[HN Gopher] Erik Naggum
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Erik Naggum
Author : Tomte
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-04-10 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikiquote.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikiquote.org)
| javert wrote:
| I noticed on his websites that he likes to write dates in a
| format like "2009-121" or "2006-257", i.e., year and then day of
| year (1..366).
|
| I also use that concept, though I write it as XXYYY where XX is
| years post 2000 and YYY is the day number. For example, today is
| 22100.
|
| Why do I like this? I find this is more "mentally ergonomic" to
| use for software tooling I have made for myself only. I usually
| don't care about the month or date of the month; I care about
| offsets (e.g. tomorrow is 22101 and ten days from now is 22110).
| If I'm computing an offset in my head, I don't have to account
| for wrap-arounds due to month (e.g. 10 days from March 25 is
| April 4 because March has 31 days.) The XXYYY format is about as
| concise as you can get (i.e., takes up minimal space on the
| screen) while still capturing all the information I care about.
| XXYYY sorts easily (though that's also true of YY.MM.DD which is
| my second favorite format).
| rdpintqogeogsaa wrote:
| This is actually specified in ISO 8601; they call it the
| ordinal date.
| javert wrote:
| Ah, thank you.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Ordinal_dates
|
| Looks like I'm using the second format (YYYYDDD) with the
| first two year digits truncated.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I also do this, but I format it in more of a "NASA Mission
| Event Timer" form with the full timestamp:
|
| YYYY:NNN:HH:MM:SS
|
| So,
|
| 2022:100:11:29:15
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Have you considered that your system might not be communicative
| to others?
| javert wrote:
| As I stated in my comment, I use this in tooling made for
| myself only.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Apparently my reading needs work.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What do you think about week-counting dates? They are quite
| popular for project planning in nordics.
|
| You sometimes see them written like 22w10 or even 22w10.5
| (2022, week 10, day 5, which is Friday).
|
| Outlook etc support showing week numbering if you opt in.
| unixhero wrote:
| I find it super weird that this is not common outside of the
| Nordics.
| suction wrote:
| Probably it's just me, but after 2016 and all that idiotic
| internet edgelord-ery that enabled and accompanied it, and the
| repercussions we will still feel for decades, I've lost all
| patience and interest with these type of 14-and-this-is-deep
| edgelords, especially when they're in their 20s or even older.
|
| They don't add anything that for instance Houellebecq hasn't
| formulated before them, and way more poignantly. Just because
| they don't read literature but stew in the muddy waters of forums
| and usenet and other places, doesn't mean their pontificating can
| be excused.
| unixhero wrote:
| These types drove me away from IRC and and Computing
| environments all together. I met a whole bunch of them and the
| whole vibe was very dismissive. I became an economist and later
| returned to computing again. Edgelords is an accurate term for
| these types!
| jzebedee wrote:
| Erik died in 2009.
|
| Erik Naggum in memoriam https://perpelle.net/artikler-og-
| leserinnlegg/erik-naggum-in...
| hanche wrote:
| And in case someone wonders, Xyzzy was his cat. Or rather the
| other way round; he was her human.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Apparently it's smart troll day on HN. (Xah is just down the page
| right now.) It's like a celebration of the kind of person I
| admired before I realized that other people are real too.
| codr7 wrote:
| The more you know, the more lonely you get.
|
| I suspect they crave the company of peers more than attention.
|
| Naggum eventually couldn't cope if I remember correctly.
|
| We're failing all over the place.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I don't believe that's true. Several of the smartest people I
| know are among the most socially-capable and personally
| engaged. I think a healthy person recognizes value in aspects
| of a person additional to their intellect.
| sva_ wrote:
| Probably saw this guy mentioned on that awfully long Xah Lee
| wikipost.
| legrande wrote:
| > People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy
| question: we are born into a world that presents us with many
| millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our
| predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life
| ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons
| badly
|
| Yeah the Not Invented Here mindset is hard to avoid. So many
| people ignorant of the whole body of knowledge on various
| subjects before them, and the best they can do is re-invent the
| wheel and cry 'Eureka!' (e.g Like when stumbling upon a yoga
| asana/posture that was committed to text 2000 years ago or
| accidentally coding Bubble Sort with no prior knowledge of
| algorithms).
| rauhl wrote:
| > accidentally coding Bubble Sort with no prior knowledge of
| algorithms
|
| Heh, I did that when I was a kid. I was so proud of myself,
| right up until I learned how bad it was.
