jayvanguard

> it still isn’t competitive with C or C++ and, with a little love, Haskell and OCaml can or will eclipse it in that domain

Oh please. It has displaced C and C++ for the vast majority of programming. And call me when people other than a few rabid fans and academics are actually using Haskell and OCaml for real software development.

If you want to run the existing electronics or even rebuild basic electricity the easiest route isn't re-build the world's supply chains and production capabilities for oil and/or chemicals.

Wind, solar, and hydro are your easiest routes to electrical energy. From there lots of things become easier.

Work for a european based software company. Very different culture around vacation.

I agree. Medicine, metal working, practical mechanics are severely underrepresented. Not to mention alternative energy sources.

I do think the majority of these fall into the "first built in the 90s" category and while they aren't legacy they do have a legacy codebase to deal with.

Good examples though. If you were building them from scratch, I would still question the choice of C++ for these as opposed to C#, Objective-C native UI layers combined with a C core.

Show me non-legacy desktop apps that were written in the past few years that are in C++. I believe the majority of ones I use on the Mac were written in Objective-C. If they aren't using specialized legacy libraries (e.g. image processing) I bet I don't have a single one that is in C++ other than image editing and browsing.

I'm not sure the state of consumer Windows apps but almost all desktop business apps are in C# or VB. Unless of course they are accessing legacy C++ stuff.

What OS are you running this on?

> Everyone hates C++, and yet every desktop application in widespread use is built with it. I wonder why? Is it really just inertia?

First off, that is incorrect. You underestimate the number of VB, C#, and other apps, not to mention OSX based apps. Most business apps are either in Java on the backend or if they aren't web based they are in proprietary languages and frameworks that likely use a mix of C and C++ at the core. They are mostly shit nowadays though which is why everyone is re-writing them in the Cloud. They're unmaintainable.

But yes there are a lot of high visibility popular desktop apps in C++ and yes, it is just inertia. When were all of those desktop apps you're thinking of first built (or came of age)? The early 90s! Microsoft Office, the Adobe suite, Visio (bought out by Microsoft), desktop databases, etc.

That was the age of the desktop and briefly, C++ was the best choice. I'll grant you a few very small niches still exist and they are in the desktop domain e.g. web browsers and very complex image editors. But how many people are writing browsers? And simpler image editors are better off being mostly in Objective-C or C# (minus some core libraries which are best off in C).

Don't mix the two together. C is great for systems and some application programming, C++ is rubbish.

There was one brief stretch in history around 1994-1998 where C++ was the best choice for application level programming. And even then only a very narrow type of app programming.

Before that brief timeframe and since then it has been a poor choice for every single type of programming. There are better choices in all cases. It has no niche anymore where it is the best fit, not anywhere.

But most (or at least a huge percentage of) server-side web apps are written in Java. While I don't love Java it is better in every way shape and form for server-side web apps than C++.

No organization in the history of the world with hundreds of people doing anything remotely important or of consequence has been structureless. At least not for long.

Everyone who starts a company in their twenties thinks they are re-inventing the office environment (I know, I did it too). It turns out, your company is just small, it is in a cool industry where people are well paid, and if you step back you probably have very little diversity in your office. Everyone looks just like you. Not the most challenging human organizational structure to manage.

Just because we like a company's products doesn't mean it makes financial sense for society to allow it to externalize many of its costs such as transportation of employees, roads, social welfare, and health care.

Talk about an abusive family.

It is an unfashionable role right now in good software development organizations. I used to go by the title but tend not to anymore.

Nevertheless, there is still a need for that role in large organizations whether they are called that or not. A typical project or product at a large company has many people over multiple sites involved and/or significantly affected by the project.

Someone with enough technical depth needs to coordinate, make decisions, and be accountable for the overall technical cohesion.

Most developers either aren't interested in spending their time on that or aren't good at it. The ones that are end up playing the role of architect. If they don't have the authority to back it up, either by reputation or granted by title, they will get nowhere when they try to convince other groups all work towards the same vision.

