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 No.983153>>983463 >>983483 >>983497 [Watch Thread][Show All Posts]

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8153

>It not news to readers of this blog that I like to find common tactics and traps in programming that don’t have names and name them. I don’t only do this because it’s fun. When you have named a thing you give your brain permission to reason about it as a conceptual unit. Bad jargon obfuscates, map hiding territory; good jargon reveals, aiding reflection on and and improvement of your practice.

>In my last post I coined “shtoopid problem”. It went viral; every programmer has hit this, and it’s useful to have the term because you can attach to it recognition rules and tactics for escaping such traps. (And not only in programming; consider kafkatrapping).

>Today’s invention is the term “rule-swarm attack”. It’s derived from the military term “swarm attack” and opposed to “deep reasoning”, “structural analysis” and “generative rules”. I’ll explain it and provide some case studies.

>A rule-swarm attack is what you can sometimes do when you have some messy data-reduction or data-translation problem and deep reasoning can’t be applied effectively -- either you don’t have a theory or the theory is too expensive to apply in the place you are working. So instead you look for patterns – cliches – in the data and apply a whole bunch of little, individually stupid rules that transform it towards what you want. You win when the result is observably good enough.

>It’s curious that this strategy never had a general name before, because it’s actually pretty common. Peephole optimizers in compilers. Statistical language translation as Google does it. In AI it’s called “production systems” -- they’re widely used for tasks like automated medical diagnoses. It’s not principle-based – rule-swarms know nothing about meaning in any introspective sense, they’re just collections of if-this-then-do-thats applied recursively until you have reached a state where no rules can fire.

 No.983158>>983239 >>984278

>they’re just collections of if-this-then-do-thats applied recursively until you have reached a state where no rules can fire.

I thought that was called a "program."


 No.983201>>983239 >>984278

How's this different from a decision tree?


 No.983239>>983488 >>983517

File (hide): 955f7e380dbf6b8⋯.png (146.08 KB, 761x1194, 761:1194, simplify.png) (h) (u)

I used a rule swarm attack to write an algebra simplifier. It works for very basic things, but can't cope with things that look fairly simple. eg: 'x^2 + (x+1)^2'. Should be expanded to '2*x^2+2*x+1' then complete the square. The problem is that expanding and completing the square are inverse operations; it can be instructed to do one or the other, but not both. I know that algebraic simplification is as good as a solved problem, does the solution use rule swarm attacks, or something more sophisticated? If so, what?

>>983158

>>983201

See pic related for my interpretation of this. General distinguishing points: a large number of rules; runs recursively.


 No.983358

more like rulecuck attack amirite? just waiting for the followup post where he tries to use this prompting of the reader in some "muh sjws" soapboxing

esr is a talentless hack and the only code he's written in the past decade is edgy forks of abandonware for which much better alternatives exist. at least link to posts written by someone with capacity for thought


 No.983463

>>983153 (OP)

>When you have named a thing you give your brain permission to reason about it as a conceptual unit.

>muh names

the UNIX community


 No.983483

>>983153 (OP)

So... skip logic?


 No.983488>>983511

>>983239

Literally read SICP, this is very similar to Ex. 2.3.2, symbolic differentiation. You need to recurse to handle the recursive data structure you're manipulating(algebraic expressions).


 No.983497

>>983153 (OP)

>this is somehow special

This is how I parse odd websites without using their APIs.

In fact, this is how I program most things.


 No.983511>>984278

>>983488

>differentiation

differentiation is always guranteed to be possible. Solving is not. Consider eg 1 = e^x + x. With traditional addition/multiplication/exponentiation/logs this has no solution. Derivatives could help you look for solutions numerically, but I want algebraic solutions.


 No.983517

>>983239

nice eyecancer setup


 No.984278

File (hide): 3ad0bac87ff11e9⋯.jpg (47.85 KB, 315x315, 1:1, assburger sunglasses.jpg) (h) (u)

>>983158

>>983201

Welcome to esr, the only things of note the man has ever made are bad programs and stupid additions to previously good jargon files.

>>983511

>differentiation is always guaranteed to be possible

pic related




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