> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 22:47:46 +0300
> From: martynas@graphity.org
> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Accelerating software innovation with Wikidata and improved Wikicode
>
> Here's my approach to software code problems: we need less of it, not
> more. We need to remove domain logic from source code and move it into
> data, which can be managed and on which UI can be built.
> In that way we can build generic scalable software agents. That is the
> way to Semantic Web.
>
> Martynas
> graphityhq.com
>
> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Michael Hale <hale.michael.jr@live.com> wrote:
> > There are lots of code snippets scattered around the internet, but most of
> > them can't be wired together in a simple flowchart manner. If you look at
> > object libraries that are designed specifically for that purpose, like
> > Modelica, you can do all sorts of neat engineering tasks like simulate the
> > thermodynamics and power usage of a new refrigerator design. Then if your
> > company is designing a new insulation material you would make a new "block"
> > with the experimentally determined properties of your material to include in
> > the programmatic flowchart to quickly calibrate other aspects of the
> > refrigerator's design. To my understanding, Modelica is as big and good as
> > it gets for code libraries that represent physically accurate objects.
> > Often, the visual representation of those objects needs to be handled
> > separately. As far as general purpose, standard programming libraries go,
> > Mathematica is the best one I've found for quickly prototyping new
> > functionality. A typical "web mashup" app or site will combine functionality
> > and/or data from 3 to 6 APIs. Mobile apps will typically use the phone's
> > functionality, an extra library for better graphics support, a proprietary
> > library or two made by the company, and a couple of web APIs. A similar
> > story for desktop media-editing programs, business software, and high-end
> > games except the libraries are often larger. But there aren't many software
> > libraries that I would describe as huge. And there are even fewer that
> > manage to scale the usefulness of the library equally with the size it
> > occupies on disk.
> >
> > Platform fragmentation (increase in number and popularity of smart phones
> > and tablets) has proven to be a tremendous challenge for continuing to
> > improve libraries. I now just have 15 different ways to draw a circle on
> > different screens. The attempts to provide virtual machines with write-once
> > run-anywhere functionality (Java and .NET) have failed, often due to
> > customer lock-in reasons as much as platform fragmentation. Flash isn't
> > designed to grow much beyond its current scope. The web standards can only
> > progress as quickly as the least common denominator of functionality
> > provided by other means, which is better than nothing I suppose. Mathematica
> > has continued to improve their library (that's essentially what they sell),
> > but they don't try to cover a lot of platforms. They also aren't open source
> > and don't attempt to make the entire encyclopedia interactive and
> > programmable. Open source attempts like the Boost C++ library don't seem to
> > grow very quickly. But I think using Wikipedia articles as a scaffold for a
> > massive open source, object-oriented library might be what is needed.
> >
> > I have a few approaches I use to decide what code to write next. They can be
> > arranged from most useful as an exercise to stay sharp in the long term to
> > most immediately useful for a specific project. Sometimes I just write code
> > in a vacuum. Like, I will just choose a simple task like making a 2D ball
> > bounce around some stairs interactively and I will just spend a few hours
> > writing it and rewriting it to be more efficient and easier to expand. It
> > always gives me a greater appreciation for the types of details that can be
> > specified to a computer (and hence the scope of the computational universe,
> > or space of all computer programs). Like with the ball bouncing example you
> > can get lost defining interesting options for the ball and the ground or in
> > the geometry logic for calculating the intersections (like if the ball
> > doesn't deform or if the stairs have certain constraints on their shape
> > there are optimizations you can make). At the end of the exercise I still
> > just have a ball bouncing down some stairs, but my mind feels like it has
> > been on a journey. Sometimes I try to write code that I think a group of
> > people would find useful. I will browse the articles in the areas of
> > computer science category by popularity and start writing the first things I
> > see that aren't already in the libraries I use. So I'll expand Mathematica's
> > FindClusters function to support density based methods or I'll expand the
> > RandomSample function to support files that are too large to fit in memory
> > with a reservoir sampling algorithm. Finally, I write code for specific
> > projects. I'm trying to genetically engineer turf grass that doesn't need to
> > be cut, so I need to automate some of the work I do for GenBank imports and
> > sequence comparisons. For all of those, if there was an organized place to
> > put my code afterwards so it would fit into a larger useful library I would
> > totally be willing to do a little bit of gluing work to help fit it all
> > together.
