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BITWASTES
October 29, 2021
"Bitwise: A Life in Code" (2018) by David Auerbach
David Auerbach writes well and has read
widely-- he can give me a run as a
quotester, easily-- but I can't say I
got all that much out of reading this
book. I'd have to say that while he's KNOWS_SOMETHING
someone who knows a few things he never
seems to understand things very deeply. A lot of his weightier remarks are
His examples are often good, but the pushed off to footnotes.
points he makes with them frequently
seem a little shallow to me. Whatever problems "the doomfiles"
format has, at least my footnotes
aren't cul de sacs.
On the other hand, it's impressive
the way Auerbach continually returns
to the same theme (obsession?): the
difficulties inherent in systems of BITWASTES_FACECATS
categorization of human beings-- and
how computer technology often
amplifies these problems.
In each chapter he acts like he's
talking about a new subject at first, This is a trick I've thought about
but it always gets used as a new deploying myself... I should think
ground for him to examine through hard about how well it works for
this lens. Auerbach. Would it be better to
just tell people up front what
you're doing?
Auerbach is a programmer-turned-writer
with some background at Microsoft and
Google and an enthusiasm for Serious
Literature, in particular James Joyce. DANGERBABY
Despite his protestations to the
contrary I gradually concluded that Dangerbaby interjects
there's one simple way to sum up his but aren't *you* a snob?
attitudes both toward literature and
computers: "snob". That is of course, *completely*
different, I'm a complicated
mixture of snobbery and reverse
Concerning his literary snobbery, snobberies, a compendium of only
that's so much in evidence it the very best snobberies that
hardly needs elaboration-- this is humanity has to offer. I am an
a man who proudly features his *ecclectic* snob par excellance.
Thomas Mann and Thomas Pynchon
quotations. TURNING_THE_SNOB
BITWASTES_ANTIPOP
Further though, I think he's a rather
conventional computer science snob, as well.
He leads off with the young insight that blew Recursion can also waste
him away-- recursion can generate complex tremendous amounts of
fractal patterns-- and never says a single resources, and you
thing that's at all critical of the Computer frequently want to
Science field. re-write it as iteration.
At a talk at Google promoting his book And if you think about it
Auerbach commented that other programmers too much you may write a
have been remarkably *nice* to him about book that's rather
his writing efforts. He gets comments like shallow (and yet
"at last, *someone* who understands us". amazingly popular), like
"Goedel, Escher, Bach"
I submit that one of the reasons his
reception is so favorable is he never RECURSIVE_DEFINITION
says anything *challenging*, he has no
unusual opinions about anything related
to computers.
In the comments to his Google talk
he gets a laugh from the audience The reason Javascript is probably a
by reacting in horror to the good pick for a first programming
thought of Javascript as a first language is obvious enough: that
programming language and remarks browser in front of you is something
grudgingly "*Maybe* Python". that can run Javascript code and give
you immediate feedback.
Back when every microcomputer
shipped with Basic, it made
sense to play with Basic first.
If you're going to
recommend something else
to a beginning, casual
programmer, consider the
barriers in the way of
even the initial setup.
The faster you get to
"Hello World", the better.
Auerbach is a peculiar case-- he's *almost* a clear-thinker,
who starts to illuminate subjects of interest, and then I
think he seems to get distracted by the language itself.
He wants to say something that *sounds good*, and lets that
nudge him toward saying things that seem weak, murky,
sometimes poorly thought out.
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