inimino

18 ms·

211.
by inimino 4y ago
He's not saying that the SICP was no longer relevant, but that the people (e.g. administrators) wanted something else. You'd be surprised what people can do without libraries. SICP covers patterns, like in chapter 3 with the `make
212.
by inimino 4y ago
That is probably true. I think this is always a problem for elite schools, because you will always get the really motivated students who started a subject early and had a genuine interest in it, and these kids will never need what you are t
213.
by inimino 4y ago
Not so much about smarts but about exposure. Most of the kids who get into MIT for math didn't start doing proofs at MIT, but in maths olympiads and such at a much younger age. Still, even given the formidable qualifications of the MIT
214.
by inimino 4y ago
SICP starts with abstraction, and gets there via closures, which are an abstraction that encompasses and goes beyond everything that OOP can do with regards to encapsulation. You can do as much mutation as you want in Scheme, SICP uses this
215.
by inimino 4y ago
Andrei Sorin's book (it's available free online) might be interesting to you. It's quite long but if you skip around in chapter 7 (on software) you might find some ideas worth keeping around.
216.
by inimino 4y ago
Those people are the ones who can't be stopped, and they will continue to exist as long as people continue to pursue understanding for its own sake.
217.
by inimino 4y ago
Sounds nearly the same to me, obscured by an added layer of organizational retconning.
218.
by inimino 4y ago
First of all, pilots absolutely do know how airplanes work, and they make you study the aerodynamics and pass a course before you get your first hour of flight time, even as a student going up. Feynman understood how airplanes work better t
219.
by inimino 4y ago
The very way he tells the story practically lampshades all the behind-the-scenes intrigue that will never see the light of day.
220.
by inimino 4y ago
In the late 90s? Surely OOP, code re-use through encapsulation and inheritance, the relational model (though on the way out), and making XML of all the things should have been some of the "interesting topics" at this time.
221.
by inimino 4y ago
You might be surprised how deeply math is connected to what you're doing! It sounds like you're doing some visual reasoning with decision trees, which means you're doing computer science (understanding the execution of an alg
222.
by inimino 4y ago
After SICP Sussman wrote Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. The text is available free online, and it covers some (advanced) areas of classical mechanics by way of simulation.
223.
by inimino 4y ago
Sussman went on to write a textbook that investigates classical mechanics starting from the Lagrangian and proceeding by way of simulation experiments in Scheme. I think the distinction is not between science and non-science, but between th
224.
by inimino 4y ago
I am coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that organizational habits (hiring and promotion practices, VC preferences for engineering team structures, etc, etc) are more significant than what universities teach (or perhaps, ultimately, the
225.
by inimino 4y ago
I think before making any broad statements here I'd want us to be clear about what it means to completely understand something. I was once asked the classic interview question about what happens when you type a domain and hit enter in
226.
by inimino 4y ago
So true.
227.
by inimino 4y ago
He says "although still important intellectually, it was no longer relevant to the kinds of things people needed." What people? The students? Working programmers? Companies? The university administration? Notice how he tells the a
228.
by inimino 4y ago
The trick should be how to set things up so other people get lucky in the same way. I could give you the same sequence of projects and goals I had as a curriculum, and it wouldn't work for you. As an individual, if you follow this path
229.
by inimino 4y ago
The standard wisdom is absolutely right. The standard wisdom tends to keep the bureaucratic beast in control, not you. That is why it is the standard wisdom, and not the outsider minority opinion. That is why increasing your professional
230.
by inimino 4y ago
To the administration, yes. Not to the students (except perhaps morally). The University decides what you are required to learn to get the credential, the wider society determines what the credential is worth, and influences the institution
231.
by inimino 4y ago
On the JTAG points, I (sadly) don't have enough hardware hobbies under my belt to appreciate that pain. On the Rust borrow checker front, I too share this same sunk cost and the have the same lingering regret. Uniqueness types have bee
232.
by inimino 4y ago
As an industry we are capable of producing software that is completely incomprehensible to anyone, yes. That is not the argument. You haven't demonstrated that this is a good idea, or that there isn't a better way this software co
233.
by inimino 4y ago
The question is whether this is necessary . I agree with you that people are doing all of those things. It's not, strictly speaking, necessary, it's just a popular choice.
234.
by inimino 4y ago
> The problem is that the complexity of systems is growing beyond the capacity for people to understand in the first place This is the argument, but it's a question whether this is a choice that we are making as a society and an ind
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by inimino 4y ago
You protest too much. You surely know it is not out of reach, but you would have to find your own way back into the joy of it and no-one else can tell you what to read or where to start.
236.
by inimino 4y ago
It's a way of solving a (tribe-wide) coordination problem, because if enough people do the thing, the balance shifts and it's not acceptable to ridicule anymore. The opposite of being curious about something and wanting to study i
237.
by inimino 4y ago
The industry includes large organizations of middle managers, who prefer to hire PhDs because they have demonstrated near super-human abilities to submit themselves to the whims of overbearing bureaucracies. The bit about overabstraction I
238.
by inimino 4y ago
Are you agreeing here?
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by inimino 4y ago
There's an "intellectual immune response" effect, when a group that asserts that you don't need to know something meets someone demonstrating the passion to learn it.
240.
by inimino 4y ago
I've been through the book twice, both times with a group (always thinner at the end) and doing all the exercises. It was well worth every minute. I got a much deeper level of comfort with approaching "hard problems" and it w

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