It is necessarily harsh. The industry goes in these cycles with monolithic frameworks. Each time they end up collapsing under their own weight and each time a new generation goes and builds another piece of bloatware that catches on and away we go again...

I understand what you are saying but I think the real value in the kind of perspective he brings is how it makes you think rather than the ideas itself.

The specific connections he makes aren't important. It is getting others to think and make connections themselves that are actually meaningful.

The author of the article does a good job of pointing out the ulterior motives for tech culture elites wanting to get him involved e.g. grasps for authenticity. I like how she also points out there may be positives to these ulterior motives like actually getting back in touch with its counter-culture roots.

An alternative point of view is that the Maker culture is basically arts and crafts for men so it actually is a positive example of "raising our sons more like our daughters", to use her example. It provides a positive creative outlet that isn't about competition, success, building a business, etc. which almost all men's activities seem to have to be centered on.

In any event, thought provoking article...

> By robustness I mean the brain is pretty hard to exploit.

As others have pointed out, the complete opposite is true.

This is one of the better explanations of this fundamental shift in AI research. I remember even a decade ago this would have been a controversial stance.

Now it is very clear the neats have lost and the scruffies are on the rise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies

Yes, yes it is. Simply asserting the opposite doesn't suddenly invalidate an entire industry's decades worth of experience.

One good point from the essay though is Knuth's example of 12% speed increase for low effort is definitely worth doing. I agree.

A better way of putting things is:

Considering low effort, small performance improvements that don't affect other factors such as code readability or system maintainability is not "premature optimization".

If you are considering performance "in the small" and it affects maintainability you are indeed prematurely optmizing.

My usual reaction to these things is "does the world really need another language/framework?"

But this is actually a cool little language with well thought out features. I can see it being very useful for embedding.

Should be titled "Books to Read to Understand the USA".

In 1995 C++ it wasn't a good choice. In 2000 it was a poor decision in most cases. In 2005 it was a bad decision in almost every case. In 2010 it was completely indefensible. It is almost 2015, why are we even talking about it? C++ was a mistake. A bad detour on the highway of computing.

I think you can just accept that as a tautology. If a bunch of humans want to save their culture then by definition it has some human value in saving it.

A separate question is whether we have a duty to help _other_ cultures in their quest for self-preservation. I think there are altruistic reasons for doing so stemming from the fact that most people value their own culture so we can empathetically understand why others would want to preserve theirs.

There are also interesting biological and sociological arguments around diversity and resilience of the species that don't rely on altruism.

The question specifically about language is asking something different though. So this conversation should just be about languages where the group that spoke it no longer has enough interest to continue that tradition. So the question becomes should we save the language of other cultures for them? I don't think there is a strong case (other than academic preservation).

Arguments about the intrinsic relationship of language to culture are valid but fall apart when the members of the culture itself don't care enough to preserve the language.

If the FBI is involved and there was significant uncertainty to their conclusion wouldn't they slightly biased against concluding it is an international actor since it takes it out of their jurisdiction?

If the above is true should that cause us Bayesians to slightly believe their conclusion more? Or are they so influenced by governmental interests (who may want cyber warfare) that it really isn't a factor?

It demonstrates the value in academically preserving languages, but not in culturally "saving" them from extinction.

Fewer and fewer people believe this myth nowadays as opposed to 10-15 years ago.

https://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism

Jack Welsh never did believe it.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-orig...

No doubt, I prefer to have actual hashing going on in my hash tables.

Is there any large software company in the industry that has a sizeable development center in India that isn't a clusterfuck?

I've got a sample size of three and all were gong shows.

I blame the outsourcing mindset -- low cost, high volume of people. No focus on quality and accountability. Because the individual engineers I've worked with have on average been excellent. Most of the time though you just get a pool of "resources" rather than actual named people with clear responsibilities.