tempaway85751 (u/tempaway85751)

tempaway85751 commented on On Being the Right Size (1926) [pdf] phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3... · Posted by u/benbreen

j7ake · 2 years ago

The clarity and authority in his writing is remarkable.

His writing is in contrast to todays blog post style writing.

Today it is a catchy intro graphic, a low-information intro paragraph, a barely relevant graphic separates every two paragraphs, a gigantic quote in bold letters separates every four paragraphs, and the entire essay can be digested by rapidly scrolling down website without reading any content.

tempaway85751 · 2 years ago

In 1926 if you were privileged enough to get published you could write in an authoritative voice knowing that no-one would challenge you, or if they did it would take many months for any such challenge to appear. Perhaps a letter to a newspaper or something. These days anyone can publish anything at any time and if you write in that authoritative sort of style its just begging for someone to come in and contradict you (you see it in HN comments all the time).

Hence people write differently now

OR

And so I thusly declare that is a most elegant explanation, without possible rebuttal, for why this most elegant authoritative style is so rarely seen in these times.

tempaway85751 commented on I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it basta.substack.com/p/no-s... · Posted by u/robdimarco

bastawhiz · 2 years ago

I mean, I asked at the time, and I did it. If either company wants to start a legal fight over a pile of code that neither of them wanted that's old enough to be in elementary school, they know how to reach me.

tempaway85751 · 2 years ago

Fair enough. But I'll leave my comment there as general advice for other readers

enjoyed the article, the bit about Excel circular ref linear regression was wild

tempaway85751 commented on I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it basta.substack.com/p/no-s... · Posted by u/robdimarco

bastawhiz · 2 years ago

Author here. The code was originally written outside of work hours. I offered the code to Box and they didn't want it.

If Uber wants a few thousand lines of JavaScript from over half a decade ago that didn't originate with them and that they used for less than a month, they can send me a letter.

tempaway85751 · 2 years ago

... Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day ...

You can't really do this. Depends on your employment contract but code you write for an employer is usually copyright to them

... My first reaction was to publish the code on Github ...

You can't really do that either.