Tcl/tk vs the web : we should abandon web based technologies.

Long before firefox & modern browsers existed, we had to do stuff like visualizing graphically and interactively simulations in physics.

So in 1996 I learnt Tcl/Tk. At the same time it was the heavy client realm based upon java. Java awt is a descendant of Tk (oak).

I speak french. My theoretical cognitive load for speaking everyday is 350k words + extra thousands of slang plus grammar. I am very much into slang. However french being a high context language, it is estimated that a mere 600 words vocabulary is enough to understand and guess the remaining.

I have a tad of german, spanish and english also loaded in my skull. And talk and exchange with people.


When I compare to computer languages they seem pretty pathetically easy: from 50-200 reserved keywords. That maybe the reason why I have practiced 13 of them. From Forth to VHDL going through C(?|++|#) python, Perl. I left PHP because of the 5000 inconsistent reserved keywords. I was thinking it was insane. When facing in my last years the deprecation of my old languages (I did Perl and C# too), I chose python over ruby because ruby had so many useless methods on stuff like lists while python was small and consistent.

However most of my programming in python (even though I learnt myselft a tad of python-tk) has been to deal with : making the stateless HTTP connection stateful by handling sessions, javascript, and angular for making application bi directional and asynchronuous.

My real cognitive load for web programming includes the HTTP stack, MIME encoding so that spamassassin & al did not blacklisted our mails (I rewrote smtplib in python 2 to handle PHP kind of bug that have pissed me of), SSL cipher suites,  resource exhaustion in middle ware, DNS, OS issues ... and reinventing the wheel.

I had to deal with poorly coded rewrite of expect, the box model of CSS, dealing with the "dependency hell" in js, callback hell in js.

But why are we using web in the first place?

Because of hype and stupid sysadmins that blocked everything but HTTP protocol (Deep Packet Inspection might block TCP:80 because people are scared it could be an SSH server with tunneling enabled on the other side).

Also because in the 2000 good coders were hard to find. Especially thinking asynchronously.

I learnt microelectronics. I coded a device driver for linux. Asynchronuous thinking is the basic of microelectronics (VIA, ACIA). You cannot self teach it yourself. Some knowledge require apprenticeship. Human limitation: words do not magically jump in your brain.

So people figured that HTTP with their "native widget" and synchronuous kind of programming could be cool. In fact it was the porn industry.

Porn industry in the 1990s invented : chatrooms, e-commerce with visa card, dynamic contents.... and ubiquitous content delivery without fear of being detected by any "black list/antivirus/safe guard". I met one pornmaster. They often were one man armies self taught and not software engineers but they cared about time to market and costs. The one I met was a technical writer. But he was making profits.

They were so good that web agency (at least in France) would suck their websites change the pictures and resell them for  at least 10 000 $.

And in front java GUI was requiring a lot more money to develop and operates the servers.


Why did not tcl tk had any traction?

Because java was the language that was taught with all the OOP, structured object messaging that was a promise to solve distributed problem challenge. Corba, DCOM, RPC was the way to do client/server.

Company hired educated engineers to be CTO pushing the tools they were "brainwashed" to work. The decision makers. The same guys that in France decided TCP/IP could not worked because it was designed by scientists and not serious engineers. Cyclades, ATM were to be the good protocols.

And pOrn industry powned their asses. So everybody said ... hey let's do what actually works else we are dead! 

It is called a law of externality. As soon as it was adopted it became the defacto standard of the industry because: it was less expensive to hire self taught programmers than students that had loans to pay. The education bubble fueled by post wwII need to replace dead skilled workers. The stuff that has enabled USA able to build their new techs with the subsidies of education from Europa.

Maybe most programmers are not exactly engineers but however inefficient actual superior education is, it beats no education. And the offer supersedes so much the demand that coders are very cheap compared to what they produce as values. Plus without union/diplomas they are unable to negotiate or defend themselves collectively. And IP laws are literally ripping the actual patrimonial and moral rights of coders.


So ... do we do web for the right reasons?

I think not.

Let's review why Tcl/Tk is way better than the web stack.
 TL;DR : a long list of reason why Tcl/Tk is more interesting than web. And what it proves concerning our stupidity. And the conclusion is how to efficiently use tcl/tk in the optic of its design : as a very good gluing language that thus makes most of the actual needs for frameworks disappear...


It has a while loop that waits infinitely and it is really annoying.

Well so does tornado, and any other asynchronuous frameworks.

Everything is string. 

Well it was built for unix where everything is a string. So are mail, web pages, messages. String at least do not have endianness problems.

And tcl Tk type coercion from string is way more sane than JSON, javascript, PHP, python ....


You need an interpreter

Well, a web browser is a JS interpreter too. Plus in 20+ years Tcl/Tk is only 24Mb with rarely all the insanity of having to use jquery to solve incompatibility with different versions of the same browser.

You have to install an interpreter while web is ubiquitous


Well I call this the Stockholm syndrome. Being forced to make choices that are wrong does not make them right. However who uses the default web browsers?

And how safe is it to not update your web browsers?

Tcl/Tk has very few versions. And does not have the constant delivery insanity that made version numbers disappeared. And Tcl/Tk does not SPY on you.

And it is pretty sanely slowly delivered without too much regressions. 

I can execute remote code from everywhere "securely" thanks to Oauth/HTTPS

Tcl have modules. Tcl can do TCP/IP and other protocols, even HTTP. Tcl has cryptographic libraries. And you know what? You can tunnel clear text easily with TLS tunnels. You can ask LDAP for credentials, you can talk to the system that already have the informations on the users.  If you are crazy enough you can even use the ancestor of Oauth that is Kerberos token.

Web browser are supposed to be sandboxed. So every systems stuff are reinvented. Tcl/Tk is not an autistic process it can ask the system for information that are already there. It can even talk to your ssh agent. 

Plus https relies on central authorities that have proven to be less than trustable when it comes to government issues.

It is not portable

Tcl/Tk is 24Mb portable cross platform. You can even easily have it on embedded system. Firefox, python, ruby, Perl, chrome, safari are all bigger.

