pgbovine

38 ms·

151.
Lead From Below (how to lead initiatives from the bottom of a hierarchy)(cacm.acm.org)
2 points by pgbovine 14y ago|0 comments
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by pgbovine 14y ago
These guys are all seriously bad-ass at what they do. I had the honor of working with them back in grad school on http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/
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by pgbovine 14y ago
The inherent limitation here is that Online Python Tutor is built upon a line-oriented single-step debugger (Python's bdb module), so there's no way for it to step inside of subexpressions (e.g., in your list comprehension example).
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by pgbovine 14y ago
I've never actually posted any of my projects in the past. Every so often I wake up to an inbox flurry and then check HN :)
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by pgbovine 14y ago
Please email me examples that fail to run. It might be memory overload, or just other weird server crashes. (My alert dialog message isn't particularly informative.) Online Python Tutor isn't meant for running large examples. Think of it as
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by pgbovine 14y ago
Bret has certainly been an inspiration to lots of us who work in this field, but I still don't think this is an implementation of his vision. To truly implement his vision, someone would need to design a new programming language and environ
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by pgbovine 14y ago
Yep, right on! I wanted to show off linked list recursion and render box-and-pointer diagrams like those seen in SICP.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
Oh wow, woke up this morning to some great emails. Thanks, everyone! Here is some context behind the current incarnation of Online Python Tutor: https://plus.google.com/+ResearchatGoogle/posts/cseo9qi7LWq
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by pgbovine 14y ago
as part of my dissertation work, i built a related self-monitoring tool, except with a focus on helping scientists/researchers record and annotate their workflow: http://pgbovine.net/burrito.html
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by pgbovine 14y ago
excellent -- my unsolicited advice is for you to ping some professors and TAs who teach low-level programming to get them interested in using this in their teaching.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
probably not, unless you're really good at filtering out what you need from 1312 pages. a more tightly-focused programming interview study guide is probably more beneficial if your only goal is prepping for these sorts of interviews.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
great question -- i should add a book FAQ soon. yes, i focused the book exclusively on research and not on my personal life. (also note that i didn't talk about classes, teaching, qualifying exams, or other non-research things)
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by pgbovine 14y ago
great insight!!! perhaps i should've added more clarification in that section. i guess the way i worked best was to learn by producing; i wouldn't have had the patience to do what you did (consuming deeply for three years -> producing o
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by pgbovine 14y ago
Other than the projects you specifically worked on and the papers you published what can you say the greatest advantage over someone in my situation would be? I have no idea -- that's why I put that parenthetical caveat in that paragraph
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by pgbovine 14y ago
wow didn't expect to see this on here, especially with that particular post title! just to provide some context, this page is the epilogue of a ~100-page memoir of my Ph.D. experiences [1], so parts of it might not make any sense as a stand
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by pgbovine 14y ago
yikes -- i never meant for anyone to read the epilogue without context (or see it posted standalone to HN). the rest of the book talks about how i cultivated all of those traits throughout the past six years. also, that's sort of why i had
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by pgbovine 14y ago
done -- epub/mobi versions online at: http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm
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by pgbovine 14y ago
thanks; this might be a presumptuous suggestion, but if you're interested in these topics, please take a look at my dissertation. at the very least, it's useful as a bibliography of work in this field ... http://pgbovine.net/projects/pubs/
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by pgbovine 14y ago
thanks! just to warn you -- it is definitely "research-quality" code. out of all the tools i built for my dissertation, CDE is the only one that's remotely usable ... everything else is just a proof-of-concept.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
i have a big fat disclaimer in the preface that this isn't meant to be anything other than me telling my own story; it's one data point, and there's a huge amount of variation in Ph.D. student experiences. maybe i didn't make the disclaimer
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by pgbovine 14y ago
ha you're another person i meant to email today ... i should get on that soon!
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by pgbovine 14y ago
"Before reading his book, I too had the idealized notion of "brilliant idea, years of writing one paper about it". The reality isn't quite as fantastic, but I appreciate learning the truth over belated disillusionment." I don't know whether
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by pgbovine 14y ago
wow, thanks for the compliments! i'm looking into rendering in a Kindle-friendly format soon.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
actually i don't know wilson, but he went to grad school with my advisor, so i figure i should ping him! re: Onward! yes, i've heard good things about it; will keep a look-out.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
oh, no worries at all! in fact, i just shipped today. thanks for posting, ethan.
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by pgbovine 14y ago
whoa thanks for the compliments! re: focus -- yes, that's key. but of course, it's bad to be blindly focused down a bad direction, too. don't put too much pressure on yourself early on, since nearly everyone flops and flounders. re: what to
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by pgbovine 14y ago
hi matt - wow, i was gonna email you tomorrow, but HN scooped me. re: distilling -- my main intention in writing this memoir wasn't to provide advice, since it's hard for me to determine how much facets of my experience generalize. i do hav
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by pgbovine 14y ago
oh thanks for reminding me ... i should forward this to your advisor!
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by pgbovine 14y ago
whoa i'm astonished people have the attention span to read this on a friday night :) here's an HTML version too ... http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm
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by pgbovine 14y ago
thanks ... wow i hope my Ph.D. didn't have the body count of a clancy thriller

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