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Reading 11: King of the Ball

One thing I found funny was the quote "I suspected that Orem - and even Salt Lake City - weren't quite representative of the rest of the country". I couldn't agree more after having lived there for over 23 years. It was interesting to me that Utah of all places was the first place he visited in the US. His description of the US definitely was accurate to my knowledge, and I think it helped his understanding of the market he was trying to sell to, and the people he would be working with/against. Linux as a whole was entirely new and unique for the time, and caught a metaphorical perfect wave in terms of project timing and execution. It was something that computer hobbyists, and computer-based businesses, could all talk about and have common ground for new discussion for the time. Every success story such as Linux always has facets of incredible luck, but that does not mean that it can't be done again. For a lot of innovations, whoever "got there first" us...

Reading 10: Birth of a Nerd OS

 I think that some aspects, but not most, of Linus' upbringing are similar to mine. We both were nerds, however I managed to be thankfully nerdy in a time where being a nerd was starting to be seen as cool. I also would not self-describe as ugly, or a 'runt' like Linus does. I also did not grow up in Finland - as much as Salt Lake City did feel like a foreign country at times compared to other walks of life in America. One aspect of our lives that was weirdly and interestingly similar however was our first introduction to computing. I, too, was given access to a computer (mine was an old, bricky laptop that wouldn't function without a charger and ran Windows Vista) via my mother's father. I grew up a lot with my grandparents for a variety of reasons, and I used to love going over to their house because I could use the laptop. I vastly used it for playing browser-based flash games from places like Armorgames, Maxgames, and Candyland.com. One thing that I did latch on...

Reading 09: The Magic Cauldron

 I think that the "service instead of software" is definitely an interesting business model, as it goes against the norm of traditional 'hey here is something with a price tag on it'. I think that because of the nature of how software has been shared throughout the history of computing, it makes sense for this business model to be implemented. It has been the computer and programming culture for important programs to be free, as originally computing was just a hobby and the knowledge that was shared was mostly academic in nature. But, as computing grew, the culture around free and open information was kept, leading to this model when businesses and programmers started to need to make money from it. This business model does this without affecting or disrupting the original free culture.  I think that ESR's remarks about the closed-source bs open-source approach when it comes to independent peer review is interesting, and correct for the most part. I don't think...

Reading 08: The Noosphere

 I believe that the main motivations for participating in open source code and content stem from a greater purpose of self, and one's own sense of community. When you have a particular subject that you are passionate about, such as a particular game or community or program, you want for it to be shown to as many people as possible and for the community to be driven forward. One of the best ways to do this without outward advertisement is to participate in the community openly. Collaboration is the key to what makes large open source projects possible to execute, and the best thing that someone can do is to participate. It follows a similar structure to fundraising, concerts, or political events, where even if you are not directly monetarily donating it still matters a lot that you cared enough to show up in person to an event. The amount that the public 'cares' about a project usually is tied to overall community impact, and the amount of people affected. If an open source ...

Reading 07: The Cathedral and the Bazaar

 The difference between the Cathedral and the Bazaar styles of software development is that in the Cathedral model, code developed between releases is restricted to an inner circle of developers, while in the Bazaar model, the code is developed over the internet with full public showing of the development cycle. I personally do not have any strong feelings about either, but if I had to choose a favorite, I would probably say the Bazaar model. This is because I still believe that public knowledge and insight into products and projects is an important tool that many companies do not see as a tool. Many companies need to be secretive and select about what they show in their code base, I understand. However, I still feel a lot of projects especially in the gaming world would benefit from clearness. Some examples that I can think of are Counter Strike's Tick and Sub-tick system, and Call of Duty's DPS system. Because these code bases are not available to the public, people get specu...

Reading 06: Wealth Creation

 I think that Paul Graham's pitch about startups is a fair assessment of the impact that tech-based startups in particular have had over the job landscape in the past 20-30 years. A lot of the most successful tech companies were born out of startups. However, I believe that the average startup is far less profitable than Paul Graham would like to believe. I think that the vast, vast majority of startups fail within the initial designing and testing phase, and don't make it to full production. These are usually unseen and fairly unheard of, as most of the strife that the startup accumulates is all internal and within the first weeks or months of the idea spawning. Most of these failed startups are heavily unprofitable, and depending on the amount bought in to the startup, tend to accumulate a lot of debt. I think that applying and joining an already mildly successful startup, as Graham says, is a much better and more reliable way to get rich, as a lot of the financial burden and...

Reading 05: Programming Languages

 "Programming languages are not just technology, but what programmers think in" is a very interesting statement, that I agree with and also do not agree with. I agree that when I personally am coding in a language, it does feel like I am thinking in that language, as in the verbiage my internal dialogue thinks in is definitely tied directly to the keywords that programming language uses. However, I do not think really that all programmers think in their own specific language, as interspersed with those keywords are chunks of thought that are larger than the unique language. This includes simple thoughts such as "I need the array to be larger" or "I can't believe this is not working correctly". As pedantic as it is, I do think that that fundamental difference disqualifies me, at least, for 'thinking in a programming language'.  On another note, I do believe that there are 'stronger' programming languages than others. However, I think tha...