schanq

Agreed and that’s what spiking is for! Once you have an idea of the solution then you can implement properly with TDD, which generally results in a much better design than just going with the original spike. However, I find it bizarre that many engineers think unit testing is beneath them. I can understand that people find it difficult to stick to the test first discipline. But it’s crazy to me that you wouldn’t want to write tests at all.. I feel so much happier with the additional protection.

I see this same attitude about TDD adoption - teams in my company say things like “testing is for lackeys / that work is beneath us”, I.e. they see that as the responsibility of QA testers who are less important in their view. This is short sighted, arrogant and encourages similar problems with superiority complexes. TDD is still controversial in some circles, but engineers who have a deep understanding of both tests and implementation are far more valuable than those who only understand one side. Anyway, sorry for the somewhat off topic rant, but a lot of what you said resonated with me

> The most obvious way to organize all that is to imagine a strong regional rulers, a class of nobles, taxes, some sort of manorialism.

Yes.. and/or religious leaders.

Supercollider has been around for many a year. Has there been a big update recently? Or has OP just discovered it?

Why discourage people from entering music tech R&D? I’ve worked in this space for 7 years and we’re constantly on the lookout for talent! DAW programming is just one option for people wanting to develop musical applications, e.g. game industry (procedural audio, adaptive synthesis, etc), generative/adaptive music services (generative composition/arrangement for media or context dependent listening), mobile app development (on device synthesis, voice processing, etc). Furthermore, thanks to online learning resources (e.g. this author, JUCE ADC, etc) and online communities (e.g. KVR), it’s never been easier to learn how to build music DSP applications. However, we’re increasingly looking for people who have a strong background in both musical DSP and ML, so if you want to pursue a career in this space I suggest brushing up on traditional DSP and modern DSP/ML combined approaches (e.g. DDSP https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp, QMUL research topics http://c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/audioengineering.html)

Reminds me of a project by Patrick Tresset @ Goldsmiths, UoL...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdQbyff_Sk http://research.gold.ac.uk/9255/