Joe Armstrong's list of 80 things

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Computer Science - A Guide for the Perplexed, Joe Armstrong

A list of 80 things to do

• 2 great papers to read
• 4 old tools to learn
• 4 really bad things
• 3 great books to read
• 7 reasons why software is difficult now
• 10 reasons why software was easier back in the day
• 1 fun programming exercise
• 8 great machines from the past
• 3 performance improvements
• 5 YouTube videos to watch
• 6 things not to do
• 5 sins
• 4 great forgotten ideas
• 6 areas to research
• 2 dangers
• 4 ideas that are obvious now but strange at first
• 2 fantastic programs to try

2 great papers to read

• A Plea for Lean Software by Niklaus Wirth
• The Emperor’s old clothes, ACM Turing award lecture by Tony Hoare

4 old tools to learn

• emacs or vi
• bash
• make
• shell

4 really bad things

• Lack of Privacy
• Attempts to manipulate us through social media
• Vendor lock-in
• Terms and Conditions

3 great books to read

• Algorithms + data structures = Programs by Niklaus Wirth
• The Mythical Man-month by Frederick Brooks Jr.
• How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnagie

7 reasons why software is difficult now

• Fast machines
• Huge memory
• Hundereds of Programming Languages
• Distributed
• Huge programs
• No specifications
• Reuse

10 reasons why software was easier back in the day

• Small machines
• Small memory
• Few Languages
• Not distributed
• No reuse of code
• No IDEs
• No Git
• Complete Control
• Did not communicate
• Understandable in it’s entirety

1 fun programming exercise

Meta II: A syntax-oriented compiler writing language

8 great machines from the past

• Baby SSEM
• PDP11
• Vax 11/750
• Cray 1
• IBM PC
• Raspberry Pi
• iPhone
• Nvidia Tesla P100

3 performance improvements

• Better algorithms (x6)
• Better programming language (x50)
• Better hardware (x1000 per 10 years)

5 YouTube videos to watch

• The computer revolution has not happened yet, Alan Kay
• Computers for Cynics, Ted Nelson
• Free is a lie, Aaron Balkan
• How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day, Tristan Harris
• Winning the war on error: solving halting problem, curing cancer, Matt Might

6 things not to do

• Backdoors
• Violate Privacy
• Put microphones in everybody’s houses
• Hijack our attention system
• Hijack our social systems
• Sell crap we don’t want and/or need

5 sins

• Crap documentation
• Crap website
• Crap dependencies
• Crap build instructions
• Group thinking

4 languages to learn

• C
• Prolog
• Erlang
• Javascript

4 great forgotten ideas

• Linda Tuple Spaces, David Gelernter and Nicholas Carriero
• Flow-based programming, John Paul Morrison
• Xanadu, Ted Nelson
• Unix Pipes

6 areas to research

• Robotics
• AI
• Programmer Productivity
• Energy Efficiency
• Precision Medicin
• Security

2 dangers

• Group thinking
• Bubble thinking

4 ideas that are obvious now but strange at first

• Indentation
• Versioning
• Hypertext accross machine boundaries
• Pipes

2 fantastic programs to try

• TiddlyWiki
• SonicPI