I watched Joe Armstrong – Keynote: The Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science – Code BEAM SF 2018. I made the mistake of starting my notes as I went along with the video. If I had have watched the video first I probably wouldn’t have made the notes. Anyway. Sunk cost. Here ’tis.

Two papers to read:

1. A Plea for Lean Software by Niklaus Wirth
2. The emperor’s old clothes by Tony Hoare

Four old tools to learn:

1. emacs (vi)
2. bash
3. make
4. shell

Four really bad things:

1. Lack of privacy
2. Attempts to manipulate us through social media
3. Vendor lock-in
4. Terms and conditions

Three great books to read:

1. Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs by Niklaus Wirth (PDF)
2. The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks (PDF)
3. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (PDF)

Seven reasons why software is difficult now:

1. Fast machines
2. Huge memory
3. Hundreds of PLs
4. Distributed
5. Huge programs
6. No specifications
7. Reuse

One fun programming exercise:

1. META II a syntax-oriented compiler writing language (PDF)

8 great machines from the past:

1. Baby SSEM
2. PDP11
3. Vax 11/750
4. Cray 1
5. IBM PC
6. Raspberry Pi
7. iPhone/iPad
8. Nvidia Tesla P100

3 performance improvements:

1. Better algorithms (x6) (Interpreter -> Compiler)
2. Better programming language (x50) (Prolog -> C)
3. Better hardware (x1000 per 10 years)

5 YouTube videos to watch:

1. Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 – The computer revolution hasnt happened yet
2. Ted Nelson — Computers for Cynics [full version]
3. Free is a Lie
4. How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day | Tristan Harris
5. Matt Might – Winning the War on Error Solving the Halting Problem and Curing Cancer

6 things not to do:

1. Backdoors
2. Violate privacy
3. Put microphones in everybody’s houses
4. Hijack our attention system
5. Hijack our social systems
6. Sell crap that we don’t want or need

5 sins:

1. Crap documentation
2. Crap website
3. Crap dependencies
4. Crap build instructions
5. Group think

4 languages to learn:

1. C
2. Prolog
3. Erlang
4. Javascript

4 great forgotten ideas:

1. Linda Tuple Spaces – David Gelernter and Nicholas Carriero
2. Flow based programming – John Paul Morrison
3. Xanadu – Ted Nelson
4. Unix pipes

6 areas to research:

1. Robotics
2. AI
3. Programmer productivity
4. Energy efficiency
5. Precision medicine
6. Security

2 dangers:

1. Group think
2. Bubble think

4 ideas that are obvious now but strange at first:

1. Indentation
2. Versioning
3. Hypertext across machine boundaries
4. Pipes

2 fantastic programs to try:

1. TiddlyWiki
2. Sonic Pi

7 distractions:

1. Open plan offices
2. The latest stuff
3. Twitter/Facebook (social media)
4. Notifications (turn ’em off)
5. Links (don’t click on them)
6. Ban Scrum etc
7. We can only do one thing at a time; our brains are terribly bad at context switching

3 general laws:

1. Software complexity grows with time (because we build on old stuff)
2. Bad code crowds out good (Gresham’s law)
3. Bad code contaminates good code

3 laws of physics:

1. A computation can only take place when the data and the program are at the same point in spacetime -=> get all the data + program to the same place (can be client or server or someplace in-between) (problem – easy to move data – difficult to move programs) This is why PHP is good :-)
2. Causality – Effect follows cause. We don’t know how stuff is we know how it was (the last time it told us)
3. 2nd law of thermodynamics – Entropy (disorder) always increases

6 common problems:

1. Does not know how to delete files – when the system runs out of space they buy a new computer
2. No idea of what MBytes, Mbits, Bits/sec, quad cores, etc means
3. If the app doesn’t work immediately gives up
4. Does not search for fixes – or does and does not understand the answers
5. Does not want to try the latest things
6. Uses a method that works (not the best) – e.g. to copy a file open it and then save it with a new name

5 more problems:

1. The UI changes
2. Passwords
3. Stuff doesn’t work
4. Terms & Conditions
5. non-reproducible errors

Things can be small:

1. Forth OS 24KB
2. Forth compiler 12KB
3. IBM PC DOS < 640KB
4. USCD Pascal
5. Turbo Pascal
6. Turbo C

The old truths:

1. Keep it simple
2. Make it small
3. Make it correct
4. Fight complexity

Web is broken:

1. It’s not symmetric; users read data but write very little
2. Can every page be changed?
3. Can I make new data by combining fragments from other data in a flexible manner? No.
4. The Web is dominated by a small number of companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook) using huge data centers, it should be controlled from the edge network.
5. The original vision was a Web controlled by “citizen programmers” (Search for Ted Nelson talks)

HTML and HTTP have several problems:

1. Non symmetric
2. Easy to read/difficult to write
3. Pages get lost (disappear)
4. Links are wrong (404-problem)
5. Re-use, attribution, IP rights, payments is a mess
6. Controlled by a very small number of companies