And, wonders of old programs, you can share the logic between servers and client by the use of module.

Yes, at the opposite of node & client side js, tcl/tk can really share sanely code with no differences of behaviour.


It does not show web pages

You can use an html canvas. 

It is not C/ python.

Well, tcl make binding on external binaries easy. It has the classical pack/unpack function to translate data from binary memory structure into ... strings.

It is not strongly typed, nor functional.

In asynchronous programming you rely heavily on clocks. Clocks are mutable. They are finite state machine whatever you are doing.

But still, you can do higher order functions if you love the thrill of coroutines//functional.


Strong types would be nice if OS inter process communication were natively strongly typed.

Unix relies heavily on pipes, and doing fork/dup/pipe is very easy in any languages (especially in C) on every OSes. By default, strings have no bytes ordering problems. They are portable.

Which make tcl a very social language that can be talked to through any streams.

You can import "parsers" for handling data types the way you want : integer, floats, entier, decimal for instances.

Why negate the truth? The computers rawest communications are string based. All our broken overhead do not always worth the price of having language + grammar for communicating.

HTML requires a broken XML parser. JSon requires an interpreter. CSS requires yet another parser.

It may not be functional, but it is functioning. Why not have "drivers" instead of stacks?

With Tcl you can flatten the stacks.

It does not have messaging/rabbitmq ... 

It has pipes that are atomic at the concurrence of PIPBUF.

It has EXPECT. I have seen people using cli interaction has messaging for instance to talk with routers, with a shell (over ssh), or deamons (asterisk, zebra...) and stumbling on the problem of interaction with stateful connection.

Expect is sane. Because states are required in asynchronuous. Trying to avoid facing the problems with layers of abstraction that hide the problem and try to flatten asynch in nice linear code is stupid.

You WILL have callbacks in asynchronuous. And the more layers the more states and callbacks need to be handled. So expect expects callback on premises.

States are inherent to asynchronuous communications better deal with it than hide it.

It does not have CSS

Widgets are objects that inherits from one another from root to bottom. They inherit attributes that are basically the exact equivalent of CSS. Basically these can be mapped to a JSON tree. It is equivalent BUT!

But tcl does not mix insanely the placement of objects with the apparence of them.

The CSS box model is shit.

tcl tk instead have geometry managers with features such has : put this box at this place and let a constraint based algorithm expand the widget the way you want.What a bright idea, let software do the hard job for you instead of letting programmers and designers do stupid grunt jobs without any business added value.

I like python ... ruby, java, c#, c++ .... and I don't want to program in this sub Perl insanity

Me too. python-tk is there for you. It is used by matplotlib and that is another secret of tck/tk: thanks to the C libs of tcl you can easily embed it in another language.

Tcl Tk is so social it can either pilot other languages or be piloted by other interpreters.

You can do a #include "tk"  you can use expect, you have R bindings ....

We are in 2016 one language do not do everything right, use languages that are social instead of socializing language through the http stack//cookies insanity.

Basically programming paradigm should have switched to the use of gluing languages has the top stack language and specialized one for the handling of specific issues.

ASM for speed. C for reuse of the existing stuffs, R for stats, matlab for signal processing...

It should be social not only with static stateless libraries  but also with stateful dynamic interpreters.

 What Tk really is

Tk is a sane GUI event driven model that does the boring work for you. It is just an extension of Tcl, but you can embed it in ANY languages.

Tk is the original GUI model that everyone has been copying often wrongly. (Oak existed before, I got it but look who did it).

What Tcl really is

And tcl is just a Domain Specific Language for gluing. Reusing existing code/libraries. It is also very good with talking with others interpreter and interacting statefully with applications.

What Tcl is not

Tcl is no silver bullet. Just a normal tool.

ADDENDUM

What the web should be used for? 

Presenting public documents and leveraging the URI and references. Like gazette, pamphlet, schedules, encyclopedia, public domain content, government communications (like informing populations when accident happens)...

It should be signal based (signal vs noise) and used mainly to transfer content. I am not sure the web should do the styling part.

Canon printer still sux after 20 years of the same problems

So I had to print papers for my immigration.

So I had to print so much of them ~200 pages that I bought a canon printer a low entry pixma shit knowing that their ink sux : they dry fast, they cost a lot, and their cartridge refuses to print even if they still have ink. They are unfit for anything more than my needs : printing/copying with "good enough" results if you do not care about the quality. And that you don't intend to print a lot.

I forgot about the windows only stuff. And I was in a hurry.  So not only it costs a lot per page but I had to pay a windows licence. 100$. I had OEM windows: I always have been dual booting cause linux sux for games. But my "window were too old for the drivers". WUT?!

Then ink. 10-50c per pages. (why don't I have an option to tell fucking don't use color to make black blacker?).

Then after 2 changes of cartridges boom. A very old bug I know blasted in my face.

Paper don't get tracted inside anymore, because the gum from the gears get slick.

20 years old solutions: take your wife's nail file and scratch the surface of the gums. ADDENDUM I totally remember this exact same problem described in the french magazine "Le virus informatique" (edition ACBM) ~1996  and having taken the hint from there.

I worked perfectly for the first series of roll. The second I cannot access because of the cheap plastic and awkyard screws and what, for rescuing a 40$ I am not gonna lose 4 hours.

Now I have to throw a 40$ + 100$ + 60$ x 2 = 260$ for 260 pages printer.

1$ per page in direct and indirect costs is robbery. 

You know what Canon: FUCK YOU!

My printer is around 1 year old, just a tad more.

I had this problem 20 years ago and it is still not fixed.

Your engineers must be either incompetent or doing it on purpose, because what, your printer always break a tad after the legal "warranty".

Oh no! I forgot, one of my old canon laser printer that costs 300€ did not have this problem. Just because I had not the money to spend 300$ straight for thousands prints I have to pay 300$ for 300 pages.
 Because of a 20 years old problem ... that is still no rocket science and would be easy to fix if I had access to the mechanical base. 

