The Difference Between Programmers and Coders (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://workfunc.com/differences-between-programmers-and-coders/ <comment><USER3> With the media coverage of code.org, Leo the Homeless Coder, and the code schools and bootcamps springing up everywhere, the message the general public is getting is that whatever "coding" is and whatever "coders" do doesn't really take a whole lot of skill or effort. If anyone can apparently do it with a few weeks of training, why should they be paid $80-100+k?

Either coders=programmers and we should expect increasing competition and decreasing wages, or self-described programmers need to somehow distinguish themselves from the unskilled "coder" masses.

Yet in these very comments, every response I've seen is essentially endorsing the "coding is easy and anyone can do it" message.

It's strange to see so many otherwise intelligent people advocating for their own marginalization. Doctors would never say things like "everyone should learn medicine" or "anyone can be a doctor." Instead they erect barriers to entry to eliminate competition and force you to pay for their services, driving up the cost of health care, and the stupid general public loves them for it.

What is wrong with programmers? Are we simply too egalitarian for our own good?

<comment><USER4> No, this isn't really the case. What I see, as the guy who wrote the book that tells people that learning to code is _hard_ but _possible_ , what people are realizing is that programming is hard, but possible.

Programmers are simply confusing the fact that people are attempting to learn it and succeeding in greater numbers than before with the idea that all these new entrants all think it's easy. The truth is I see them all say it's damn hard, but if they put the work in they can learn it.

Another thing they realize after getting through my book is just how long it'll take to get good. They don't take what they've learned lightly, and they don't think it was trivial to learn. What this ends up doing is giving everyone who attempted it a healthy dose of respect for what we do.

I'm a coder. I've been a coder a huge chunk of my life. This attempt to label "coder" as some kind of idiot is really pissing me off, especially when I see it coming from programmers who don't realize that more people learning an introduction to code means more people will appreciate and understand what they do.

Now, the site is down so I haven't read the article, so take my comment as only replying to what you said, not the article.

<comment><USER3> > I'm a coder. I've been a coder a huge chunk of my life. This attempt to > label "coder" as some kind of idiot is really pissing me off,

If you want to call yourself a coder, fine. However, there is still a difference between Linus Torvalds and someone who, for example, has at most hacked a few things together in JavaScript, and I think the terminology should reflect that in more ways than just "beginner" and "expert."

I also think calling ourselves "coders" and calling what we do "coding" isn't going to gain us the respect or prestige that terms like "software developer" or even "programmer" would. If you're happy being called a "coder," in the sense of "Zed Shaw is a great coder," that's fine, but personally, I'm not.

> Now, the site is down so I haven't read the article

It was down for me too. I was responding to the comments that seemed to take great offense at the apparently horrible, elitist idea that maybe, just maybe, it might be worthwhile to have a term that distinguishes professional developers from people who've done some exercises on code.org.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The difference is a matter of arbitrary semantics. The quote in the beginning is nothing more than a setup of an argument from authority ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)).

The only takeaway of value is that, yes, there can be a functional difference between designing logic and implementing it. This in no way means you can only do one or the other, or that any specific job or title dictates that you'll do one or the other.

This might as well have been titled, "The difference between a senior developer and a junior one."

</comment><comment><USER6> In German we use a different terminology for the whole field. It's called 'Informatik', as in the science of processing information. The people doing this are thus called 'Informatiker'. This alone helps, I feel, in making people understand that there is some degree of formal training behind it, that 'Informatiker' aren't just code monkeys. Granted, many still use the term Software Engineer today, simply because Engineer degrees have a higher entry barrier and thus have a better sound to them (you can get 'Informatiker' degrees without a higher education by doing an 3-4y apprenticeship at 16, a very common way of how education works in Germany and Switzerland).

In any case I think that the English speaking CS pioneers have failed to coin a good term for their field - CS just isn't right, especially regarding the English definition of 'Science'. It also leaves non-CS-degree holders who practice this job in a sort of vacuum about what to call themselves.

<comment><USER7> > ... I think that the English speaking CS pioneers have failed to coin a good > term for their field - CS just isn't right, especially regarding the English > definition of 'Science'.

Definitely. And even the "Computer" part causes confusion. I'm a C.S. professor. The man on the street thinks I teach people to use MS Word. Alas, so do many textbook publisher reps, along with the occasional prospective student.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe the author merged the responsibilities of a "programmer" with an "Technical architect". To become a good programmer, all you need to do is enjoy reading books, enjoy coding, and work at a moderately sized company.

An architect is different. You have to understand the picture as a whole. You have to understand that one stupid decision can affect the entire product or company's future.

Hurrying to implement excellent code (as a programmer) won't could cost the company many weeks or months or effort to redo.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this distinction, because to me almost every coder is a programmer, but there are still more theoretical positions such as technical architects who don't necessarily even touch the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh, come on.) btw, the first chapter of The Programmers Stone explained almost everything about two decades(?) ago.

All this could be summarized in one sentence: Programmer is a writer, like Orhan Pamuk, coder is a translator from Turkish.

Or, according to the classic - programmers are "mappers", they are inveting abstractions. Coders are "packers", they are writing piles of Java classes for a paycheck.

Even simpler. Coders are Georges. (Those who have seen SICP lectures would understand instantly).

Update: my two cents to what it is to be a writer.

Look, there are a standard qwerty keyboard in front of you. All required symbols (letters and digits) are here. You know the rules how to compose them into words of English, and how to chain words info sentences. So, go ahead, open a notepad, or even Emacs, and write, say, 1984. It will be much better than any silly startup, you don't have "to Java", you need no AWS and Docker, you don't have to hide the fact that you cannot grasp Design Patters, etc.

All you need is in front of you, all the knowledge is available since secondary school. You could even apply some agile practices.

It also could be that you are esthetically sophisticated person, so you may would like to use a fountain pen and paper, or a pencil and a notebook - <USER2> go ahead. We are not asking about poetry or, god forbid, classic music composition, which is even closer to what programming is.

<comment><USER10> I remember The Programmer's Stone.

It fell into that dubious genre of essays that draws a false dichotomy that there is no particular reason to believe is real, then puts all of the positive characteristics on one side, so that readers have a new label to apply to themselves so that they feel good, and a corresponding label to apply to everyone they don't like.

I wasn't impressed by that addition to the genre at the time, and I've seen nothing since to make me think that I should have been.

<comment><USER9> I think that you somehow did an analysis of writing style instead of the meaning. The distinction is quite simple, some people are interested in how things work and why, others just use them (usually in a wrong way). I suggest you to read Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it is about exactly the same segregation, but in a much more poetical wording. And then at least a half of Atlas Shrugged, to complete enlightenment.)

<comment><USER10> _The distinction is quite simple, some people are interested in how things work and why, others just use them (usually in a wrong way)._

If you truly believe that, and believe that people can be so divided, then I suggest that you read [https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe](https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe) and discover that for all you think you understand about how things work and why, there are things you just use.

Indeed I can give you dozens of examples of important things that impact your life, ranging from the reason why fertilizer makes good high explosives to how airplane wings work, and you'll find that for all that you pat yourself on the back for being such an intelligent and curious person, you're far more someone who just uses that which you find around you than someone who understands your world.

If you can accept that, then you might get beyond your naive belief that you bring enlightenment that I have failed to grasp, and you may come to see why I think that the purported distinction is BS.

