Just as I was reading up on flexbox, as a better way of organizing layout objects, while I was reading up on bootstrap, another front-end framework for layout, I see a new grid layout, and my brain is kind of exploding… Anyway, not yet implemented in Microsoft Edge, so maybe by the time I learn it it will be a standard across all the browsers, not that many people currently use Edge.
I just watched a video by Andreas M. Antonopoulos on youtube, called “The Killer App: Engineering the Properties of Money.” In technology, entrepreneurs are always searching for the “killer app”, the program/application that will popularize whatever technology that the company is developing. He’s also written a couple books, Mastering Bitcoin and The Internet of Money.
I just got my own ethereum (approaching bitcoin in popularity, the up and coming cryptocurrency) miner working as a proof of concept on an old PC:
I have no idea how I got interested in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies! I think it’s because I know someone who was mining in bitcoin and making money a long time ago, and I thought–hey, I’m good with computers, and I’d like to make a little money on the side, why don’t I check it out?
So last night I started installing an ethereum (geth.exe) program, and then waiting around to see if I could get my PC to create some virtual currency, based on an article that said in the first sentence: “you can get it up and running and start your own ethereum mining project in 15 mins”.
I was OK until step 7, running a program in a dos window: “the screen should start downloading the blockchain for Ethereum…. ” My problem is that it never seemed to complete itself, so this morning, after 12 hours of continuous running with no end in sight, I killed it and started looking for another way to get mining.
This requires some faith and patience. And I’m not very patient. I came across an intriguing youtube channel called Boxmining:
And this person seems rather knowledgeable and interested in learning more about finances and technology. (Notice how the coin on the far right column has been grayed out–this is where he lost money–all part of the process of learning, and I think it would be better to color it red instead of trying to visually dismiss it.) I feel in the long run being patient and investing in technical knowledge will work out. It seems like technology applied to finances is another “internet wave” in the making in its power to disrupt traditional businesses.
Well, a few hours go by and I’m still impatiently waiting!
Java is mainly large enterprise back end systems, and some android, and quite a lot of embedded stuff (nominally what it was invented for), and, worryingly, quite a lot of client side GUI stuff.
C++ is used for legacy systems and where you need speed.C is used where you need speed, have simple programs and memory constraints, and old fashioned unix software.
C# is for windows programming and
.net Javascript is for browser programming and Node, and some general scripting, where someone has used it as their system’s internal scripting language (see also lua)
PHP is used for relatively simple web stuff, because it’s easy and works and has wide library support
Python is used for what PHP is by better developers, and has brilliant maths libraries so is increasingly used for anything maths related where esoteric things like matlab and R and F# are unhelpfully niche.
Haskell is used for academic curiosity, and some maths stuff.
Perl is dying out, but is still used for unix automation a fair bit.
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/17/06/12/0136253/ask-slashdot-will-python-become-the-dominant-programming-language
Adi Da wrote an essay called “Art and Chaos“. Here is a sentence that I really like:
The conceptual aspect of all art is the mental animation of the intrinsic self-apprehension of order.
Art is making sense out of chaos.