Ciro Santilli's favorite religion. He does not believe fully in it, nor has he studied it besides through brief Wikipedia and Googling.
Ciro likes Buddhism because it feels like the least "metaphysical explanations to things you can't see" of the religions he knows.
Ciro also believes that there is a positive correlation between being a software engineer and liking Buddhist-like things, see also: the correlation between software engineers and Buddhism.
Quick facts:
- Nationalities: Italian and Brazilian
- Grew up in: Brazil
- Relationship status 2017-: married
- Given name pronunciation: take your pick from Ciro Santilli's given name
- Chinese name: 三西猴, means "three western monkeys". Phonetic approximation to SANtilli CIRO. More info at: Ciro Santilli's Chinese name. Semi-unintentionally reminds Chinese people of Sun Wukong (孙悟空). This association is further slightly strengthened by the phonetic choice of 三 San, which Ciro later noticed matches the middle character of Tang Sanzang (唐三藏), the monk in Journey to the West. The given name 西猴 was given by Ciro Santilli's wife, then recent girlfriend, as a semi-joke, and he took it up because the best way to take a joke is to play along with the joker. 三 was chosen by Ciro himself.
- laptop: high end Lenovo ThinkPad
- distro: latest Ubuntu release
- Vim or Emacs: vi/vim. But for The Love, will someone please make an open source C++ integrated development environment that actually just works?
- tabs or spaces: spaces
- Mailing list or Git(Hub|Lab): Git(Hub|Lab), with passion, see Section "Mailing list"
- system or unit tests: system
- programming languages: Python and C++. He'll learn Rust and Haskell once he's rich. As of the 2020s, Rust was picking up some serious steam, so Ciro might end up eating his own words there.
- musical instruments to listen: Chinese Guqin and electric Jazz-fusion guitar
- metric or imperial: metric, for The Love. Science? Standardization? 21st century anyone?
- QWERTY or Dvorak: QWERTY, alas
- birth name: Ciro Duran Santilli
Other people with the same name are listed at Section "Ciro Santilli's homonyms".
Sun Wukong (孙悟空) is a playful and obscenely powerful monkey Journey to the West. He protects Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang, and likes eating fruit, just like Ciro. Oh, and Goku from Dragon Ball is based on him. His japanese name is "Sun Wukong" (same Chinese characters with different Japanese pronunciation) for the love. His given name "Wukong" means literally "the one who mastered the void", which is clearly a Dharma name and fucking awesome in multiple ways. This is another sad instance of a Chinese thing better known in the West as Japanese.
It is worth noting however that although Wukong is extremely charming, Ciro's favorite novel of the Four Great Classic Novels is Water Margin. Journey to the West is just a monster of the week for kids, but Water Margin is a fight for justice saga. Sorry Wukong!
The photo was taken in an open event organized by the awesome Cambridge Synthetic Biology outreach group, more or less the same people who organize: www.meetup.com/Cambridge-Synthetic-Biology-Meetup/ and who helped organize Section "How to use an Oxford Nanopore MinION to extract DNA from river water and determine which bacteria live in it".
Taking part in such activities is what Ciro tries to do to overcome his lifelong regret of not having done more experimental stuff at university. Would he have had the patience to handle all the bullshit of the physical word without going back to the informational sciences? Maybe, maybe not. But now he will probably never know?!
Notice the orange high visibility cycling jersey under the lab coat, from someone who had just ridden in from work as fast as possible as part of his "lunch break". It is more fun when it is hard.
Ciro Santilli fantasizes that he would have make a good scribe in the middle ages, partly due to his self diagnosed graphomania, but also appreciation for foreign languages, and his mild obsession with the natural sciences.
OurBigBook.com is Ciro's view of a modern day scriptorium, except that now the illuminations are YouTube videos.
Chill and eat your bread in peace comes to mind. A scribe, in a library, reading and writing the entire day in peace and quiet. The life!
The job of a Internet-age scribe is basically that of making knowledge more open, legally extracting it from closed copyrighted sources, and explaining your understanding of it to the wider world under Creative Commons licenses on the web. And in the process of greater openness, given a well organized system, we are able combine the knowledge of many different people, and thus make things more understandable than any single/few creator closed source source could ever achieve.
Ciro Santilli waving hello in infrared.
More info at: Figure "Ciro Santilli waving hello in infrared".Two things come to mind when Ciro Santilli thinks about his sinohpilia.
There is a strong "Ciro Santilli's knowledge hoarding" side to it. Ciro has decided that he has to know EVERYTHING about China. It's culture. It's people. It's art. And so once that has been decided, it becomes inevitable.
But of course, there is also the "which part of Ciro's inner being led to that hoarding decision" part of things. Mishima's quote often comes to mind:
Exoticism is undoubtedly part of it.
Maybe it has something to do with growing up observing 5th+ generation Japanese Brazilians immigrants, well, being Asians and crushing it academically. But also being quiet people, and sometimes misfits. I.e., nerds.