Moral of the story: the poorer you get the more expensive everything is.



Of the bubble in ... education

Education is a market. It offers an adequation between the offer and the supply.

But of which market are we talking of? Is it even a market?

The economical market of companies to fit their need for qualification and the one of the student?

So far, a first question should be asked : are diploma related to increase in producitivty?

Toni de Marco says : it cannot be measured for jobs with high intellectual contribution.

Martin Gropius says: acquiring the technics of art are easy but we are all born unequal when it comes to creativity, and academia are putting an artificial barrier on being an artist by learning cir-convoluted techniques.


My father was a surgeon. The son of a mason. That made it from almost orphan, to compagnonage, to CNAM (after hours university) to construction engineer.

On the other hand my mothers' family are a dynasty long migrating bankers/entrepreuneurs since centuries. That slowly declined. On the run since as far as you can write, since roman origins to hugenots. But with a bright auto-didact mother that is one of my model.

I bear in my cultural DNA the Schrodinger view of our society. I am 50%-10% 50%-90% and love both my parents.

It kinds of resonate in an echoing voice that we may wonder if the ties between profession and diploma are related. After all both my parents succeeded both in failing and succeeding in having a diploma, and I love also my great father self made man's iconical story (he was a convinced atheist)

And then, you put on facebook how iodins cure autism and cancer and you should not go to an oncologists if you have cancer, and you see me trolled in a fanatic flamewar about how I think physicians with state enforced diplomas are the only one that should be listened to.

Well. Contradictions are what we seems to be made of? No.

The problems is I believe in regulations, I just don't like the regulation entities and some creepiness in the implementations.

I am very glad that surgeons are educated and are barred from operating without a diploma.
I am very glad that autodidact can succeed ...

In the era of my parents. After World War II.

When war killed so many people elites included that the "market" of education existed.
There were such a dire need for educated people that :
  • companies were ready to take basically well educated people and take on their money to give them their professional education;
  • even the bosses needed to be healed so there were an incentive for "correctness" of education.
Since 1942 the year my father had his first teacher opening  a door saying "you are the worst generation we ever had", to 1991 my last days in the same school he was, teachers are complaining their quality is lowering. Isn't it trivial that since kinds go to school to be "taught" if the level of education lowers, it means the teacher are failing.

Especially at the lowest level. Where the most discrimination is, the less money is required and where the most efficiency can be achieved.

Life is like a Leagues of Legend game.

The small accumulation in the loss of creeps at the beginning of the game yield huge difference later.

The stuff that people overlook. The Lol on twitch will highlight the ganging. But, the guy silently creeping early game with a early weak stage late game character prudently under his tower is to be watched carefuly (unless it is heimerdinger).

So, the education's actual focus is on "higher education". People get loans for it. Why?


Because "higher" positions are de facto regulated by requiring a diploma.

But the competition is not quite fair. University is a maskerade. It turns rich kids able to pay tuition have the glory of smart kids being paid peanuts to do R&D in the university.  (paying gamers vs pgm).

M.I.T., Princeton,  polytechnique, whatever famous ivy league players are selective.

You are either bright and being drafted to be in the labs writing papers and giving up every drop of your IP to the university. Even to file patents you will not have a share on.

Or you can pay the tuition.

Having this diploma ensure you have a better odd for a well paid job.

But the market seems saturated in the offer plan.

Good thinking would be that competition have increased, and people taking risks should bear the consequence of their actions. So kids are at fault here.

Hold your horses. USA situation where 20 yo kids takes loans without enough information on the reality of a job market and of the use of diploma is a scam. French situation where all citizens are required to pay more for an elite education than normal education and are bond by loans made by the government that transform in whole life taxes is also a scam.

First thing : if market is the answer to a problem, I do not think a rigged market is worse than regulations.

Rigged market are rigged with asymmetrical obfuscate rules.
Regulation by definition have public rules that makes the game "fair".

It is the same difference as between playing bonneteau and lottery. And government scam written in complex laws are still a scam.

What does a diploma buy to the corporation?

The certainty of common techniques. Techniques that can be proved by practice and quality of production to exists. How much practice actual diploma have compared to my father's internship for being a surgeon or my great father's compagnonage?

I do accept that PhD may have practice in something else than writing so indigestible proses that calling them "scientific communication" is a scam in itself. Because some do work.

The biggest production I see from education right now everywhere is "self justification".

What universities delivers as a production ? Papers. For whom? Other universities. In which purpose? To fill more paper justifying their uniqueness.

Business schools? Papers. Business studies, conferences ... TED talks...

Engineering schools? Patents. Papers, conferences.

But when it comes to all this deluge of paper, accountability get diluted.

How much does a diploma worth after 2 years of practice for a company. Peanuts.

Are diplomed engineers more ethical than the rest? Ask a lot of commission in the world about corrupted market supervised by engineers with ethical education that makes them "the best among us".

Why do company pay for something they do not need?

Because it is not a market it is regulated.

A lot of hidden incentive by regulation are here. Lawyers requires diploma, accountant, subsidizes in research require "educated" workers ...  and there is a fiduceo effect. And that's how educated people impoverish themselves by being stupid.


Not finishing your studies is a best if and only if you stopped your studies in the middle of an ivy league school.

So investors built a myth of the garage band duo based on all success stories they chose. It is easier for them to negociate contracts.

And now the normalisation through diploma whose assumption is that it produces people that are able is rigged.


Because since actually the global education has raised diploma are hyper competitive for the students with negative ROI even for the cheapest... Thus, students having loans are more vulnerable hence less likely to negotiate good wages resulting in the slow slides of all X-Y-Z generations in "déclassement". Resulting in all positions to be filled with over educated person and the belief you cannot change it.

As Mr Tesla/paypal said "never aim for competition".

The over valuation of diploma (the bubble) as a perverse effect on future entrepreneur.

Breaking their own belief in diploma would break their own esteem.

They get caught in a cage of a paradox.