After that, you might realize why I became curious about how a theory that is so obviously BS would appeal to otherwise intelligent people. And then you might find my theory about it to be enlightening.

<comment><USER11> As a polymath, your linked post was hardly enlightening.

Additionally, the repeated line "no single company can deal with that entire complexity" is misleading. I can provide examples of companies that deal extensively with most if not all aspects of each individual layer presented.

The truth, though, is that thinking about all the layers together can and likely will make most people dizzy. As for companies? I would propose that a hypothetical company, let's name them "IBM" for convenience, could theoretically deal with each and every layer presented, and I'd estimate they could do so successfully for 50 years or more.

<comment><USER10> My point in the linked post was to show for one common technology how no individual person can really understand it. At some point we have to switch from understanding to just using.

That said, there is no company that does deal with each layer in all complexity. Even IBM outsources. But the reason does not have to do with it being too complex as much as too standardized.

The economic theory of the firm says that firms divide when the internal stupidity of a large firm exceeds transaction costs between several. But as an area standardizes, stupidity remains unchanged and transaction costs reduce - meaning that you get more smaller firms. There is an excellent chart that I think I saw in _The Innovator 's Solution_ which shows the resulting fragmentation of the semi-conductor industry over the decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The difference is hubris.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would consider most of the points as the difference between a senior "Programmer" and a junior "Programmer" rather than "Coder".

</comment><comment><USER14> Potato - Potahto.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's from the same side of the argument as the "Software Engineer is not really an Engineer" phrase.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google cache text version: [http://bit.ly/1gZj3kQ](http://bit.ly/1gZj3kQ)

</comment><comment><USER17> I think it is important to distinguish between the two.

It is possible to program a computer without coding. Currently, the tools to do this are very domain specific.

I think, in the future, there will be domain agnostic development tools that will let people program software without the need to write code.

<comment><USER18> coding is a synonym for programming. No need to distinguish the two. If you can program you can code, if you can code you can program. Talking about software design or architecture is something different.

<comment><USER17> > If you can program you can code, if you can code you can program.

If you consider people who use scratch ([http://scratch.mit.edu/](http://scratch.mit.edu/)) as coders, then I would agree with you.

But, to me, it doesn't look like they are coding. It looks like programming using something other than coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's good for us, developers, to know the difference between you :).

</comment><comment><USER20> Hmm, The site takes too long to load.</comment>


Archaeologists now have a handy new tool for analyzing paleo poop - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/archaeologists-now-have-a-handy-new-tool-for-analyzing-paleo-poop/ <comment><USER2> "Look at this. It's worthless. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless. Like the Ark."

~Belloq</comment>


Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180703-why-no-one-speaks-indonesias-language <comment><USER2> The article's premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it's always a second language. I can't find a good reference right now, but I think that's wrong. I'm under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language. I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anyway, and modern Indonesian is very closely related to Malay, so this wouldn't be a big stretch.

<comment><USER3> In Jakarta the people speak Bahasa and Javanese equally. People who have come in from other areas of the country speak their own language plus Bahasa; the Javanese who were born there make Javanese the most common language.

Malay and Bahasa are 90% the same language. Bahasa is considered a traders' language, much like Swahili - a lingua franca that allowed commerce to happen for centuries.

Source: studied bahasa for two years and used to live on Java - amazing, complex place.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't quite say "equally". Jakarta is a melting pot and the most significant portion of the population there is of Javanese descent. But many many people who are of Javanese descent don't even speak Javanese, especially if they were born in Jakarta or in the western part of Java.

<comment><USER2> It seems likely to me that people who are speaking Indonesian as a first language (e.g. Jakartans) have a substantially larger vocabulary than those that are speaking it as a second language (e.g. Yogyakartans). I would presume so, but that makes me wonder what the source of that larger vocabulary -- Malay? Javanese? English? Other languages native to the Indonesian archipelago? All of the above?

<comment><USER5> > It seems likely to me that people who are speaking Indonesian as a first > language (e.g. Jakartans) have a substantially larger vocabulary than those > that are speaking it as a second language (e.g. Yogyakartans).

They are speaking Indonesian as a second _native_ language, they will acquire Javanese and Indonesian at the same time but use Javanese in conversation and Indonesian when consuming TV, books and in school. So their grasp of formal Indonesian is going to depend mostly on education level.

As for colloquial Indonesian, due to the internet new colloquialisms spread much more rapidly to other parts of Indonesia. So it probably depends on how old said Yogyakartan is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Some things I learned when I was in Singapore and Indonesia about 10 years ago:

\- Our Singaporean host had business dealings in Indonesia and he said he could get by just relying on his Malay language skills, so it seems that Malay and Bahasa Indonesia have a decent degree of mutual intelligibility.

\- In one of the national museums we ran into an American professor who had been teaching part time in Indonesia for many years. Among other things, he mentioned that when Indonesia was founded, the government created a standard vocabulary for the language at the same time. He thought that that was one of the smartest things they'd done.

\- One Indonesian woman that I spoke with (who I presume was Javanese) mentioned that one of the benefits of Bahasa Indonesia was that the Javanese in one village might not be mutually intelligible (in the practical sense, anyway) with the Javanese spoken in another village a few miles away. But you could always switch to Bahasa Indonesia to communicate.

\- The word "Bahasa" means "language", and in Indonesian languages always seemed to be prefixed with ""Bahasa", e.g. "bahasa Indonesia", "bahasa Inggris", "bahasa Jerman". However, I recall several times hearing Indonesians using just the word "bahasa" when clearly referring to the Indonesian language. This was speaking in English though, so it might not be representative of how they'd say it in Indonesian.

<comment><USER6> >the Javanese in one village might not be mutually intelligible (in the practical sense, anyway) with the Javanese spoken in another village a few miles away.

>The word "Bahasa" means "language", and in Indonesian languages always seemed to be prefixed with ""Bahasa", e.g. "bahasa Indonesia", "bahasa Inggris", "bahasa Jerman".

It is probably derived from the Sanskrit word "bhaashaa" (writing it phonetically, if that is the correct term), since Indians had traveled to and culturally influenced parts of S.E. Asia in earlier centuries. Singapore (the name itself is from singha-pura which means lion city), Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, all have a lot of Indian cultural influence, not only in the sense of Buddhism, but words in the language, for people and place names, food ingredient influences and other things.

It's quite interesting, really, for me, as an Indian, because as I read various topics about those regions, which I keep doing now and then, I keep coming across such words and other influences that I can recognize as having something to do with India. Of course, that sort of reading (about any country) is interesting even without such influences existing :)

<comment><USER7> I don't know much about Sanskrit's history, but the linguistic similarities don't infer its influence on SE Asian languages. The influence could have gone the other way, from SE Asia to India (really, to South Asia; modern India's borders are a 20th century innovation, and Sanskrit seems to originate in Punjab, straddling modern India and Pakistan[0]) - and probably the influence would have gone both ways. Also, a third party could have influenced both, leaving them with similar vocabulary, and often influences are very indirect, such as Sanskrit's influence on European languages - it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in France.

[0] [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-Aryan- languages](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-Aryan-languages)

<comment><USER6> Check this out, as one example, in the History section:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia)

>The influence could have gone the other way

Can be, sure. My saying that there was influence in one direction did not rule out it happening the other way as well Good point.

>often influences are very indirect, such as Sanskrit's influence on European languages - it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in France.

