The following collection of conversations and articles have all been thought-provoking to me and I want to respond to them.
Functional architecture is Ports and Adapters – Mark Seemann
Dependency injection, pushing state to the edges, and more.
Towards a text editor construction kit – @raphlinus
Troubles with the CRDT model and the xi editor.
Everything is correlated – gwern.net
Troubles with frequentist statistics and null hypotheses.
Strong typing – M-J. Dominus
Introduction to type systems and why PERL’s core design fights types.
What To Know Before Debating Type Systems – Chris Smith
Broad discussion of what type systems are, what they can do, what they can’t do, and what “type” means.
Remembering Joe, a Quarter of a Century of Inspiration and Friendship – Francesco Cesarini
Inside the mind of Joe Armstrong and how his brain ticked.
Should we adopt Dave’s way of building applications as a series of components? – Joe Armstrong
Designing protocols vs. APIs and hooking up software pipes the way we hook up electrical circuits.
Discussion of ALGOL in contrast to modern C – reddit
ALGOL, Burroughs, Donald Knuth
The Emperor’s Old Clothes – Tony Hoare (1980)
“experiences in the implementation, design, and standardization of computer programming languages, and issues a warning for the future”
Alan Kay on the meaning of “Object-Oriented Programming” – reddit
How far do we push the paradigm? Is the paradigm practical? What does it mean, essentially?
Programming Sucks – Peter Welch
A terse discussion of what’s wrong in the software industry and why we can’t get ahead.
The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy) – Nicholas C. Zakas
As in the name – why does it seem like software developers are cynical naysayers.
What if “data” is a really bad idea? – Alan Kay, Rich Hickey on reddit
What comprises “data?” What comprises “code?” Why does it matter?
The Failures of “Intro to TDD” – Justin Searls (2014)
Invert our normal conception of test-driven develop or of building independent units as we work up the application; start with the “finished” application as a fake/mock and refine the tests and the units as you fill out more and more of the product.
Ironies of Automation – Lisanne Bainbridge, Automatica Vol.19, No.6 pp. 775-779 (1983)
Adding automation in order to minimize the demand for skilled manual labor has an odd tendency to increase the demand for more-skilled manual labor. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The Early History of Smalltalk – Alan Kay, HOPL II pp. 511-598
What does object-oriented mean and how did it develop? What is the significance of Smalltalk and how does its history mix with the pursuit of personal computing?
Allegory
Computing Machines – Lawrence Kesteloot
A fictional tale of how deeply computer security bugs can go; an imagination of “reflections on trusting trust” where the actor is sentient in itself rather than malicious.