I haven't thought about it yet... but I'm sure there's some that would have huge popularity...
Fireplaces. A good technology that the modern world is abandoning with all the 2030 agenda and the urbanization process. I used to live in apartment for 20+ years. Now I live in the country and I use the chimney as much as I can (I am in winter right now). You can heat up your spaces, read a book next to the fire and even cook a home made pizza. Well, the technology is actually fire. "Invented" quite a few years ago.
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I use mine all the time!
ETA: wood burning, not gas.
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Exactly! I use wood only.
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Common Lisp. It is a very powerful programming language that, despite it's age, still has many features that most other programming languages don't have. The fact that so many programs still need some sort of scripting language is proof that most languages will never achieve the power of Common Lisp.
If more software, especially operating systems, were written in Common Lisp, there would be significantly less problems with computers, especially in regards to security and time spent maintaining code.
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"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."
Ok, now I'm intrigued. Can someone ELI5? I'd dive deeper into this statement, but I need to go to work.
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ELI5-ing this topic is tough without also ELI5-ing a bunch of obscure parts of computer science. But I'll give it a shot anyways.
If you are writing a big program in a language like C or Fortran, it will get harder-and-harder to make changes as the program gets bigger-and-bigger. Common Lisp provides powerful ways to manage complexity in an efficient way.
C/Fortran requires you to do a lot of things manually. As the program gets bigger, a C/Fortran program requires more work from the programmer. Common Lisp automates certain kinds of programming tasks, and it provides ways for the programmer to automate many other programming tasks.
C/Fortran requires you to stop running the program entirely in order to change the program's code. Common Lisp will let you change your program's code without stopping your program.
But C/Fortran programmers will not re-write their program in Common Lisp, when their C/Fortran code becomes too complex. Instead, they will add a scripting language to their complex C/Fortran program. Such scripting languages are what Greenspun's Tenth Rule summarizes:
  • ad-hoc: Those scripting languages are intended to be used for a narrow range of tasks.
  • informally-specified: There is minimal thought put into their design before starting work on them.
  • bug-ridden: They are written in C/Fortran, so all the problems of writing complex software in C/Fortran apply to making the scripting language too. A bug in the scripting language will seem like a bug in your scripts, so the bug becomes tough to fix.
  • slow: They are always made using an interpreter, which means they are inherently slower than using a compiler (e.g. C, Fortran, and Common Lisp).
  • half of Common Lisp: Common Lisp is a large, complex language; and it was written by experts in the design of programming languages. When you are making an ad-hoc scripting language, it isn't worth it to re-create all of the features of Common Lisp. Half of Common Lisp usually feels like it is enough, but eventually you realize you need more, which requires even more complex C/Fortran code.
I don't know if that's ELI5. I can explain each part in more detail if you'd like. But I can't guarantee that those explanations will be ELI5.
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That was awesome. Above and beyond ELI5. Thank you.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 24 Aug 2023
Mhhh, another area of computer science I didn't even touch yet.
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another area of computer science
That is a very apt way to describe Common Lisp. The Lisp family of languages are a true branch of computer science, because many things discovered via Lisp are only feasible to discover/learn via Lisp. As an example, consider this book:
Alan Kay called it "the best book anybody's written in ten years", and contended that it contained "some of the most profound insights, and the most practical insights about OOP", but was dismayed that it was written in a highly Lisp-centric and CLOS-specific fashion, calling it "a hard book for most people to read; if you don't know the Lisp culture, it's very hard to read".
The key bit is "Lisp culture". There are certain concepts learned by Lisp programmers that cannot be learned without learning Lisp.
One last example, consider LambdaLite, which is a database written in 250 lines:
what LambdaLite does would be impossible in most languages.
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Going outside and playing with dirt and bicycles, instead of video games and YouTube.
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Reading a physical book. Turning pages. In a quiet place for 8 hours without anybody disturbing you. Nobody being able to contact you. And you not being able to distract yourself, and pick up a phone, because there is no phone.
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I have a boat for exactly this...well, I have it for many reasons, but being able to sit safe and undisturbed for hours is bliss.
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Miss my old boat I sold for exactly this reason
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I was thinking today about how in the west they want to phase out petrol consuming cars. And then how in Cuba they are still using old cars that can be maintained for that long.
Where am I going with this? Generic parts need a comeback. No more tricky BS
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Sitting at the table with your dad, mom, brothers and sisters telling jokes. Without mobile phones, internet and tv.
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3840 x 2160 CRTs would be sick!
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Minidiscs.
I don't care what anyone says.
They were cool AF.
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Heck yeah. Really wish they would have had time to take off like CDs/DVDs so we'd have them at libraries, second hand stores, etc. Granted, digital music would always make minidisc obsolete, but it would have been cool if it gained more traction since they are so much cooler than CDs.
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Kindness, chivalry and sound money
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Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower and plans to put them around the planet.
However, it would fry most modern electronics (new ones would have to be developed to utilize free AC energy), but this would create a whole new world.
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That tower didn't transmit AC. It was wireless. Radio Shack used to sell those tiny radio kits you could build, that powered themselves from the actual radio waves. I think that's the same thing Tesla was doing, more or less. Didn't MIT students do the same thing with electromagnets, like 20 years ago?
Anyway, I don't see any reason why you would fry anything. Just like when power tools started using 18650 batteries. You can just pop an adapter on there and use the new batteries with the old tools.
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Look into Lazar's explanation on what would happen if we fired Tesla's dream with current tech. Capacitors and such would go poof.
Actually, the engineer leading skinwalker ranch is deep into replicating the wireless AC, they did it on a smaller scale not long ago and learned some things about how the grounding worked.
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