Programming Leftovers
-
The phrase "good enough" isn't fit for purpose
Instead of things that are good enough, I'd rather we make things that are fit for purpose. The phrase "fit for purpose" doesn't carry the connotation of cutting corners, but of actively considering what is needed and ensuring that that's present. Whatever you're describing has what it needs to do the job.
-
Reducing Measurement Error
What did they do in the 1600s? They wrote down everything about the circumstances in which the observations were made, like atmospheric conditions, status of the telescope and other equipment, times, climate, weather – I wouldn’t be surprised if they recorded what the astronomer had eaten and how much they had slept – and then they asked an expert to judge, based on the circumstances, which observation was best. And they used that single observation.
It makes complete sense – they knew what the problem of measurement error was, and they tried to reduce it by picking the least erroneous observation. Absolutely the right intention, but they just didn’t have the technology we do now: an understanding of statistics and how numbers behave in aggregate.
-
John Warnock, who helped invent the PDF and co-founded Adobe Systems, dies at age 82
Warnock worked for Xerox before he and colleague Charles Geschke created a company around a rejected idea in 1982. Nearly a decade later, Warnock outlined an early version of the Portable Document Format, or PDF, transforming the way documents are exchanged.