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Author sounds like a young person who feels like he's a god among men just for the fact that he's implemented the algortihms and understands the math and engine

Author sounds like a young person who feels like he's a god among men just for the fact that he's implemented the algortihms and understands the math and engineering behind the libraries most DS's just pip install. Which is weird coming from a generation of devs, where actually doing this work yourself was the norm. As for DS, from what little I've experienced from the field, he sounds right. Most people come in without a mathematically rigorous education, they talk fancy, but what they end up doing is pulling in dependencies from a pre-written library and using those without understanding the theory behind them. They also ignore the fact that 99% of the value in data science is created by taking good data, understanding the domain, in which case fancy algorithms are unnecessary. And the acquisition of said things needs good data engineering, not data science. But more often than not, the credit and prestige goes to folks who pull in fancy ML algorithms and run extensive experiments and build massive ML pipelines, feeding in truckloads of tangentially relevant data.

kelnos 2y ago
> Author sounds like a young person I almost laughed out loud when he said he started working as a data scientist in 2019. Five years is not a very long time. And he claims he already had identified the entire field as full of fraud in the first two years of that! I agree with a lot of the article's points, but the author took a serious credibility hit with me after asserting that two years of from-scratch experience is enough time to evaluate an entire subfield of computer science.
pineaux 2y ago
You start quite condescending but then basically acknowledge what the author is saying. Most DS's, even "from your generation" probably don't write their own tools. I bet you are even guilty of this too. No need to do some implicit grandstanding.
camillomiller 2y ago
Americans not getting Aussies is the best part of this thread
- exodust 2y ago
  He grew up in Penang, moved to Australia in 2013 according to his blog. I'm not a fan of the "I'll break your neck" theme. He doesn't want people talking about AI but his own business website says he'll talk to you about AI in exchange for money. Does he want to be Louis CK Live at the Beacon Theater AND a data scientist consultant? I don't think it's possible to be both.
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. I know you didn't intend to but it's what this kind of internet comment leads to (in the general case), and we don't want that here. In fact, since your comment is a putdown both of a nationality and of the community, it might be good to quote this from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
  - camillomiller 2y ago
    You realize that this comment was a very minor tease? This community is so Us-centric that the pro-US-on-anything bias drives basically every voting trend, and the issue is just teasing how Americans don’t understand other nationalities’ humor and cultural nuances?
    - dang 2y ago
      Unfortunately people tend to underestimate their own provocations by 10x or more. Even when we get full out flamewars the instigator inevitably says things like 'but I was only mildly teasing' or what have you. In any case, what matters is effects, not intent, and that's what we have to moderate by (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). The effects of snark, flamebait, and so on are predictable, so commenters are responsible for avoiding them. By the way, this has been a problem in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657986 (Aug 2019), and we've had to ask you several times not to break HN's guidelines in other ways too. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and recalibrate how you're posting to this site? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286445 (Nov 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619557 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33885502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33885502 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127589 (Aug 2017)

kelnos 2y ago

> Author sounds like a young person I almost laughed out loud when he said he started working as a data scientist in 2019. Five years is not a very long time. And he claims he already had identified the entire field as full of fraud in the first two years of that! I agree with a lot of the article's points, but the author took a serious credibility hit with me after asserting that two years of from-scratch experience is enough time to evaluate an entire subfield of computer science.

pineaux 2y ago

You start quite condescending but then basically acknowledge what the author is saying. Most DS's, even "from your generation" probably don't write their own tools. I bet you are even guilty of this too. No need to do some implicit grandstanding.

camillomiller 2y ago

Americans not getting Aussies is the best part of this thread

exodust 2y ago
He grew up in Penang, moved to Australia in 2013 according to his blog. I'm not a fan of the "I'll break your neck" theme. He doesn't want people talking about AI but his own business website says he'll talk to you about AI in exchange for money. Does he want to be Louis CK Live at the Beacon Theater AND a data scientist consultant? I don't think it's possible to be both.
dang 2y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. I know you didn't intend to but it's what this kind of internet comment leads to (in the general case), and we don't want that here. In fact, since your comment is a putdown both of a nationality and of the community, it might be good to quote this from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
- camillomiller 2y ago
  You realize that this comment was a very minor tease? This community is so Us-centric that the pro-US-on-anything bias drives basically every voting trend, and the issue is just teasing how Americans don’t understand other nationalities’ humor and cultural nuances?
  - dang 2y ago
    Unfortunately people tend to underestimate their own provocations by 10x or more. Even when we get full out flamewars the instigator inevitably says things like 'but I was only mildly teasing' or what have you. In any case, what matters is effects, not intent, and that's what we have to moderate by (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=troll%20effects%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). The effects of snark, flamebait, and so on are predictable, so commenters are responsible for avoiding them. By the way, this has been a problem in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657986 (Aug 2019), and we've had to ask you several times not to break HN's guidelines in other ways too. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and recalibrate how you're posting to this site? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38286445 (Nov 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35619557 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33885502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33885502 (Dec 2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127589 (Aug 2017)