The Cathedral and the Bazaar

In the world of software development, few essays have had as much lasting impact as The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond. Published in 1999, the essay is more than just a reflection on open-source software—it’s a philosophy that has influenced how software is built, maintained, and distributed in the modern era. By contrasting two distinct models of software development, the cathedral and the bazaar, Raymond provides a compelling argument for the power of open collaboration.

The Bitter Lesson: Theoretical Foundations

In his 2019 essay The Bitter Lesson, Richard Sutton outlined a key observation in AI research: general-purpose methods that leverage massive computation consistently outperform human-crafted, specialized approaches. While this claim has strong empirical support, its theoretical justification is often overlooked. This post explores the fundamental learning theories, computational complexity principles, and optimization frameworks that underpin The Bitter Lesson.

Shannon-Hartley Theorem

The Shannon-Hartley theorem is a fundamental concept in information theory that describes the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted over a communication channel with a given bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. It provides a theoretical limit on the capacity of a communication channel, which is the maximum rate at which information can be transmitted without error.