> >
> >> Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 19:13:54 +0200
> >> From: jane023@gmail.com
> >> To: wikidata-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >
> >> Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Accelerating software innovation with Wikidata
> >> and improved Wikicode
> >>
> >> I am all for a "dictionary of code snippets", but as with all
> >> dictionaries, you need a way to group them, either by alphabetical
> >> order or "birth date". It sounds like you have an idea how to group
> >> those code samples, so why don't you share it? I would love to build
> >> my own "pipeline" from a series of algorithms that someone else
> >> published for me to reuse. I am also for more sharing of datacentric
> >> programs, but where would the data be stored? Wikidata is for data
> >> that can be used by Wikipedia, not by other projects, though maybe
> >> someday we will find the need to put actual weather measurements in
> >> Wikidata for some oddball Wikisource project tp do with the history of
> >> global warming or something like that.
> >>
> >> I just don't quite see how your idea would translate in the
> >> Wiki(p/m)edia world into a project that could be indexed.
> >>
> >> But then I never felt the need for "high-fidelity simulations of
> >> virtual worlds" either.
> >>
> >> 2013/7/6, Michael Hale <hale.michael.jr@live.com>:
> >> > I have been pondering this for some time, and I would like some
> >> > feedback. I
> >> > figure there are many programmers on this list, but I think others might
> >> > find it interesting as well.
> >> > Are you satisfied with our progress in increasing software
> >> > sophistication as
> >> > compared to, say, increasing the size of datacenters? Personally, I
> >> > think
> >> > there is still too much "reinventing the wheel" going on, and the best
> >> > way
> >> > to get to software that is complex enough to do things like
> >> > high-fidelity
> >> > simulations of virtual worlds is to essentially crowd-source the
> >> > translation
> >> > of Wikipedia into code. The existing structure of the Wikipedia articles
> >> > would serve as a scaffold for a large, consistently designed,
> >> > open-source
> >> > software library. Then, whether I was making software for weather
> >> > prediction
> >> > and I needed code to slowly simulate physically accurate clouds or I was
> >> > making a game and I needed code to quickly draw stylized clouds I could
> >> > just
> >> > go to the article for clouds, click on C++ (or whatever programming
> >> > language
> >> > is appropriate) and then find some useful chunks of code. Every article
> >> > could link to useful algorithms, data structures, and interface designs
> >> > that
> >> > are relevant to the subject of the article. You could also find
> >> > data-centric
> >> > programs too. Like, maybe a JavaScript weather statistics browser and
> >> > visualizer that accesses Wikidata. The big advantage would be that
> >> > constraining the design of the library to the structure of Wikipedia
> >> > would
> >> > handle the encapsulation and modularity aspects of the software
> >> > engineering
> >> > so that the components could improve independently. Creating a
> >> > simulation or
> >> > visualization where you zoom in from a whole cloud to see its
> >> > constituent
> >> > microscopic particles is certainly doable right now, but it would be a
> >> > lot
> >> > easier with a function library like this.
> >> > If you look at the existing Wikicode and Rosetta Code the code samples
> >> > are
> >> > small and isolated. They will show, for example, how to open a file in
> >> > 10
> >> > different languages. However, the search engines already do a great job
> >> > of
> >> > helping us find those types of code samples across blog posts of people
> >> > who
> >> > have had to do that specific task before. However, a problem that I run
> >> > into
> >> > frequently that the search engines don't help me solve is if I read a
> >> > nanoelectronics paper and I want to do a simulation of the physical
> >> > system
> >> > they describe I often have to go to the websites of several different
> >> > professors and do a fair bit of manual work to assemble their different
> >> > programs into a pipeline, and then the result of my hacking is not easy
> >> > to
> >> > expand to new scenarios. We've made enough progress on Wikipedia that I
> >> > can
> >> > often just click on a couple of articles to get an understanding of the
> >> > paper, but if I want to experiment with the ideas in a software context
> >> > I
> >> > have to do a lot of scavenging and gluing.
> >> > I'm not yet convinced that this could work. Maybe Wikipedia works so
> >> > well
> >> > because the internet reached a point where there was so much redundant
> >> > knowledge listed in many places that there was immense social and
> >> > economic
> >> > pressure to utilize knowledgeable people to summarize it in a free
> >> > encyclopedia. Maybe the total amount of software that has been written
> >> > is
> >> > still too small, there are still too few programmers, and it's still too
> >> > difficult compared to writing natural languages for the crowdsourcing
> >> > dynamics to work. There have been a lot of successful open-source
> >> > software
> >> > projects of course, but most of them are focused on creating software
> >> > for a
> >> > specific task instead of library components that cover all of the
> >> > knowledge
> >> > in the encyclopedia.
> >>
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