4 ms·

I always wonder where the upvotes for those posts that simply plant a link to highly specialized lectures/books that likely take months to work through (given a

I always wonder where the upvotes for those posts that simply plant a link to highly specialized lectures/books that likely take months to work through (given a sufficient mathematical background) come from. Especially since the material at hand isn't relevant unless you work in certain specialized subfields. Don't get me wrong, the resources posted here are often good and learning is great, but I doubt anyone who sees them here actually follows through and starts studying.

elcapitan 9y ago
Some people just collect resources for later use. I keep Evernote notebooks for certain topics. Collections of such posts give me a quick overview in case I need it later, and the combination of the reputation/upvote system and the discussions (which I usually link in my notes too) allows for some kind of ranking of the resource I collected. I interpret it as a vote of confidence.
ajakate 9y ago
I often skim hn from my phone browser and save posts that look interesting to read later. Unfortunately, you can't mark a post as favorite from the main page, so for me, upvoting them is the fastest way to make sure I can access it later
logicallee 9y ago
as a hacker news reader it's your responsibility to become an expert in the basics of things like computer vision, machine learning, wavelet algorithms (even if it becomes irrelevant) and so forth. at the end of the day, someone has to build something using all this, and that someone is us. I mean what else are you going to do while waiting for another javascript framework to appear? surely we can't all write new front-end frameworks. It just doesn't make sense. (note: this comment might be at least partly sarcastic, but I'm not sure which part and how much.)
- Chris2048 9y ago
  > surely we can't all write new front-end frameworks If you're a JS dev, it's your job to do this every 3 months
- _e 9y ago
  I am glad you added a disclaimer stating your post is meant to be sarcastic because my automated deep learning HN voting bot has not learned sarcasm, opencv or angular6 yet. I don't know how or why but it has mastered memory management in spark.
  - logicallee 9y ago
    >it has mastered memory management in spark. that's really only half of learning something, though, isn't it? it needs to write a blog article about its experience.
    - _e 9y ago
      I just hope it is just a matter of time before it learns to do that!
Mathnerd314 9y ago
A lot of the material overlaps significantly with others I've read, so AFAICT "working through" the book, at least for me, amounts to a few hours reading some background definitions plus the last chapter. Maybe it does seem hard to get to that position, but really it's just building up skills incrementally. Google all the terms you don't understand, read the explanatory posts until you get to something you don't understand, and repeat recursively until it's clear or you get bored... so far depth-first seems to work better than breadth-first, there aren't that many foundational concepts.
tr1ck5t3r 9y ago
Maybe its a technique used by Uni's to phish for new students or people in IT who havent studied? Phishing for genius'es in other words, the NSA wont mind either as they will be there in the shadows to pick over the work of budding geniuses to see how they can apply whatever discovery or innovation to their operations that always come with a certain psychological element to it. Sometimes the methods used give the game away. ;-)
zintinio5 9y ago
I certainly have in the past when something really grabbed my attention. My library has expanded in recent years partly because of the topics shared on Hackernews and mentioned in discussions. I would hazard a guess that most people don't follow up and just upvote a cool sounding title. It really does take months/years to work through some of this material, but there are some people who do it. Also important to keep in mind is that readers specialize (I'm big into math/stats/ml, but some of the guys I work with are deep into logic programming and theorem provers) so no single reader is knowledgeable in everything posted here.
atemerev 9y ago
The number of upvotes reflects a perceived outlook of HN readers on technology's perspectives. Probabilistic programming, Monte Carlo methods, and other complex topics are back in vogue these days. Because programmers who only can do simpler coding tasks will be soon replaced by robots, that are programmed probabilistically. And if you want to have one of those really rare jobs of maintaining said robots, you have to be prepared. Fear and learn.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

elcapitan 9y ago

Some people just collect resources for later use. I keep Evernote notebooks for certain topics. Collections of such posts give me a quick overview in case I need it later, and the combination of the reputation/upvote system and the discussions (which I usually link in my notes too) allows for some kind of ranking of the resource I collected. I interpret it as a vote of confidence.

ajakate 9y ago

I often skim hn from my phone browser and save posts that look interesting to read later. Unfortunately, you can't mark a post as favorite from the main page, so for me, upvoting them is the fastest way to make sure I can access it later

logicallee 9y ago

as a hacker news reader it's your responsibility to become an expert in the basics of things like computer vision, machine learning, wavelet algorithms (even if it becomes irrelevant) and so forth. at the end of the day, someone has to build something using all this, and that someone is us. I mean what else are you going to do while waiting for another javascript framework to appear? surely we can't all write new front-end frameworks. It just doesn't make sense. (note: this comment might be at least partly sarcastic, but I'm not sure which part and how much.)

Chris2048 9y ago
> surely we can't all write new front-end frameworks If you're a JS dev, it's your job to do this every 3 months
_e 9y ago
I am glad you added a disclaimer stating your post is meant to be sarcastic because my automated deep learning HN voting bot has not learned sarcasm, opencv or angular6 yet. I don't know how or why but it has mastered memory management in spark.
- logicallee 9y ago
  >it has mastered memory management in spark. that's really only half of learning something, though, isn't it? it needs to write a blog article about its experience.
  - _e 9y ago
    I just hope it is just a matter of time before it learns to do that!

Mathnerd314 9y ago

A lot of the material overlaps significantly with others I've read, so AFAICT "working through" the book, at least for me, amounts to a few hours reading some background definitions plus the last chapter. Maybe it does seem hard to get to that position, but really it's just building up skills incrementally. Google all the terms you don't understand, read the explanatory posts until you get to something you don't understand, and repeat recursively until it's clear or you get bored... so far depth-first seems to work better than breadth-first, there aren't that many foundational concepts.

tr1ck5t3r 9y ago

Maybe its a technique used by Uni's to phish for new students or people in IT who havent studied? Phishing for genius'es in other words, the NSA wont mind either as they will be there in the shadows to pick over the work of budding geniuses to see how they can apply whatever discovery or innovation to their operations that always come with a certain psychological element to it. Sometimes the methods used give the game away. ;-)

zintinio5 9y ago

I certainly have in the past when something really grabbed my attention. My library has expanded in recent years partly because of the topics shared on Hackernews and mentioned in discussions. I would hazard a guess that most people don't follow up and just upvote a cool sounding title. It really does take months/years to work through some of this material, but there are some people who do it. Also important to keep in mind is that readers specialize (I'm big into math/stats/ml, but some of the guys I work with are deep into logic programming and theorem provers) so no single reader is knowledgeable in everything posted here.

atemerev 9y ago

The number of upvotes reflects a perceived outlook of HN readers on technology's perspectives. Probabilistic programming, Monte Carlo methods, and other complex topics are back in vogue these days. Because programmers who only can do simpler coding tasks will be soon replaced by robots, that are programmed probabilistically. And if you want to have one of those really rare jobs of maintaining said robots, you have to be prepared. Fear and learn.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]