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I'll never forget that day when I was a junior at University of Oregon, and had just finished reading GEB. Hofstadter was from UO, and I was taking a data struc
by mullingitover 3y ago
I'll never forget that day when I was a junior at University of Oregon, and had just finished reading GEB. Hofstadter was from UO, and I was taking a data structures class from Andrzej Proskurowski, who knew Hofstadter. Andrzej was a pretty brilliant man who had a reputation for being very blunt. I was in his office hours and I asked him for his take on the book. He said, "Hofstadter is first order...bullshitter."
- calf 3y agoMy theoretical CS professor said GEB was nonsense and we all laughed in class.
- namaria 3y agoI've heard good things about this book for years and nearly bought it a few times. Could never bring myself to commit the hundreds of hours of reading time. Every time I leaf through it it feels like it's just a collection of anecdotes about how amazing mathematics is. Like I need someone to remind me...
- lukas099 3y agoIt was a transformative book for me when I first read it, but now when I leaf through it I feel a little underwhelmed; the ideas are just things I've thought about a million times now.
- namaria 3y agoThat's more or less what went through my mind when I saw the parts about computation. It would have been amazing as a primer when I first got interested in computers, especially if I had seen it in my youth or several decades ago. Now that I pretty much worked that out by myself it's a lot less more like dejá vu then an ahá moment.
- pfdietz 3y agoWhen I read it when it first came out, that was my reaction. I didn't understand why it was being admired.