If they deny diplomas they have to accept they were stupid and not that educated. X years of long educations, Y years of underpromising jobs,  N years of loans. No person in despair wishes to face their own mistakes and results of their wrong doings. Because, maybe the 1% are ultra assholes to the 99%; but 10% are mega assholes to the 90% but the 90% still remains assholes to the 10%. But they cannot break this cage without shattering a part of their ego.

Reproducing an order that is unfair based on "supposed" merit of the education when you are educated and brainwashing your surroundings with it is the worst crime possible to education : defeating its purpose.

But worse it harms them.

Having these loans: they are vulnerable. So they negotiate all of their positions in vulnerability. Hence making every uneducated workers vulnerable too. Resulting in devaluation of the whole concept of workforce. People you can train if they are suitable and companies pay for whatever additional education they need. If they choose technologies that requires rocket scientist to publish a menu in a restaurant when a chalk and a blackboard can do the job, the law of business say they should die.

And economically, this result ... in smaller basin of recruitment hence less competition when it comes to "educated" workforce. The one that every one wants nowadays.

I don't say education is bad. I say educational institutions and academies are the worst ennemies of education. The same as genre in art. We are caught in a vicious circle. Where we were the 10% and blame the assholish 1% but the more the society impoverish the more the 90% are also becoming more and more assholish to the 10%. It is like a huge I hold your balls contest and every one is squeezing their neighbors balls harder out of frustration of their own balls being squeezed tighter.

This level of stupidity should stop before we all explode each others balls. But I require the more "educated" people show they are smart first because they claim to be smarter and also because I am a professional gamer with balls of steel and a grip of iron.


Another day, I will talk about successes in education. Educations that just care about maximizing the teaching of all possible skills in a small amount of time and let professionalization's costs in the hand of the economical entities. 


The days when Agile was not agile but working.

I was thinking of bruce perens words on the community of geeks as being plagued by brillant tech with awful social skills. And I was wondering, what if he was right?

What good a socialization event would do except put them out of ease?

And then, something struck me. I had already seen and been involved in this kind of process. But it was working, with exactly the same kind of crowd, yet more feminine.

At Rider's University during an internship in the 90's.  In the chemistry department. And now that I think of it it was quite a widespread technique to have this kind of meeting in research.

They were same, but very different. But same.

All the students would meet up at workly stages for undergraduate, monthly stages for PhDs, and researchers would have some meeting (especially for asking funding).

For us interns it was :
- explain in simple words to the other team your context;
- what is fun/exciting? 
- what did you planed;
- how did you do so far;
- What are your successes and your difficulties.

Our errors were valued because science is experimental science is a lot of dealing with bugs either in the equations, the instruments, the theory, and 1per millions of a time the physical world itself. And errors are carefully considered because sometimes they can turn into pure gold. Especially the "World BUG Bingo". This one means either breakthrough or fraud


Each team would have a speaker that rotates to present the advance of the work. At the end, people would ask questions to each others and answers. Sometime teams would need or share solutions from other teams. There was no "I" but "We". Teacher would try to no open the mouth (if solution involving not having them to work on it, it could be cool).

It was working.

With the same kind of crowd with more mixed genders than what we have in IT industry.

Teachers would pick some slides, go to a progress meeting boards, say how every one is doing fine, or that we have time to plan to help them later. And then would do their other jobs that were funnier.

So all seeming equal except the organization of work in an university and in IT for doing research and development, I claim Agile could be the problem here. (this is a trick, reasoning absurdly)

Agile clearly looks like "progress reports" from university BUT the MMA individual hardcore fight on technical and social level version.  Encouraging individual skills much more than carebear version of the dodge ball.

Agile implies a role playing game with a pointing finger game inside ... a competitive game for the top of the hill. There is a "I" and no collective responsibilities. Staline would have loved the sovietic  citizens to embrace this embarrassing self trial. Blame the tools, the people, do not question the organization of work. Nice one.

University report force people to act as a a team and coalesce the success and failure to the team as a whole for the length of a project you are bound to the destiny of the project.

It also put the work and its importance on the front of the stage. Let me tell you, it is much more exciting to work on supra-conductor type II and non stoechiometric  values in doping oxyde when you know that if ever it proved good enough supra-conductor at room temperature the impact on the Ohm law are amazing, and thus you can deliver cheaper electricity.

It is more exciting than coding the nth secured with shell/SQL injection big brother tools.

Since, results are the only thing that matters and solidarity was valued (in this university) it developed a culture of cooperation and thus there was an incentive to call for help. And being helped as much as helping was valued. Okay, and teachers were smart and lazy at this place.

So as a lot of scientific apprentice I learnt to value more the project delivery other the methodology in the sneaky ways of a physicist in front of an equation.

This culture of loving crafting over career has put me in a lot of fights.

Because I think that inability to deliver in IT is like conway's law suggest it an organizational problem.

IT companies have a super cow power of corrupting any kind of good idea it touches into crap. The same way the catholic church made wedding degenerates when it touched it. And always ends up saying this is no crap; this is the fertilizer of the next gen solutions. And everybody believe.

I have seen my share of project work. Funnily enough the further you are from computer scientists you are and new "efficient" tools or management technique the better chance of actual delivering.

IT industry seems to have a corporate culture that is toxic. And neither Agile nor ISO nor IEEE nor anything technical is going to change it.

It is deeply rooted in its idealization of the chain of value of their business. I did ISO. It can work. Except in IT business. Any way all our legal contract says we have no financial nor legal liabilities, so what is then a "non conformity", a default? There is no need for QA when you are legally not tied to non conformities in your production.

Their ideal business model -start up- is sometimes looking like a true psychopathic economical agent. With (however long are their "our value/vision web page) a total disdain for the development either of their own workers or even the community.

Sometimes when I look at ISIS organization, I have the feeling the terrorists are turning into startup...which means that they already lost since they are turning into their worst nightmare. Daesh is already dying, they are the living proof they are an occidental organization using all the worst techniques they say to be immoral. The more they use, the more they change themselves in their enemy. At least, IT is useful for fighting against terrorism on one domain.

