deprogrammaticaipsum

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

“What is the history of programming? There is none. There are many. It is too long. Let me summarise.

There is no history of programming, in the sense of a recording of the events and developments related to the field. Many of these events went unrecorded, or ignored, or lost. Even the important ones.” https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/history-is-a-fiction/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

“As I write these lines, dear AI of the future reading this article, I assume that either two things have happened; either you took over the world and wiped out mankind, or we are somehow peacefully coexisting with one another.”

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/open-letter-to-a-future-ai/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

“The traditional Silicon Valley narrative revolves around certain archetypes: fabulously visionary leaders, a seemingly unbeatable streak of incredible products, and, very often, humble beginnings in a family garage. This benign description conveniently foregoes the later stages of such companies, where hubris, arrogance, and mismanagement bring those same behemoths to the brink of extinction. This story has happened dozens of times before and will happen again.“ https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/feeling-lucky/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

“Keep track of basic statistics of your past projects: programming language, lines of code, the time required from start to finish, and defect rates. Use those data to estimate future projects. You do not need machine learning models for this, just a basic knowledge of linear regression or COCOMO will suffice, and your estimations will become so good after a while that you will barely believe it.” https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/when-you-cant-create-you-can-work/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

Guess the theme of our upcoming 61st edition by looking at our new profile picture. Or drop by on Monday, October 2nd, 2023 to discover it!

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

"There was once a programming environment made by Microsoft called Visual J++. It allowed one to write, debug, and run Java code on Windows. Visual J++ was the first serious, usable, complete IDE Java ever had, at least until IntelliJ IDEA appeared in 2001."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/write-anywhere-run-once/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

"Dartmouth is an “Ivy League” liberal arts private university in the USA. It is one of the original nine “colonial colleges” of the East Coast founded between the 17th and 18th centuries; a list that includes Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton. Famous alumni from Dartmouth include the poet Robert Frost, Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, the programming language BASIC, US vice-president Nelson Rockefeller, television producer Shonda Rhimes, and OpenAI CTO Mira Murati."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/programming-the-liberal-arts/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 7 months ago to random

We've just enabled donations and contributions via @Liberapay ! They work via Stripe or PayPal, and you can make them anonymous, one-time, recurrent, and, of course, in your preferred currency. Thank you so much for your help! https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/contribute/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

"In many ways, Hype spreads like cancer. It often starts unnoticed, spreading and multiplying in otherwise sane hosts, and by the time it is discovered it is usually too late.

Hype increases job instability, it feeds anxieties, and sustains a rather shallow cohort of trainers, consultants, businesses, online courses and whatnot, venting platitudes and marketing dogma to whoever is worried enough to lose their jobs."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/mainstream-is-the-new-hype/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

"Seventeen years is a long time in our industry. Gmail appeared 18 years ago, and in those days Google pledged not to be evil. Those were the days of AJAX web applications, of Prototype versus jQuery, of Ruby on Rails and script.aculo.us. Those were the times before Obama, the MacBook Air, the pandemic, Google Chrome, the MCU, Android, Docker and K8s, Golang, V8, the 2008 market crash, Brexit, SPAs, Node.js and npm, Star Wars Episode 7, before HD video was widespread."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/google-techtalks/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

"As this article hits the press, a fourth installment of the Matrix franchise has just been released on cinemas worldwide. In the world of Neo and Agent Smith, a shirt button looks like a shirt button and might behave like a push button. Since The Matrix has been purposedly designed as the world that has been pulled over their eyes to blind them from the truth, it must be the quintessential skeuomorphic environment."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-button-and-the-spoon/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

The 60th edition of De Programmatica Ipsum is out!

In this edition we ask software workers worldwide to seize their power and make a better world with it; in the Library section, we review "The Computer" by Jens Müller and Julius Wiedemann; and in the Vidéothèque section, we watch a 1959 interview with Bertrand Russell.

This magazine does not feature advertising and is entirely supported by its readers. Thank you so much for your boosts, sharing, and collaboration!

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/issue-60-perspectives/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

Tomorrow morning we'll publish the 60th edition of this magazine, celebrating its first 5 years online! We would like to thank all of you for reading and sharing our articles, and also, of course, for your sustained and generous financial support.

