This article seems to focus mainly on Western civilization. Not saying they aren't wonders. There were many engineering feats in the South/East Asian subcontinents that are not covered.
I have a bunch of these pencil brands Tombow, Mitsubishi. I usually buy them on ebay. Its an amazing experience to write with them... I usually use the H, HB to write, and its fascinating, how the premium ones H differs from an ordinary H. There is some paraphernalia that goes with it - sharpners, erasers.
I had lost the writing habit..coding invariably takes you to the keyboard. Gradually I'm writing more, and it slows down, and that helps. Its a very analog experience, and is a form of digital detox. I am also learning to draw, hence the splurging on pencils in the first place. While I'm not an artist (yet!) - its a whole another world with an amazing spectrum of varieties of pencils.
I bought a Dell 34 inch widescreen curved monitor 2 years ago for ~500. Somedays even that feels too narrow when I'm coding. 32 inch would feel restrictive.
Ballmer hated Linux & open source. He would've driven their cloud division to the ground trying to sell Windows servers in the cloud. It would've taken him another 20 years to accept that Linux was key to the cloud. VSCode (Visual Studio Code) - would never have taken birth. Microsoft survived and thrived once Ballmer had no option but leave.
In this era of Python development, Microsoft Windows still feels a step or two behind as far as using a Windows laptop for coding in the cloud. Python is the language of AI - not Asp.net, not C#. Ballmer would never have seen the writing on the wall. He would've pushed something wierd, like VBA .
That was Bill Gates. Bill Gates founded the company on BASIC and seemed to remain a fan of the language even as the rest of the world moved on to other languages.
Ballmer wasn't technical so appeared to have no skin in the game of which language "won", so long it was Microsoft Developer Tools like Visual Studio developers used to work on it (and what would become VS Code, which as many point out did start under Ballmer's tenure). That "Developers! Developers! Developers!" meme was directly an "I want to support developers wherever they are and however they want to work". Sure he was a huge Windows cheerleader and would want those Developers working on Windows machines, but he really did seem to want to see Windows be the best platform for developers to code for anything (including/especially the cloud).
In terms of Python specifically, IronPython was active and interesting during Ballmer's tenure and Ballmer helped form a team that was actively contributing to open source projects like Python (and Node and Redis and others) to make them all run better (sometimes much better) on Windows. Ballmer may have been afraid of open source as a business model, but he also seemed to realize the usefulness of open source for bringing developers (back) to Windows and he did start efforts in that direction.
I have as much disdain for the monkey man as the next OSS fan. But VSCode was always closed sourced crap at the arbitrary whims of a soulless zombie corp, and they never promised otherwise in a significant way. It's not relevant and not a good foundational signal or basis for any argument.
> they never promised otherwise in a significant way
It’s commonly promoted as „open source“ and this seems to be commonly believed. Pretty much everyone I tell that the official builds of VSCode are proprietary (and how proprietary they are) is pretty surprised.
That is Code OSS, MS official binary builds of Visual Studio Code, as explained at the top of the Readme, include proprietary code. MS also has several very popular proprietary extensions. Some of those extensions, older cersions were open source.
the old ‘embrace-extend-extinguish’ model is what it _truly_ is, f.e. , you cannot take extensions from m$ store and use it.
there have been large number of discussions around this topic, and folks have highlighted these concerns more articulately than i could ever hope to do.
The destructive EEE strategy is replaced by a constructive poisoning the well strategy. That's arguably moral progress while there is no legal or financial incentive to do so.
That's praise for Nadella, not Ballmer.
Support for linux was there, since the very early days of Azure. But at the time this was clearly Nadella's baby. AWS was running away with market share, and Azure gained some decent marketshare, at one point they said 25% of Azure revenue was on Linux, this was about 5 years ago or more, that can only have grown to now. No one lays that credit to Ballmer.