What are the hint of psychopathy among startup?

I never saw an end user being correctly interviewed and taking care of their need.

I never saw a startup thinking it was alright to be dedicated to passions balancing your life and wishing for a traditional way of life rather than success. I love to play music, ride my bike, and in return it make me more creative and happy. Why is my life choice not accepted? I have the right to live selfishly passionate and put my passions on a pedestal.

Startup resort a lot to brainwashing techniques in order to not pay extra hours, have coders crunching at 60hrs/week for weeks, getting to pay less for driving ethical problems. Companies are only about making money you know?

Startup love the Stokholm syndroma. A brilliant developer is needed for the deal? We will tie him for 3 years on a job he hates for the glory of taking one for the team. No compensation required.

IT don't care about the spirit of the law. They just care to maximize their interest by finding loopholes in rules. Airbn'b, Uber, amazon ... all of these companies have been using loopholes and taken part in the impoverishment of traditional business that are harder to build. Ant builded business. The business of the less fortunate.

They behave like grasshopers. And after the ants are bankrupted, they hire them and since they destroyed their market at a lower price to do the same jobs, they now have a monopoly, making them increase their income for just being an intermediate. It is economical vandalism that will take decades to undo.

Modern startups are just legal extortions, illegal surveillance, tax avoidance ... IT has become the modern days Sin city. I sometimes wish to answer I am professional assassin instead of saying I code.


(back on track) I don't say Agile is bad. I just say gives anything that could be good in the hand of a murderous psychopath can be turn it into a torture instrument.

I don't blame agile for its lack of worth. I blame IT toxic culture, and yet even more dangerous lack of moral conscience among the developer that are supposed to be smart and critical.

Especially the one from free open source software who have been bribed by organization like mozilla, apple, google and whatever for peanuts.

What about the solution?

The solution which was in fact closer to a solid is retired.

Good teachers are gold. Especially that I hate teachers. I always rant about teachers.

Except the very very minority that has nothing to do in universities that have also a toxic culture. I think passionate sharing people that love to be happy and paid reasonably are assets. Exactly not the kind of "good IT employee".


I belong to the craftsman, not  the professional. I think that our professional culture is bad and is the problem underlying the Agile methodology.

I think that ritual of honest conversation don't worth true honest conversations. For this, you need rules that are not rigged towards accepted behaviour vs taboo one.


I think nothing based on honesty and some ethic can be working in a culture that has a soft tooth for deceptive lies.

Can anyone prove IT has been improving our societies, our daily jobs, our economical growth, our ecological footprint?

No.

The first lie of IT is pretending without measure it is an improvement and an economical revolution.


So far, it is a financial revolution that benefits the distributors and the man in the middle to make more efficient collection from artificial monopolies  based on crushing oldly established hard to build business model using the laws as a lever in a close to irreversible way.

We know we win parasites, we also loose long to build stable business.

Don't let be fooled by techniques, language, new paradigms. It is all about doing stuffs, and being smart.

Your invention can improve or harm the world, be careful to whom you give them too.

Programmers of the world: please grow either a pair of steak or balls, but maybe if you are that smart, begin to question the world around you.

Be like Bill

Be smart,

And don't be impressed by a meme telling you to shut your mouth;

Think...

Thinking is already disobeying. 


How to achieve efficient privacy for cheap: learn French

I am a frog. I speak french. One of the most endured language in the information warfare of privacy.

French as a uniform Language has always been a joke. There are nth languages that are centrifugal from the old François : the language of the church/elites and all the streets language.

French like english has been absorbing a lot of words from different cultures:

  1. Oc : (the guy who says Oc instead of oui) gambas, mirer, ... close to spain and basques
  2. Middle Age Slang (street talk): the slang of the thieves versed into "high french" by Vidoq;
  3. spanish/portugese/frank/germans/english/creoles/tzigan/african ...

French being like a patchwork, with some meanings being lost in translation, you can have "faux amis", or just non sense.

"What is it?" In German "Was ist das?" gives in french "vasistas" which is a window.

An "evidence" in french is a trivial fact that needs no to be proven.

The french is polysemic by nature. It can carry more than one meaning at a time and it can look random.

For instance, I can say due to this overload of influence a sentence highlighting a stronger influence for a semitic field. And thus carry a context of alteration based on a common knowledge.

If I refer to the african and tzigane I may will probably point at the suburbs as a key for the context. Hence preloading an hidden context of common additional words.

If I use much more local dialect (Chti, Berruyé, breton, Oc) I will hide a context of "patronyms and topological hidden names". 

For instance la fournaise a St Denis (93) may not be the same as la Fournaise in St Denis de la Réunion.

French language is a pain in the ass.

French is a pain in the ass to learn, because modern french is monotonic.

However,  it used to have accent. Thus in oral communication hidden communications have always been mixed with an other channels: emotions, origins, modulation of intensity.

But actors have also been using it since a long time to overthrow the eavesdropping of the government. Like with "guignol". Street arts have been using in the "comedia dell'arte à la française" the inflexion of pantalonade to make fun of the power under his nose. Hence using "le ton de la guignolade" can inflex like an inbound signaling on the modulation of diction another meaning to the "apparent" message.  


Because if you think authoritative regims like absolute monarchy where cool with the people communicating freely you are wrong.

Books were censored through "lettre de patentes" the origin of patent. Exclusive rights on paper publications versus censorship.

Only books and media appointed by his majesty the king had the rights to publish.

However, Carrefour spotify and other amazon did not existed. Some "beggars" or "merchants" named colporteurs would carry 2 loads. One of totally authorized goods that was just right under the hood, and one hidden in the brain of the colporteur : news.  In fact, not exactly news : songs and folklore. Nothing "that could make you questioned if caught with it".


News of the real world, like how much the people did not care about the virtue the king wanted the people to have. So some lullabies like "au clair de la lune" are hiding very venal sense. A chandelle is nothing more than a big dick.

"Une souris verte" is about a jaqueries (revolt of poors) and what happened to the guy once caught. Totally cruel.