Sure. I did not claim that. In fact, I've read a bit about the common features of Indian and European languages, etc. - and you can detect it too, if you listen to, or read, stuff in both Indian and European languages - e.g. mater (Latin) ~ mata (Sanskrit), pater (Latin) ~ pita (Sanskrit), hundreds more words that seem to sound similar or have a common root which historians say is due to the common Proto-Indo-European roots of both, which is the topic of a descendant (but really ancestor :) link of the one you posted: [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-European- languages](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-European-languages)

Also see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo- European_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language)

and

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo- Europeans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans)

Not sure how true all of that is, though. I have a healthy skepticism about historians, particularly when they cross-quote each other, and make claims about the past that almost sound like they were present there at the time :) And another reason is how the heck can they know all that they claim to, about things so long ago.

<comment><USER7> > Not sure how true all of that is, though. I have a healthy skepticism about > historians

Is that supposed to be an argument against it? Have you examined the arguments and evidence, which thousands of experts have examined and been convinced by? What exactly do you object to?

<comment><USER6> > Have you examined the arguments and evidence, which thousands of experts > have examined and been convinced by?

Which "thousands of experts", are you referring to, exactly?

Sure, there could be many thousands of "expert" historians. My point is, have you personally "examined the arguments and evidence" of those thousands of experts, who you claim have been convinced by said evidence? If not, why are you arguing on their behalf?

>What exactly do you object to?

I'm objecting to the fact that _some_ of them (whose claims I have read in history or Sanskrit courses I studied in school), state things about people and events of centuries ago, as though they know for sure that those things happened in the way they claim - without providing evidence, except for their assertions, which anyone can make.

That's why I have a healthy skepticism about them.

<comment><USER6> And if you are asking me if I have examined the evidence of those historians, what is _your_ evidence for making this statement (in an earlier comment above, by you)? :

>it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in France.

It may be true or false, but have you examined the evidence for it, if any? If not, how are you saying it categorically, and questioning my doing the same on another point (about historians)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People in America really don't appreciate the blessing of having a single (nearly) uniformly spoken language. Being able to drop in anywhere in a country of 300+ million people and being able to _converse_ with the locals (not just _communicate_ , but convey your deepest thoughts)--it's a benefit the vast majority of people in the world simply do not have.

This article touches on something I've been thinking a lot about lately--the deepness of language. I think people have this vision of a polyglot future with automatic computer translation. I think that's quite short sighted and misses how deep language goes. My mom, who was born in Bangladesh, learned English in school and moved to the U.S. as an adult. Though she has been in the U.S. for thirty years, she will never be able to communicate in English with the level of sophistication she does in Bengali. Indeed, even we (her family who know better) perceive her as someone capable of a limited range of thinking as a result of the limited range of what she can express verbally in English.

All that resulted in quite a shock for us when she started using Facebook. On Facebook, she can sit and mull things over and think about what she wants to say. So we'll be taken aback by her posts quoting Dostoevsky or whatever (she was a voracious reader of classic literature translated into Bengali). It's a stark example how hobbling it can be to be forced to communicate in a language that is not one's own (an idea the article delves into). It also makes me skeptical of any idea that we can establish meaningful communications built on automated translation.

<comment><USER9> Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?

<comment><USER10> Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin.

Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to do with Mandarin (The Shanghainese use of tones is closer to Scandinavian languages than other Chinese languages!). In Hong Kong, Mandarin would be your _third_ language in school, unused in public except to communicate with visiting mainlanders.

Writing is basically isolated from the spoken language, so there the primary concern is that some areas use traditional Chinese, whereas others use simplified.

<comment><USER11> That's exaggerated, outside of Cantonese-speaking areas Mandarin is the native language of the younger generations.

<comment><USER12> That isn't true. Many people will speak their local dialect as a native language, even outside of cantonese speaking areas. My wife is from a town in Hunan, her mandarin is native, but that's because her mom and dad were from different places in Hunan. But there are still many kids in that area who speak Mandarin with a heavy accent...

Cantonese isn't very special as Chinese dialects go; e.g. Taiwanese/Fujianese (Min Chinese) are just as proud of their dialect (more so in Taiwan where the push for mandarin is not as strong as on the mainland).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It makes sense that the language is too young to have evolved to be a means of communication.

I remember being surprised that the phenomenon of colonial rulers of a country imposing their own language on the population (occurred with the British wherever they went) was not true for Indonesia. The Dutch seemed to have kept their language out of reach for most of the local population. There being no translation for a lot of words, especially legal terms, from Dutch to local languages, a lot of Dutch words ended up being part of Bahasa Indonesia. This could be more cause for it to feel like a foreign language.

</comment><comment><USER14> If anybody would like to get the basics of it, here some Indonesians Natives willing to do conversation Bahasa / English conversation exchange:

[https://lessons.coffeestrap.com/learn/Indonesian](https://lessons.coffeestrap.com/learn/Indonesian)

Disclaimer: it is a language exchange sideproject I've been working on for a while (yes I know it needs some UX polishing work).

</comment><comment><USER15> It's always seemed wild to me that Indonesia doesn't come up more in general in the west. It seems like the only time I hear about it in the news is when there's a natural disaster.

<comment><USER16> Indonesia is poor, far away, not particularly significant geopolitically, and there's no large Indonesian diaspora in the West outside of the Netherlands. A large portion of Indonesian-Americans are actually ethnically Chinese.

<comment><USER17> It's a huge country in terms of both population and land, and with abundant natural resources including oil. It's the largest Muslim nation in the world, and also has significant numbers of religious minorities. It's adjacent to many other eastern and southeastern Asian markets. There's definitely interest to be had there.

<comment><USER18> Largest Muslim-majority nation. However, they are on a frightening trajectory towards becoming a Muslim nation. Their democracy is on increasingly thinning ice.

<comment><USER19> Islamisation of Indonesian politics has happened and faded away before, in the early 2000s. The current wave is worrisome, but there is no reason to believe it will rise indefinitely.

<comment><USER18> The growth in fundamentalist groups since 1998 has not faded. The foundation for Islamic identity politics is much sturdier in 2018.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article is hyperbolic and opinionated at best, and ignorant at worst. A vast majority of the country speaks Bahasa Indonesia as either a first or second language. You have to go to very remote villages to find people who don't speak it.

The author's idea that Indonesians have other "options" of languages to speak if they don't like Bahasa Indonesia is also laughable. People will generally know their own particular ethnic language, and may choose to speak it when they are only around others who speak it too, in the home for instance. But people rarely elect to learn a second local language that they didn't grow up speaking.

Bahasa Indonesia is used very widely, partly because the opportunity to use local languages is quite restricted, especially in cities, where the populations are much more diverse. Regions tend to have their own localised slang, but I think that's true everywhere in the world.

</comment><comment><USER21> Old (not fake) news: the difference between a dialect and a language is an army and a navy.

<comment><USER22> I've never liked that witticism. For one thing it breaks down really quickly - ie by that logic Welsh is a dialect of English, and Walloon French is a dialect of Flemish. It's also fairly irrelevant to me what a government thinks is a dialect when I want to discuss languages. IE ethnic chinese can call languages that are mutually unintelligable 'dialects' all they want, it doesn't change reality.

<comment><USER23> The Yiddish original, "a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot", was targeted at people who refused to view Yiddish as an independent language, but rather just as a dialect of German. The point was that if Yiddish-speakers had their own country, those people wouldn't have said that.

