Tech-inzichten door Niek de Greef. Reflecties op technologie, software development en de impact van digitale innovaties op cultuur en maatschappij.
One of the blogs I read regularly is the one by Scott Young. Scott got some fame by arranging his university degree online for a few thousand dollars. This was unheard of, especially in the US, where the costs for a college degree have gone totally out of hand.
Scott has been writing his blog for a very long time now and keeps coming up with interesting thoughts on learning and other things.
Scott also wrote the book Ultralearning about effective learning.
The past couple of years we have heard that a blog was something of 2000’s. The rise of Youtube and more recently, the popularity of podcasts, were supposedly make blogs a thing of the past.
But the debatable recommendation and influencing practices of Youtube, and other advertisement-backed social media drive people away from these platforms. At the same time there is a increasing number of people being driven away from tradiditional media, finding the “breaking news” tactics distracting and misguiding.
As a replacement for these, the blog seems on it’s way back, as is the newsletter (via email!) informing the readers of blog updates. Blogs are not found through google searches or Facebook recommendations, but through recommendations by real people. Thus providing a source of manually curated web content by like-minded people.
One of these treasures I found today is Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files blog.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/
I love these places on the internet. In no particular order, for now.
Austin Kleon – Drawing writer with a great blog.
Brain Pickings – Maria Popova’s labour of love on books and other beautiful things.
Mr Motley – Great Dutch site about art.
Beeple-crap – Wonderful artist, became known for selling digital works as art with NFT’s. I think his daily work is immensely inspiring.
Boing Boing – Despite being somewhat North-America oriented, a beautiful site by my favorite internet person Mark Frauenfelder. (You will have to accept too many too disgusting ads, that are apparently needed to keep the site alive.)
booooooom – A beautiful art platform. Scrolling around cheers up your mind.
Swissmiss – A design blog it says, but it is much more. Run by Tina Roth Eisenberg. I would say it is her personal “thing that delight me on the web” log.
https://www.dirtyharrry.com – For a visual orgasm.
Seth Godin – Well, guess it needs no elaboration – Seth Godin’s blog. All about making a ruckus.
The Correspondent – Probably the most refreshing journalistic platform in the world, focusing on “unbreaking news”. Here the original (even better) Dutch De Correspondent.
Derek Sivers – Slow thinker comes to unique points of view. Now redirecting to https://sive.rs/. Hope he will re-start posting.
kk.org – A wealth of Kevin Kelly interesting initiatives, thoughts, articles, stuff.
elsadorfman.com – The website of Elsa Dorfman, 20×24 Polaroid portait photographer. An relatively old website I found recently after she passed away. This site keeps engaging me.
B – Blake Andrews’s long running blog. On (street) photography, and other interests from Blake.
Recomendo – another site/newsletter by Mark Frauenfelder.
Abbi Jacobson must be a tireless centipede. Amongst all the things she does, she hosted the podcast A Piece of Work, about modern art. The Moma and the podcasting company WNYC Studios produced this fantastic series.
Wikipedia (May 2020) tells us Jacobson is planning to do another series. Let it come.
Brainpickings, the beautifully intense mind sprout by Maria Popova. She write about books, philosophy, writers, thinking, tenderness, music, art, love, the beauty of life, and more I can safely say.
All these beautiful essays…
Started as a simple email list, the site has grown into a monumental achievement showcasing the richness of what the Internet can bring humanity.
The cool-tools website makes many tools review sites superfluous.
I stumbled upon the YouTube channel from Mark Frauenfelder, Editor In Chief of the Cool-Tools website and had great fun watching the video they made of the first podcast.
The Cool Tools initiative has a website, podcast and Youtube channel. It is just fantastically nerdy. Watch the semi-scientific comparison between the Bernzomatic TS4000 vs. TS8000 and other great videos.
These guys have a real fresh and liberating view on design.
OBS Studio is een geweldig tool om video opnames te maken van je computer. Ik gebruik het om trainingsmateriaal te maken, veelal voor software tooling.
Met OBS Studio kan je je scherm opnemen, tegelijk met het gelijk dat je kan inspreken zijdens het maken van een instructie. Ook kan je de schermopname live streamen. Het tool is van professionele kwaliteit. Het is zeer stabiel en heeft vele mogelijkheden, zoals verschillende broninstellingen en uitvoermogelijkheden.
