> Once you get familiar with the tools to make these kinds of visualizations, it can become very straightforward to develop one for your specific use case.

That's the thing, we need a Visualization for Understanding 101 class in comp-sci or something similar.

I guess I had scientific modeling in physics as part of EE but over half the focus was on how to gather/deal with the physicalities of real-world data, which isn't so important when you're modeling something which lives inside a computer to begin with.

Sure, various senior projects etc require a presentation, but generally that's a "sink or swim" kind of thing rather than help and practice building tools for presenting esoteric information in an illustrative manner.

Note: I thought it was obvious reading digital output as analog (or merely hooking together input to output on two sensitive instruments) is always going to cause a lot of artifacts and distortion. You don't chain 2 microscopes together and expect to get twice the magnification with no problems...

Hmm... Get much performance out of your systems that way? Procedural methods have a time and place, and have given us most of what we have now. Functional methods have given us... A pale, slow, anemic cousin of what procedural has done? (that can't fail in-theory, much like the titanic...)

Honestly, garbage collection did way more for the industry than any other sea-change... Here, was some scut work we could freely let the computer do completely for us. (At least when any kind of hard time-keeping doesn't matter)

I don't see how NOT understanding how computers work is going to make them better. Seriously. (I mean, if you want to skip steps from the design cycle, why not simply use genetic algorithms to implement everything, then you don't need design either and can go strait from requirements to testing and don't need to worry about anything else.)

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm definitely this way. When I get to work in the morning I return to the massive subjective machano-city in my head where the repository lives and plug it in to the objective reality that is Mercurial. Much of bug-fixing is ferreting out the differences between the two. Reading code is removing the fog of the unknown in my head and writing is creating new streets, buildings, and even neighborhoods. (Well... You could hardly call it something so terrestrial, more like cogs of motility and points of inflection or something even more abstract but you already have the idea.)

Actually, after reading the article, I'd call what he's doing extremely good basic engineering and model design/view. It's very cool for the problems he presents, but looks like a ton of work. To be generally useful, it seems he'd have to come up with rules of thumb and generalizations for what it is typically important to see/understand in a given algorithm and a way to identify *what* to model/visualize that isn't completely subjective.

He appears to make some great subjective decisions on what/how to do things, the problem in general is many developers are poor in certain subjective areas. The real gem will be how to reduce some of the less useful subjectivity and turn it into things that are more objective and better subjectively through practice of useful rules and guidelines.

Consuming this stuff is really just letting another engineer do the heavy lifting FOR you. ... like watching a movie and letting Hollywood do the imagining FOR you...

I mean, this is a great movie, don't get me wrong, I'm just glad I read the book first.

It's ironic you post this on this particular article. It highlights how the placement of receptors in your eye effects how you see the world. What makes you think your own in-built bias (apparently culture-jamming) is any less than anyone else?

I drive many other programmer's batty because when they ask me for help the first thing I do is "survey the scene", the code surrounding their point of interest, rather than listen to anything they think or *know* about what is happening. Once I have my bearings, and a basic outlook of the subject matter, I'll hear them out. It may seem 5 minutes wasted, but I've solved many 4 hour problems in 10 minutes this way.

What makes you think I treat the media any differently?

What you mean if I turn my head, the scenery changes? How unexpected! Who would ever think focus was important ... or choice?

I'm sure this is fun cool stuff to play with but... I'm pretty sure my imagination is still better than what a computer screen can show me. "Playing computer" is one of the first practices most new programmers learn, and if you're good at it, it is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.

Here's hoping "kids these days" don't skip out on the importance of programmer's imagination over these new fangled tools.

No, you get to open your cold dead hand so they can pry out the encryption key. Let your next of kin work on the lawsuit.

Where is the spine of modern secret-keepers?

Perhaps you should read the right to read: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/...

This idea has been around a long long time, and there are even people trying to protect you from that particular distopian future.

Exactly.

These things need to be built robust and secure in the first place or no amount of "remote management" is going to fix the problem.

Why is it so impossible that a product could be created and released, and still perfectly functional after 10 years with no need of a single software upgrade? Because we have no quality control of any value in the software industry. If a car (or worse airplane) suddenly died because it was 5 years old, the manufacturer would be out of business in a week.

How can there be a "basic" pen register demand?

> ...to advance religious doctrine, which is the only reason these issues are ever raised in the first place...

Because that's exactly what third graders are doing when they ask questions in the classroom. Advancing their religious doctrine. Down with inquisitive third-graders!

Seriously. Slow-change Darwinism? Ya that explains it all...

Oh man, you must get positively turgid when you read new licensing models and agreements for crap-products that don't even exist. I mean. What a wonderful world where it's impossible to actually *buy* anything and all anyone can ever do is "license".

Don't mind the guys writing stuff that's useful and works and then giving it away for free. You'll find a way to litigate them out of existence, or criminalize them (DMCA).

> First year law school stuff.

Ya, the "wet dream" part...

Ever hear of Common Law?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Note: Judges are lawyers too.

I think the point is: If you didn't *get something* out of the contract for what you're *putting in*... It's very often not a valid contract.

foo: "Sign this document that I get all your money."
bar: "Okay."
*bar signs*
foo: "Muwahahah, I'm so smart!"
*not a valid contract, foo is gonna get reamed in court*

foo has to at least *pretend* (like a cell phone carrier) to have given something valuable to bar in return for the money...