<comment><USER24> Similarly, I've heard several non-Bavarian Germans claiming Bavarian isn't a language, while the Bavarians claim it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sort of somewhat tangentially related, I've been watching a lot of Indian youtube recipe videos recently and was a bit surprised by the amount of English phrases being spoken. I know there's a lot of people who know English in India but it felt like a lot of videos the presenters/chefs would switch seamelessly from what I assume is Hindi to an English sentance and then back again.

It felt like around 20-30% of what was said was English, the rest I assume Hindi, but I guess what really surprised me was that it wasn't one or the other, but a mixture of both.

<comment><USER26> Due to the long presence of British in India and its influence, English words have seeped into common usage across all Indian languages (except Sanskrit, which is not practically used by a substantial number of people for general conversation and communication). You'd find sentences in most languages constructed with some English words that have become common over time. The reasons for this are many, including the fact that English is considered as a language of the higher classes in society and as the one that provides better opportunities in life. What's also interesting, or surprising, is that the accents and pronunciation of the English words also change with the location and the influences of the local language.

In many states in India, and more so in the south, you'd find many people who're able to converse in at least two to four languages, including English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Javanese is not supported by Windows, MacOS, or Ubuntu, but is supported by Google Translate.

[http://peterburk.github.io/i2018n/](http://peterburk.github.io/i2018n/)

There are more Javanese speakers in the world than Java programmers. Please look at the other graphs that I made if you're interested in internationalisation!

</comment><comment><USER28> The only really successful state-demanded language simplification was in Korea, with Hangul. Wonder how that happened, but Korean really is extremely simple and successful.

New Greek is also successful, but this grew out naturally such as English out of modernized Nieder-German. These had nothing to do with dialect unification efforts, only natural modernizations.

The neighboring Filipino and Tagalog (it's popular natural dialect) are also extremely simple, such as english or korean, a simple mixture of Malay and Spanish. The Filipino effort is comparable to the standardization effort in Indonesia, but was much more successful. Even if English is their standard language in government now.

So in summary, a modernized language is a necessity, but only if it grew naturally and is not too revolutionary. People tend to simplify their language anyway, regardless of books, news or TV.

<comment><USER29> Almost everyone speaks the standard Filipino anywhere in Philippines because it is taught as a basic subject alongside English. However, Filipino is not the majority's first language here but the grammatical structure is the same most of time so it is easy to learn.

But today, Filipino as its own language is diminishing its own identity due to its flexibility to combine and replace using English words. As an example, you will rarely hear the Filipino word for sorry today, because "sorry" has been integrated closely in conversational dialogues as a word replacement because it is simple to say and short to write.

<comment><USER30> I hear "sorry" somewhat frequently in Munich now from Germans, I think because there isn't a simple direct equivalent in German; "Entschuldigung" is more like "excuse me" and "es tut mir leid" sounds kind of...stiff or overdone. At least that's what it seems like to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have worked in Indonesia for the past decade, various mine sites, various islands.

Never heard of this before. I know different cities had dialects/words but never had an issue speaking/listening bahasa with the locals.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone interested in conlangs would do well to study Malay. It is not a constructed language per se, but modern standard Malay (Bahasa baku) underwent a massively interesting standardization phase in the 60s which resulted in a fairly consistent language today.

By contrast the standardization of Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia baku) looks comical. The rules of Indonesian are all over the place.

Unfortunately in Malaysia, modern spoken and indeed modern written Malay has gone the same way Indonesian has gone - textspeak and internet lingo made all the standardization efforts in vain. But from an intellectual point of view, standardized Malay has very nice consistent properties to it - it's a lot harder on rules than English.

For example in English there are no rules on nounification of verbs. In Malay, you simply wrap the lemma of the verb between "per...an" \- so speak "kata"(meaning speak) becomes "perkataan" (meaning words). There are clearly also rules regarding spelling - "cegah" (deter) becomes "pencegahan" (deterrence) instead of "percegahan", but by and large the standards are sane and doesn't have very many exceptions, or have exceptions that can actually be encoded by rules (unlike English where it's I before E except before C, except that's not true at all).

And the best part about the standardization is that it doesn't shun the heritage of the language. There are a lot of Australasian aboriginal linguistic features that made the cut and got improved in my opinion.

Take for example, the linguistic feature that is repeated across many Australasian aboriginal languages: repeating a word to indicate a higher count.

"Laki" as a root word means "man". "Laki laki" means... "men". The standardization process that happened in the 50s formalized a rule that had been in the language earlier - "Lelaki" means "men". Interestingly here's a Indonesian grammar blog that discusses this: [https://www.katabaku.com/2016/05/laki-laki-atau-lelaki- yang-...](https://www.katabaku.com/2016/05/laki-laki-atau-lelaki-yang-benar- adalah.html) (TL;DR - "lelaki" is "true" while "laki-laki" is canonical form)

In Malaysia, the word "laki-laki" is no longer being used. Instead the language and community converged upon using the word "lelaki", which is a more succint and elegant way of using it.

TL;DR - Malay went through a very nice standardization process while Indonesian went through in my opinion, a not-as-well-thought-of standardization process.

<comment><USER5> "laki" actually an example of a word that changes its meaning when reduplicated instead of creating a plural. "laki" means _husband_ and "laki- laki" means _man_ or _male_. So you have to be careful about using for producing plurals. Generally Indonesians prefer to denote number contextually e.g. by saying "one apple" or "many apple".

<comment><USER32> "laki" means man in Malay, but is a synonym for "suami" (husband) in Indon. I assume "lelaki" slipped into Indon lingo after a while (if you read old Malay books, before the 1960s, the word "laki-laki" is used a lot more than "lelaki") - I have no experience with written Indonesian stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I often see great articles from BBC travel, anyone know if there's an RSS feed?

</comment><comment><USER34> Claims about the relative simplicity or complexity of different languages are rarely grounded in actual linguistic evidence. Languages comprise so many parts that it's not even clear what the basis of comparison could be: is English, a language with highly restricted word order but without grammatical case marked on most nouns, more complex than Russian, a language with comparatively free word order but a highly articulated case system? Who can say?

With that in mind, the statements about Bahasa Indonesian being simpler or more rigid than other languages are more like social or cultural judgments than bonafide linguistic facts.

<comment><USER35> While I agree with you in general, a surprising number of grammatical features that make many other languages difficult to learn are missing in Indonesian. Some examples:

No grammatical gender

No plural forms of nouns

No grammatical case

No verb conjugations

No verb tenses

In addition, written Indonesian uses the Latin alphabet and has a very consistent phonemic orthography.

Of course, it also has some more complicated features, like formal and informal pronouns. But it still seems fair to me to say that it is grammatically simpler than many (most?) other spoken languages.

<comment><USER36> I don't think that is fair to say. There are lots of other languages that lack most/all of these features (e.g. Mandarin has no gender, limited number marking, no case marking, lack of inflections). Indonesian is not unique in that regard.

Indonesian verbs lack the tense, number and person agreement marking that is commonly found in European languages, but they have a lot of derivational morphology including complex voice and valency operations (Austronesian alignment[0], causatives, applicatives etc.)

Indonesian also has noun classifiers like Mandarin which have to be memorised like grammatical genders.