Microsoft's documentation wouldn't even acknowledge the present of Linux, I kid you not, till maybe 2012 or so. For example, pathnames like "My Folder" (spaces in folder names) - which are a no-no on any kind of server code (leave alone the block letters). This was as someone pointed out, Gates, since he was the tech architect (and hated linux or feared it ). In a sense, Linux rescued Azure, and Microsoft. Quite ironic, today we see Gates smiling (cluelessly imo), but Window's is still not a good environment for development - be it C# (a fine language), or Web. My colleagues on Windows struggle to run any Python code - all you need to do is git clone, followed by Pip install - that's still a challenge comparatively on Windows.
Actually there was a lot of open source happening under Ballmer - not because of him but in that time. VSCode’s beginnings were in an earlier similar product were from that time. He didn’t interfere or stop those projects. Attributing that to Nadella is just false.
Companies profiting off Open Source is a very common pattern. Look at AWS (amazon web services) long list of 'managed' services, and there are quite a few open-source candidates. I'm not saying Amazon is not adding anything to benefit users there, they are, but adding a management layer (with all their in-place templates/patterns for similar things) - wouldn't be a huge development or research effort - contrast that to developing the original code from scratch.
Then there will be engineers who will get certified on this tech, training companies, and the ecosystem just keeps taking root, where the source of the innovation is all but forgotten.
The owner of WPEngine is investing in billions - and they are contributing relatively little to the software that they never wrote, but got for free.
In my past non-profit we used WPEngine, that was about 10 years ago. Yes they were expensive but we didn't have people, nor did I (a backend python guy) want to mess with websites and be on the critical path. If I had been aware of, or known how this company was profiting from Open Source, I'd have taken my business elsewhere. Roughly 1K per year, base plan at the time, so, not a huge amount. We were broke, so there was no question of upgrades.
I guess the author, a historian, writes about ancient Indian mathematical contributions (a science of which he has no expertise presumably). These historical references I have learnt in various mathematical texts (the story of Fibonacci and al khwarizmi) - the journey across multiple centuries, of these innovations made by Aryabhata or Brahmagupta.
As an Indian, and as a math aficionado (and degree holder) - I wonder, that was about 1500 years ago. In that era, a discovery (as you can read it) took 500 years to move from Arabia to Europe, thanks to Fibonacci's writing. Contrast it to today's instant dissemination of information and breakthroughs. Yes those were the glory days of Indian civilization. We have a Ramanujan every 100 years in India. Breakthrough ideas (earthshaking ones like the concept of 0) emerging out of India are few and far between. Around 1000 years ago, the fountain of (world-changing) creativity and ideas seems to have dried up, as far as India is concerned. Maybe it was the invaders , easy to blame everything on outsiders, though - what is India today was 600 or 400 odd kingdoms, frequently warring each other - so turmoil was always there. And if you were a reclusive monk in a forest with a bunch of students, no Brit or Mughal dude was stopping you from innovating. So, the big question is - can we explain why genius ideas stopped (without blaming British, or Mughals etc) - because thanks to Indian's instincts, the first step is to blame the Brits/Mughals , so problem solved, proved, ostrich is happy in the sand.
I can only indulge in thought exercises , like : Aryabhata and Brahmagupta didn't have computers, didn't even have pencil and paper. They just sat there and thought. For months, or years. Or maybe they were walking. And gazed at the stars and observed and observed. And most likely, and importantly debated orally : endlessly with their teachers (in a monastery type place class sizes were small), peers- I believe this was a time in India's cultural history when debating, and disagreeing were positive things. In modern India, intellectualism has taken a back seat. To disagree is to be unpatriotic even. (Nalanda University comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda_mahavihara - not its modernized recreation which is likely going to be hardly attempting to break the mold). WhatsApp - the destroyer of brain cells by atrophy , has a grip on every mind.