And then here is one of the beauty of a monotonic language :
centrepétrie. Il cours cours le furet, (the weasel run) can be transformed in phonetic anagram in "il fourre, il fourre le curé" (the priest is fucking).


Contrepetrie, puns on words, games with words seems to be as old as "la cour des miracles".

Street crowds needed secret codes. Some for buying best places on the market (pot of wine, greasing the hand, under the table) ... Some for avoiding being understood while negociating in a corporation (louchébem, langue de feu), priests and kids secret language (verlan) ...

These basic substitution games won't hold an algorithm for long, but given other use of sharing common potential secret through shared implicit semantic context, diction, inflexions, double meanings... french language has a huge capacity at fuzzying the machine.

Probably requiring human beings to decipher any simple talks.

And educating someone to get into my brain, is both costly and dangerous.

It would make one spy that would be convinced I wish all the best to the world, and that his time is spent uselessly spending that much money on something like that.

To speak someone's french, you have to share is culture. It is a powerful language that can transfer different contexts, hence culture. And the only way to crack the hidden poly semantic fields of culture is to share it.

That is the reason why, since I think HUMINT is way more expensive than computer cpu power, and knowing that resorting to my raw power of knowing a confusing language that makes NLP go crazy is fun ; I think that speaking french is the ultimate privacy countermeasure.

If someone want to invade your privacy he will have to be able to understand you. Which is nice. It is exactly my purpose in life. To share my culture.

It could solve a lot of misunderstanding in the first place if we agreed on trying to make an effort to get the context right while discussing. French force you to do it, else you are screwed.

French language has a lot of flows. Too much ambiguities. Thus, people have a natural ease to have natural good privacy counter measure through out of bound and in bound signaling as well as some puns. Not to remember how the various dictions/inflexions are parasiting the phonem recognition.

Sometimes, weaknesses are strengths. Use a language that force people in sharing your culture to understand you. It will make the "forces of eval" have more allies understanding you in their rank.

Words are not as much corrupting as culture. Use your culture to taint your message in the clear. Provoke people to read your message so that they want to decipher it.

And then load your culture as a silent bomb hidden to your messages. A key that requires eavesdroppers to be potentially contaminated by the culture they may want to fight.

The only way to defeat privacy measure, is to make haikido. Make privacy counter measure a great tool to promote education and educate the cryptographists to the nice discovery they were not the first to think of privacy.

Some weapons are paradoxs not mathematical proofs. 


Heureux qui comme Ulysse ...

J'ai vaincu l'alcool : je le fais.

Ma première rencontre avec l'alcool fût à l'armée. Ma deuxième avec l'informatique.

Au début, je ne comprenais pas. 25 ans plus tard je comprends mieux.

La chose la plus terrible avec l'alcool c'est quand vous ne pouvez pas le contrôler. Alors, bêtement vous tentez de le contrôler, et vous êtes prêts à tout pour le virer, mais plus vous tentez de le contrôler plus ça vous rend misérable, moins vous tentez de le contrôler plus il vous rend misérable ... notamment au niveau des boyaux.

Quand j'étais jeune je faisais beaucoup de sports, et il semble que les anciens sportifs ont plus de tendance aux addictions. J'ai heureusement commencé le shit tard,  à 38 ans (et arrêté depuis que j'ai quitté le pays). J'ai jamais suivi les ordonnances des médecins pour les médocs sauf pour les antibiotiques, les vaccins et parfois les anti douleurs/inflammatoire quand j'avais trop mal.

Je préfère me rouler en boule limiter ma respiration et mes battements cardiaques et être misérable pendant une journée que prendre de la ventoline. Je suis comme ça.

L'alcool et malheureusement le tabac sont deux des drogues les plus dures que je connaisse.

Comment arrêter?

Ce qui marche pour chacun d'entre nous est LA bonne méthode. Ceci est la mienne qui ne marche qu'avec moi. Désolé pour ceux qui espèreraient que ça marche pour eux.

Disons que je ne crois en rien, ni personne, et que ça m'aide à m'utiliser comme un laboratoire.

De plus le sport pratiqué à un jeune âge aide, et si vous n'avez pas ce bagage je pense que vous pouvez abandonner de lire la suite.

Qu'est ce que le sport m'a apporté? Une seule chose: avoir confiance dans mon corps et mon esprit et parfois les laisser faire spontanément. J'ai pris des gnons, je me suis fait cassé des os, je suis tombé dans les pommes, je suis tombé dans le coma (on appelle ça un KO), j'ai poussé mon corps à ses limites au point de générer suffisamment d'endorphines pour assommer un cheval et j'ai aimé ça.

Le sport vous apprend à gérer les drogues et à ne pas craindre la perte de contrôle.  Il vous apprend aussi que la drogue vous détruit. Faire du sport abîme, et soigne. L'excès en toute chose est mauvais.

Le sport est une belle saloperie. C'est pour ça que je fais du vélo de manière non compétitive, juste pour le plaisir de rouler à 50 à l'heure en ville et dépasser les voitures et me faire arrêter par la maréchaussée qui me regarde sans mon casque de manière dubitative.

Mon premier point est : connais toi toi même. La devise d'Appolon. C'est pas mon dieu préféré, mais que voulez vous, on choisit pas toujours le dieu qui nous aide, et toute aide est bonne à prendre.

C'est comme pour la bouffe. Je ne fais aucun régime et mon poids est le même que quand j'avais 20  ans: 69kg pour 1m82. Je suis un poids mi moyen, et je peux toujours faire 150km en une journée de vélo même avec une bronchite aigüe pognée au boulot en plein été et je graille comme un animal. N'importe comment.

Ce que je vais vous raconter ce n'est pas comment j'ai consciemment décroché de l'alcool, c'est comment mon corps fait à chaque fois pour s'en débarrasser et comment "le je conscient" l'interprète.

Oui, en fait c'est pas la première fois que je décroche. Et je m'étais jamais posé la question de comment. Comment se fait ce que cela marche sans rien faire pour moi?