[0]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_alignment)</comment></comment></comment>


China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea Plan Renewable Energy Super Grid - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/21/china-japan-russia-south-korea-plan-renewable-energy-super-grid/ <comment><USER3> I'm crazy excited that this might actually have a chance to come to fruition. Back in my salary-man days, I worked for Hiroshi Fujiwara when he was doing work on Superconducting DC technology.

The idea was similar to this one -- set up solar and wind generators in the Gobi desert, and transmit the energy through a superconductor network to Japan, Russia and other countries. The Superconductor system (I believe) could transmit energy at nearly 99% efficiency,

We got to see the 200m superconductor track at Chubu University, which was amazingly cool.

[1][http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389212021268)

<comment><USER4> but how much would it cost to operate such a channel?

<comment><USER5> Looking at some ballpark estimates what targets it should hit, Japan consumes about one petawatt hour per year. We assume 10% of electricity consumption for one cable and a 10% slice of the value for transport. Electricity price 20 c/kWh:

10^15 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.2 x 10^-3 = 2 billion dollars per year

I have been saying it for a while. Looks like the renewables will cause a lot of long distance electricity transfer lines to be built.

It's an industry ready for some disruption too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the biggest blocker for this project is the nations involved. Can such degree of cooperation be made between nations that have huge political differences, violent history and territorial claims between each other?

Other than that, this could set the precedent for more regional integration, which is awesome.

<comment><USER7> Developing these kinds of infrastructures that require tight collaboration between governments are a warranty of peace on the future. When countries are interdependent for their mutual growth and well-being, they have no other option than maintaining peace and good diplomatic relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The article's about two months old - but I thought it was a fascinating idea.

I know that one of the challenges of harnessing renewable energy is battery technology not being up to he task (yet), but I'd never thought about creating a grid large enough that demand is smoothed out over a large region.

<comment><USER8> Could it be feasible at the scale of the planet ?

<comment><USER9> You can link US / Russia with a 50 mile under sea electric cable. Which would join, Afro-Eurasia with the Americas fairly easily.

However, local storage ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped- storage_hydroelectricity)) is going to be cheaper than shifting solar power around the globe. Further, while you can connect any two grids (worst case generator / alternator pair) that does not make it cost effective.

<comment><USER10> The Bering Strait? Easily?

There's all sorts of things that are easy if you focus on an easy part that doesn't accomplish anything.

<comment><USER9> You may have missed my point. Under sea cables that distance are proven tech. EX: ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_to_England_Interco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man_to_England_Interconnector) a 40 MW 65 mile under sea cable.)

However, my point was geography was not the problem.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking more about the thousands of miles separating the straight from any large groups of people (on both sides).

Yes, crossing the straight is nicely feasible. Putting power to that crossing is not so nicely feasible.

<comment><USER9> Sure, sending 100+GW of power though there would be ridiculously expensive and a huge waste of resources. However, there are some people in the area so sending "nominal" amounts of power would not be an issue.

I do wonder how connected these areas are to a wider power grid. It's probably cheaper to just have local power generation than run power cables to these remote areas I mean [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales,_Alaska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales,_Alaska) has 150 people.

ED: Anyway, it's an economic not a technical problem.

<comment><USER10> _ED: Anyway, it 's an economic not a technical problem._

Arguably the more important aspect of feasibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a small country I really wouldn't want to be reliant on a grid shared with either China or Russia.

<comment><USER12> "Controlled by", I would understand, but why not "shared with"?

<comment><USER11> Once you're a small country sharing the grid with a big neighbor , I'd imagine it would be very difficult to go independent after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The next step in the process was the establishment of the nonprofit Global > Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization

Interesting, that reminds me of IXPs. E.g. AMS-IX is one of the world's largest exchange points (shared infrastructure) and it is a non-profit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm generalizing too much - but couldn't we say that electricity generation is starting to resemble the internet more and more?

Servers (generators) that provide content, users (consumers) that want to consume it. As more and more people use things like rooftop solar - <USER2> servers are brought online, and the infrastructure needs to be updated accordingly to direct the "traffic" well.

<comment><USER14> That's exactly the idea behind the term "smart grid". Rather than a network which has a relatively static set of inputs and outputs, new nodes in either category can join the network at any time. The US is doing research on smart grids, though I don't have any real familiarity with it - would love to hear more from someone who does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about all the coal miners that will lose their jobs because of renewable energy?

<comment><USER16> Getting real tired of coal miners, their expired jobs and their voting rights.

<comment><USER17> > and their voting rights

I bet you call yourself a 'liberal democrat'.</comment></comment></comment>


"Why do you work in security instead of something more lasting?" - <AUTHOR> http://addxorrol.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-do-you-work-in-security-instead-of.html <comment><USER2> I asked myself this same question when my work was focussed on attack research, and the result was that I stopped working on it, finding some clever new attack is great, but no one really cares after it is patched. So I focussed on building tools as well, automated reverse engineering and static analysis tools. Tools are getting better, but even then it's not clear that any of the current tooling approaches will have significant lasting pay offs.

For all the talk of security being a rapidly changing field, it's only true in the same sense that JavaScript frameworks are rapidly changing, lots of churn but not so much progress.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean "no one really cares after it is patched"?

At that point, you get a chance to find a new attack. People really care. The government adds a new task order to your contract and then you get working on the problem.

<comment><USER2> No-one really cares about what you have come up with before except as proof of your abilities.

You can't keep building on top of your work as you can in other parts of CS. Personally, this lead to a desire to keep bugs private since then at least you could privately chain things together in interesting ways.

It can be a very lucrative career, and it can be a lot of fun if you enjoy turning puzzles over in your mind (though this really applies more to tricky exploit dev), but I did not find it satisfying in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I transitioned from writing trading software to writing software to secure networks (with a brief startup co-founding stint.) Here's my biased, objective, and anecdotal opinion.

Security is just another knowledge domain. More than any other domain, security has a clear divide between understanding the math behind cryptography (primes, elliptic curves...), understanding how to implement correct and high- performance code (sse4, avx,simd..), and high-level use of crypto implementations to create secure protocols (diffie-hellman, tls...) On top of that there's a new category that's emerging in the field of what I would call embedded/root of trust security in the form of SGX and TPM.

If you stay with the mind-set of "use TLS and PGP" that's very commendable but probably not very challenging. Going all the way up and down the crypto stack is extremely challenging. Squeezing every last cycle out of CPUs is very lasting (we'll always need crypto )and very transferable (mobile devices, clients, servers, embedded, companies of any size, companies of any domain...) It's also political and philosophical at times. Basically it's a hacker's dream to work in security.

<comment><USER5> Very few people working in security do cryptography. In fact, despite the fact that the author of this post is a trained cryptographer, virtually none of his professional work is cryptographic (he's a reverser).

I think one of the good things about security is that it exposes you to so much domain knowledge (like cryptographic algorithms and bare-metal programming).

But executing well in security (and particularly software security) is more about a specific kind of problem-solving mindset. The unique difference between security and other subfields of CS is that security provides you with an adversary; it's intrinsically competitive in a way that other kinds of computer science aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been wondering why I worked in it for a different reason: overall lack of demand for real thing and apathy of users. Industry faces a constant, uphill battle that gets steeper every year due to the apathy. The intellectual challenge is great in terms of having to learn everything part of the stack down to EM effects of transistors. Then try to outsmart a world full of brains in a design. You get moments you feel proud of.

