elb2020

If you steal my secret code, then I no longer have secret code.

The question is whether the secrecy itself has value. I may perceive that it does, and you may conveniently perceive that it doesn't.

It's a dubious mindset, to believe that it's your own call to decide whether something should be of value to someone else.

It's quite possible that it is a social signal, I think. Something designed to facilitate a non-spoken syn-ack handshake between members in a social group. I see you, you see me, I see that you see me, end of transmit.

Won't become undone and is easy to undo, I would add.

You can put a very high weight on it, and it'll still be easy to untangle afterwards.

I'm not familiar with Go, but is there anything in the language which makes it a particularly good fit for this type of problem?

I see you've revised your comment from 3 days ago, where you made the more sweeping statement that "the longer you use C++, the more you despise it".

My experience is that C++ is complex, but it gives you power. I think whether or not you like the complexity of C++ depends very much upon whether or not you _need_ the power that comes with it. If you do not need the power, I can understand your argument that a simpler language is preferable.

I looked up the Wodehouse quote:

“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

I think he uses it, not just in one of his books, but in several, maybe in slightly different forms.

> You can't count on project managers to do that.

This is one of my pet peeves when it comes to software development. I _really_ think that software development project managers ought to be able to spot the difference between a good architectural decision and a bad architectural decision, a good design decision and a bad design decision, a well implemented function and a badly implemented function. It sinks my heart, as a software development professional, having to work for project managers who, in many cases, would be hard pressed to explain what a byte is. It's just so wrong.

It's like working for a newspaper editor who does not know how to read or write. It does not mean that you cannot produce a newspaper, but it depends upon the workers stepping in and doing all the strategical technical decision behind the project managers back. As an engineer you can live with it for some time, but eventually it ends up feeling fake, and like a masquerade.

I'm much more in favor of hands on leadership types like Microsoft's Dave Cutler, with the technical skills to actually lead, and not just superficially 'manage'.

I think it's fair to call it a complex problem, if referring to the task itself, of creating performant software (which I assume is what he did). I agree with otabdeveloper in general. I'm learning C++, and over the past year there has been many occasions where I've found myself dumbfounded by patterns in the language. But, in 99% of the cases, the outcome is that the patterns are there for a reason. And the reason is performance.

Agree, that was my main takeway too. I found the animation with the two mirror systems especially illuminating.

Without the theory of spacetime, it would seem that the two mirror systems would somehow get out of sync over time, since it appears, from the stationary system, as if the photons in the moving system are doing fewer rounds in the same amount of time. And from the moving system the photons in the stationary system appears, likewise, to be doing fewer rounds. The theory reconciles it by saying that time itself is not fixed, but dependent upon relative motion. And the relative motion is something that observers at both systems can agree upon. So, by accepting that time is dependent upon relative motion, they can agree upon the motion of photons in both systems.

The reason behind this wisdom is that it's easy to suggest a rewrite because you think the current code is too complex. You suggest a rewrite because you cannot grasp the current code. If that's the case, then I think the mentioned wisdom more or less holds up. However, it's also possible to understand the complexities of the current code, and still suggest a rewrite. Then the likelihood of a success is much, much bigger, I think.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm under the impression that imdb.com pulled off such a rewrite a couple of years ago.