Hello, I am the famous obscure hacker known as Super Hell

Ask me anything.

Do you think that CPU speed is actually relevant these days, or distributive performance and latency is more important?

>>2
You get to choose how to get to Rome. Either very specialized performant hardware, or a good farm of average spec CPUs, the performance you get is significant, and the more work you can make the faster you can bruteforce a solution (for any reason). If you're talking about servers, usually it "scales" better/faster (in speed increase per money invested) by parallelization, because the type of work servers do is not sequential by nature, but each request is treated separately and independently. But if you're doing something compositional, with state, where the logic of the next step depends on the previous', you might get a better boost by hardware and optimization than by distributing work, up to a point.

When will people stop using C?

Can I ask you anything?

>>5
It has already been declared so.
>>4
I suppose, since C was originally thought of as a macro system for Assembly, when a different macro system with a saner syntax and less obscure behavior comes up, that competes with C in performance, and maybe implements those advances in Computer Science that we hear about, that are usually relegated to less performant functional languages, something like an overcoming of C might happen.

>>4
When hardware becomes too incompatible with C compilers to require rewriting the entire software stack from asm to high-level languages.

>>7
So........ never?

>>6
Sounds like rust

30 years later, is SICP still a useful learning material or is it obsolete in the world of out-of-the-box frameworks for everything?

Do you work with Mentifex?

>>10
That is a good question. There seems to me to actually be a duality (both points have some validity) between abstracting away complexity and not hiding it at all, but learning its internals fully. You could say the first is the top-down approach and the second is the bottom-up approach. But there is a difference between necessary and contingent complexity, and from a strictly top-down approach you'll never be able to discern the second from the first, but will think all complexity in the tools or APIs you use are necessary, and you just need to "adapt". Likewise, in a strictly bottom-up approach, you might see many defects in things and feel compelled to reimplement them the right way, or just whine about them, without considering the cost upon yourself to embark on each quest, or where your time might be better employed. You could say the top-down is shallow and dives and emerges quickly, while the bottom up is deep and gets to see what most people don't see. But, as a technology or school or field popularizes itself, it starts inevitably getting biased towards the first approach, because most people who join it will start of course with a shallow vision, and most people won't get very far into it, but stay where it is "good enough" for their purposes, or in some other way stabilize while adopting "good enough" tools which abstract things away so they're never questioned.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

- Isaac Newton

Regarding SICP, I say it can be worthwhile if you're seeking understanding, rather than learning current technologies for employment. I am still a student, so I wouldn't know, and I remain a hobbyist that uses Scheme on his many projects and is struggling to find a cloud-based hosting service that supports Scheme deployment.

Will nikita finish making his game?

>>12

But there is a difference between necessary and contingent complexity, and from a strictly top-down approach you'll never be able to discern the second from the first, but will think all complexity in the tools or APIs you use are necessary, and you just need to "adapt".

Top-down thinking is not bottom-up thinking that starts on a higher level. The top-down approach is when you start from the requirements and work your way down. Top-down is about whole systems, big picture, global optimizations, and the realization that systems do not have to be designed the same way. Top-down thinkers built many different kinds of computers that implement common concepts in very different ways, like high-level language computer architectures. Bottom-up thinkers think of things in terms of a specific implementation and adapt to this implementation.

Likewise, in a strictly bottom-up approach, you might see many defects in things and feel compelled to reimplement them the right way, or just whine about them, without considering the cost upon yourself to embark on each quest, or where your time might be better employed.

Top-down thinkers want to know the purpose of everything because computer systems are designed by people. Top-down forces you to find where the defects and bottlenecks really are and fix everything that doesn't make sense or is counterproductive to the user.

You could say the top-down is shallow and dives and emerges quickly, while the bottom up is deep and gets to see what most people don't see.

Top-down starts at a higher level and ends at a lower level. The top-down approach covers the user interface, programming languages, operating system, data structures, hardware, libraries, and APIs, and nothing is off limits. If something is stupid, you will change it, not rationalize it. Most students do not have the mental grasp required to think this way.

But, as a technology or school or field popularizes itself, it starts inevitably getting biased towards the first approach, because most people who join it will start of course with a shallow vision, and most people won't get very far into it, but stay where it is "good enough" for their purposes, or in some other way stabilize while adopting "good enough" tools which abstract things away so they're never questioned.

This describes bottom-up thinking, where you are told to build everything from what already exists but not change it. Top-down thinkers are the ones who understand everything can be improved and simplified.

top-down approach: sageing the thread
bottom-up approach: saging my own poast

Super Hell - Promoting tolerance since 2018


The website will soon be online, maybe even today.

>>13
Game development is trickier than simply "finishing" it. It is not finished until you ship it, and you can always improve your game and reship it, and target new audiences. I know because I once had a project like that. He did get greenlit, I think, but unfortunately his activisms and crazinesses got in the way, and now his project seems abandoned. I say not to give up hope, and one day everything that has been started is going to get finished, and everything will be alright with the world.

>>17
It maybe a surprise, but you need valid credentials to actually publish anything and if you're being persecuted under "terrorism" charges, then you will have hard time finishing your're are game or making it into the app store.

>>18
Then get a proxy to publish it for you, and then give you the returns it gets. That was my suggestion from a very early point, if you do remember it.

>>19
I have TOR proxy. But I don't see how it will help me publishing.

>>20
I mean a "real life" proxy. Proxy in the old sense of the word. You would use another's person identity for your publishing (maybe convincing someone to do it for you) and hide your relationship with this person from the authorities for as long as you're able to. This person would be your "proxy" to the audience of your game, and to other utilities you would also like to get. You can promise some return to this person or simply make him/her sympathize with your cause. This is a very old method of getting things done, in fact.

>>21
Sounds illegal.

Proxy = Intermediary
My meaning is that social engineering is as important a part of being a successful hacker as any other.
And even if you consider yourself simply a problem-solver, security questions will arise in any activity you ever develop. That's because society itself works as a very large security net.

>>22
Do you love and respect authority? I thought you were a self-respecting activist.

It's a trick, but it is not necessarily illegal. It depends on the jurisdiction you're in. (Even Banksy has an intermediary for representation.) It's similar to how the GPL is not necessarily illegal, even if it is a sort of trick. It is 'a clever hack' that helps you get what you want. In your case I think that would be money and bargaining power to get the many other things you would like to have. (Or to make the many "reality adjustments" you would like to do.)

How long does it take for piss to land in balls?

I'm sorry for >>25, he has been possessed by the restless fuckspirit of RedCream.

Ed Balls