13 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Weakness of the Library of Alexandria
Both the work of research and the work of dissemination went on under serious handicaps. One of these was the great social gap that {152}separated the philosopher, who was a gentleman, from the trader and the artisan. There were glass workers and metal workers in abundance in those days, but they were not in mental contact with the thinkers. The glass worker was making the most beautifully coloured beads and phials and so forth, but he never made a Florentine flask or a lens. Clear glass does...The library's knowledge did not benefit the average worker. It's discoveries were purely academic, reserved for the aristocracy.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Douglas Crockford on Reading Code
One of the things I've been pushing is reading. I think that is the most useful thing that a community of programmers can do for each other—spend time on a regular basis reading each other's code. Then are's a tendency in project management just to let the programmers go off independently and then we have the big merge and if it builds then we ship it and we're done and we forget about it.An important exercise for programmers is to read each other's code.