Overall, though, it looks like it might have been more satisfying if I stayed on the automatic programming track. Doing things like program/hardware synthesis, static analysis, functional programming compilation, and so on. Have a steady stream of useful inventions plus more users happy to adopt them. Must be nice for _those_ fields. ;)

<comment><USER7> That's a very insightful take. When you say "apathy of users" are you speaking of "higher level" users like CIOs and network admins or just the end users / average users in the network or both?

It may be a truism or cliché but it seems correct from my perspective as a "devops type": security is a losing game in favor of attackers due to asymmetry between attack and defense.

Perhaps automation will change that? :)

<comment><USER6> "When you say "apathy of users" are you speaking of "higher level" users like CIOs and network admins or just the end users / average users in the network or both?"

All of them. There were secure computers far back as Burroughs, which was successful.

[http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...](http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burroughs%20B-5000.htm)

The drivers of most of the computing industry were more features and speed at lowest cost. Quality or security meant less of that. Tradeoff began there. By about 80's, we mostly knew how to secure computers from specs down to CPU. Market demand was so non-existent almost nobody was producing them. Per one of INFOSEC's inventors, Roger Schell, there was some demand by CIO's (?!) but they believed IT industry intentionally left bugs in products to sell them fixes & would never sell them bulletproof stuff. So, maybe they weren't dumb. ;) By 90's, DOD's Computer Security Initiative that promised to _only_ buy secure products for certain stuff plus TCSEC critera for building them led to a number being on market. Almost nobody in DOD or regular market bought them. Rinse repeat with only a few niches doing higher assurance with high unit price due to low volume: safety-critical like aerospace, a few companies selling to military, TEMPEST industry, HSM vendors, and some smartcards. Smartcards being exception to low volume & high price. Even most on that list have been lowering amount of assurance & increasing risky features due to market demand.

Now, let's look at user side. Vast majority of time users get to choose between a secure/private or insecure/surveillance-oriented product they will choose the latter. Just look at whose dominating in messaging, storage, thin clients, remote access, calenders, document formats, etc. Almost got an exception in browsers with Chrome, based on OP Web Browser that was secure, but they watered down security because they knew demand-side wanted blazing fast over kind of fast but secure. There's now privacy-oriented, easy-to-use apps for various things on smartphones for $1-10. Desktop stuff free or even $5 a month on critical functions that are still easy to use. Almost nobody uses these even when they get a lot of press.

So, it seems demand for actual security is almost non-existent even when it gets main function done, performs acceptably, is plug-and-play, and is inexpensive to free. I mean, if they don't care at that point, what can you do? I think it's a fatal flaw of human nature in the way people's minds make tradeoffs. Now, I encourage people to instead get into established companies in senior roles or do startups where the product is good, people use the heck out of it, it stays competitive, and you just bake security into it. Or just avoid INFOSEC altogether for something not set up to fail. :)

"Perhaps automation will change that? :)"

I had some hopes for that. There were tools like 001 Toolkit by Hamilton, various 4GL's, logic programming, and so on that basically let you specify the problem where the tool would do everything else. One could do something like that which embeds good security into it. Opa language does that for web apps as an example. Additionally, the automated analysis tools for code with or without annotations are getting _really good_. They're at a point where users almost does no work. They also get almost no adoption even by companies that "care about quality." ;) Anyway, machine learning that studied tons of annotated codebases to learn what annotations go with what code patterns might result in tools that correctly annotate new code & just run in background of build process. There's potential there but manual effort will still be required due to false positives/negatives. And new domain logic.

So, there's some brainstorming on that.

<comment><USER8> The problem with selling for consumers is simple: it's hard to achieve credibility. On the one hand, anti-virus software , that we all bought, sucked. So we don't have much trust in security vendors.

On the other, after hearing about the crazy stuff hackers do, like stuxnet or the more trivial daily privacy news, make people think the task is impossible. And even what's possible - it's hard to quantify benefits.

Combine that with network effects , the marketing power of free apps and default apps, and the complexity of it all - it's natural that most users don't the time/money to spend on this.

<comment><USER6> "The problem with selling for consumers is simple: it's hard to achieve credibility. "

I probably need to think on that angle more for the consumer side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > 1\. Original thinkers > 2\. Tolerance of non-conformism and diverse > educational backgrounds > 3\. Intellectual honesty

This also sounds a lot like the overall SRE org at Google. I've never worked with a more no-nonsense, brutally honest group who are open to everybody's contributions.

Incidentally this isn't the first time I've seen this connection between security and (Google) SRE. This talk at USENIX talks about the intersection between "privacy engineering" and SRE: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx2y2yi0rZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx2y2yi0rZc)

<comment><USER10> Except that Google is fairly infamous for having educational background as one of their primary criteria. There are theories that close knit groups tend to overestimate their own diversity since they are more sensitive to differences among themselves e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out- group_homogeneity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity)

<comment><USER11> Like in many cases, perception lags reality. Google was already starting to broaden out past Ivy League candidates when I was hired (2008), and it's been almost 8 years since then. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't source enough candidates from just the top schools to fill the open positions; they're at 66,000 employees now.

SRE actually seemed one of the more educationally diverse organizations while I was there - it's a field where skills are easily measured and passion for the job you do tends to result in better performance than educational background. Search Quality was still overweight Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/IIT/etc at the time, as was Research and X. Chrome and Apps had a wide variety of backgrounds, including a number of really good people without college degrees. Ironically, the departments that seemed to have the biggest Ivy-League bias were AdSales and HR; when there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree.

<comment><USER12> _When there are few objective ways of judging candidates, more weight gets placed on educational pedigree._

About as sad as a statement of a company's (or in this case, a specific department's) culture as one could make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _I described what I do for a living to him (reading code for subtle mistakes), and he said "that sounds like one of the worst imaginable jobs ever". He is a builder._

I find great interest in finding bugs. Writing code is actually an easier job: it is well defined with inputs, outputs and your keyboard in between.

Human error, in contrast, could be anything. Someone made a typo. Someone used a compiler that had a bug. Or the CPU had a bug. Or they didn't ship the product right. Or they wrote the password on a postit. Human error is unbounded, which is what makes it so intellectually challenging and interesting to find.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Predictions about what is "lasting" are very difficult to make :-)

It's kind of sad when you realize that a lot of the code you write will eventually be rewritten or lapse out of use, or be replaced by something better.

It's very hard to find truly "lasting" work in this world. Maybe research?

<comment><USER15> >It's kind of sad when you realize that a lot of the code you write will eventually be rewritten or lapse out of use

It's funny, I actually get sadder when I find out code I wrote a long time ago is _still in use_. The deployment tool I wrote for reddit ended up lasting six or seven years. Some of the stuff I wrote at eBay is still in use today.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand why that's sad at all. There's something to be said about code that works well enough, it is needed for a long period of time without being removed or replaced.

We don't pine for bridges that need to be torn down every few years.

<comment><USER17> If my code shows how less competent I was in the past, then I will definitely want to rewrite it. Unfortunately, I've known some people who can't touch code other people have written (or have touched), even if that "other person" was themselves 6 months ago, without doing a large unnecessary rewrite, invoking a crazy combination of lost features and freshly reinvented wheels.

<comment><USER16> I think we can agree though, most code is "good enough", and there's always room to improve, refactor, and make it better.

