asceticprogrammer

[asceticprogrammer]

The Ascetic Programmer is now a book, loosely based on the content of this microblog. All information at the link and description below.

Ascetic programming is the writing of computer programs using fewer lines of code or forgoing certain programming language features.

Imposing restrictions on programming other than those on resources goes at least as far back as Edsger W. Dijkstra's condemnation of the goto statement. However, among possible restrictions, the one on program length is the most interesting. It has positive associations to computing, from correctness to maintainability.

Asceticism originated as a spiritual practice targeting worldly pleasures and promising salvation or enlightenment. This book will focus mainly on code length restrictions and, more generally, description length restrictions, and our rewards will be plenty and varied, but less spiritual.

Asceticism in programming comes in two flavors: conciseness and frugality. The former aims at delivering the same functionality with fewer lines of code; the latter's goal is identifying essential features and discarding the rest. They both apply to programming at all scales, from snippets to systems.

Beyond programming, unexpected examples of asceticism can be found in statistics, philosophy, the visual arts, music, literature, and more. Outside science and engineering, both the function and the complexity of an artifact are less clear or undefined, so this foray will be, by necessity, more speculative at times.

This book doesn't present a grand theory or a practical method, but rather anecdotes and expert opinions, together with the occasional theorem and research paper, some from giants in their respective fields and some from regular professionals. Let the case for asceticism build from the totality of the book rather than a single, decisive argument.

Hopefully, you will be convinced that asceticism benefits engineering, science, and the arts and inspired to adopt unnecessary restrictions in your endeavors.

[asceticprogrammer]

iPhone buttons are rumored to be the next thing Apple kills.

iPhone 13 could be completely buttonless. What Apple might do instead - CNET

[asceticprogrammer]

The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that.

It's probably time to stop recommending Clean Code @ Things Of Interest

[asceticprogrammer]

Finding the strongest way of seeing is really, to my way of thinking, intellectualizing within myself what it is that attracted me to the scene in the first place. And then, doing my best to include all of that within the photograph itself and eliminate everything else out of the photograph

Video: How to improve your compositions, from a photographer who worked with Ansel Adams: Digital Photography Review

[asceticprogrammer]

[Folk music] is the classical model of how to express an idea musically in the most concise form, with the greatest simplicity of means, freshness and life, briefly yet completely and properly proportioned.

Folk Music and the "Free and Equal Treatment of the Twelve Tones": Aspects of Béla Bartók's Synthetic Methods - College Music Symposium

[asceticprogrammer]

The Lisp in the 1960 paper, translated into Common Lisp, is only 53 lines of code.

[asceticprogrammer]

I couldn’t pick just one favorite quote from it, so here are two:

2020 BookRiot Read Harder challenge – Mike Crittenden

[asceticprogrammer]

There’s no law that says a blog post needs more than one idea or more than one sentence.

Atomic blog posts – Mike Crittenden

[asceticprogrammer]

The goal is for the final report to be concise, dense, and readable.”

Creator Spotlight: Dru Riley's Success on Gumroad - Gumroad

[asceticprogrammer]

Stieglitz described his most recent work as 'intensely direct. . . . Not a trace of hand work on either negative or prints. No diffused focus. Just the straight goods.'

The Alfred Stieglitz Collection | Straight Photography

[asceticprogrammer]

The most natural implementation of any feature request is additive [...]. As this process is repeated, the simplicity of a system is lost and complexity takes its place.

Why software ends up complex · Alex Gaynor

[asceticprogrammer]

(via Why Voltus – Voltus) "One-page commercial agreement". Could we make all contracts one page?

[asceticprogrammer]

Obama also says he is “painfully aware that a more gifted writer could have found a way to tell the same story with greater brevity ([...] a signed copy of the 272-word Gettysburg Address rests inside a glass case)”.

Barack Obama: 'Americans spooked by black man in White House' led to Trump presidency | US news | The Guardian

[asceticprogrammer]

[Random number ] generators start from few lines of code but generate billions of numbers. It's like creating a live being and make it live

I generatori partono da poche righe di codici ma poi generano miliardi di numeri. È come creare un essere vivente e farlo vivere.

Il prof della Statale conquista la Silicon Valley con un algoritmo - Cronaca - ilgiorno.it