a $100 gift card burning a hole in my pocket so I'm planning to spring for an X25-V, but if you are considering the same, it might be worth noting that IMFT's new 25nm flash is coming in Q4 this year, promising double the capacity for roughly the same price. If you can wait that long that is.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your point, but I would definitely argue that society now is better than that of the 1920s.

The medical/tech advances alone would make my point, but you seem to want to ignore those, so I'll stick with social aspects.

Our populace is more educated, less violent, healthier, and wealthier than we were in the 1920s. Heck, on Wall Street the 1920s was a decade of greed and moral decrepitude (if you get into that sort of name calling) that is possibly only rivalled by the 1980s. Go back 30 years, and you are squarely in the 'Gilded Age', where the Senate was completely controlled by large companies (to the point where the companies simply picked candidates and ushered them through state legislatures, because Senators weren't popularly elected yet). After that came the Progressive years, where we learned that our meat was lethal and other things, and women finally got treated like human beings. How could any of those decades be considered better than the current one? Sure, women's suffrage was a great accomplishment, but only because the reality to that point was so bad.

My brother has a saying... "progress, not perfection". American history has been exactly that. Sure, there are temporary setbacks (no one can argue the 1930s were better than the 1920s really), and there are local setbacks (1980s Detroit?) but the overall story is progress. Thankfully the small victories accumulate faster than the setbacks, leaving us with a better society all the time.

I guess if we need the jeremiad to motivate us to make progress, then that is fine. I was simply commenting that it's disingenuous to pretend that it's somehow different this time. If it really were different, you wouldn't be sitting around musing about it, you'd be dealing with a collapsing society.

But I guess if you realize that, the jeremiad loses it's power, so maybe it's better we keep pretending that things are going to hell.

It amuses me that, since it's inception, America has essentially always moved from one jeremiad to another... and yet every year we keep pretending that there is something new about this.

According to Americans, things have been "going to hell" for over 200 years, and yet somehow this time it's different.

On the upside, I think all this lamenting is just a sign of our ambition to be better... and that is a good thing.

I think a really simple and sort of bash-you-over-the-head means to get this across to homebuyers would be to tack on the monthly utilities to the mortgage+tax number that people see.

If you were comparing the price of two houses, you often look at the monthly cost of mortgage and taxes... so throwing utilities on there would make it more apparent which house will actually be cheaper over the long term.

I know someone that works in Dr. Berggren's group, and they are indeed doing some nifty things. She is working on taking electron beam lithography down to a 5nm feature size (as opposed to 28nm-32nm currently in production flash memory and microprocessors), and has been successful enough to publish it.

One thing to note is that the group works almost exclusively on process technology. While my friend can create 5nm features, that is still a couple steps away from creating a useful circuit at that scale.

Other fun Japanese inventions (culling from Wikipedia):

  The Biplane
  Graphing Calculator
  Solar powered calculator
  Camcorder
  Digital Camera
  Blue lasers
  VCRs
  Anything made by Nintendo
  Flash memory
  Various types of steel
  Quartz wristwatch
  The continuously variable transmission

Yep, nothing innovative or new there.

I was impressed by the number of interesting concrete ideas he listed for improving efficiency and retrofits. Usually policy at that level is almost entirely focused on enticements to lower levels of government and other types of stick/carrot programs. To see the DoE developing actual technical solutions like software and hardware is very cool.

In the same vein, the FCC has their broadband speed testing tool to gather data and make useful maps of speed vs. price and other factors, all to guide future policy decisions. Maybe this idea of running the executive branch based on data is widespread in the administration? If so, kudos.

I almost threw Topeka in there, but I wanted to keep it simple.

I know a lot of decidedly cool people from Wichita... but I also know quite a few crazies.

One place to check out in your job hunt is Perceptive Software. A lot of the really good people I knew from my undergrad days (I went to KU, which is about 40 minutes from KC) ended up there. They have a dodgeball court, and seem to try and be a fun place to work.

Another popular option is Cerner. From what I have heard they have good pay and benefits, but expect lots of hours.

Whatever you do, don't work for Sprint. They employ a ton of people in the area, but there is a running joke that the halflife of a job at Sprint is about nine months. They are constantly hiring and laying people off, and the people they lay off seem to be totally arbitrary.

In all fairness, I grew up about five miles from the Garmin headquarters, and most people in that area don't believe Jesus rode a dinosaur to work (that would be in Wichita).

However, Olathe is a town of suburbs and schools and not much else. I wouldn't want to move back there, period, let alone from SF.

I was told once that they don't rank on karma, but if they recognize your name from discussions around here it helps your case.

So my question is, what sort of data plan does AT&T force you to buy in order to use this? AT&T's data plans are so confusing right now. There is a $30 "unlimited data and texting plan", but then there is a $50 version that is "unlimited data and texting for smartphones", etc.

It almost seems like a better deal to just get an iPod Touch with skype and google voice and carry around something like Verizon's MiFi.

Good point. Judging from the table of contents, he added a chapter up front on various types of trees, tacked on Haskell source in the appendix, and mushed all the conclusions together.

But I'm a poor grad student, so I'll read the free dissertation over the $75 book. ;)

If you haven't read Okasaki's dissertation:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/theses/okasaki.pdf

I'd highly recommend it. It's hard to find a dissertation that reads like a novel, but he somehow managed to accomplish such a feat.

Not to mention the obvious question... is there really a point to breaking everything down seven ways from Sunday?

At that point it becomes a video game, and loses any semblance of meaning anything whatsoever.