6 ms·

From the book being reviewed: > All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowl

From the book being reviewed: > All joking aside, we fledgling mathematicians understood that the single most important thing was not raw intelligence or knowledge (Americans tend to lag behind in the latter compared to all international students). What mattered was passion. The way to become successful in mathematics, like almost every endeavor, is to care about it, to love it, to obsess over it. And in this, Eastern Europeans had a clear superiority, a cultural advantage. They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely. IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field. I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money.

dinobones 2y ago
Good example of passion from early bell Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 Other examples I can think of (from my Gen Z experience, growing up in SoCal): - Elementary school: Making custom action replay codes, hacking game saves with programs, CheatEngine/memory/hex editor and following YouTube tutorials, Javascript "document.contentEditable=true" hack and changing stuff on websites, pressing F12 and changing random javascript code until something interesting happens or breaks. - Middle school: making sites on Weebly/freewebs, embedding chats and flash games on them, sharing them during computer class - High school: Making PHP sites/vbulliten/Newgrounds/flash games, later iOS apps I wasn't the only one doing these things. There were always like 3 other kids like me in any classroom that would do the same things. Most of us ended up becoming passionate SWEs, besides one that became an accountant.
Onavo 2y ago
> They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely. Nonsense, sounds like post-hoc rationalization. Maybe talk to some actual Slavic people. Sure the Russians had "math clubs" and "chess clubs" but it wasn't as if the US didn't have RadioShack and garage/ham culture. Talk to some of the older generations that still remember the Berlin Wall and you might also understand why so many women from the ex USSR states are in STEM while it's the opposite in the West. TL;dr: STEM was a quick way to prosperity, the eastern bloc countries were poor, and engineers are useful even in a communist regime. They studied math because there wasn't much else they couldn't have done.
- cyberax 2y ago
  Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. I'm not joking. But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. This was very much a cultural thing, pushed by the government (engineers are useful!). Another thing, there was a huge societal pressure to excel at school. It was common for parents to check their children's marks every day. There's a very famous picture about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Marks_Again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Marks_Again - a kid knows that his parents are going to check his marks and berate him. And this attitude was everywhere. For example, getting low marks and then overcoming them was a theme for a lot of iconic Soviet cartoons and stories ("The country of undone homework", "Vovka in a Faraway Kingdom", etc.). I have not seen anything similar in the US.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. But in the USSR, your ability to buy something was generally not limited by the amount of money you had. It was limited by whether you'd be allowed to buy the thing for other reasons. > But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's?
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's? Not in general. It heavily depended on individual circumstances. For example, machinists could earn a bit more money by using factory tools (lathes, drills, etc.) to make replacement parts for cars. And a lot of workers were stealing some of the product their factory was making. There was a common attitude of "everything around is common, so everything's around is mine". On the other hand, engineers had more career perspectives. They were more likely to be promoted to managerial positions.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      That depends on what you are buying. Some things worked like health insurance in US, some others weren't. Housing you don't buy at all, a car you need to know a secret way to jump the queue or be in a right position. Fancy stuff -- you need to have friends who can sail and bring it to you. But there was plenty of stuff you just buy, from air plane tickets to beer and meat.
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. But immigrants you see were very really motivated to leave the post-Soviet hell, so they had to show excellent results. Math is taught horrifyingly badly in Eastern Europe. It presented as something extremely overcomplicated and most teachers, having a laughably low salary they barely survive on, don't care teaching it in a way kids would understand.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. Most people everywhere are bad at math. However, Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. And it's not even close, if you look at math competitions. Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members. Still survivorship bias. Immigrants from China and India are not selected randomly from the population, they're selected by their means and determination to emigrate. Furthermore, if you include the fact that the US caps the number of visas granted on a per-country-of-origin basis and the fact that China and India have the 2 largest populations in the world, the people who successfully obtain visas from these countries are the survivors of the most stringent selection process.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      You can also look at Fields Medal winners. The majority of award ceremonies have at least one Slavic person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal
  - munificent 2y ago
    > Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. These are two different claims: Eastern Europeans and Asians who are in the US have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math.* Eastern Europeans and Asians who are in their respective countries have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math.* If you are making the first claim, you're just restating the parent comment's survivorship bias claim. If you're making the second, then you are making a strong claim, but it would be interesting to see data behind it. (I don't have any insight one way or the other.)
redundantly 2y ago
> I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money. This seems narrow minded. In the early days of software development, the barrier for entry was incredibly high. The possibility of people making high quality, unique software is greater than it ever has been. It's also narrow minded to insist that only passion for engineering itself can produce high quality results. It's like claiming famously wealthy musicians can't and don't make remarkable, impactful music.
- munificent 2y ago
  > It's also narrow minded to insist that only passion for engineering itself can produce high quality results. It's like claiming famously wealthy musicians can't and don't make remarkable, impactful music. I think you're making a logical fallacy, or at least you seem to be implying that the set of "famously wealthy" people is disjoint with the set of people who are passionate. Sure, famously wealthy musicians can make great music. So can poor ones. But I haven't seen a lot of lazy, uninspired musicians make great music.
  - redundantly 2y ago
    I never said anything about laziness, so I’m not sure why you’re adding that qualifier. I take it you believe that without pure love or enjoyment in something, a person could only be lazy. Inspiration doesn’t require passion for the art to come first, or even at all. Look at Gene Simmons. He co-founded one of the most successful, influential rock bands ever, driven by the goal of becoming rich and running a successful business, not by an unadulterated love for music.
    - munificent 2y ago
      I was looking for an antonym for "passionate". You're right that "lazy" doesn't quite capture it. > Look at Gene Simmons. He co-founded one of the most successful, influential rock bands ever, driven by the goal of becoming rich and running a successful business, not by an unadulterated love for music. This is a good example because while Kiss certainly has popularity, few of their songs are really loved for their musicality. Kiss' music is more about being a good time than good music per se. Sort of like how Garfield is an effective comic product but not actually really funny in the way that other comics are. In both of these cases, the creator is passionate about something and working hard at delivering it. They're passionate about providing a certain product experience, and less so about "art" (for however you want to define that). But imagine a version of Gene Simmons that didn't have the passion to master playing the bass and also didn't have the passion to grind every day at making Kiss a world-known rock band. That person isn't someone you'll ever hear of.
cyberax 2y ago
> IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field. People in the Soviet Union had much less access to computers than in the US. And the first years after the fall of the USSR were quite lean for the vast majority of the population. Only by the late 90-s people in the xUSSR started getting enough money to buy computers en-masse.
- eru 2y ago
  > Only by the late 90-s people in the xUSSR started getting enough money to buy computers en-masse. Well that, and computer continued getting ever cheaper.
richardw 2y ago
Hasn’t that happened already? As someone who started coding a long time ago and who did it for fun, I’ve seen the industry move from enthusiasts to mainstream and finally to massive comp optimisers who spend more time on angling for a promotion than building. I’ve fallen in and out of enjoyment of engineering many times. But I still come back because I love making something that adds value. There will always be space for the builders who give a shit.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  As someone who has needed to hire quite a few developers, I will say that the biggest communality of the greatest software engineers are those who are in it for fun. So I ask about side projects, I ask about what they did as kids, I ask about what they're excited about... Someone who is just there for the money can be great in a bigger company but has no place in a startup.
- eru 2y ago
  You say it like trying to get paid well is a bad thing?
  - richardw 2y ago
    No human on earth doesn’t want to get paid well. Some are purely mercenary. Those I would prefer not to work with or hire. (There are a lot of caveats. Someone might have always worked for jerks and has checked out, etc.)
    - eru 2y ago
      I like to be passionate about what I am doing, but there's plenty of great projects / companies to work for. So might as well look after the money, too. (Generally, the companies that can afford to pay you well, are also those that can afford to treat you well.)
Tomis02 2y ago
> IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field. IMO it was funding that made the difference. People outside of USA did not have any less passion towards the field.
- eru 2y ago
  I think the comment you replied to is not so much comparing USA vs rest of the world, but USA then and now.
- tightbookkeeper 2y ago
  Any amount of funding gets immediately sucked into the abyss. The entire mathematical research community in Soviet Union probably cost less than a series C startup. The only sense in which this is true is if choosing that field is a death sentence relative to other society outcomes due to lack of resources.
eru 2y ago
> I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money. And that's exactly how progress looks like! When you need to know 6502 assembly to make a game, only geniuses can make games. When you can click one together in Roblox, game development opens up to many more people. So the average game developer won't be as smart. But that's not because the new tools make us stupid. The same applies to any kind of software. (Or photography, or music, or movies, etc.) The average quality might go down when the floodgates open, but with modern tools the geniuses can produce even better stuff than before.

