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Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
- submeta 6y agoTruly inspiring. I am in my late forties, and I was wondering if I have enough time to learn Haskell, now I have no reason not to.
- xwdv 6y agoIt’s never too late to learn anything. The problem is, are you ever going to be able to put it to good use before forgetting much of it? I’ve wasted so much time in the past decade learning random shit that I never used, it’s been a poor ROI compared to just continuing to hone the skills and languages I use daily. Really demotivating.
- pbourke 6y agoIf you’re a working programmer using a mainstream language, then I feel that spending some time with an ML-derived language such as Haskell and a Lisp will pay dividends in your day to day practice. There are some keen insights about computing that are revealed by these languages - and those insights are transferable to your daily work in JS, C#, Python, Java, etc to some degree.
- xwdv 6y agoCan you give any examples?
- jimbokun 6y agoLooking backwards, I dug pretty deeply into Clojure for a while. When Streams came to Java, I felt like I was already an expert in that paradigm, and was able to adopt it immediately in ways that made my Java code clearer and more concise, and maybe even more performant in some cases. (Streams can allow you to transform a very long sequence of data, without needing to realize the whole sequence in memory first, as one example.) I also use immutable data structures by default wherever possible, unless I know I really need to mutate the data. I try to make the output of a method dependent only on the inputs, wherever possible. You shouldn't take it to extremes, but incorporating paradigms from one language into another can pay big dividends.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- st1x7 6y ago> and those insights are transferable to your daily work Some people say this, others say that it makes your daily work worse because going back to a language that isn't on the cult-approved list is so difficult.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoIt sounds like your problem is a certain outcome dependency. A better mindset is to learn things out of curiosity. You could level your criticism at learning anything that doesn’t help you in the cubicle tomorrow.
- b3kart 6y agoPeople should really learn to separate work and play. As soon as you utter “ROI” your play has become work.
- trangon 6y agoDo it. You never know where it will lead. For example I started screwing around with C a few months ago and now I playing with microcontrollers and cameras because of that.
- bitexploder 6y agoI started playing with Linux and C in 96. I was just an ignorant teenager. I didn’t know C was “hard”. I didn’t really care that Linux was different from Win95, I just knew Linux had fvwm2, gedit, and C compilers I needed for hacking on MUDs. I didn’t know chasing down obscure memory leaks was hard, I just linked libefence and did it. I was just playing and learning. Then I got offered a job doing web development with ColdFusion while still in high school. I was amazed at how easy the language was compared to C. Every “wow they must have a lot of time” project is often some other hacker playing and learning. Play and finding a way to make programming and computers not seem like work is how you develop a life long love of hacking and learning :) (this is not follow your passion advice, I think that is terrible advice, but if you can make your work feel like play and your play very intentional you will struggle to burn out or find it hard to sit down and write code any given day) :) Edit: also, in 96 the Internet was very different. Many problems were solved by reading man pages, reviewing library source code, and thinking hard about what was happening. Modern Internet and stackoverflow /can/ make you more efficient in the short term but in the long term, it’s worth not rushing to google every error or weird problem. Give it a few minutes. If you’re writing a web app for example, in say Django or Rails go peek at the source code (they are beautiful projects). It’s almost a crime to not review the Go standard library source code, it is one of the cleanest out there. Etc, etc.
- djeiasbsbo 6y agoThat's awesome. I am currently an ignorant teenager and I started messing around with C around this time last year. If I had to describe this current age I'd say it's driven by endless curiosity; I can't wait to start studying later this year. I don't think there has been one day in 2020 on which I haven't tinkered/hacked around. The latest thing I did was looking at the AArch64 reference manual and studying the structure of ELF binaries and then disassembling them manually.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoMy dad is a 55 year old mechanical engineer. He have called me 3 times today with various questions regarding C++. He’s learning it by writing a program to draw Bezier curves. Maybe at 55 I’ll pick up mechanical engineering as a hobby.
- fortran77 6y agoHey! I'm 58 and just starting a new contracting position writing software for Software Defined Radios, which I never did before. Started working with Matlib. Need to learn/relearn some math, too. 55 is certainly not too old to learn C++.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iso8859-1 6y agoThe Berlin FP group on Meetup just finished the haskellbook.com , you're just in time to join in with the next reading group!