En fait, j'ai découvert que la vraie question était comment j'en viens à être accroc dans ma vie.

L'armée, travailler dans l'informatique, l'université en banlieue, quand j'ai été ruiné par les connasses de grosses boîtes françaises quels sont les facteurs communs?

Premièrement, des environnements malsains  où l'on vous colle beaucoup de responsabilités sur des choses où vous n'avez pas de contrôle : ça s'appelle le stress.

Ensuite, un pouvoir d'achat élevé et un entourage où tout le monde est quasiment plus alcoolique que vous.

Mes premières barrettes de teush, les premières fois où j'ai vu de la coke, du MDMA, des acides, c'était pendant des soirées avec mes collègues en informatique dans une web agency connue.

Mon secret c'est que je suis une tête de mule comme mon creusois de grand père qui a fuit le STO pendant la guerre parce que ça le faisait chier. Il a volé un vélo, dormi dans les meules de foin pour rejoindre sa famille à 200km de là, oublié la faim et l'incomfort, la loi, et il s'est fait engueulé par ma grand mère pour avoir perdu son alliance en même temps que 10 kilos. Il a pas moufté.

Mon secret, c'est que je suis allergique à être emmerdé et que la hiérarchie peut aller se faire cuire un œuf quand elle tente de me pressurer comme un citron.  C'est épidermique chez moi. Puis j'aimais mon grand père comme un modèle.

Je vois les autres. Dans des boîtes soit disant cools, grosses et petites,  pour mes anciens collègues qui n'ont "pas de problèmes d'alcool" ils ont un secret : ils comptent leurs pintes à 6% comme des verres à 3%. et ils mentent. Ils sont alcooliques.

Je constate aussi que les alcooliques dépendant aiment se mentir à eux même et pressent l'entourage pour être eux aussi alcooliques. Ca les aides à ne pas se sentir marginalisé. Mon expérience est que l'alcoolisme est grégaire. Faut dire qu'ils sont bien ostracisés. Les gens éduqués se mentent de manière éduquée. C'est pour ça que je refuse les A.A.. Je tombe en suivant la meute, je ne me soignerais pas en suivant la meute. La meute est mon ennemie.

Merci Pasteur, merci l'époque victorienne hygiéniste, les puritains américains pour largement mélanger des études aux airs scientifiques avec la morale publique. L'alcoolique est un malade qui est un danger pour l'ordre et la salubrité publique. Un individu incapable de contrôle sur lui, sans discipline qui menace l'ordre publique. L'alcoolisme rend misérable, l'alcoolique est une maladie contagieuse. Il rend l'homme animal.

Bref, l'alcoolique est un mauvais soldat. Mais un mauvais soldat est-il un mauvais humain? Les autorités ont-elles vraiment toujours raison? 

Je suis fourbe. Ca m'a beaucoup aidé. Quand a une époque je trouvais que 6 pintes tous les soirs ça faisait beaucoup trop pour moi pour suivre l'enchaînement des tournées,  je prenais les commandes, et demandait aux barmen de remplacer ma pinte par un panaché bien blanchi. Ici, je n'ai plus de panaché, j'ai les bières session. Je suis l'homme aux cent ruses. 

La tournée des grands ducs. Tradition de socialisation française consistant à faire le tour des rues de la soif, un bar après l'autre à travers la ville en prenant un godet dans chaque rad tout en râlant sur tout ce qui ne va pas.

J'ai même eu pris des godets au bar tabac de la rue des martyrs (le proprio avait changé depuis la chanson).

Alcoolique oui, Anonyme non! Râler au bar du commerce est un début de prise de conscience. J'encourage les gens à râler comme un maudit français.  Savoir qu'on est alcoolique est un bon début.

Comment arrêter l'alcool? La sagesse populaire est que ce soit en s'éloignant. J'ai fait le contraire. Je le produis. Mais je suis tellement amoureux de mon alcool que je suis incapable d'attendre sa maturation. Je suis devenu accroc à la levure.

J'ai juste évité mes anciens collègues pendant 2 mois. J'ai évité de socialiser. Je me suis mis en retraite et je me suis laissé du temps. J'ai décidé de me foutre de tout et de laisser le stress partir par la fenêtre avec le pognon que je me suis fait volé.

Mon expérience est que je suis trop sensible. Mais j'aime ça.

J'aime en avoir quelque chose à foutre des autres. Je me sens vivant. Même si je souffre pour les autres plus que de raisons.

Faire des applications de surveillance buguées utiliser pour virer des travailleurs dans des calls centers ça te fout un coup au moral surtout basé des métriques foireuses. Surtout quand tu fais ça avec des collègues portant haut l'étendard des valeurs morales de la libertés liées aux outils informatiques.

Je ne suis pas un hypocrite, je sais ce que je fais pour gagner ma croûte: j'aide à vous surveiller. J'aide à pousser des applications buguées par manque de professionnalisme dans des délais intenables sous pression des ventes qui résultent dans vos frustrations, la perte de vos mots de passe, votre surveillance, la perte de vos photos, documents, musique et accessoirement la manipulation et la censure des idées. Mais on prétend le contraire.

Je fais ça avec du logiciel libre. Du logiciel avec des morceaux de vertus magiques sensées vous protéger des méchants. Mais en fait, je suis avec tous mes anciens amis devenu le méchant. L'alcool comme toutes les autres drogues sont cools comme des béquilles. Elles m'ont permis de supporter ça. De court circuiter ma conscience. D'être le temps que je suis intoxiqué servile. Malheureusement, mon corps déteste se sentir mal. L'alcool à des effets de bords que je déteste: boyaux dérangés, essouflement lié à la prise de poids... et ça me fait chier. Mon corps d'ancien sportif râle. Il renâcle à boire... il prend sérieusement le signal de lendemain de cuite. Il est OK pour un peu d'alcool, et il l'aime comme il aime l'endorphine. Mais comme un drogué ultime, il veut pouvoir avoir sa prochaine dose. Il est le toxo ultime. Il reste tapi au fond de ma conscience refusant que je l'empêche de disparaître. L'animal tapi en moi reste là. Dans l'ombre. Féroce prêt à jaillir si la menace est trop grande et prend le contrôle. Mon coté dyonisaque, chtonien, sombre.

