raddan

19 ms·

301.
by raddan 1y ago
No kidding. If your org is large enough, you have to communicate with nontechnical people sometimes. Unless you're a Microsoft shop, they probably aren't using your chat platform of choice. Email is still the first stop where I
302.
by raddan 1y ago
Try doing a calculus problem. E.g., integration. Even if you do it on paper, your approach is probably wildly different than a computer integration algorithm. An algorithm that does it symbolically, ala Mathematica, is a pretty difficult
303.
by raddan 1y ago
We don’t actually disagree. Note that Dijkstra did not say “modern computer.” He said “computer.” Computer science is in a major way about what “is computable.”
304.
by raddan 1y ago
Non-algorithmically, using intuition, like a (non-programmer) human.
305.
by raddan 1y ago
I have always found this quote annoying. There are many ways to solve problems, but when you constrain yourself to solving them mechanistically, that is what makes computer science computer science. Virtually every theoretical CS paper impl
306.
by raddan 1y ago
Not to mention that motivated humans are amazing learning machines. The supposed trend of replacing entry-level programmers with AI is pure insanity. Sure, code of indeterminate quality (let’s assume for a moment that it is good) will get w
307.
by raddan 1y ago
I too am baffled by the prevailing sense of doom that many young people have. They certainly get a lot of messages about how hard things are, and of course, one’s circumstances have a big effect on one’s future. I am often asked in my job a
308.
by raddan 1y ago
This is false. Many PhD graduates struggle to find jobs in the US. And even if it were true, that would be fine. These people were trained here, understand the American style of research, and want to contribute. It is a massive loss to the
309.
by raddan 1y ago
There are a lot of variables, but from personal experience it also depends on how you talk about that experience in your tenure dossier. I was able to spin a research finding into a commercial product. Due to intracompany politics, that pro
310.
by raddan 1y ago
> Specific instances have included classical liberals supporting free markets and the rule of law, communists aiming for a violent revolution, and progressives focused on identity politics. I’m not sure I understand how equality factors
311.
by raddan 1y ago
Actually it’s just the paper’s introduction.
312.
by raddan 1y ago
I think what is going to happen is that junior devs will develop a strong reliance on AI tools to be able to do anything. I cynically think this was OpenAI’s aim when they made ChatGPT free for students. I had a rather depressing experience
313.
by raddan 1y ago
Good luck with the app! But I could not help but be reminded of this hilarious Ben Stiller scene: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9y5K3KsuQ_M
314.
by raddan 1y ago
Oddly I have found that nearly all of my best friends come from different walks of life than me, and do different things for work. Only one of my very good friends does the same things that I do. Others, like my stonemason friend, have very
315.
by raddan 1y ago
It is most definitely a thing, and that is how my job worked when I was at Microsoft, in three different roles. All of the senior people I worked for definitely could code (one of them was well-known in the memory management research space)
316.
by raddan 1y ago
These are absolutely spot on. I worked as a programmer having been a self taught coder. There were important things I just did not understand. A good example is how to gauge the runtime complexity of a program. I did not know what I did not
317.
by raddan 1y ago
> is it actually just very cherry picked? 100%
318.
by raddan 1y ago
My father recently gave me a big pile of stuff from my childhood (cleaning out the attic) and this was mixed in. I think he must have acquired it during HIS teenage years, since he would have been in high school at the time. It was fun look
319.
by raddan 1y ago
It would be seriously disappointing if the world we are moving to is one where people don’t care about in person talks anymore. Not only do I love in-person conferences, I would probably stop caring about publishing papers if it was discon
320.
by raddan 1y ago
> If one altruistically decides to give to society then I'm unsure what outcomes one should expect from society? What's the game-theory here? I’m not sure if you’re asking rhetorically, but answering your question literally spe
321.
by raddan 1y ago
I also used both of these at a formative time in my programming career, and it really felt magical. I built half a dozen little apps, some using Access (another product whose loss I mourn), to solve problems at the small company I worked fo
322.
by raddan 1y ago
I understand that somebody might want to generate static pages from code that generates it dynamically, but I fail to appreciate _why_. Are people using this for a handful of pages they want to load quickly and whose contents rarely change
323.
by raddan 1y ago
When I was in graduate school, my wife and I bought an affordable house in a neighborhood with a big factory next door. It was otherwise a lovely place, and so my morning jog often took me up and down the rural roads around the factory. O
324.
by raddan 1y ago
You might be surprised how often multi-language programs appear. Basically all of modern day Python for starters. But also a number of important numerical libraries for C are actually written in Fortran.
325.
by raddan 1y ago
I wrote a bootloader for an iPod Mini when I was an undergrad, and honestly, I don’t think that would have helped me understand linking the first time around. With 20 years of hindsight and lots more hacking experience I can see the connect
326.
by raddan 2y ago
Along those lines, I discovered (by accident) that soft music has a similar effect. It’s not something you necessarily want to play when people are trying to focus, but when people are congregating for a meeting, it puts them at ease. There
327.
by raddan 2y ago
I think an important question to ask is whether your scientific task is primarily one of interpolation, or one of extrapolation. LLMs appear to be excellent interpolators. They are bad at extrapolation.
328.
by raddan 2y ago
It’s wild that OpenBSD still supports the architectures it does. I literally learned how to program on a G4 Mac running OpenBSD back in 2000. I think it was version 3.0 but I don’t really remember. It was a wonderful experience, and I chose
329.
by raddan 2y ago
I have something similar at my desk, an Apple Extended Keyboard II. It is connected to an ADB to USB adapter (which needs its coin cell battery replaced every 5-7 years) and then that is connected to a USB-A to USB-C adapter to connect to m
330.
by raddan 2y ago
This is such a lost experience. I was a “free range kid” well before that term was coined. It was wonderful. I occasionally got in trouble, but mostly I explored the world and learned a lot. A student recently asked me if I was ever bored.

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