Toen ik pas begon met mijn bedrijf deed ik zelf de boekhouding. In het begin was dat eenvoudig. Ik gebruikte het open source tool GnuCash
Ik moest mezelf een beetje trainen in de principes van het dubbel boekhouden, en in het opzetten van een structuur in GnuCash, maar daarna was e.e.a. prima bij te sloffen. Gnucash is goed gedocumenterd. Het heeft niet een heel elegante interface maar er is goed mee te werken. Bovendien krijg je er een goed inzicht in de inkomsten- en uitgavenstromen van je bedrijfje door.
Op een gegeven moment werden de uitgaven en inkomsten wat omvangrijker, en heb ik gezocht naar hulp. Ik vond EasyZZP, een bedrijfje dat de boekhouding voor je overneemt voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag. EasyZZP maakt gebruik van Yukiworks als (online) boekhoudpakket.
Yukiworks is redelijk makkelijk te doorgronden software, hoewel je er als EasyZZP klant niet alle ins en outs van hoeft te kennen. Yuki integreert met je bank waardoor je bij voorbeeld al je zakelijke transacties automatisch in Yuki kunt importeren. Er is ook een integratie met Op een gegeven moement werden de uitgaven en inkomsten wat omvangrijker, en heb ik gezocht naar hulp. Ik vond EasyZZP, een bedrijfje dat de boekhouding voor je overneemt voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag. EasyZZP maakt gebruik van Yuki als (online) boekhoudpakket. Dat is redelijk makkelijk te doorgronden software, hoewel je er als EasyZZP klant niet alle ins en outs van hoeft te kennen. Voor een alleszins redelijk bedrag verzorgt Yuki de boekhouding en de belastingaangifte.
My review of programming languages I learned in during my years in IT.
BASIC
On the TI99-4a.
Could do everything with it. Especially in combination with PEEK and POKE. Nice for building small games.
Impossible to maintain.
GOTO is unavoidable.
Assembler
In various variants.
Z80, 6802, PDP 11, System 390.
Fast, furious, unreadable, unmaintainable.
Algol 68
Liked this language. REF!
Have only seen it run on DEC 10. Mainly used in academic environments (in the Netherlands?)?
Pascal
Well. Structured. Pretty popular in the early 90s.
Again is this widely adopted?
COBOL
Old. Never programmed extensively in it – just for year 2000.
Totally Readable.
Funny (rediculous) numbering scheme.
Seems to be necessary to use GOTO in some cases which I do not believe.
Smalltalk
Beautiful language.
Should have become the de facto OO programming language but failed for unclear reasons.
Probably because it was way ahead of it’s time with it’s OO base.
Java
Totally nitty gritty programming language.
Productivity based on frameworks, which no one knows which to use.
Never understood why this language was so widely adopted – besides it’s openness and platform independency.
Should never have become the de facto OO programming language but did so because Sun made it open (good move).
Far too many framework needed. J(2)EE add more complexity than it resolves.
Always upgrade issues. (Proud programmer: We run Java! Fed up business person: Which Java?)
Rexx
Can do everything quickly.
But nothing structurally.
Ugly code. Readable but ugly.
Some very very strong concepts.
Php
Hodge-podgy language of programming and html.
Likely high programmer productivity if you maintain a stark discipline of programming standards. Stark danger of creating unmaintainable crap code mix of html and php.
Python
Nice structured language.
Difficult to set up and reuse.
Can be productive if nitty gritty setup issues can be overcome.
Ruby (on Rails or off-track)
Nice, probably the most elegant OO language. Too nitty gritty to my taste still. Like it though.
I would start with this language if I had to start today.
What is next?
Visual programming? Clicking building blocks together?
In programming we should maybe separate the construction of applications from the coding of functions (or objects, or whatever you call the lower level blocks of code.
Programming complex algorithms (efficiently) will probably always remain a craft for specialists.
Constructing applications from the pieces should be brought to a higher level.
The industry (well – the software selling industry) is looking at microservices but that gives operational issues and becomes too distributed. We need a way to build a house from software bricks and doors and windows and roof elements.
Probably we need more standards for that.
Some bold statements
AI systems “programming” themselves is nonsense (I have not seen a shred of evidence).
AI systems are stochastical systems.
Programming is imperical.
In summary, up to today you can not build software without getting into the nitty gritty very quickly.
It’s like building a house but having find your own tree and rocks first to cut wood and blicks from.
And then construct nails and screws.
A better approach to that would help.
What do you think is the programming language of the future? What need should it address.