Yeah, this post is inspired by the O’Reilly book of the same name. It’s a few years old, but it’s a good one.  When I first read the title of the book, I thought it was about beautiful looking code. It’s not… necessarily, but I found something peculiar when reading it. Code that implements a beautiful design usually ends up looking, well, beautiful.
I find in large designs the most beautiful lead up to a bang. Say there is a class that has a handful of functions. If you trace into …

This post directly follows this post and the comments originating there. Anyway:
Don’t fool yourself: social consciousness has become commoditized, as evidenced by culturally aware works by Cory Doctorow like The Makers and, to a small extent, Little Brother. I talked about that a little in my post on STUFF. More so, proof that it has been directly commoditized is directly exemplified by CauseWorld. This is the only program I’m aware of that does this, but I’m sure it’s not the only one that exists.
If you’re not familiar with it – …

Things always seem to come in ever increasing waves of crystallization – it seems like brains collect ideas, group random data, and link those pieces together. But there’s always some extra piece, like an encryption key or something like that, that prevents the whole idea structure from becoming a cohesive whole.
But then, BAM! The last piece is added, and there it is, a whole body of thought seems to spring from nowhere, like Proust’s madeleine or that philosopher who had a sudden realization when stepping on a bus. In …