dinobones 2y ago

Good example of passion from early bell Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 Other examples I can think of (from my Gen Z experience, growing up in SoCal): - Elementary school: Making custom action replay codes, hacking game saves with programs, CheatEngine/memory/hex editor and following YouTube tutorials, Javascript "document.contentEditable=true" hack and changing stuff on websites, pressing F12 and changing random javascript code until something interesting happens or breaks. - Middle school: making sites on Weebly/freewebs, embedding chats and flash games on them, sharing them during computer class - High school: Making PHP sites/vbulliten/Newgrounds/flash games, later iOS apps I wasn't the only one doing these things. There were always like 3 other kids like me in any classroom that would do the same things. Most of us ended up becoming passionate SWEs, besides one that became an accountant.

Onavo 2y ago

> They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely. Nonsense, sounds like post-hoc rationalization. Maybe talk to some actual Slavic people. Sure the Russians had "math clubs" and "chess clubs" but it wasn't as if the US didn't have RadioShack and garage/ham culture. Talk to some of the older generations that still remember the Berlin Wall and you might also understand why so many women from the ex USSR states are in STEM while it's the opposite in the West. TL;dr: STEM was a quick way to prosperity, the eastern bloc countries were poor, and engineers are useful even in a communist regime. They studied math because there wasn't much else they couldn't have done.

cyberax 2y ago
Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. I'm not joking. But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. This was very much a cultural thing, pushed by the government (engineers are useful!). Another thing, there was a huge societal pressure to excel at school. It was common for parents to check their children's marks every day. There's a very famous picture about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Marks_Again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Marks_Again - a kid knows that his parents are going to check his marks and berate him. And this attitude was everywhere. For example, getting low marks and then overcoming them was a theme for a lot of iconic Soviet cartoons and stories ("The country of undone homework", "Vovka in a Faraway Kingdom", etc.). I have not seen anything similar in the US.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. But in the USSR, your ability to buy something was generally not limited by the amount of money you had. It was limited by whether you'd be allowed to buy the thing for other reasons. > But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's?
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's? Not in general. It heavily depended on individual circumstances. For example, machinists could earn a bit more money by using factory tools (lathes, drills, etc.) to make replacement parts for cars. And a lot of workers were stealing some of the product their factory was making. There was a common attitude of "everything around is common, so everything's around is mine". On the other hand, engineers had more career perspectives. They were more likely to be promoted to managerial positions.
  - Muromec 2y ago
    That depends on what you are buying. Some things worked like health insurance in US, some others weren't. Housing you don't buy at all, a car you need to know a secret way to jump the queue or be in a right position. Fancy stuff -- you need to have friends who can sail and bring it to you. But there was plenty of stuff you just buy, from air plane tickets to beer and meat.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. But immigrants you see were very really motivated to leave the post-Soviet hell, so they had to show excellent results. Math is taught horrifyingly badly in Eastern Europe. It presented as something extremely overcomplicated and most teachers, having a laughably low salary they barely survive on, don't care teaching it in a way kids would understand.

cyberax 2y ago
> Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. Most people everywhere are bad at math. However, Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. And it's not even close, if you look at math competitions. Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members.
- chongli 2y ago
  Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members. Still survivorship bias. Immigrants from China and India are not selected randomly from the population, they're selected by their means and determination to emigrate. Furthermore, if you include the fact that the US caps the number of visas granted on a per-country-of-origin basis and the fact that China and India have the 2 largest populations in the world, the people who successfully obtain visas from these countries are the survivors of the most stringent selection process.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    You can also look at Fields Medal winners. The majority of award ceremonies have at least one Slavic person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal
- munificent 2y ago
  > Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. These are two different claims: Eastern Europeans and Asians who are in the US have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math.* Eastern Europeans and Asians who are in their respective countries have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math.* If you are making the first claim, you're just restating the parent comment's survivorship bias claim. If you're making the second, then you are making a strong claim, but it would be interesting to see data behind it. (I don't have any insight one way or the other.)

redundantly 2y ago

> I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money. This seems narrow minded. In the early days of software development, the barrier for entry was incredibly high. The possibility of people making high quality, unique software is greater than it ever has been. It's also narrow minded to insist that only passion for engineering itself can produce high quality results. It's like claiming famously wealthy musicians can't and don't make remarkable, impactful music.

