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The most incredible programmer
On page 158 of the book "Agile Software Development Ecosystems",
Jim Highsmith talks about the most incredible programmer. He writes:
This programmer could sit down at a terminal and create (in a
couple pf weeks) a well-designed 100,000-line program that
contained virtually no bugs. He created the program--abstract to
concrete--as fast as he could type.
I find this a highly unbelievable story. Maybe it is simply an
Urban Legend. In an attempt to verify this on the Internet,
came across the
Homebrew's 26th Birthday Commemoration, which explains how
Steve Wozniak once typed in BASIC in hex during a presentation,
presumely from a print-out.
Or was it
Robert T. Morris Jr who was also known for being able to
program very fast.
I also found AEXX
archived news for December 2001 on which somebody, who stayed up for 66
hours, states: "One day, I'm going to make an incredible programmer".
Old diaries
This evening, I read through large parts of my
diaries numbered VII,
VIII and
IX, starting with the week of
November 19, 1997
till March 13, 1980. It always gives me a strange
feeling when I read through old diaries. It is almost
as if I am reading the diaries of a stranger. Often
I cannot make much sense of what I wrote then.
This pattern suggests you make a roof garden at the same
level as a floor that does have rooms that are used in
daily life. In most cases that means that roof gardens
appear on the roofs of the first floor. To have a reasonable
sized roof garden along a room on the second floor, you
need a rather large first floor, which because of it size
must have some dark areas. For this reasons this does not
seem to be a generally applicable pattern.
I totally disagree that a city needs a fixed place for carnival.
A place such as suggested into this pattern, would quickly
disolve into a place where drunkness and immorality would
reign. I do think there is place for annual festivals in
a city. These should be held in public places and be such
that they can be attended by people from all ages (especially,
young children). I have noticed that parents often find a lot
of joy in attending fun activities which are geared towards children.
(Also the idiots fair I attended earlier
this years comes to my mind.)
I fully agree with pattern. It made me remember the many
times I climbed winding stairs of the "Domtoren" in "Utrecht"
and looked over the city from a height of 112 meter.
The cabinet falls
After a lot of internal struggles inside the LPF (Lijst
Pim Fortuyn)
the cabinet finally fell today.
Although this was to be expected, it is really a shame to the
people of the LPF that they made it come this far. We will have
elections again in December or January. If a few days ago,
elections were held, the LPF would only get 3 places in the
parlement. It is likely that this figure will even be lower now.
It is very unlikely that they will play any role of importance in
Dutch politics in the coming years. It is not likely that any
other (new) party, with the same ideas, will draw enough votes
to become part of the government in the coming four years, I
think.
(follow-up)
Are we mere machines?
With respect to consciousness being an illusion, here
a quote from Brooks:
The body, this mass of biomolecules, is a machine that acts according to a set of specifiable
rules... We are machines, as are our spouses, our children, and our dogs... I believe myself
and my children all to be mere machines. But this is not how I treat them. I treat them in a
very special way, and I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my
unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis. Like a
religious scientist, I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs and act on each of them in
different circumstances. It is this transcendence between belief systems that I think will be
what enables mankind to ultimately accept robots as emotional machines, and thereafter start to
empathize with them and attribute free will, respect, and ultimately rights to them... When our
robots improve enough, beyond their current limitations, and when we credit humans, then too we
will break our mental barrier, our need, our desire, to retain tribal specialness,
differentiating ourselves from them.
I read through the Metamath book, not understanding everything,
but most of it. A very interesting approach.
See here
for an overview of mathematical proof systems.
tags: Metamath (next)
After all, it has been proven that Tetris is NP-complete,
and thus not an easy game,
even if you know all the shapes that are coming in advance.
Strange sound
The
sound of a
plasma wave near Jupiter.
Storm
Yesterday, we had the strongest storm in twelve years. Luckily,
Li-Xia had already convinced
Annabel that she should not visit
some friends from church, which live in Hengelo. During the
afternoon, I told her that during a storm like this, there
are always some people who die because of trees falling down.
On the eight o'clock news we heard that about six people
died because of storm related accidents, one of them was a
person in our own city who was hit by a tree.
It seems that two of the people who died, were attracted
by the fasinating spectacle of the storm into life treatening
situations. One person was reported to have been blown
into the sea, close to the
Wind Organ near Vlissingen,
which was constructed by Gert Rietveld.
While biking to my office this morning, I did not
see so many fallen trees. One of the thirty trees
on the parking lot before our building had fallen
down yesterday around 10 past one in the afternoon,
I was told by someone. Before the entrance of our
building there was a huge pile of leaves, about one
feet high, I guess. Just under the window of my office there were some brances of
a tree, which apparantly had fallen down over the
road judging the tracks on the grass.
This evening, I heard the news that the head of all
police Chiefs of the Netherland, Mr. Minze Beuving,
is requesting that Dutch Internet providers should
keep logs of visited web sites and email addresses
up to one year for all their members.
The most shocking about this is not that it would
be a grave violation of our privacy and incure high
costs, but that it really shows that people in the
government have not the slightest idea of how the
Internet works.
Interesting links
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