critique

Bilingual

Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management
2 months ago
- The author critiques Brennan Kenneth Brown's article on personal knowledge management (PKM), arguing it presents inconsistent arguments and shifts questions mid-article.
- Brennan's claim that Obsidian has not increased public-facing knowledge is challenged; the author argues tools enable contributions but are not themselves contributors.
- Brennan misrepresents Obsidian's values, attributing 'higher-brow purpose' and 'epistemological value' when Obsidian's team emphasizes flexibility and user choice.
- The four questions Brennan poses about PKM are deemed inconsistent and poorly scoped, with the second question changing entirely between statements.
- Brennan's point about Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten being a 'myth' is disputed; the system was idiosyncratic but not invalid.
- The author highlights that incubation and insight are supported by PKM systems like PARA, contrary to Brennan's claim that they involve only browsing links.
- Brennan's third question about successful writers' processes is seen as irrelevant; personal methods vary and don't disprove PKM.
- Brennan's own writing process—rapid drafting with placeholders—is criticized for leading to poor research, as evidenced by his article's misleading citations.
- The irony is noted: Brennan criticizes PKM enthusiasts for lack of output while himself producing daily posts and self-published novels without rigorous research.
- The author concludes Brennan's intentions were good but his article suffered from overambition and insufficient research, agreeing with Brennan on AI's limitations.
They Are Just Links
2 months ago
- NFTs are tokens representing ownership, typically visual art, stored on a blockchain like Ethereum using the EIP-721 standard.
- Many NFTs rely on centralized services (e.g., Google Cloud) for metadata, risking data loss if those services fail or change.
- NFTs don't guarantee uniqueness or authenticity, as anyone can duplicate a contract and create similar tokens, requiring centralized verification (e.g., OpenSea).
- NFTs resemble torrents by linking to content rather than containing it, posing copyright issues but depending on centralized platforms for recognition.
- The NFT space is not truly decentralized, with major platforms like OpenSea able to ban tokens and control value, making it a speculative and hype-driven market.
Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented
2 months ago
- Object-oriented programming (OOP) is currently popular, but some smart programmers are unenthusiastic about it.
- OOP is useful in some cases, but not necessary for every program; defining new types shouldn't be the only way to express programs.
- There are five reasons people like OOP: it compensates for limitations in statically-typed languages without closures or macros; it suits large companies with mediocre programmers by imposing discipline (though bloated code results); it generates apparent work by encouraging excessive scaffolding; it allows extensibility if the language itself is OOP; and it maps well to specific domains like simulations and CAD.
- The author personally has never needed OOP, even in Common Lisp with its powerful object system, and warns against including features in languages based on untested assumptions.
My Gripes with Prolog
2 months ago
- No standardized strings – ISO only defines atoms or lists of character codes, leading to incompatibility across implementations.
- No functions – code is expressed only in predicates that return true/false; simple operations like adding 1 to a length require multiple steps.
- Limited collection types – only linked lists and compound terms; no built-in maps or structs, and custom solutions lack cross-compatibility.
- Boolean values absent – true/false are control flow, not data values, making it inconvenient to store and combine intermediate results.
- Cuts (!) are confusing – they prevent backtracking but can lead to invalid programs; conditionals rely on cuts, causing unexpected behavior.
- Negation as failure (\+) is confusing – its behavior depends on instantiation order, and it is not purely declarative.
- Querying is interactive by default – obtaining all results at once requires bagof/setof with existential quantifiers (^), which is non‑intuitive.
- Symbol terms have no official conventions – e.g., a-b is used for pairs but not enforced, leading to potential inconsistency.
- sort/2 removes duplicates – it returns a sorted set, not a sorted list, requiring cumbersome workarounds to preserve duplicates.
- Rule termination with a period – trailing commas are not allowed, making reordering lines cause syntax errors.
Solid and Clean Code never felt solid or clean to me
3 months ago
- The author critiques the presentation and perceived manipulative nature of 'Uncle Bob' (Robert C. Martin)'s works like Clean Code and SOLID principles.
- He finds the content filled with unnecessary filler, akin to academic padding, and questions the subjective naming like 'Clean' or 'Simple' for code.
- The author argues that software engineering culture is dogmatic and overly reliant on acronyms (e.g., SOLID, DRY) that can lead to complexity rather than clarity.
- He draws parallels from his history studies, noting how writing styles and cultural rules form, and applies this to detect manipulative or overly subjective advice in programming.
- The critique is not about the technical ideas themselves but how they are marketed and perceived, emphasizing the need for more objective and substantive content.

critique

Note-Taking and Personal Knowledge Management

They Are Just Links

Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented

My Gripes with Prolog

Solid and Clean Code never felt solid or clean to me