- submeta 6y agoSounds good. Will check that out. Thanks.
- VladimirGolovin 6y agoI’m also in my late forties. I did learn myself some Haskell, and it was literally mind-blowing. The last time I had so much fun learning a language was in my late teens when I was learning class hierarchies in OOP.
- wiz21c 6y agoLate forties too... Got burn out and now I'm studying again to get a engineering degree in data sciences (yeah, the full hype thing). It feels so good to study (with 20 y.o. kids :-)), and it sure dwarfs the lack of money coming in (I'm not working because studying is a full time job). So it's a totally risk career move but that's either that either being sad at my workplace. Hopefully I'll feel empowered by the degree and be able to move on professionnaly.
- RealSpaceMonkey 6y agoThis should just be normal. The idea that you study until a certain age then that's it is outdated. We are not mechanical cogs coming out of an educational factory. Societal norms are not always right. Do what makes sense.
- superdeeda 6y ago[video]
- dang 6y agoAdded above. Thanks!
- vuciv1 6y agoEat fruit and take cold showers. The last time this was posted, someone said cold showers were the secret to looking young forever. I can't find much convincing official research (just blogs) to support that cold showers are beneficial to skincare, but I've been taking them nonetheless, and honestly, my pores have looked better :)
- zekrioca 6y agoIt is easier in tropical countries like Colombia, where “cold” is basically “warm”. In colder (northern) countries, I tried this but it is very hard because “cold water” (i.e., non heated) is way too cold (like minus temperatures).
- CBLT 6y agoIt's certainly easier in tropical countries because you can just use the cold knob, but it's doable in colder places as well. Even using both hot and cold sources to get a comparable temperature, it isn't as easy to get into the shower when the weather is colder. I've noticed that the coldness of the water only bothers me for the first 20 seconds of the shower, so I'll use a bit more heat then turn it colder.
- desiderantes 6y agoColombia has a huge range of climates. His city, Medellin, is a bit chillier than what you would expect.
- helmholtz 6y agoI just submitted my own doctoral thesis in fluids to Manchester! This is absolutely stunning, and my day (and life) is better for it.
- gspr 6y agoCongratulations, doctor!
- jimbokun 6y agoHeh, you should drop him an email and compare notes! :)
- yrimaxi 6y agoThis submission is about you.
- dang 6y agoAw, come on. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- djedr 6y agowow, an exceptional character what caught my attention is that when asked about his secret to longevity, he said that he eats lots of fruit and takes cold showers not the first time I'm hearing about cold showers being beneficial; been doing that myself regularly for a few months and I definitely find benefits this is definitely encouraging to continue does anybody have a longer experience with cold showers and can share any findings?
- xwdv 6y agoI keep hearing the secret to longevity is exercise. Maybe cold showers would help you look younger though. But a lot of things will help you look younger.
- johanneskanybal 6y agoIf you're 104 and takes long walks everyday that's the more extreme element rather than cold showers. But sure a great morning routine with the adrenaline boost from cold water might give you the edge to actually take that morning walk.
- djedr 6y agoyeah, definitely it works like this; it has a stimulating effect in many ways better than a coffee, although not pleasant like a slap in the face helps you locate your socks, to quote a classic but yeah, no reason why just taking cold showers alone and then sitting around should have any magical effect so perhaps it should be seen as a catalyst to being active; that's already significant
- forgotmypw17 6y agothere is no secret to longevity, at least not one "the secret" key to everything. the real secret to longevity is recreating the conditions are bodies function best at and upholding those conditions. because our environment is so radically different from the past, this requires a lot of discipline, pondering, and paying attention most of all. our bodies evolved for a certain environment, and recreating that environment would do us good. (i believe that careful people lived long lives pre-industry.) some of these conditions are regular exercise, occasional starvation, following environmental queues, supporting a healthy biome, and avoiding stress. our approaches to health today are comical in their attempt to simplify and reduce a billion-year-old continuously-evolving system down to one or two simple concepts while ignoring all the harm we do to it at the same time. to use a car analogy, it's sort of like throwing away your automobile's maintenance manual and saying, "i heard the key to car longevity is changing the oil often", and filling up the engine with olive oil.
