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In the beginning of Hillegass's book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, he has a great quote of someone from Caltech being asked about the real world usefulness o
by J3L2404 17y ago
In the beginning of Hillegass's book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, he has a great quote of someone from Caltech being asked about the real world usefulness of a degree in astrophysics. His response was "Not much, but if I run into a hard problem and start thinking I must be stupid because I can't figure this out, then I remember I have a degree in astrophysics so I am not stupid and this must be hard. So in that way it is useful." I'm paraphrasing (the book is buried somewhere) but that always stuck and your post reminded me how important it is to keep at it because coding is not easy, but it is worth it.
- bryanwoods 17y agoThanks for mentioning this. I've actually been working through that book over the past few days and think that anecdote really got under my skin. For some reason it didn't dawn on me when writing the article. I'll make note of it.
- zck 17y agopg made a similar comment in Undergraduation (http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html): > My mother, who has the same [thermostat], diligently spent a day reading the user's manual to learn how to operate hers. She assumed the problem was with her. But I can think to myself "If someone with a PhD in computer science can't understand this thermostat, it must be badly designed."