Maybe there is also someting to do with the influence Japanese anime, highly popular during Ciro's hildhood in Brazil. Ciro, unlike many of his friends, left that relatively early, as he got into the deeper pleasures of natural sciences and then more traditional Asian culture. But still.
And finally perhaps the correlation between sofware engineers and Asian fetish and the correlation between software engineers and Buddhism.
As "deadlines" approach, feature sets get cut down, then there are delays, and finally a feasible feature set is delivered some time after the deadline.
The only deadlines that can be met are those of tasks which have already been done but not announced.
This is of course Hofstadter's law.
On one hand, yes, we need knowledge at all levels, and it is fine to start top-to-bottom with an overview.
The problem is, however, that there is a huge knowledge gap between the one liner "this is the truth" and the much more important "this is how we know it, these are the experiments" as mentioned at how to teach and learn physics.
Therefore, if you have that extremely rare knowledge, you should be writing that in addition to the dumbed down version with an open knowledge license. It takes time, but that's what really changes the world.
Ciro Santilli has always felt that there is a huge gap between "the very basic" and "the very advanced", as mentioned at: Section "The missing link between basic and advanced", which existing scientific vulgarization is not doing enough to address. In a sense, filling out this "middle path" is the main goal of OurBigBook.com.
Ciro really enjoyed the description of the "Arindam Kumar Chatterjee" youTube channel:
Theoretical/mathematical physics at the graduate level and above. This is NOT a popular science channel. Here you find real theoretical physicists doing real theoretical physics. We think it is important for people to get a taste of the real deal, and for aspiring theoretical physicists to see what they are working towards, i.e., to provide the public with something beyond the ubiquitous Michio Kaku and Brian Cox.
One thing must be said however: there seems to be an actual bias against researchers tho try to create vulgarization material: How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University by Sean Carroll (2011), and that is terrible.
There is often more value in a tutorial by a beginner who is trying to fully learn and explain a subject, than by an expert who is trying to "dumb it down" too much.
Ciro Santilli lived in Santos from about the year 1998 to 2007, with a 10 month hiatus in Coventry, UK, until he went to the University of São Paulo.
Santos is the nearest beach city to São Paulo City, and for this reason:
- the largest port of Latin America in 2018, through which large chunks of the precious coffee export exited Brazil in the 19th century. There is a Coffee museum in Santos.This importance is also linked to the fact that Santos is one of the oldest european cities in Brazil, being founded in 1546. From this you can infer that it was a good port. One reason for this is obvious if you look at the map of the city: the neighbouring towns of Praia Grande and Guarujá form a large protected bay where ships may safely dock.
- a popular local tourist destination that gets crowded on hot weekends, with the beach line being fully built with tall buildings from the 60's, many of which became incredibly bent due to the inadequate technology used on such soft soil
Ciro idolizes Santos as the perfect location to live nature-wise due to its amazing wide sandy beach, in which Ciro spent endless hours walking on the sand and on the largest beachfront garden in the world (archive), meditating, and playing some soccer after school was over. Santos is also the city where Pelé first played professionally.
Ciro has visited Santos several times after leaving Brazil. Doing this gives him a weird feeling of having a separate life, in which time passes 2 weeks every few years. Of course, as your family grows, it gets harder and harder to go back home, and your family members might want to just go travel to more interesting places than just stay at your wonderful beach which you love in part due to nostalgia.
Ciro is also fond of the concept of the small public buildings near the beach garden (postos de praia), which serve different cultural activities: library, comic book store, art cinema, surf school. It is such a shame that the library and comic book ones are in such bad shape as of 2020, old books and poor people who go there to sleep a bit in the barely working air conditioning. Ciro fantasizes how those could instead be cultural hubs for the gathering of the brightest artists, and scientists, of town. Maybe they are just too small. Maybe it is not within the realm of possibility of public service. Maybe, we should focus instead in the poorer regions, far form the beach. But the dream remains.
Santos only has one natural defect: mosquitoes. By the sea it is fine because the wind is strong, and they don't like salt water. But anywhere else, you will be eaten alive, and maybe get dengue, Ciro got it once. Gene drive, please.
Sometimes you can debug software by staring at the code for long enough Updated 2025-04-24 +Created 1970-01-01
A senior developer came over, and rather than trying to run and modify the code like an idiot, which is what Ciro Santilli usually does (see also experimentalism remarks at Section "Ciro Santilli's bad old event memory"), he just stared at the code for about 10 minutes.
We knew that the problem was likely in a particular function, but it was really hard to see why things were going wrong.
After the 10 minutes of examining every line in minute detail, he said:and truly, that was the cause.
I think this function call has such or such weird edge case
And so, Ciro was enlightened.
It is such a huge shame that you have to understand Portuguese to appreciate those songs... this is yet another great evil outcome of having more than one natural language is bad for the world.
The good songs stopped before of just after Ciro Santilli was born, they were originally heard by his parent's generation. Those young new kids are boring.