- kowlo 6y agoI took cold showers for 2 months in the UK recently but it got too cold... and then, I got a cold! I had to stop (or wanted to)
- labster 6y agoIf this guy is lucky, maybe he’ll get tenure by the time he’s 120. Then he’ll be set for life!
- BeetleB 6y ago> If this guy is lucky, maybe he’ll get tenure by the time he’s 120. Nah - I'd wager he'll be an eternal postdoc.
- dzink 6y agoYou can trial the cold shower experience by just a washing your face with cold water after you wake up every morning. Growing up in Bulgaria that was a standard practice for my whole family. It does wonders for the skin and is very refreshing.
- ngold 6y agoThat sounds awful. I think I'll give it a try.
- majkinetor 6y agoIts not awful at all. Its the only way to do it.
- m00x 6y agoThe only way to do what?
- majkinetor 6y agoFace washing. Doing it with hot water is totally different experience. To say it another way, I do it for the cold water effect, not for cleaning.
- kecupochren 6y agoOr you can start by turning on the cold water for couple of seconds at the end of your regular shower. Holding your breath helps. Gradually you will be able to stay in the cold water for longer and longer and it won't hurt. A neat side effect to this is that you won't feel cold when you get out.
- voisin 6y agoThis is Wim Hof’s advice.
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- asxd 6y agoI’m on mobile at the moment so will have to watch later, but it looks like this is a video. It maybe should be marked as such
- every 6y agoI'm a mere youngster at 71. I had to wait until retirement before I could spend the time I wanted on things that interested me. Currently that is the Unix Toolkit. There should be enough there to keep me busy for a while...
- kevinmannix 6y agounrelated: I love your website design!
- every 6y agoOh, thank you. But most of the credit must go to tree v1.8.0 and markdown. I was simply lazy enough not to want to code html...
- sn41 6y agoGreat for you!! I am considerably younger, but I am currently learning Forth, essentially based on the same principle. However, I don't have a lifetime of earnings to provide for my family yet, so I have to pretend to care about boring things for at least 25 years more.
- dorchadas 6y agoSomething like this is my dream goal. I'd love to become financially independent so that I can then pursue what I want (namely, endless study in a variety of subjects) without worrying about financial pressures from the outside. Sadly, I've got close to 30 years still to wait, then to hope my retirement pays enough that I can move to a nice college town with a good library and use it and maybe audit courses/do many masters.
- every 6y agoSounds like a nice goal. But be advised, time and circumstance may intervene. Adaptability is a virtue...
- every 6y ago
- vecinu 6y agoInspiring story, I'd love to hear more. I was really hoping he would mention having a social life as a secret to longevity, referencing the Harvard study on happiness and living long. [1] He briefly mentions his friend from Canada, I wonder if they still go on walks together or if he passed away and made new friends in the mean time. Getting old is hard because your friends pass away. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...
- jp57 6y agoFruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all. Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows the secret of his longevity than a gambler knows the secret of a hot streak. Like every centenarian, he's on the mother of all hot streaks, that's all. Our impulse to find some causal agency that we can understand and adopt is no different than a gambler's. When he said "fruit and cold showers", it's no different than saying "if I stand on one foot and close my left eye when I throw the dice, I don't crap out." I have to think that he knows this and he's just humoring us because he knows we want an answer other than ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. After all, we are all just children to him.
- boogies 6y agoThe inventor of Twinkies lived to 88 and attributed his health to eating them regularly (I thought I’d read one every day ever since inventing them, but https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-03-me-10272-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-03-me-10272-... says ≥ 2 packets per week).
- voisin 6y agoI love that. Lesson: Keep talking your book right to the end!
- jp57 6y agoMy dad's doctor told him to stop eating so much butter. Dad said, "My uncle ate a stick of butter every day, and he lived to be 96!" The doc replied, "See? It finally got him!"
- felipemnoa 6y agoOne way or another it always gets you!
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- mmhsieh 6y agoLooks like he had a hell of a good side project during grad school.
- gchamonlive 6y agoI watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society. It could also be a matter of language, and words can't convey the elders experiences as effectively as it could in simples times, where symbols did not need to account for vastly different experiences. So when someone says "I don't regret working hard" in the context of a village, where hard work is essencial, It could mean something else completely to someone who grew up with absent parents, who devoted their lives to work and didn't pay attention their children. And theses discrepancies permeates the entirety of the discourse. To rescue the value of elderly advice I suggest more context is needed, at least more than a 4 minutes video could possibly convey.
