Scales of cities, scales of software An Article by Linus the Sephist linus.coffee American cities seem like a product of industrial processes where older European cities seem like a product of human processes. This is because most American cities were built after and alongside the car and the industrial revolution – the design of cities took into account what was easily possible, and that guided the shape and scale of everything. Software has similar analogues. There are software codebases that feel much more industrially generated than hand written, and they’re usually written in automation-rich environments fitting into frameworks and other orchestrating code. …But despite the availability of cars, I still much prefer the scale and ambiance of European, human-scale cities, because ultimately cities are places humans must inhabit and understand. In the same way, I still much prefer the scale and ambiance of hand-written codebases even in the presence of heavy programming tooling, because ultimately codebases are places humans must inhabit. urbanismsoftwarescaleindustry
evermore, and other beautiful things An Article by Linus the Sephist linus.coffee If all evidence of civilization on Earth was destroyed, and humans had to re-build society from the ground up, what would be different? Feynman reckons that pivotal scientific moments, like the discovery of the atom, will still happen in the same way. Perhaps mathematics will be similarly rediscovered. Someone told me once in response to this question, no artwork would ever be recreated. The art we create – music, stories, dance, film – isn’t a fundamental element of the universe, or even of humanity. It’s unique to each artist. If you choose to create art, you leave something in the world that has never had a chance to exist before, and will never again have a chance to exist. There will never be another Beatles or Studio Ghibli or Picasso. Art, in its infinite variations of originality, is cosmically unique in a way the sciences will never be. Art immortalizes human experiences that would otherwise vanish in time. artsciencehumanitysociety
Recognizing Constraints An Article by Jeremy Wagner css-tricks.com Super Nintendo games were the flavor of the decade when I was younger, and there’s no better example of building incredible things within comparably meager constraints. Developers on SNES titles were limited to, among other things: 16-bit color. 8 channel stereo output. Cartridges with storage capacities measured in megabits, not megabytes. Limited 3D rendering capabilities on select titles which embedded a special chip in the cartridge. Despite these constraints, game developers cranked out incredible and memorable titles that will endure beyond our lifetimes. Yet, the constraints SNES developers faced were static. You had a single platform with a single set of capabilities. If you could stay within those capabilities and maximize their potential, your game could be played—and adored—by anyone with an SNES console. PC games, on the other hand, had to be developed within a more flexible set of constraints. I remember one of my first PC games had its range of system requirements displayed on the side of the box: Have at least a 386 processor—but Pentium is preferred. Ad Lib or PC speaker supported—but Sound Blaster is best. Show up to the party with at least 4 megabytes of RAM—but more is better. constraints