Political Theory

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Andris Birkmanis — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:11:43 GMT

We should see alot of mathematicians and other kinds of scientists too.

Programmers have a higher ratio of productive workers to, well, parasitic ones than scientists. I mean, of course, hired by private business vs. hired by the state. People used to getting grants because they "deserve" them are less conductive to libertarian ideas.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Kelvin Silva — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 04:16:26 GMT

We should see alot of mathematicians and other kinds of scientists too.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Anenome — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 03:52:57 GMT

RagnarD:

It definitely seems like there's a correlation, and I've been thinking it through trying to find an explanation....causation, if/then statements, critical thinking skills learned through debugging, but I'm starting to think the correlation is just that guys that post a lot on the internet tend to have deeper computers skills than the average user.

Well, a programmer has to think systematically and precisely. There are a lot of parallels to that kind of thinking and, say, logical and philosophical system-building.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

RagnarD — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:12:53 GMT

It definitely seems like there's a correlation, and I've been thinking it through trying to find an explanation....causation, if/then statements, critical thinking skills learned through debugging, but I'm starting to think the correlation is just that guys that post a lot on the internet tend to have deeper computers skills than the average user.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

gotlucky — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 07:23:26 GMT

@Clayton

Even though I'm no programmer, glad to hear it! Keep us posted!

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Kelvin Silva — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:57:42 GMT

http://direct.mises.org/community/forums/p/30958/489331.aspx#489331

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

DanielMuff — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:45:35 GMT

Hammers are centralized striking devices, like the statist military. Therefore, hammers are statist.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Andrew Cain — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:32:33 GMT

You said not to take you too seriously, so I won't.

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Kelvin Silva — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:30:45 GMT

Ill rephrase- They are more centralized, which could be a statist resemblance.

Dont take me too seriously about it, just wondering.

Also if we were to make an analogy- Linux you can customize however you want, but with windows you gotta follow the rules set by microsoft (which in this case would be the state).

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Andrew Cain — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:26:50 GMT

What are you doing? Computers are statist? It is a machine, it does not have beliefs or goals. Using linux does not make you "more libetarian."

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Kelvin Silva — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:19:54 GMT

I dont think there is a correlation. If anything, computers are pretty statist- centralized machines, everything is at a touch of a button.

However i guess it is more libertarian to use linux, than it is to use windows (but i myself use windows since i game).

But then again, programmers are intellectuals, and alot of intellectuals are socialists/leftists in some way, but then also why alot are libertarian?

Maybe libertarianism is the new intellectualism>?

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Clayton — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:02:22 GMT

Update on Babel: Development has been stalled for the last couple of months due to very heavy day-job workload. I hope to resume active development by the end of the year. I have cleared a couple unanticipated hurdles in the architecture of the language and I basically have the entire thing in my head, just need to find enough keyboard time to write it all out.

Clayton -

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Clayton — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:32:18 GMT

Addendum: By the way, the core Python, Ruby languages etc. are no better than Babel in terms of built-in web support, their web capabilities come from the available user-created libraries which you can include. Babel will be at least as easy to extend as any of these big-name languages are today. And none of those languages have built-in support for HTTP GET and PUT like the Babel core will, so if it's just a core-to-core comparison, I think Babel is more web-friendly.

In fact, I think it is easier to extend Babel with new functionality based on existing open-source code so I think it will have a leg-up in that way, as well. If you want to re-use your favorite web-development environment (say, curl), it's almost trivial to build a Babel-linkable library. You just write a few wrapper functions and you're on your way. Eventually, I hope to make an automated wrapper-function generator... then it will be a push-button operation to extend Babel with your favorite code library.

Clayton -

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

Clayton — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:18:54 GMT

How will it be better than Python, Java, Ruby, etc.?

Not better, just different. That said, I am developing it in such a way that I would prefer to use it over any of those languages.

Any use cases in mind?

Glad you asked. So, my view of languages is that nobody ever learns a language because it's "so powerful". Look at Lisp - it is clearly more powerful, flexible, you-name-it than any of the mainstream PLs. But nobody uses Lisp. Why not? Because they don't need to use it for anything. In order to enter widespread use, a language requires a killer app of some sort... an application which people are motivated to use and, hence, willing to add a new language to their vocabulary, if required. I didn't think this idea up on my own, there was some article I read somewhere that made the case and I'm convinced it's true.

So, I have an application in mind which is: an encrypted virtual drive that can be stored remotely (on the web) but which is encrypted client-side. I believe people would use this if it were available. The current solutions, such as dropbox, require you to encrypt as a separate step before sending the file out, which is an insecure usage model (info leaks through file names, user forgets to encrypt before sending, etc.)

How will it help me develop web apps?

It depends. I'm not going to write a web dev environment, in part because I don't know how and in part because I think it's a waste of time (that's part of why I don't know how). The browser model is fundamentally broken. The reason we use browsers is because data fetched from the ether is inherently dangerous... it could contain viruses, trojans, spyware, keyloggers, etc. But the browser itself is a fundamentally insecure container and it restricts the user experience in arbitrary ways that just workarounds for the insecurities inherited from prior web architecture.

I believe that a revolution is going to occur at some point. Instead of OS's and "the Web", I believe we're going to have something which I call a "compute environment." If you've used VNC, you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about. Basically, the user wants to be able to access his data at all times from a relatively consistent user interface, across all his devices. Apple is leading the way on this but I don't think their model scales. It will work for their hardware niche but the reality is that a piece of hardware becomes exponentially more useful the more devices it can connect to. The Apple model relies on segregation of Apple from non-Apple hardware. At some point, that model will break down.

A compute environment consists of: state, user-interface and business logic. Unix was really the first truly comprehensive compute environment and remains a formidable model of computation in the web environment despite the fact that it was not designed to be a web OS. I have to be honest: there's no way in hell I could write a complete compute environment but I think Babel will make a kick-ass component of some future, yet-to-emerge compute-environment. The Babel core could be used to implement the business-logic of the CE and the "killer app" of a virtual encrypted drive could be used to implement the state component. All that is left is UI and I have some kick-ass ideas for that too (just need to find someone crazy enough to implement them).

To get back to your question: will it help you develop web apps? Yes and no. It can help you with any intermediate processing (text processing, logic, etc.) but I'm not going to build in an HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. library. I'll leave that to someone else.

There will be a built-in HTTP client so you can say something like:

"http://www.foo.com/bar.html" slurp

... and it will pull the file bar.html down off the web through HTTP and place it on top-of-stack (TOS). If the web server also supports HTTP PUT, then you will be able to do the reverse:

"http://www.foo.com/bar.html" spit

... and it will generate an HTTP PUT request to put whatever is on TOS out to that file on that server. That's the extent of the built-in support for web, however, and its purpose is not to enable you to write an HTML browser (already plenty of those) but, rather, so you can pull down a Babel file off the web and begin executing it locally. This goes to the CE I was describing above... at some point in the future, there will be no "installing" of programs or apps, you'll just pull code right down off the web and execute it as-is. Yes, there are security problems but the browser is a highly sub-optimal solution to those security problems ... I believe Babel has a better solution (I can describe it if you're interested).

Clayton -

Re: Programming and Libertarianism

DanielMuff — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:27:41 GMT

How will it be better than Python, Java, Ruby, etc.? Any use cases in mind? How will it help me develop web apps?