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programmers actually need to think sometimes. the jobs mentioned are more routine and rely on soft skills and experience a lot. I do not mean any disrespect by

programmers actually need to think sometimes. the jobs mentioned are more routine and rely on soft skills and experience a lot. I do not mean any disrespect by that. mathematicians are also best when they are young, but unlike programmers work in academia and get to teach until retirement, whereas programmers get replaced.

emodendroket 9y ago
Doctors don't need to think? Come on, man.
- timwaagh 9y ago
  they do but it is not the same thing at all. we need to think for hours, finding the right algorithm to compute something. doctors need to make the right decision in very little time based on their experience and knowledge.
  - mmmpop 9y ago
    > finding the right algorithm to compute something Perhaps English is not your first language because you sound like me at 19 explaining to my dad why I haven't finished his website lol
    - timwaagh 9y ago
      What does that have to do with anything?
yellowapple 9y ago
I'd hope that my doctor "need[s] to think sometimes". Anything less while holding a scalpel in anticipation of cutting me open is downright terrifying. Same goes, ideally, for politicians and lawyers and engineers.
js8 9y ago
> mathematicians are also best when they are young This guy springs to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai Because, yeah, programmers and mathematicians don't actually need any experience, they can just think everything up on the spot! I also wonder how you imagine that other professions gain their experience, if they don't need to think.
- timwaagh 9y ago
  it is a historical fact that most of the best mathematicians make their famous discoveries when they are younger than 30. if you have studied the subject, you'd know this, so i assume you just dislike these facts and argue for the sake of it.
  - pathsjs 9y ago
    I would question whether this is actually true. Stats on Field medalists have to be taken with a grain of salt, given that it is awarded at 40 years top in the first place
    - timwaagh 9y ago
      That is pretty limited information. Talk to a good professor. he will gladly admit that his mind is not as nimble as it was once. maybe he will say things like hes glad he can still keep up and do research. mine told me this in front of an entire class just to drive the point home that 'the time is now'.
      - pathsjs 9y ago
        I have been doing mathematics up until a couple of postdocs - and based on first hand experience I think that the story of young mathematicians is mostly a myth. Maybe people in their 60s were not at the center of research, but I would say that the field was dominated by people in their 40s (certainly not by 20-something). I cited the Fields medal, because their artificial limitation on age is one of the first things that comes to mind when talking about the subject
caseydurfee 9y ago
Are you sure the jobs that rely on soft skills and experience are more routine than other jobs? What experience do you have to support that? I've found that once you throw humans into the mix, nothing is routine. I think CS schools do their grads a huge disservice by creating the expectation that the coding is the hard part. There are a lot of people who can reverse a linked list who can't coordinate a huge project, or build a product from the ground up that people care about. If those are soft skills (implying they're less challenging to pick up), why do most engineers only develop them after they're pretty skilled technically? In my experience, it's not because they're forced to in order to make up for declining mental horsepower. It's because what you're calling the "hard skills" have become routine to them, and they want to do harder things than they can accomplish as an individual contributor. They want to do work that's less routine. Why label soft skills as "not thinking"? Humans are way more complex than computers.
- timwaagh 9y ago
  For me not everything needs to be labelled thinking to be valuable. I do not know how much money beyonce makes but i know its a lot. I never implied that soft skills are easy to pick up. in fact for some people they are nearly impossible to learn.
mmmpop 9y ago
Yes but aren't probably a good 2/3 of "developer" jobs the relentless pursuit of arranging the chaos into routine? Funnily, is not a "routine" a building block of a programming language??
altano 9y ago
Can't tell if trolling...

emodendroket 9y ago

Doctors don't need to think? Come on, man.

timwaagh 9y ago
they do but it is not the same thing at all. we need to think for hours, finding the right algorithm to compute something. doctors need to make the right decision in very little time based on their experience and knowledge.
- mmmpop 9y ago
  > finding the right algorithm to compute something Perhaps English is not your first language because you sound like me at 19 explaining to my dad why I haven't finished his website lol
  - timwaagh 9y ago
    What does that have to do with anything?

yellowapple 9y ago

I'd hope that my doctor "need[s] to think sometimes". Anything less while holding a scalpel in anticipation of cutting me open is downright terrifying. Same goes, ideally, for politicians and lawyers and engineers.

js8 9y ago

> mathematicians are also best when they are young This guy springs to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laszlo_Babai Because, yeah, programmers and mathematicians don't actually need any experience, they can just think everything up on the spot! I also wonder how you imagine that other professions gain their experience, if they don't need to think.

timwaagh 9y ago
it is a historical fact that most of the best mathematicians make their famous discoveries when they are younger than 30. if you have studied the subject, you'd know this, so i assume you just dislike these facts and argue for the sake of it.
- pathsjs 9y ago
  I would question whether this is actually true. Stats on Field medalists have to be taken with a grain of salt, given that it is awarded at 40 years top in the first place
  - timwaagh 9y ago
    That is pretty limited information. Talk to a good professor. he will gladly admit that his mind is not as nimble as it was once. maybe he will say things like hes glad he can still keep up and do research. mine told me this in front of an entire class just to drive the point home that 'the time is now'.
    - pathsjs 9y ago
      I have been doing mathematics up until a couple of postdocs - and based on first hand experience I think that the story of young mathematicians is mostly a myth. Maybe people in their 60s were not at the center of research, but I would say that the field was dominated by people in their 40s (certainly not by 20-something). I cited the Fields medal, because their artificial limitation on age is one of the first things that comes to mind when talking about the subject

caseydurfee 9y ago

Are you sure the jobs that rely on soft skills and experience are more routine than other jobs? What experience do you have to support that? I've found that once you throw humans into the mix, nothing is routine. I think CS schools do their grads a huge disservice by creating the expectation that the coding is the hard part. There are a lot of people who can reverse a linked list who can't coordinate a huge project, or build a product from the ground up that people care about. If those are soft skills (implying they're less challenging to pick up), why do most engineers only develop them after they're pretty skilled technically? In my experience, it's not because they're forced to in order to make up for declining mental horsepower. It's because what you're calling the "hard skills" have become routine to them, and they want to do harder things than they can accomplish as an individual contributor. They want to do work that's less routine. Why label soft skills as "not thinking"? Humans are way more complex than computers.

timwaagh 9y ago
For me not everything needs to be labelled thinking to be valuable. I do not know how much money beyonce makes but i know its a lot. I never implied that soft skills are easy to pick up. in fact for some people they are nearly impossible to learn.

mmmpop 9y ago

Yes but aren't probably a good 2/3 of "developer" jobs the relentless pursuit of arranging the chaos into routine? Funnily, is not a "routine" a building block of a programming language??

altano 9y ago

Can't tell if trolling...