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I’ve long been confused by the two definitions of the word dimension. Sometimes we talk about a 3-dimensional array: floata[5][6][7]; and sometimes we talk about a 3-dimensional vector: floatv[3]; I finally figured out that the word is only correctly used in the second example above. In the first example, the term should be rank, as in, “a rank-3 array”. So rank is the number of indices that you need to get to a scalar. In the first example you need three indices to get a float: x=a[i][...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
I’m not thrilled about the overruling of Roe v. Wade, but let’s try to look for upsides. (Background: In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutionally-guaranteed fundamental right, due to the 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause’s “right to privacy”. In 2022 this was overruled, again by the U.S. Supreme Court, mostly on the grounds that abortion was not a historical right in the U.S. This returned the issue to statutory law, where states and other jurisdict...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
In the show Silicon Valley T.J. Miller’s character, Erlich Bachman, asks someone “… what nine times F is. It’s fleventy-five.” The answer is 0x87. It sounds like it should be 0xF5, so Tim Babb took this and made a whole scheme for pronouncing hex numbers. Before that, 0xF5 would have been “fimtek five” in S.R. Rogers’ 2007 scheme, “fytonsu” in John W. Nystrom’s 1859 scheme, and “frosty five” in Robert Magnusson’s 1968 scheme: None of these took off, which is just f...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
When Milo was in kindergarten, I read Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams, which argues that schools are no longer the appropriate way to educate children. The essay haunted me for years, as I sent Milo to public school, to sit in a chair all day and have uninteresting (to him) information pushed on him. Two months into Milo’s 7th grade, Jen and I decided to pull him out for two years. Reasons included: His middle school was pretty bad. He was still young enough to enjoy spending time with ...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
This is a guest post, written by my friend Dan Collens in 2011. There are two references below to “short beards”. Pictures of Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson usually show them with a long beard. These programmers understood software from top to bottom and wrote software in a fundamentally different way than most of today’s web & mobile app programmers (whom we derisively refer to as “short beards”). Long beards are often the older and more experienced programmers, but there are plen...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
Paul Graham argues that technology can take things we like and concentrate them to make them more addictive. As technology improves, this process will accelerate. Here are two quotes from his post: “No one doubts this process is accelerating” and “the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40”. I want to push back on this. This only looks at one force: the technological force. And that’s clearly increasing. But it ignores the opposing force: that ...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
Three thoughts on competence. I. When someone is less skilled than you are, it’s pretty easy to estimate just how much better you are. But when someone’s better than you, it’s very difficult to estimate how much better they are. If they beat you in every chess game you play, are they twice as good? Ten times? One hundred? Those might look the same to you. Most skills can’t even be compared so easily. How much better is another computer programmer, manager, interior designer, or scient...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
It’s said that “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.” I agree. I think people who do study history also repeat it. The original implies that by studying history you’ll learn lessons you can use when faced with a similar situation, but no two situations are identical, only similar. There’s always enough wiggle room for you to convince yourself that this time the lesson doesn’t apply, if the lesson is inconvenient. You think Hitler didn’t know about Napoleon’...| Lawrence Kesteloot's writings
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