We read about the great Greek debates. We see videos of Tibetan buddhist monks practice debating in a monastery. Surely this kind of debating, face-to-face is missing in today's world (without getting angry) - this is the equivalent of the modern cafe in Paris or Vienna, with Godel and co. debating . This debating society , was Nalanda back a thousand years until invaders burnt every manuscript down and slaughtered every monk almost - except the manuscripts the Chinese monks took back to the Emperor in China - they are the only written records of life that remain, that and some arabic ones.
Yet I hope new lotuses will bloom from India - we can never predict where the next genius or breakthrough idea will emerge from - why not Africa?
I think it's just that industrialization, the computer, and the Internet were such massive juice that even if you have a brilliant mind it doesn't matter because the guy with that tool can take anything you think of and make it better. Each of these is a step up so huge that no mind can match it. So you have to match the tool first before the minds start mattering.
The oral tradition was certainly strong but there was no dearth as such of writing instruments. What makes their work not easy to access is their poetic symbolism, sun is one, moon is two and so on. These symbolisms were not even one to one, thus always leaving a window a doubt about what they really meant in their verses.
Since you mention Fibonacci, you may know what we call Fibonacci series was worked out around 250 BC by Pingala as an exercise in enumerating meter of verse
The question is why has that innovation of breakthrough ideas dried up. Past glory is small consolation, or none at all. How long will we keep sharing these 1000-year old memes in 'modern' India? Maybe innovation still happens (likely) - but no one recognizes it, and it gets lost in the endless clamor and noise of meaningless rituals that define religion in India today - or there may be no ecosystem to surface it, ie bring to market.
What religion/culture was then in the time of Aryabhata (which no one really knows I suppose) - is very likely totally different than what it is today , i.e. a way to impose majority opinions with zero debate. Because Aryabhata and others created works which made it through the centuries of strife, they survived, they had an ecosystem that supported the genius - which seems to be lacking now in Modern India - which might explain why it has dried up - i.e. Indians aspirations are far less lofty, the bar is set quite low - because there is no lack of money, there is no lack of tools. Whether now, or 1000 years ago, they were recognized as authoritative, transformative works - do we have the current generation creating anything (to which the average Indian response is the last 70 years of liberal rule has to be ruled out, and undone first).
> Past glory is small consolation, or none at all.
I think its far worse. Current and in power ideology has co-opted scientific progress for romanticizing about a past, often fictional. That's why we have government patronage of fraudulent medicine-men and their medicine such as coronil that was supposed to ward off coronavirus and simultaneously fight the evil conspiracies of the western civilization that denied them their due glory.
I also misunderstood an aspect of your original comment. I thought you were waxing romantically eloquent -- look they had no pencil and paper and they would just gaze poetically at the heavens and maths would happen in their brains... just imagine what would have happened had they been given paper.
Hence my comment, that lack of writing material was not holding them back.
The Manusmriti - if you ignore the social aspects of it has a calculation for the age of the universe. The very first chapter has it. I think it computes to about 12 billion years - close to what modern science brings it out to be.
While manu discouraged widow remarrige he advocated for a share of property for a married woman who has an extra-marital affair. The norm the world around at that time was death by stoning.
I don't see why it wouldn't be. Conscious thought is only the tip of the iceberg; even Western thought has a long tradition of noting that Eureka moments come during periods when you are not rationally engaging with the topic. See for example
That is the belief. But deep meditation is elusive. You need to understand the relationship between yourself and your Mantra.
One of the best explanations of Mantras and meditation are by Dr Robert Svoboda (for any audience more familiar with English than Sanskrit/hindi). Granted he trained under an Aghori which isn’t traditionally the path most folks would take. But his explanations are exemplary.
You're likely as old as my kid, so I am sad to see this. Yes, take your health into your own hands. Medicate as little as possible - but this won't work for many people - in fact it could be dangerous. I am lucky to not have chronic conditions so I could afford not to believe my medical professional.
In my case - just to get the facts on Blood pressure took quite a bit of digging - thanks to some independent doctors who went against the grain and had a conscience and courage to dissent. Cholesterol is an even murkier pool. Its amazing how muddled the picture is.