The place to start is definitely the Holy Trinity of popular Brazilian music:
- Caetano Veloso is arguably Ciro Santilli's favorite MPB artist, he has just too many amazing songs, best ones at: Section "The best Caetano Veloso songs"
- Chico Buarque. Ciro's second favorite.
- Gilberto Gil. Perhaps Ciro likes him third because he is the most lighthearted one, although not always: Section "The best Gilberto Gil songs"
Video 1. Preciso Me Encontrar by Cartola. Source. Present in the 1976 eponymous album though it is likely from much earlier.Video 2. Asa Branca by Luiz Gonzaga. Source. Translation: "White wing". Written in 1947Video 3. O vento by Dorival Caymmi (1949)Source. Translation: "The wind".Video 4. Panis et Circenses from the Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis (). Source. Translation: "Bread and circuses", a famous Latin phrase. Composed by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso and performed by Os MutantesVideo 5. Mistério do Planeta from the Acabou Chorare album by Novos Baianos (1972)Source. Translation: "The mystery of the planet".Video 6. "Senhor Cidadão" from the Se O Caso É Chorar album by Tom Zé (1972)Source. Translation: "Mr. Citizen". This is likely reference to Military dictatorship in Brazil-lingo. This is an anti-Military dictatorship in Brazil song, appears to reuse terms used by the dictatorship propaganda in the song.Video 7. Marimbondo from the "Pirão de Peixe com Pimenta (1977)" album by Sá & Guarabyra (1977)Source.Video 8. Romaria by Renato Teixeira. Source."Romaria" is the name of a type of Catholic peregrination.Video 9. Metamorfose ambulante by Raul Seixas (1973)Source. Translation: "Itinerant metamorphosis". From the album Krig-ha, Bandolo!Video 10. Ouro de tolo by Raul Seixas (1973)Source. Translation: "Fool's gold". This dude should be a scientist. But well, he went for mystic/artist. Close enough.Video 11. Gita by Raul Seixas (1974)Source. "Gita" must be a reference to the Bhagavad Gita. From the album: Gita.Video 12. Maluco beleza by Raul Seixas (1977)Source. From the album O Dia em que a Terra ParouVideo 13. A telicidade by Tom Jobim (1958)Source. Translation: "Happiness". Composed for the Black Orpheus (1958) film. "Tristeza não tem fim, felicidade sim" (Sadness never ends, but happiness does). The movie itself is OK. Appeals to Ciro's Buddhist sensibilities.Video 14. Chega de saudade by Tom Jobim. Source. Translation: "Enough longing".Video 15. Jorge da Capadócia by Jorge Ben Jor (1975)Source. From the Solta o Pavão (1975) album. The Caetano interpretation is better however, poor Jorge.- Jair Rodrigues
Video 16. Disparada by Jair Rodrigues (1968)Source. This song is simply amazing. Not exactly MPB, a bit more towards country, but close enough. This was as the track of some soap opera.Video 17. Deixa Isso Pra Lá by Jair Rodrigues (1964)Source. Fantastic early example of early rap music!!! This is regocnized example at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnDEuuPq4Q which builds upon the 1964 song. Amazing. An amazing live performance at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3E1uHdrJws, only not using that as the default link as it is not from the official channel. - Vinicius de Moraes. Many of his lyrics are poetry. Notably, he has some "children" songs that you think about as an adult and go "oh fuck". For some reason, Ciro can't help but think that he looks like a pedophile, but he doesn't have any scandals apparently, poor dude. He was a drunkard for sure though.
Video 20. Aquarela by Toquinho (1983)Source. This is a mega childhood hit, and it never gets old. Amazing. One of the most brutal memento moris ever?Video 21. Xô Saudade by Alceu Valença. Source. From the 1980 album "Coração Bobo"Video 22. Carcará by João Do Vale (1981)Source.From the eponymous album.Video 23. Carcará by Maria Bethânia (1981)Source. This very good interpretation likely did much to popularize the song.Video 25. Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda by Hyldon (1974)Source. Translation: "On the Street, In the Rain, On the Farm".Video 26. Source. Translation: "All that you could be".Video 27. Caçador De Mim from the eponymous album by Milton Nascimento (1981)Source.
New developers won't want to learn your project, because they would rather shoot themselves.
Of course, at some point software gets large enough that things won't fit anymore in 5 seconds. But then you must have either some kind of build caching, or options to do partial builds/tests that will bring things down to that 5 second mark.
A slow build from scratch will mean that your continuous integration costs a lot, money that could be invested in a new developer!
One anecdote comes to mind. Ciro Santilli was trying to debug something, and more experience colleague came over.
To reproduce a problem, ciro was running one command, wait 5 seconds, run a second command, wait 5 seconds, run a third command:
cmd1
# wait 5 seconds
cmd2
# wait 5 seconds
cmd3The first thing the colleague said: join those three commands into one:And so, Ciro was enlightened.
cmd1;cmd2;cmd3
