[HN Gopher] Process Intensity (1987)
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       Process Intensity (1987)
        
       Author : Kinrany
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2021-09-19 12:03 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.erasmatazz.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.erasmatazz.com)
        
       | reidjs wrote:
       | These sorts of hidden gems are why I like to read HN. This makes
       | a lot of sense to me:
       | 
       | "The difference between process and data is profound. Process is
       | abstract where data is tangible. Data is direct, where process is
       | indirect. The difference between data and process is the
       | difference between numbers and equations, between facts and
       | principles, between events and forces, between knowledge and
       | ideas."
        
         | MarkLowenstein wrote:
         | I like to say that, just like _matter_ can be regarded as
         | frozen energy, _data_ can be regarded as frozen actions. I
         | would not be surprised if physicists eventually regarded both
         | phenomena as isomorphic.
        
       | Phileosopher wrote:
       | This is a profound concept. I've known this in computers for some
       | time, but was only able to parse the concept by understanding the
       | philosophical difference between utility (closely resonant with
       | "purpose") and metaphysical reality (simply what "is").
       | 
       | It's interesting as well because the only time I've grokked
       | efficiency is when it refers to algorithmic efficiency, where the
       | data efficiency often gets overlooked because it's abstracted
       | onto the hardware encoding level and completely misses the OS.
       | 
       | Though, that lends me some more thinking to do on this, since my
       | new life's purpose is to create improved information[1]. I'm
       | getting the feeling that better data could make better processes,
       | though I'm not sure how that would implement beyond the broad
       | concept of "data cleaning" (which is nothing more than uniformity
       | in a set).
       | 
       | [1]https://stucky.tech/purpose/
        
       | lliamander wrote:
       | "Process intensity" is a good way to describe the kind of
       | programming work I find most interesting. The standard CRUD
       | application being an example of a low-process intensity software
       | in contemporary context.
       | 
       | Often we can become mesmerized by systems of great scale that
       | deal with large amounts of data. But what's really interesting
       | and valuable is not the amount of data _per se_ , but the things
       | done with that data.
       | 
       | Furthermore, data intensity and process intensity are orthogonal.
       | That means you don't have to work at a company like Google with
       | massive amounts of data to find interesting work. There's
       | process-intensive work to be found at all scales of data
       | intensity. I've even done interesting side-projects processing
       | less than a kilobyte of data.
        
       | dragontamer wrote:
       | "Balance of Power"
       | 
       | I've heard of this 80s game time and time again. Often times, its
       | called the first computer strategy game. A cold-war era video
       | game about cold-war era politics, it was immediately relevant
       | back then and taken as a historical lesson today... and also one
       | of the major inspirations for 90s-era strategy games.
       | 
       | Maybe one day, I'll put forth the effort to find it and play it.
       | For now, I'm satisfied with an old version of Hearts of Iron 3.
       | 
       | Given how many times this game pops up in 1980s-era computer
       | discussion threads, I feel like I'm missing something each time
       | its brought up.
       | 
       | -------
       | 
       | In the realm of "process intensity", the crunch-to-bit ratio of
       | Factorio, OpenTTD, and now my current game (Hearts of Iron 3) is
       | pretty high. In Factorio: all mistakes are correctable: just
       | order your bots to deconstruct everything, and place everything
       | down again. Once you have your defense system automated, you can
       | continuously update your designs to more-and-more optimized
       | results.
       | 
       | Hearts of Iron 3 is similar though punishing instead. You spend
       | an inordinate amount of time looking through your commanders's
       | skills, experience, and organizing brigades / divisions / corps /
       | armies / groups / theaters, and the commanders of each stage of
       | the hierarchy. You consider production, and which groups the
       | weapons will go towards.
       | 
       | Then you unpause the game, and hope for the best. Hopefully your
       | organization was good and your commanders / troops can do their
       | thing. If not, you restart the game, or accept the results as you
       | get strategically bombed or whatever.
        
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