Diff for "DevilStack"

The Devil in the Stack

Andrew Smith . August 2024 . Beaverton Lib. 005.1 SMI

Andrew Smith 1961

My first glance at this book was off-putting - I somehow got the idea that the author thought perjoratively about programmers and technologists. The book is actually a journalist making a deep and sincere dive into software, the communities of people who create and maintain it, and how they think about it.

• pXI Prologue, 2013 and Bitcoin , pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto

• pXI Adam Back cryptographer, cyberpunk, Hashcash

• pXIII Bitcoin uses C++

• pXIV Bitcoin exegesis: Satoshi not C++ native, learned to code in 1980s, mixed US/British spellings

• pXV Russian(s)? Vladislav Surkov? Putin’s Rasputinreflexive control

• pXVII demimonde derangingfebrile

• pXXVIII TV shows Silicon ValleyMr. RobotRussian Doll 10Xer 5% women 3% black

• pXXVIII Facebook Myanmar genocideIndiaSri Lanka

• p001 1700 to 9000 programming languages

• p002 freeCodeCamp 2014 Quincy Larson

• p002 trio of web languages: HTML CSS JavaScript

• p003 shift-devil: dash that should have been underscore

• p004 fCC freeCodeCamp W3Schools

• p005 Pascal case Camel case

• p005 lorem ipsum

• p007 programming is never easy ... accept that feeling -- of being constantly wrong and not knowing
• p008 ... exposes me as probably no smarter than an economist.

• p011 Gerald Weinberg The Psychology of Computer Programming

• p014 Python Software Foundation Guido van Rossum

• p016 Bloomberg essay What is code?

• p018 Nicholas Tollervey Don't let anyone tell you code is not political

• p018 Zen of Python

• p019 There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.

  • compare Larry Wall's TIMTOWTDI for Perl

• p021 Young travelmate Alex, maintains websites using the Django web framework (like MoinMoin, coded in Python)

• p022 Author's new home in Marin, where crimes are harshing a mellow without a license, and gluten smuggling

• p022 ecstatic dance group ... sensei

• Pycon in Cleveland

• p023 Hosho!Zulip! Tivix! Nexmo!

• p25 Naomi Ceder

• p27 Recurse center in Brooklyn, phrase "well actually" banned

• p27 San Quentin The Last Mile

• p28 Eric MatthesPython Crash Course

• p28 Bikeshedding

• p28 bike shedding yak shaving

• p30 PyLadies

• p36 Lynn Root painting charity-auctioned for $16, $32, $64 ... $512 ... $1410!

• p38 Edsger Dijkstra Selected Writings on Computing

• p59 George Boole The Laws of Thought

• p59 Great Hunger 1845-1852

  • homeless in the streets while academics and church elders dined luxuriously
• p67 Post-Brexit Überschwemmung (flooding, presumably of coders from England to the continent)

• p68 Anti-immigration riots in Chemnitz 2018

• p68 2018 Google data breach private data of 500,000 uw34w

• p70 Dr. Janet Siegmund learning coder brain scans

• p70 programming education high drop out rate (50% is "astronomical?" Higher for Medicine, Engineering, Architecture, Law, and Accounting)

• p72 André Brechmann Combinatorial NeuroImaging, Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg

• p73 Java -> Python Norman Peitek

• p73 artHOTEL Magdeburg

• p75 axon transmission rate 50% ??
• p78 computer code comprehension activates brain areas for working memory, problem-solving, and language processing, left hemisphere for most right-handers
  • same areas for natural language and general analytical processing
  • no left hemisphere for mathematical thinking
• p78 Dijkstra "An exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset for a competent programmer."
• p79 "...some computer science students are hardly able to talk, to form whole sentences when they come to us/"
• p79 "... you can't train them. All you can do is find them and let them loose"

• p80 Scott Portnoff https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3152433

• p81 "Homework ... was to memorize the assigned program ... to write it out perfectly."
• p81 "... this is how we acquire language"

• p82 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg Gerald Weinberg The psychology of computer programming