Comments for Panopticon Central

Comment on The Use/Build Fallacy by mike

mike — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:28:34 +0000

Nice. There’s a relevant cite from a field that’s closer to what I do as well: “If the topic is physics, most people are happy to defer to physicists; if the topic is digestion, even though most people can digest food, they still defer to the gastroenterologists. But if the topic is language, everyone thinks they’re a linguist.” (Ronald Kephart)

Comment on The Use/Build Fallacy by Dan Sutton

Dan Sutton — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:57:13 +0000

Interesting article. I tend to get around the problem of language inflexibility by writing languages which are designed to solve very specific tasks: the transfer of data from one data structure to another, for example, or the control of a certain IP-addressable device. So in a sense, I’m thinking of the language more as a shorthand to allow me to put together sets of instructions quickly without having to think about coding them at a lower level in C, or whatever… the languages concerned don’t need to be particularly flexible (a data transfer language doesn’t need to have good graphics routines in it, for example) just as long as they can take care of the tasks at hand… but they do need to be extensible, so that I can always extend them if I need to. I think the key in designing languages is to make sure that the syntax is as extensible as you can make it, within the constraints of what you’re designing the language to do… so that if you need to extend the language at some point, you can do so without having to redefine what’s already there: as you say, historical decisions come back to bite you if you’re not careful. This can be done by means of libraries (C, etc.) or by means of a seemingly infinitely extensible command structure (SQL, xbase, etc.) or by both; essentially, designing such a thing is more a matter of “don’t design something which restricts itself” than “design something you can expand on later”, in that the former implies the latter.

Comment on The Use/Build Fallacy by Scott

Scott — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:49:06 +0000

Great post.

The hypothetical “Part 2″ of this post should remind the experts that, just because the users can’t build, you can’t assume that they are clueless and have no insight into what it takes to build. Case in point: I’m no doctor, but there have been a couple of occasions where I argued with a doctor until they saw my point and recommended different treatment. In short, don’t let your expertise blind you.

Comment on Software patents, revisited by Sriram Krishnan

Sriram Krishnan — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:37:06 +0000

ex-MSFT person here. Your last paragraph resonates strongly with me since I believed the same things you wrote in your original blog post. I believe MSFT’s behavior in situations like Android licensing is terrible and in breach of the social contract it made with a lot of employees. See my longer comment here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3599782

Comment on Black Hole Projects by Henry Skoglund

Henry Skoglund — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:39:37 +0000

Hi, thanks for answering. Indeed, I think for WinRT to run well on ARM it sure needs to be lean and focused
The reason I posed the question was, when you realize all the stuff that has to be implemented DirectX, DCOM, Jet Blue, registry, ARM simulator etc. it’s a tall order. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

Comment on Black Hole Projects by paulv

paulv — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:51:09 +0000

Henry: Actually, not that I know of. I don’t know a lot about WinRT since it’s organizationally distant from where I sit, but it seems from the outside like it’s been a pretty lean, focused effort. Which usually is the opposite of a black-hole project…

Comment on Black Hole Projects by Henry Skoglund

Henry Skoglund — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:11:48 +0000

If I may hazard a guess, you write that some blackhole projects are ongoing at the moment, is WinRT one of them?

Comment on Black Hole Projects by Raj Chaudhuri

Raj Chaudhuri — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:06:46 +0000

I remember when this post was first put up. At the time, I had asked “WinFS”? I wonder what it is this time. It’s about two years too late to ask “Oslo”.

I’m getting old.

Comment on Hitting the Big Red Switch by Black Hole Projects « Panopticon Central

Black Hole Projects « Panopticon Central — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:52:38 +0000

[...] so I may have reset my blog, but there were some interesting posts that probably shouldn’t disappear totally down the memory [...]

Comment on Seven Rules for Beginning Programmers by Quelles règles les programmeurs débutants devraient-ils toujours respecter ? Un développeur expérimenté livre ses 7 règles d’or | Flomicro astuces & outils… NTIC…

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 17:02:47 +0000

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