- coldtea 6y ago>I watch these types of videos and I can't help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society. I think we've combined "youth-centric" with "faux-young" (aka immaturity), where 40-year olds are "excited" about the latest superhero movie and 50 year olds act like teenagers...
- theodric 6y agoIf you're unable to muster excitement for things you love purely because of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you.
- coldtea 6y ago>If you're unable to muster excitement for things you love purely because of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you. That's putting the cart before the horse. Rather you should love things that fit your age and cognitive and culture development. I'd loved ice cream for breakfast and sunday morning cartoons too at 8. I'd have an infantilism problem if I still loved them at 40. If you still watch teletubbies at 40 and are excited desipite of your age, I'm genuinely sorry for you. Slightly less so if you are genuinely excited about superheror movies, but still sorry.
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- lifeisstillgood 6y agoWonderful - and even better, thanks to him, I am not middle aged yet and might have time to work on that phd myself :-) good luck to him
- dmos62 6y agoHere's an observation: people who've survived longer than most are quick to smile. I like checking out stories about them, because I know I'll see an energizing photo of an upbeat person.
- majkinetor 6y agoGood observation. I knew personally a centuran woman and although she had a terrible life experiences (she lost both her husband and son very early) she was always smiling and had positive look at the world.
- disown 6y ago> Here's an observation: people who've survived longer than most are quick to smile. I like checking out stories about them, because I know I'll see an energizing photo of an upbeat person. There is the other side. "Russian Woman, Who Claims to Be World's Oldest at 129, Says She's Had One Happy Day in her Life" https://www.newsweek.com/russian-woman-claims-worlds-oldest-129-one-happy-day-her-life-1170907 https://www.newsweek.com/russian-woman-claims-worlds-oldest-... Also, there was a documentary a while back on nursing homes. Pretty much all "people who've survived longer" were miserable. I remember an old woman who out-lived her husband, daughter, friends, etc. I still remember what she said: "Everynight I go to sleep hoping god would take me, but I always wake up." A modern day Sibyl of Cumae. I don't think "quick to smile" has anything to do with longevity. Misers and misanthropes also can outlive many.
- rhdxmr 6y agoThis article is so inspiring. I will keep learning new knowledge.
- _huayra_ 6y agoFor anyone else who looks at these people who just are seemingly unencumbered by self-doubt and can't relate to them because self-doubt practically has you in a chokehold every day, I have a book suggestion. After feeling stuck for a long time and trying to read my way out of it (swerving between Tim Ferris-esque books about "life hacks" and unhelpful emotion-laden books with banal platitudes), the one book that has really helped me lately is How We Change [0]. I am not wont to recommend books, as I get really annoyed by the sort of folks who recommend personal growth / self-help books (again, mostly banal platitudes and unactionable faux-insights). I hope my post history shows I am not one of these types of people. However, this book has really helped me turn a corner like no other has. The gist is that when you _don't_ pursue something you want to do (e.g. learn Haskell, Unix, or the other wonderful suggestions in this thread and many others on HN) and feel flummoxed at how you continually stymie your own best intentions, you _are_ actually making a choice (i.e., to stay put); it's not some bad-faith abdication of agency. When one chooses to stay stuck (or "petrified", an apt term used by the author), one is actually choosing to preserve a sense of hope for the future; one preserves it from the painful feelings of failure that one anticipates will come due to a lack of faith in oneself to make meaningful progress towards things one deems to be important. The best way out of this trap (besides being aware that you are making a choice, instead of giving up) is to do something extremely simple on a regular basis (daily if possible) that helps you realize you have agency. As goofy as it sounds, I have started a lot of habits because of the "habit tracking" feature in Emacs' org mode (just to make all of the little marks in the agenda go green). Whether it is meditating for one minute, writing "hello world" is Haskell for the umpteenth time just to write _some_ Haskell each day (even on bad days), or anything else, that will slowly help you feel unstuck. [0] https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-ellenhorn https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-we-change-ross-el...
- commonturtle 6y agoVery inspiring. And here I am at the age of 28, wondering if I'm too old to get a PhD.