Even if your code shows you were less competent, it worked (hopefully)! A lesson was still learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From the point of view of a frontend dev front, things aren't much different:

security guy: You accumulate lots of experience over the years, where most errors happen, common culprits, but you _know_ the actual application of these ideas will always be different over time.

frontend guy: You gain lots of experience over time about common architectures, common best practices, common tooling, you _hope_ that the knowledge you accumulated will stay relevant over the following years, but in reality, except some basic concepts, everything changes. :)

I really liked his post. He pointed out to some deep issues like "Intellectual honesty" which I've been concerned about too(yea even in math) but I don't think the security sector is immune to these.

</comment><comment><USER19> Your title insinuates that security is not lasting....computer security has been around for decades, pretty much since the inception of the internet, and it is not going to go away. So what do you mean security is not lasting?

<comment><AUTHOR> (not the article author)

The lifetime of exploits/defenses (in an ever-evolving threat landscape) is likely to be shorter than the lifetime of widely adopted application software.

<comment><USER19> It's true the landscape changes rapidly, in terms of specific bugs found in specific pieces of code, but that is the same reason security never stagnates and will always be needed.

<comment><USER5> He's not addressing the question of whether security will always be needed. He's addressing the fact that the work product of a software developer working seriously in security will have a half-life of just a few years, while the work product of a generalist developer might live for decades.

Dullien is a software developer; he's the author of BinDiff, the first popular binary diffing tool, and of a suite of other reversing tools like it (he's been at Google for several years now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ar-Curunir It seems like the author approached crypto (and security) from a perspective of breaking things. Sure, that's a fundamental part of both fields, but the harder (and IMO) more fun part is building secure systems.

That's the entire reason you have proofs of security in crypto: to show that breaks are unlikely. I don't quite see why crypto should be "blindly result- oriented", and whether that's even a good thing; when public key crypto was invented it was wildly impractical.

The vast majority of crypto is usually not about breaks.

<comment><USER5> The opposite is true.

There's no discipline in computer science that is _more_ about breaks than cryptography. The whole field is refined down to the tension between performance and vulnerabilities. What you can do in a cryptosystem is defined by breaks; progress in the field is punctuated by breaks.

For what it's worth: Thomas Dullien is a cryptographer by training; he was one of Dobbertin's doctoral students.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Perhaps you refer to a specific part of applied crypto; most crypto, from what I've seen, is not focused on breaks of the cryptanalytic kind (as in "oh, let's try to break SHA256!").

Note that I'm speaking from an academic perspective.

<comment><USER5> No, I'm referring to theoretical cryptography as well.

One example: the CAESAR competition that is trying to select a portfolio of next-generation AEADs. Ciphers and constructions are entered, and submissions are sorted by the success of attacks.

Another example: databases and format-preserving encryption. It might look like Order Revealing Encryption is an exercise in _building_ things, but it's also a response to vulnerabilities in Order Preserving Encryption. One team develops something like cryptdb; another tears up cryptdb and uses its findings to design Cipherbase (or whatever).

Unlike in generalist software development, most new things in crypto are responses to breaks, often by the authors of the breaks.

<comment> Ar-Curunir I can agree with the assessment of encrypted DBs and SSE schemes, but I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish crypto. Sure, I'm not disagreeing that people don't break things; I'm just feel like that's not a primary focus of most academic cryptographers; taking a look at the papers in the last few CRYPTOs and EUROCRYPTs only consolidates this feeling.

One exception to that is perhaps multilinear maps, for which candidates are proposed and broken all the time, but once a assumption becomes battle-tested then I feel the focus shifts to building things out of these assumption

<comment><USER20> > I don't feel like that's the case for a huge portion of theoretical-ish > crypto.

You could always verify this feeling:

[https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint- bin/search.pl?last=365&title=...](https://eprint.iacr.org/eprint- bin/search.pl?last=365&title=1)

<comment> Ar-Curunir ePrint is not necessarily the best indicator for such things, since essentially anybody can post there, but even so, from some random sampling it seems like more than a majority of papers are constructive and not about attacks.

<comment><USER5> Let's try this, instead: can you name some important fundamental theoretical work in cryptography that isn't defined by attacks? Obviously, that's a subjective judgement. Whatever you name though, we can just look and see how much of it is defined by attacker capabilities.

<comment> Ar-Curunir Zero knowledge proofs? Multiparty computation? These are the staples of theoretical crypto.

<comment><USER5> Ok, let's say that those are. What's an important paper in either, so we can look at it more closely?

<comment> Ar-Curunir The very foundational paper for zero knowledge did not have much to do with attacks. Similarly for many many subsequent works.

Similarly for MPC. Most work in MPC is about improving efficiency or proving security against stronger classes of adversaries; it is not in finding breaks of these protocols.

As I said earlier, tye majority of crypto research is in the following scenario: pinning down a battle-tested assumption, using that assumption in a provably secure manner to construct new systems. zero knowledge, MPC, ORAM, etc. all fall within this paradigm.

Constructing new assumptions is obviously a task where attacks are necessary, but new assumptions come along every 5-7 years; the intervening period is dominated by this black box use of assumptions.

EDIT: see this[1] listof most cited security and crypto papers; very few attack papers.

[1] [http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security- papers-2013-2014...](http://saweis.net/posts/most-cited-security- papers-2013-2014.html)

<comment><USER20> > The very foundational paper for zero knowledge did not have much to do with > attacks. Similarly for many many subsequent works.

Dave designs a ZKP protocol for a specific application.

Jane finds a side-channel in the protocol that leaks some data about the secret being verified and publishes it.

Is it still a zero knowledge proof?

> Similarly for MPC. Most work in MPC is about improving efficiency or proving > security against stronger classes of adversaries; it is not in finding > breaks of these protocols.

How do you prove security against stronger classes of adversaries without finding breaks in existing protocols, or at least trying to do so?

<comment> Ar-Curunir The property of being zero knowledge is entirely separate from properties of the implementation; side channels were simply absent from the original model. Either way, for every zero knowledge protocol, side channels are relevant only on the prover's side; verification cannot allow anyone to learn any information about the witness underlying the proof (other wise the proof is not zero knowledge).

Sure, attacks can motivate some of the theory that is created, but most theory work only very loosely uses these attacks as motivation. A number of strengthening of the attack model are simply questions of curiosity: if we strengthened the threat model in this way, what guarantees do we have. Very rarely is it motivated by an actual attack.

<comment><USER5> At this point, I'm just going to say I take your point by stand by my own. Cryptography is unique among the disciplines we deal with in information security in being motivated entirely by attacks.

In software engineering, we're solving problems we've known how to solve since the 1970s. The challenge is solving them as programming environments and user interfaces get more flexible and performant, and as the amount of code we have to secure increases at a rate that outpaces our ability to verify it.

That's not the case with cryptography. In fact, if you include constructions along with underlying algorithms, it's difficult (I can't do it off the top of my head) to think of _anything_ we use today that was secure in the 1970s.

Most cryptography we use today wasn't widely available as recently as the 1990s --- not because nobody had invented the underlying basic concepts, but because the constructions that animated those concepts were terribly insecure.

<comment> Ar-Curunir But that's what I'm saying; there is lots of cryptography that is entirely unmotivated by attacks, like:

work on determining the size of complexity classes like CZK and SZK;

Determining lower bounds of round complexity of MPC in various models;

Determining the kinds of assumptions different primitives can be based upon;

Determining the complexity classes supported by different delegation of computation schemes, and the assumptions these can be based on;

Determining whether you can obtain particular primitives out of others, such as OWPs from OWFs in a non blackbox manner, seeing what iO can be used for, etc;

Improving asymptotic efficiency of various primitives, like NIZKs (see SNARKs).