munificent 2y ago
> It's also narrow minded to insist that only passion for engineering itself can produce high quality results. It's like claiming famously wealthy musicians can't and don't make remarkable, impactful music. I think you're making a logical fallacy, or at least you seem to be implying that the set of "famously wealthy" people is disjoint with the set of people who are passionate. Sure, famously wealthy musicians can make great music. So can poor ones. But I haven't seen a lot of lazy, uninspired musicians make great music.
- redundantly 2y ago
  I never said anything about laziness, so I’m not sure why you’re adding that qualifier. I take it you believe that without pure love or enjoyment in something, a person could only be lazy. Inspiration doesn’t require passion for the art to come first, or even at all. Look at Gene Simmons. He co-founded one of the most successful, influential rock bands ever, driven by the goal of becoming rich and running a successful business, not by an unadulterated love for music.
  - munificent 2y ago
    I was looking for an antonym for "passionate". You're right that "lazy" doesn't quite capture it. > Look at Gene Simmons. He co-founded one of the most successful, influential rock bands ever, driven by the goal of becoming rich and running a successful business, not by an unadulterated love for music. This is a good example because while Kiss certainly has popularity, few of their songs are really loved for their musicality. Kiss' music is more about being a good time than good music per se. Sort of like how Garfield is an effective comic product but not actually really funny in the way that other comics are. In both of these cases, the creator is passionate about something and working hard at delivering it. They're passionate about providing a certain product experience, and less so about "art" (for however you want to define that). But imagine a version of Gene Simmons that didn't have the passion to master playing the bass and also didn't have the passion to grind every day at making Kiss a world-known rock band. That person isn't someone you'll ever hear of.

cyberax 2y ago

> IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field. People in the Soviet Union had much less access to computers than in the US. And the first years after the fall of the USSR were quite lean for the vast majority of the population. Only by the late 90-s people in the xUSSR started getting enough money to buy computers en-masse.

eru 2y ago
> Only by the late 90-s people in the xUSSR started getting enough money to buy computers en-masse. Well that, and computer continued getting ever cheaper.

richardw 2y ago

Hasn’t that happened already? As someone who started coding a long time ago and who did it for fun, I’ve seen the industry move from enthusiasts to mainstream and finally to massive comp optimisers who spend more time on angling for a promotion than building. I’ve fallen in and out of enjoyment of engineering many times. But I still come back because I love making something that adds value. There will always be space for the builders who give a shit.

nicolas_t 2y ago
As someone who has needed to hire quite a few developers, I will say that the biggest communality of the greatest software engineers are those who are in it for fun. So I ask about side projects, I ask about what they did as kids, I ask about what they're excited about... Someone who is just there for the money can be great in a bigger company but has no place in a startup.
eru 2y ago
You say it like trying to get paid well is a bad thing?
- richardw 2y ago
  No human on earth doesn’t want to get paid well. Some are purely mercenary. Those I would prefer not to work with or hire. (There are a lot of caveats. Someone might have always worked for jerks and has checked out, etc.)
  - eru 2y ago
    I like to be passionate about what I am doing, but there's plenty of great projects / companies to work for. So might as well look after the money, too. (Generally, the companies that can afford to pay you well, are also those that can afford to treat you well.)

Tomis02 2y ago

> IMHO this is what drove American superiority in software engineering for several decades. The people who self selected into software engineering really loved the field. IMO it was funding that made the difference. People outside of USA did not have any less passion towards the field.

eru 2y ago
I think the comment you replied to is not so much comparing USA vs rest of the world, but USA then and now.
tightbookkeeper 2y ago
Any amount of funding gets immediately sucked into the abyss. The entire mathematical research community in Soviet Union probably cost less than a series C startup. The only sense in which this is true is if choosing that field is a death sentence relative to other society outcomes due to lack of resources.

eru 2y ago

> I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money. And that's exactly how progress looks like! When you need to know 6502 assembly to make a game, only geniuses can make games. When you can click one together in Roblox, game development opens up to many more people. So the average game developer won't be as smart. But that's not because the new tools make us stupid. The same applies to any kind of software. (Or photography, or music, or movies, etc.) The average quality might go down when the floodgates open, but with modern tools the geniuses can produce even better stuff than before.