|
| If only there were some way for the tech world at large to
| learn that sort of lesson.
| codr7 wrote:
| It's a solid, easy to implement and understand, strategy for
| some kinds of problems.
|
| https://github.com/codr7/snabl/blob/main/src/snabl/fuses/all.
| ..
| Hermel wrote:
| Sometimes, re-inventing something is easier than trying to find
| it somewhere else.
| civilized wrote:
| Re-inventing can be good for your personal learning. But if
| you're building something that others are going to have to
| deal with, those others will usually be better off if a
| classical solution or approach is used. The classical
| solution will usually be less buggy and better explained than
| whatever you roll for yourself.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Or sometimes, what already exists is "okay" but not all that
| great, and by "reinventing" it you can improve on things.
|
| As with many things, NIH is a great attitude to have in some
| cases, and a horrible one in other cases. Being mindful what
| you're doing and _why_ is key.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Bicycle wheels, airplane wheels, and office chair wheels
| are all pretty different for pretty good reasons.
| ectopod wrote:
| And a lot more fun.
| sva_ wrote:
| We need better, more intelligent tools to search through the
| corpus of human knowledge.
| btrettel wrote:
| When I worked as a patent examiner, it seemed to me that the
| bottleneck in searching is usually the searcher, not the
| specific search technology. Many technical people (for
| example, HN folks) tend to severely overestimate their own
| search ability. I certainly did.
|
| With the right search query, one can frequently find exactly
| what they are looking for very quickly. In some sense having
| a dumber search engine than Google is advantageous here as
| you won't become dependent on the "magic" of the search
| engine and will have to craft a good search strategy.
|
| The most valuable technical feature of the internal search
| tools (PE2E Search or EAST) was _speed_ , not anything fancy.
| I imagine this was the motivation: If the results can't
| easily be ranked (and they couldn't in my experience), make
| handling a ton of results as easy as possible. That's what
| the USPTO did.
|
| You could "flip" through documents quickly using only the
| keyboard, and if what you were looking for was easily visible
| in a drawing then this usually was the best approach. For
| text they had a good way to show what you were looking for in
| context. I'd love to see a similar setup for web search but I
| don't think it would appeal to most, so it probably won't
| happen.
|
| AI/ML based search tools were interesting but usually not
| helpful. I'd always try at least some of them. I think the
| main limitation for these in my technology area (mostly water
| heaters and ventilation) was that they didn't look at the
| drawings at all, just the text and citations. That's missing
| a lot. (When they were helpful they did save a lot of time.)
| sva_ wrote:
| I think the big difference between such a dataset and the
| web is, that the web is polluted with useless stuff like
| spam. How do you decide what is relevant, and what not, if
| not with some statistical/ML methods? It seems like only a
| whitelisting approach would work then, severely limiting
| the scope of such a system.
| btrettel wrote:
| > How do you decide what is relevant, and what not, if
| not with some statistical/ML methods?
|
| To be clear, you're referring to _software_ determining
| relevance. _I_ can determine relevance on my own, though
| it may be time consuming. Making manually determining
| relevance as quick as possible worked okay in my
| experience at the USPTO.
|
| Right now there probably are reliable signals about the
| relevance of a document/webpage/etc. But Goodhart's law
| suggests that any ranking signal used would be unreliable
| in the long run. Without AI on par or better than a
| human, I think the equilibrium would tend to be that
| search results can't be ranked well.
|
| If ranking doesn't work, then each result is roughly as
| plausibly useful as the next. Given that, figuring out
| how to efficiently manually handle a lot of results is
| reasonable strategy, one that worked in my experience at
| the USPTO. It's not for everyone, mind you, but search
| software for serious searchers should consider this
| approach.
|
| > I think the big difference between such a dataset and
| the web is, that the web is polluted with useless stuff
| like spam.
|
| While patent attorneys aren't actively SEOing their
| patent applications, they do tend to write
| legal/technical gibberish that's basically just as useful
| as spam. (I wish patent attorneys did some mild SEO like
| adding relevant keywords as it would make examining
| patents easier...)
| necovek wrote:
| You'd have a point if there was a statistical/ML search
| engine that successfully filtered spam out.
|
| Is there one?
