Superstition - an engineering anti-pattern

Aaron Gallant

2022-09-11

Design patterns are reusable approaches to common problems - anti-patterns are the same, but ineffective (and even counterproductive).

An example of a design pattern is the singleton - we often want to allow access to a resource, without incurring the cost of building it over and over. Computationally, this means restricting the instantiation of a class to a singleton, and then coordinating access to it where needed.

Anti-patterns can include code smells (like the infamous “spaghetti”), but are often less technical. Any process that inhibits effective development is cast as an anti-pattern. Long meetings, analysis paralysis, planning too much and planning too little - all this and more is categorized and enumerated as reasons for poor engineering outcomes.

Generalizing failures from producers to their ecosystem is a good thing. Yet this approach has a blind spot - nontechnical failures can also occur in purely technical contexts. And so I introduce a new engineering anti-pattern - superstition.

Exclude Unnecessary Information

Aaron Gallant

2022-07-16

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The Elements of Style urges us to “omit needless words”:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all their sentences short, or that they avoid all detail and treat their subjects only in outline, but that they make every word tell.¹

This principle has become a core part of how I think about writing. I often fall short, but striving (and editing) are both healthy and helpful.

But I am often communicating in mediums and contexts not envisioned by Professor Strunk. Sometimes I am writing asynchronous communiques (emails), and other times synchronous chats. I may be presenting slides to a general audience, or discussing implementation details with a technical one. When writing posts such as this, I am balancing brevity with my desire to think through something and express myself fully.

“Omit needless words” is still a sound principle, but it doen’t fully capture these scenarios. So I humbly offer an analogue - exclude unnecessary information.

Slack Tasks

Aaron Gallant

2022-07-03

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“You’ve got to hustle. Have a side-gig. Do personal projects. Build a personal brand.”

Such tips are frequently offered, commonly aspired to, and irregularly achieved. It is not entirely poor advice - but it is unduly simplistic.

The general idea is that you’ve got to somehow achieve concurrency - both multitask, and execute well and with focus. And, for a human, this isn’t really possible.

So what is possible?

Yes, yet…

Aaron Gallant

2022-06-26

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“Yes, and…” is a concept from improv comedy that means to affirm and build on what others do. Beyond improv, it has been popularized as a pragmatic approach to positivity - say “yes” to validate and encourage others to engage, and say “and” to be sure to engage yourself.

But what about “yes people” who blindly endorse poor decisions? And what about the need to say no to manage your time?

To handle these cases, “yes, and…” could use a philosophical twist. What would happen if we combine improv comedy and the Socratic method?

Big O(Weird)

Aaron Gallant

2022-03-26

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#!/usr/bin/env python
steps = 0


def f(x):
    global steps
    for i in range(x * x | 42, x | 42, -42):
        steps += 1
        yield i


def g(y):
    global steps
    z1 = f(y)
    z2 = f(y*y)
    z1l = [z for z in z1]
    steps += len(z1l)
    xyz = 0
    for z1, z2 in zip(z1l, z2):
        steps += 1
        if z1 == z2:
            pass
        xyz += (z1 + z2)
    return xyz


def h(z):
    global steps
    tots = 0
    for i in range(z):
        steps += 1
        if not i % 3:
            tots += g(i)
        elif not i % 2:
            tots += sum(f(i))
        else:
            pass
    return tots


print(h(1))
print(steps)

print(h(10))
print(steps)

print(h(100))
print(steps)

print(h(1000))
print(steps)

Better Left Unsaid

Aaron Gallant

2022-03-12

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Saying something is “better left unsaid” implies distaste - that the thought behind the words was inappropriate, and self-moderation would be wise.

I offer you an alternative meaning - considering what or what not to say is not inherently self-censorship. Instead, it is expressive power.

The Good Kind of Scarcity

Aaron Gallant

2022-02-12

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There has been much ado about web3, “crypto”, and decentralization lately. I care about, study, and work with the web, decentralization, and even a touch of cryptography - but I think that recent trends hinge less on technological specifics and more on economics, human behavior, and scarcity (or lack thereof).

Technology obviates scarcity, and computational technology especially so. Price is driven by supply and demand, with effectively infinite supply making price negligible. This makes the marginal cost of digital goods generally near zero, with the barrier to create and share content lower than ever.

The result is a world that gives consumers unprecedented media options, and at the same time makes it challenging to compensate artists. The blockchain enables a form of (artificial) scarcity, with NFTs digitally embodying assets, which some argue can address the above challenges. To form opinions on manufactured scarcity like NFTs, I think it is useful to more generally consider what is good about scarcity and what is not so good, economically and beyond.

Contextual Clams

Aaron Gallant

2022-01-16

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“There’s no wrong notes in jazz.”

You’ve likely heard this sort of claim from jazz enthusiasts. “It’s jazz!” is a justification for apparent discordance and free rhythms, “playing outside” the established changes and structure of the song.

There is a truth underlying this belief - but as with most things, the full story is more nuanced. Wrong notes exist in jazz, and even have their own slang term - clam.

Notes as Closure

Aaron Gallant

2022-01-09

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I take a lot of notes.

I do so rather haphazardly - sometimes I write things down in a text file. Sometimes they end up in an email draft, or a message sent to myself. Sometimes they’re in a proper document of some sort, a markup language or wiki or website.

I make notes about a lot of things - things I want to read, things I find clever or interesting, things I should research more in future. I write down stuff to make or to get and inventorize stuff I have or have done already.

“Qualitative Data” is Experience

Aaron Gallant

2021-12-31

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Being “data-driven” is a common refrain - often followed by an insistence that people consider both “quantitative” and “qualitative” data. The subtext is that, on their lonesome, numbers are incomplete, and possibly cold and insensitive. Human intuition, and compassion, is necessary to supplement dry quantitative analysis.

Logic is, in fact, incomplete - though not really in the way most people think. And the human perspective is integral to many decisions (as they impact humans) and should not be neglected.

But the best way to balance “quantitative” data (henceforth simply data) and human needs and perspectives isn’t to conflate the two. Doing so dilutes numerical explanations while skewing opinion, leading to an overconfident “data-driven” rationalization of what is actually a distorted analysis.

Data (in the modern “data science” sense of the term) is a series of observations, consistently recorded facts and information. It is inherently quantitative (even if it is categorical, messy, or unstructured), as each observation can be enumerated, and on that basis some form of statistics can be calculated (at least counts, aka quantities, for unstructured data - and that’s before applying whatever clever techniques to engineer proper features).

Qualitative information (N.B. not data) is about qualia - a concept even fuzzier than NLP and unstructured data. You can (and should!) dive into the sundry academic perspectives, but for a pithy contemporary take:

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” - Mel Brooks