Author Archives: Ted Kaminski

The future of growth

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Ted Kaminski

Or, “among the many reasons I love Paul Krugman.” Krugman reviews a Robert J Gordon book, “The rise and fall of American growth.” I’ve just put this book on my library queue, so bear in mind I haven’t yet read … Continue reading →

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Wind powered cars

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

There’s a neat, long article over at Wait But Why that I found quite interesting. It purports to be about Elon Musk and Tesla (which might dissuade some readers) but it’s actually about climate change and electric cars. I wanted … Continue reading →

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Algebraic data types: without them, we all suffer

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

Perhaps you’ve heard of “stringly typed” code. The use of strings instead of actual, you know, proper data structures, in places where it seems completely inappropriate. Why do programmers write such things? I’m sure some of it is simple bad … Continue reading →

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Human-computer interaction and programming

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

The other week, I was dismissive of an attempt at creating a “non-programming” sort of programming. I’d like to explain myself a bit more. The trouble, I think, is that many people confuse the problem. Programming is pretty terrible, but … Continue reading →

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The Fermi paradox… isn’t.

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

There is a common topic among people who like to think about the future and space travel: the Fermi paradox. Simply put, if you take even tiny-seeming growth rates for any civilization in the galaxy, it should be everywhere in … Continue reading →

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Programming is the new literacy

Posted on January 26, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

Chris Granger has a post ironically titled “Coding is not the new literacy.” It’s pretty good. Despite the early part where he attempts to redefine literacy in order to have a catchy title: This is certainly accurate, but defining literacy … Continue reading →

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More on Abstraction

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Ted Kaminski

Almost a year ago (evidently), I wrote briefly about Abstraction, Modularity, and Composition as important principles in designing software. I’ve had a few more thoughts to add about abstraction. There are two sides to the abstraction “coin”: there’s (for lack … Continue reading →

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