I think the difference in our viewpoints comes from the communities we're; I'm in the theoretical, rooted in complexity theory side of things, whereas you appear to be on the more applied side of crypto, given your emphasis on things that are being used in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because it's cool.

That's really my answer. Maybe I'm setting myself up for career failure, but I just enjoy having some Russian hacker lob a new puzzle at me every couple of weeks.

</comment><comment><USER22> I definitely understand the sentiment. In high school and university, I did my share of "informal penetration testing", and always loved it. But when I went to look for a job, I came to the "building vs breaking" crossroads, and went with building. Fast forward a few years, and I found a job building security tools. "Por que no los dos?"

</comment><comment><USER23> Um, I'm curious now at what stage anyone would think security analysis would ever become obsolete.

<comment><USER24> When AI starts writing programs? Then we would care about "intentions" rather than mistakes (as with humans).

<comment><USER25> Uhm no, if an AI writes software that contains mistakes the errors would still be important as now with human-written software. When a programmer makes a mistake usually we don't think about intentions but this is because we usually assume the mistake is unintentional. With AI we can ask ourselves if the mistake is intentional or not, but the mistake would still be important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think it's like garbage collector, they don't build anything, they keep the rats in check. We need people in maintenance jobs: repainting the road marks when they wear or finding the issues with the new version of a product.

<comment><USER27> I think it's a bit different than that. In security you are looking for weaknesses that other humans could take advantage of. This adversarial aspect is generally not present in maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Because lasting things are boring things that don't pay well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Didn't even read the article: Becuase it's an interesting problem.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the answer to the question went a bit off-tangent. IMO, what the original questioner had in mind was, "Why do you (or some people) take less challenging and/or mundane computer jobs over something that seems more "exciting" or something that will make a lasting impact?" And "Security" in this question was just an example of a mundane job that most people have in mind.

Sure, security can be/and is very challenging, exciting and lasting, but that's besides the point of the question.

The question was not whether security is challenging to the brains or "lasting", but more like "why do some programmers settle for less challenging jobs when they can do a lot more with their brains?"

<comment><USER31> I don't think security is any less challenging, more mundane, or smaller impact than other stuff. I personally find it more exciting and enjoyable. If I enjoy something, I am more likely to be more productive and "do more with my brain" than if I don't enjoy something.</comment></comment>


Do developers really love beer, or is it just a myth? - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2012/08/03/do-developers-really-love-beer-or-is-it-just-a-myth/

<comment><USER2> Okay, originally I was going to write this off as mere blogspam but I wanted to have some fun.

Issues:

1\. An ordinal scale with subjective verbiage?

2\. An ordinal scale with no natural middle (there are six options!)?

3\. An ordinal scale with 'select all that apply'?! How does that even work?

4\. The percentages add to more than 100%! That's not how percentages work. At least normalize the scale -- or change the Y axis.

There's nothing wrong with trying to promote your analysis firm (I like RedMonk!) but at least try and, you know, have good analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you do didn't notice, but it wasn't our survey, and we had nothing to do with its design. I agree that the design is not great, but c'mon, this is just for fun. When you can select multiple answers, the percentages no longer total 100 across options, only within each option vs all respondents.

<comment><AUTHOR> s/do didn't/didn't/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Developers also, on average, enjoy sex, recreational activities, and going on vacation. And bacon. Never forget the bacon.

<comment><USER4> I'm vegan

<comment><USER5> You can be vegan and like bacon. You just can't be vegan and _eat_ bacon.

...I'll show myself out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was a something people claimed? I demand another poll that asks if they've heard of the phrase 'all developers love beer' and think it's a common belief!

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what the geographic breakdown was like. I'd like to see preferences in America, vs. Russia, vs. the middle east.

</comment><comment><USER5> I will never for the life of me understand the hate people have for Corona.

Granted, it should probably be classed under some yet unnamed category of beverage other than "beer", but I still like it.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if it's just my area of north England but Corona is consider quote a good drink, and you always get it with a lime.

<comment><USER9> Corona with lime is tasty on a hot day with Mexican food. Like jlgreco said, though, at that point it tastes less like "beer" and more like "Corona with lime" - good, but not good beer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am a developer and yes I do like beer. I am a human, who would have thought? I also like long walks and holding hands with girls on the beach, then having sex. I hate the stereotype that makes it seem like developers are different to ordinary people, some of the developers I work with you wouldn't even be able to pick that they're developers, they don't walk around in Github t-shirts, wearing glasses and throwing words like release cycle and debugging around.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is meaningless without comparing to non-developers, or the general population. For all we know from this data, developers may like beer _less_ than non-developers. Combine this with the problems cited by jmduke, and I'm not sure it is enhancing the reputation of the "developer focused industry analyst firm" that published it. Yes, I have no sense of humor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even without the contrast (impossible given this particular dataset since the survey wasn't given to a control), it's still interesting. Here's why -- when you consider the broader context of the outlash against beer/alcohol at conferences, notice that only 5% of developers said they hated beer. That apparently means a tiny minority of people could have an outsized influence on conference behavior. Note that this survey wasn't given purely to conference- goers, so it's not selection bias.

<comment><USER11> Good point... I didn't know this was about getting drunk at conferences. Objection withdrawn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this compare to human beings in general (and then for men vs women)... I would imagine if you looked at data outside of developers, you'd see pretty much the same results, especially when taking into account the male bias in developer culture.

</comment><comment><USER13> A few good beers:

* Delirium

* Anchor Steam

* Carlsberg

* Negra Modelo

Contrary to popular belief, Budweiser, Coors Lite, et. al. are not actually beers but rather beer-flavored water that also contains alcohol.

<comment><USER14> When somebody asks me if I want a Budweiser, Coors Lite, etc. I reply I like beer, not alcoholic water. I usually tend to go for beer in the category of porters and stouts, and ales some times. Negra Modelo is what I drink when I don't have so much choice, but I live near Portland, OR. so beer selection is usually not a problem around here.

<comment><USER5> If there is one thing I have learned in this life, it is that locals always think their region has a better than average beer scene.

The reality of the situation is that (without exception that I am aware of) if you are close enough to a major city to be able to say that you are near that city with a straight face, then your beer selection is going to be just fine.

I would say with hesitation that this applies to larger geographic regions as well. States, 'coasts', _perhaps_ even countries and continents.

(If I have learned anything else in life, it is that you should always be gracious when someone offers you a beer.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious if this is partly because of it being a male dominated profession. I would assume polls of other professions with such chromosome skew would produce similar results.

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought the myth was developers love maryjane? Beer would seem to be a near universally loved adult beverage...

<comment><USER7> I think coffee is the universal stereotype. I'd wager that most of us prefer uppers to downers, at least while we're actively developing.

<comment><USER16> True, good point, caffeine and coffee really go hand-in-hand with the coder life - I switched from coffee to green-tea about 5 years back myself though.

Actually, depending on the type of pot and how you are wired it can be an upper or a downer (it's actually classified a hallucinogen). There are two strains - sativa and indica's - and for some the indica will knock you on your butt while the other will actually give you an odd focused, upbeat kind of buzz. Not that I would know personally, ahem...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What a great article...

</comment><comment><USER18> Who doesn't love beer.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pilsner Urquell FTW!</comment>