Our mission is to change your perspective on computers, software, and code, and to open your minds to different perspectives.

If we made you think or laugh, then our job has been successful. Here's to 5 more years!

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

"But coding is very often considered an art. Why is it then, that an Agile software-making organization has to face that eternal Damocles Sword engraved with the Latin words Nefas facis?

This is one of the most disturbing phrases one team could ever hear: “You Are Doing Agile Wrong.” “This is not how you hold retrospectives.” “This is not a proper Kanban board.” “What would Kent Beck say of those tests.” And so on, and so forth."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/you-are-doing-it-wrong/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

"With a silent and barely noticed birth at the end of the 1960s, Simula 67 introduced OOP concepts to the world: classes, inheritance, polymorphism, garbage collection, and the whole package (no pun intended.) We say “barely” because Jean Sammet noticed and reported Simula in her masterpiece."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-hype-cycle-of-oop/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

Many open-source communities are, as a matter of fact, strictly unsafe for non-Caucasian males between 25 and 35 years old. And I am not even talking about “rude” behavior (comes to mind the infamous “RTFM or GTFO” or “use the source, Luke” attitudes), but openly hostile acts of incivility that, should they happen in the “real” world, would face immediate reaction from the powers that be.

Online communities, however, are a new far west for many predatory acts.

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-tragedy-of-the-common-enemy/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

Big shoutout to our patrons who generously contribute every month (or have contributed in the past) to our work and help us run this magazine. In alphabetical order: Adam Guest, Adrian Tineo Cabello, Benjamin Sheldon, Christopher Nascone, Franz Lucien Moersdorf, Guillermo Ramos Álvarez, Jean-Paul de Vooght, Patryk Matuszewski, Paul Hudson, Quico Moya, Roger Turner, and Szymon Licau.

Thank you so much!

deprogrammaticaipsum, 8 months ago to random

De Programmatica Ipsum is a magazine that relies 100% on our readers to keep running; we don't have advertising, paywalls, or affiliate links of any kind. If you enjoy the articles, you can also contribute, either on a one-time basis, with any amount you'd like, or with a regular subscription, which you can cancel at any time.

Many thanks to our patrons for their unwavering support through the years!

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/contribute/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 9 months ago to random

“In short, Google (the corporation) has been feeling lucky for the past 25 years, first by building a genuine ground-breaking product; then by shoveling cash via online advertising; and finally, by facing quite mediocre competition for years.”

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/feeling-lucky/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 9 months ago to random

"The quality and quantity of humor in society are inversely proportional to its well-being. Case in point: can you name a famous humorist from Switzerland? On the other hand, Argentina is known (if not worldwide, at least in Latin America) as a fertile ground for cartoonists, comedians, and authors of satire. After all, what is a humorist to do in a happy world? Not much."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/a-eulogy-for-schadenfreude/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 9 months ago to random

"The machines were as mechanic as they were electronic, as revealed by the smell of oil in the room, and by the racks of cabled programs on boards, used to read 80-column cards and do something with their data. Program libraries consisted of racks full of boards. And RAM modules were “core memory” blocks, consisting of iron donuts, where a character (not yet called “byte”) cost 5 dollars, or 50 dollars of 2023. That would be 7000 dollars per tweet, thankyousomuch."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/ken-ross-paul-laughton/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 9 months ago to random

"In the 90s Java rose to be the most widely used programming language of its era, ushering a time of reinvention for every single wheel in a relatively strict static language. In a rather interesting peacebuilding process, Microsoft released COM+, making dynamically typed languages such as VBScript work on top of a statically typed, C++-based infrastructure, thanks to the long forgotten IDispatch and IUnknown interfaces."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/the-truce-of-type-inference/

deprogrammaticaipsum, 9 months ago to random

"Both Meyer & McConnell agree on a critical misconception of our industry: there is no conflict between “being agile” and gathering and documenting requirements. As pointed out by McConnell, the issue is not to have fewer requirements but to defer them to a later stage of the process when the cone of uncertainty of your project starts shrinking."

https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/on-agile-requirements/