Tags: story

Constraints and the Lost Art of Optimization — Den Odell

The entire intellectual and creative output of a team that reinvented personal computing fits in a space that, today, we wouldn’t think twice about wasting on a single font file.

Somewhere in the years that followed we’ve lost the creative solutions, the art of optimization, that being constrained in that way produces.

The best engineers I’ve worked with carry this instinct even when others might think it crazy. They impose their own constraints. They ask what this would look like if it had to be half the size, or run twice as fast, or use a tenth of the memory. Not because anyone demanded it, but because just by thinking there could be a better, more efficient solution, one often emerges.

I watched a good film last night. Tornado from the same writer and director of the also-excellent Slow West.

Tornado is a Scottish Samurai Western set in the 1790s. Although it’s not likely that many Samurai would’ve been in Scotland during the sakoku period, I was willingly able to suspend my disbelief …until something quite minor happened on screen.

One of the characters is seen playing a concertina. “Hang on”, I thought, “1790s? That’s not right!”

And indeed, once the film was over I reached for my laptop and confirmed that the concertina is very much a 19th century invention.

Look, it’s not that I know when most musical instruments were invented, but I happened to know about the concertina’s origin because of a different technology.

See, the concertina was invented by one Charles Wheatsone. He invented quite a few things. He, along with William Cooke, more or less created the electric telegraph, around the same time as Samuel Morse.

I only know this because of the excellent book by Tom Standage called The Victorian Internet:

The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s online pioneers.

Prompted by that book, I found out more about Wheatstone, including the fact that he invented the concertina. So that’s why I found myself slightly taken out of the action when watching that film last night. In the 1790s, nobody was playing the concertina in Scotland or anywhere else.

Today, though, the concertina is thriving, especially in Ireland. It’s particularly popular in County Clare. Though, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to the playing of a Kerryman, Cormac Begley.

I’ll be seeing him play tonight in the Brighton Dome where he’ll be providing the music for the superb Teaċ Damhsa production, MÁM. This’ll be my second time experiencing it. Táim ar bís!

39C3 - Persist, resist, stitch - YouTube

A fascinating talk looking at the history of the intersection of knitting and stitching with wartime cryptography and resistance.