|
| (Google is certainly not it)
| jonjacky wrote:
| For those who may not be familiar with Erik's thinking and style,
| here is a sample post[1] from Erik on Paul Graham's Arc dialect
| of Lisp, which, I recall, still powers HN:
|
| _I have briefly looked at Arc. It is yet another demonstration
| of the problem of too strong an ego that cannot live with what
| somebody else has made. Be it the standard conditionals, nil
| versus false versus the empty list, or whatever else this
| purportedly strong ego is too weak to accept, it is nothing more
| than proof of the core problem of the IT world -- the hardness of
| its pillars makes them brittle, not strong, so they cannot be
| used to build upon. What was it that stood so much in the way
| that Paul Graham could not have accomplished it without creating
| a new language? Why was creating a new language and starting from
| scratch better than building on what had come before? Why is the
| IT world defined by people who are unable to deal with the
| concepts of continuity, longevity, and design for long-term
| stability? Why do they believe they are so much smarter than
| everything that has gone before them, when they clearly are not
| and repeat mistakes that take years to undo, if not replaced by
| another stupid "revolution" that itself starts from scratch?
|
| If people built societies the way computer people build
| communities, we would still live have small warring tribes and no
| concept of a law that binds all people and absolutely no concept
| of a constitution that binds lawmakers. For all the talk about
| the Internet changing the world, we lag the real world by about
| 40,000 years when it comes to how we make lots of people who do
| _not_ agree to everything live and work together.
|
| Suddenly, I feel old and tired._
|
| [1] archived at
| https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/O5Vss_BdSy4/m/t...
| tptacek wrote:
| Like the Perl takedown downthread, this is pretty disappointing
| milquetoast stuff. It's sentence after sentence repeating the
| same question --- "why another new language?" --- that was
| literally one of the first Paul Graham answered when he did
| Arc. It reads as if Naggum believes he's the first to have
| thought of asking. Embarrassing.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| How is that "milquetoast"? You believe Naggum has something
| more to say, but is too timid to?
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes. That wasn't what I was thinking when I chose that
| word, but, come to think of it, that's exactly what I
| think. He's got, like, half a sentence of actual Arc
| critique (I'm not a fan either!).
| [deleted]
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Thanks for the quote. As @tptacek has said, I don't think his
| argument is very strong: it seems that he focuses mostly on the
| reasons for making it, bordering on an ad hominem.
|
| I agree with him in principle; it's better to use what others
| have made, than to reinvent (a slight variation of) the wheel.
| I personally believe that pg's reasoning was mostly because it
| was just fun to make, and as someone as active in the startup
| ecosystem as him, making something new rather than using the
| status quo makes a lot of sense.
|
| Regardless, I would have found it much more interesting if he
| gave some concrete examples, and/or focused on facts.
|
| I also don't know Erik Naggum that well, and I'm wondering if
| this quote is an accurate representation of his style.
| jonjacky wrote:
| I picked this quote because it is actually a better than
| average represention and shows Naggum's thinking and writing
| at its best without the bitterness and meanness that often
| crept in.
|
| I saw this post of his as not so much a criticism of Graham
| and Arc in particular, as a lament over the tendency in
| computing to dismiss the good work done in the past and just
| start over all the time.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| > _the hardness of its pillars makes them brittle, not strong,
| so they cannot be used to build upon_
|
| I think this is generally correct. Most of the time starting
| over from a clean sheet leads to something that will be
| discarded by history. And you're much more likely to build
| something of lasting value if you look for a small contribution
| to make within the general scaffold of the status quo.
|
| But this leaves open an interesting question: When _does_ a
| clean sheet reset lead to something the work can build upon?
|
| In my opinion, tech progresses in phases of expansion and
| contraction. In the expansion phase, people take the status quo
| for granted, and add useful refinements in niche areas. In the
| contraction phase, the status quo has calcified a bit, and
| there are many unnecessary assumptions baked into the
| architecture. This phase in the cycle is ripe for someone to
| come in, tear out all of those assumptions and start new
| foundations.
|
| Those foundations will be weak in many areas, but users can
| stomach that because the status quo was already beginning to
| really slow them down. This is the classic "disruptive
| technology" moment.
|
| The question I think for anyone wanting to make a contribution
| is: When you look at your problem domain, where in the cycle do
| we seem to be?
| mrtree wrote:
| A reminder to get checked with the doctor regularly and to treat
| intestinal issues seriously.
