Emre Sevinç

“A good program must be written many times. This is true of the programs we show. The first draft may not clearly separate out the concerns, but by making that draft the programmer learns the structure of the problem. We will show two different implementations, which will reveal the evolution of the program as we identify shortcomings in our draft.”
― Chris Hanson, Software Design for Flexibility: How to Avoid Programming Yourself into a Corner

“To get just an inkling of the fire we're playing with, consider how content-selection algorithms function on social media. They aren't particularly intelligent, but they are in a position to affect the entire world because they directly influence billions of people. Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user's preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more predictable in which items they will click on. (Possibly there is a category of articles that die-hard centrists are likely to click on, but it’s not easy to imagine what this category consists of.) Like any rational entity, the algorithm learns how to modify its environment —in this case, the user’s mind—in order to maximize its own reward.”
― Stuart Russell, Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

“Regular expressions are widely used for string matching. Although regular-expression systems are derived from a perfectly good mathematical formalism, the particular choices made by implementers to expand the formalism into useful software systems are often disastrous: the quotation conventions adopted are highly irregular; the egregious misuse of parentheses, both for grouping and for backward reference, is a miracle to behold. In addition, attempts to increase the expressive power and address shortcomings of earlier designs have led to a proliferation of incompatible derivative languages.”
― Chris Hanson, Software Design for Flexibility: How to Avoid Programming Yourself into a Corner

“For advanced analytics, a well-designed data pipeline is a prerequisite, so a large part of your focus should be on automation. This is also the most difficult work. To be successful, you need to stitch everything together.”
― Piethein Strengholt, Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture