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I liked the idea of categorizing things using Starcraft, but this didn't particularly resonate for me. In particular: a) Shiny math and shiny languages are ne

I liked the idea of categorizing things using Starcraft, but this didn't particularly resonate for me. In particular: a) Shiny math and shiny languages are negatively correlated; the mathier a grad student is, the more likely he is to use Matlab and the less likely he is to actually know how to program. When mathier people write non-Matlab code, it is often (but obviously not always) very shitty. Now, there are ML people, but they're a small subset of mathy programmers. b) The "Terran" description is closest to what you would think of as a normal hacker, but hackers generally care that what they make is good, and people who care about code being good are not usually characterized as "just getting shit done," since for example they rewrite code that works just because it's ugly. c) Terrans, by which I mean hackers, can and do learn math and then become unstoppable. I imagine there's some Starcraft parallel here, but I haven't played it recently enough.

RBerenguel 16y ago
The math-Matlab correlation may not be as big as you think. In my university, we use Matlab for almost nothing in the degree (I used it in Signal Processing), and write all our math code in C (Newton's methods, ODE integrators, linear system solvers). Of course this does not mean "knowing how to program" (unless you learn all the missing stuff along the way), or doing non-shitty code, but this is unrelated to Matlab being present
- ecuzzillo 16y ago
  I meant mainly grad students and the like on their projects, not languages for classes. Languages used for classes are mostly the professor either picking his favorite language for the course (very random) or letting his TAs pick the language (very random if the TAs are not his grad students, mildly correlated with the field if the TAs are his grad students). Edit: Initially I was talking about undergrad classes, but then realized you might have meant grad classes, so I changed it to say classes in general, which I believe is still true. Edit 2: I set the delay so I can edit my post a bunch of times after I post it and not provide a moving target. Edit 3: Clearly you are an exception, but then again you're reading Hacker News. Edit 4: Where are you going to grad school that doesn't let you pick your own language?
  - RBerenguel 16y ago
    I'm doing my PhD and do almost everything in C (I don't need to code a lot for my thesis, but for a paper I got in complex dynamics I did a few fractal renderers that needed to be fast, or at least as fast as I could get them to be). Sadly we can't choose the language as we have 3 courses on programming which are supposed to be C based. If I was to choose, I would pick Lisp... but this is only a dream ;)
  - RBerenguel 16y ago
    I can code in whatever I feel like (then, if I see fit!), but I can't teach in whatever language I feel like. In the first course on programming we are taught C (and only C), and the following 2 build on it. Barcelona, Spain.
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RBerenguel 16y ago

The math-Matlab correlation may not be as big as you think. In my university, we use Matlab for almost nothing in the degree (I used it in Signal Processing), and write all our math code in C (Newton's methods, ODE integrators, linear system solvers). Of course this does not mean "knowing how to program" (unless you learn all the missing stuff along the way), or doing non-shitty code, but this is unrelated to Matlab being present

ecuzzillo 16y ago
I meant mainly grad students and the like on their projects, not languages for classes. Languages used for classes are mostly the professor either picking his favorite language for the course (very random) or letting his TAs pick the language (very random if the TAs are not his grad students, mildly correlated with the field if the TAs are his grad students). Edit: Initially I was talking about undergrad classes, but then realized you might have meant grad classes, so I changed it to say classes in general, which I believe is still true. Edit 2: I set the delay so I can edit my post a bunch of times after I post it and not provide a moving target. Edit 3: Clearly you are an exception, but then again you're reading Hacker News. Edit 4: Where are you going to grad school that doesn't let you pick your own language?
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  I'm doing my PhD and do almost everything in C (I don't need to code a lot for my thesis, but for a paper I got in complex dynamics I did a few fractal renderers that needed to be fast, or at least as fast as I could get them to be). Sadly we can't choose the language as we have 3 courses on programming which are supposed to be C based. If I was to choose, I would pick Lisp... but this is only a dream ;)
- RBerenguel 16y ago
  I can code in whatever I feel like (then, if I see fit!), but I can't teach in whatever language I feel like. In the first course on programming we are taught C (and only C), and the following 2 build on it. Barcelona, Spain.

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