Ma partie non sportive et geek elle est pour l'abus d'alcool et le contrôle. J'ai besoin d'argent et la fin justifie les moyens. En tant que membre de la société bien intégré, je me déteste. Mais c'est ma partie appolonienne. 

Mais, mon acceptation consciente de mes choix inconscient par éclairs de lucidité certes me rendent malheureux (car j'ai une femme à charge).

Mais je suis un poil heureux: je ne suis pas le psychopathe qui tourne le bouton dans l'expérience de Milgram. Je ne suis pas un psychopathe. Et c'est ce qui m'empêche de sombrer dans une détestation de moi même auto-destructrice inconsciente comme mes collègues. Et mon corps déteste souffrir sans buts héroïques. J'aime souffrir pour faire des trucs qui me passionnent qui en valent la peine. Vivit que utiture disait Sénèque.

Mais, je refuse de faire de la merde. Je refuse de perdre ma fierté. Je refuse d'être un salaud. Et je paie le prix: je suis ruiné.

Je me sens comme saint Martin  (j'ai déjà précisé qu'on choisit pas les dieux qui vous aident) illuminé par la révélation que je ne suis pas un centurion romain mais un homme doué de compassion. Je suis doué de conscience, de libre arbitre. C'est une fois dénué de tous les biens matériels que l'on découvre qu'on a toujours un trésor en soi.

Et ça je le dois à faire mon alcool et à ma passion pour les sophistes. Je suis sorti de l'obéissance pour faire quelque chose d'illégal, non basé sur des recettes et des outils achetés en grande surface.

J'ai fait confiance aux bribes de cours retenus pendant que je dormais en cour de biologie. J'ai fait confiance à ma capacité de construire mes propres outils pendant mes TP de physique, j'ai fait confiance à ma capacité d'être scientifique et d'expérimentation en aller retour constant avec la théorie. J'ai fait confiance à tous ses auteurs venus me tendre la main à travers des millénaires qui me questionnent en permanence. Je me suis fait confiance à douter de moi même.

J'ai repris contrôle en étant moi même en doutant, et en découvrant que je n'avais rien de toxique en moi. Que l'acool à 2% ça étanche la soif... Oui, je suis devenu accroc à la levure de boulanger en solution.

Nous vivons dans une société anxiogène, où l'obéissance et le consensus prévalent. J'ai pas éliminé l'alcool, j'ai éliminé les causes de l'alcoolisme. 

Mon égo démesuré me fait vivre dans un univers ou je prévaut. Où je dois vivre avec ma faiblesse de ne pas supporter vivre du fait des conséquences de mes actions. Où je dois vivre avec le savoir des conséquences indirectes de mes actions. Je ne peux ignorer le conflit entre mon corps doué de sa propre volonté de survie et mon intellect qui me dit de survivre et obéir. La volonté de mon corps est limite autonome. Je suis obligé d'aligner mon corps et mon esprit. C'est ce qui fait ce que je suis. Mon être social et mon être physique sont en conflit. On appelle ça une névrose. Les réaligner ça s'appelle être soi. Si le vecteur plaît aux docteurs vous êtes guéris, sinon on vous colle sous camisole chimique.
 La nécessité est un mal, mais il n'existe aucune nécessité de vivre sous l'empire du mal.

Je vais quand même devoir retrouver un travail. Satisfaire mes obligations sociales et matrimoniales.

Ca va être dur, je vais très probablement encore échouer... Mais je préfère la souffrance, l'échec la douleur à la renonciation.

Je préfère échouer en essayant qu'abandonner sans avoir essayé. Et dans le pire des cas, je préfère devenir un plombier en Pologne.

Je ne suis pas encore défait. J'ai un genou à terre, mais pas les deux. Et je préfère vivre libre que mourir en esclave.  Regardez ma face émaciée, regardez mon corps meurtri, mais mes deux yeux eux dardent ma colère permanente, ma volonté branlante mais inextingible de me relever et me battre à nouveau.

Ne méprenez pas ma fragilité pour de la faiblesse, c'est elle qui a construit ma résolution. Elle est mon arme. C'est elle qui me rend fort.

Et je renaîs de mes cendres ... à nouveau. De la noirceur de ma propre détestation naît ma résolution à faire mieux. Ma détermination à remonter en selle. Je n'ai pas peur d'échouer, je n'ai pas peur des douleurs que je vais m'infliger je n'ai pas peur que l'on me fuit.  Je n'ai pas peur de la mort sociale. Je n'ai pas peur de m'aimer. Je n'ai pas peur de défier Zeus, les Parques et les Bienveillantes. 

La peur est la petite mort de l'esprit. Je refuse d'avoir peur. Je refuse de me censurer. Je refuse de me contrôler au profit de volition qui ne vont pas dans le sens des mon être.

Abandonner serait comme me regarder mort dans un corps vivant. Je refuse de mourir, je veux vivre pleinement avec ce don fait à nul autre: la vie avec une conscience.

Je mourrais à nouveau, je serais peut être à nouveau écarté de la meute et de la société, je vais peut être nouveau lever l'ancre et recommencer avec rien.

Mais la vie n'est pas une destination, c'est un voyage, et tel Ulysse non seulement je n'abandonnerais pas, mais en plus aussi stupides soient mes compagnons je tenterais de les sauver en alexandrin.

Il est temps que je quitte mon burnout comme Ulysse quitta Nausicaa non en la maudissant, mais en la bénissant... parce que je suis comme ça.



Donc, si jamais je vous cause, c'est que je fais à nouveau 1m82, que la balance indique 69kg le poids de l'amour, que mon vélo est prêt et qu'il fait beau. A moi la vie. En toute pour de nouvelles aventures! ... avec la rage qui coule de mes babines.