| kzrdude wrote:
| He had ulcerative colitis. People more or less use "having an
| ulcer" as slang for being in a bad mood. Maybe he was like the
| giant with a thorn in its foot - something bothered him, and
| that made him less than in a good mood.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Wasn't he diagnosed more than a decade before he died?
| vdas wrote:
| I read comp.lang.lisp from 1998 - 2006. Lot's of interesting
| technical material. Many of Erik's technical posts are
| insightful. A few of these quotes make him look like a doofus
| keyboard warrior, but I could tell after reading his writing for
| so long that he was a genuine good guy, albeit at times a bit
| abrasive.
|
| Can't believe that it has been twenty years since I was
| introduced to common lisp. Think that I will go back to it after
| I retire.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| At least Naggum's was creative and entertaining in his
| abrasiveness. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed actually
| interacting with him, but I always chuckle a bit reading
| through his old rants. If you read these things with a bit of
| humour it's quite funny.
| whartung wrote:
| I was a denizen of c.l.l deep into the Naggum era.
|
| And, yes he could be abrasive. Notably he did not suffer
| idiots well.
|
| But if you read many of the threads, you'll notice that the
| provocateur upon which Erik focused his attention, the
| majority of the time, is talking past what Erik was saying.
| Most of those threads are folks yelling past each other,
| rather than actually addressing the points being made (and
| most of the folks he was directing his attention too dumped
| the technical side of the, uh, "discussion", almost
| immediately). He didn't suffer those people well either.
|
| My friends used to get into these spittle flying, lips
| shaking, table rattling lunch arguments at high volume. And
| whenever that happened, they were always talking (or, rather,
| shouting) past each other. And this happened face to face, 2
| feet away from each other.
|
| The internet just makes that dynamic all the worse.
|
| I never had a bad interaction with Erik. He was always
| responsive and respectful to any communications I had. I
| wasn't close to him, but more than not enjoyed his commentary
| and his typically well thought out point of view (even if I
| didn't agree with it).
|
| He certainly doesn't need someone like me to defend him, but
| I do miss him. I consider his loss a blow.
|
| I had another friend, a closer friend, also an Erik. He had a
| caustic side to him as well, and we lost him just as the
| pandemic was starting. I miss him dearly as well.
|
| Maybe it's the name.
| nabla9 wrote:
| I miss people like Erik in the Internet.
|
| Erik was like a predator who contributed to the ecosystem. He ate
| frequent low quality shitposters from comp.lang.lisp and then
| swam in circles preventing them from emerging.
|
| His rants were educating or entertaining. Usually both. They came
| from deep technical knowledge. When was the last time you
| followed a Internet flamewar and learned something?
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| It's like the fondness of bullies in high school until you
| realize that other people are indeed people and not cardboard
| popups.
| nabla9 wrote:
| He was not a bully.
|
| He was short tempered, self-assured and way too aggressive,
| but not a bully.
| bjoli wrote:
| The culture on com.lang.lisp was pretty toxic at times. I
| remember having Erik telling me to have a late abortion (I
| was 13) in a discussion about '() being false.
|
| The people that looked up to him were worse.
| mmaunder wrote:
| His famous anti Perl rant circa 2000: (I worked as a Perl dev in
| 2000)
| https://groups.google.com/g/comp.lang.lisp/c/LGeQBt_ClfI/m/Y...
| tptacek wrote:
| It's... not very good? The bar for language takedowns is
| apparently much higher today than in 2000.
| pvg wrote:
| It's weaksauce for 2000, no? Pretty much everything in Unix
| Haters Handbook (1994) is better than this. In the more
| usenetty vein, Christiansen's _C-shell Considered Harmful_ is
| easily much better.
| tptacek wrote:
| There's a lot of filler in it, it's not very pointed, and
| it's mostly handwavy. You could substitute almost any other
| language in there and it would read the same. "This is your
| brain on Perl"?
|
| I think "A Fractal of Bad Design" ruined me for these.
|
| People call Perl a "write-only language". That's a good
| takedown! And in just a couple words! I don't get why
| people have so much reverence for Naggum.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This guy would have had a field day with python, if he were
| alive right now
| fulafel wrote:
| It had been around for 9 years when that was written, Python
| 1.5 or 1.6 was then-current.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Hehe but the whole "i used to write poor sql for money, now
| i write even worse pandas code for 50% more money" thing
| wasn't
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