I was going to write a bit about Kobol vs COBOL, an ancient programming language which is in the news these days. Kobol is the homeworld of the Twelve Colonies in Battlestar Galactica. I've watched the full series twice. But the synopsis on the Wikipedia page is riveting. I often forget how simple and beautiful the overall structure of the plot is. BSG plot. And of course the execution. I'd have to say, even though it has cheezy sets and special effects, it's pretty much a perfect multi-part scifi drama. I just watched The Expanse, which is also good, but BSG is still tops with me. #
A friend told the story of a hospital in upstate NY that's losing $1 million a day because they have only a handful of Covid-19 patients. Not sure of all the reasons they can't take other kinds of patients now, but there is a statewide ban on elective surgery. #
They buried the lede. A pulse oximeter may be more essential to saving Covid patient's lives than respirators. They're cheap, and widely available. Huge.#
One of the big advantages Glitch has over Heroku is that everything is done in the browser. It's such a big difference you don't even see it at first. The thread is here. #
Pet peeve: Corporate robo calls that don't take into account that my calls are screened. So I get to hear them say goodbye when I connect. Come on your computer can learn how to talk to mine. #
I took a survey class in programming languages in grad school, and COBOL was of course one of them. It was in the mid-late 70s when people were still creating new systems in COBOL. It was one of the first attempts to make programming like English instead of like programming, so managers could do it, you wouldn't need programmers. To anyone who really knew about programming, it was obvious that this would not work. People would want features for which there were no human language equivalents, like looping and recursion, nesting, local variables, procedures, closures, objects, async, etc etc. We keep discovering new concepts for which you can't say "this is just like.." COBOL may have been the first programming language to reject programming, but it was not the last. Later attempts include Hypercard and AppleScript. I'm sure there were many others. I've always been most comfortable with Algol-like languages, C, Pascal, JavaScript. My own invented language, UserTalk, is Algol-like. There is a grammar somewhere for UserTalk. I'll find it later. 🚀#My mind insists, over and over, that today is Saturday.#
- The way we're going to fight the virus is like levels in video games. You don't get to move on to the next level until you've mastered the previous. And when you fall down, you go back to the beginning. #
- This narrative comes from listening to expert explainers on MSNBC last night, mainly Laurie Garrett and Donald McNeil, who was also yesterday's guest on the the Daily podcast. #
- First, establish strategic testing. Do statistical sampling to form virus outbreak "weather reports," like tracking tornados. #
- If you are in an area where there aren't active outbreaks, you can do a covid-aware resumption of business. Strict limits on size and density of gatherings, so new outbreaks, which will happen, are limited. Makes contact tracing possible. #
- Where there are outbreaks, do intense contact tracing. Full lockdown except for essential services. Locate people who are infected, and isolate with other spreaders, not with their families. Until the outbreak subsides, then go to 2. #
- The testing is never of the whole population, always sampled, and to support contact tracing. Testing forms the basis for the weather reports. #
- We are going to get very good at all this. #
- I'm sure Nate Silver can explain better and in more detail. This is similar to what they do at 538 to predict election outcomes. It's also similar to what they do with TV program ratings for advertising, and gathering meteorological data to support weather forecasts. #