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Build Impossible Programs

jvns.ca

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Re: Build Impossible Programs

#41

Post by Elrac »

saagarjha wrote: post #3

I do love it when people post their slides for presentations, because this means I can usually get the gist of it without watching the video. Thanks, Julia! Though one quick comment: you're drawing your slides by hand, which unfortunately makes it a bit annoying for other people to consume–copy/paste doesn't work, and I'd assume people with limited vision might even be completely out of luck. So a transcript would be…

I would have liked to see the slides, and I see a paragraph headed "Slides" but no link. Am I blind or is it my browser? Would appreciate a pointer.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#42

Post by Wintamute »

AJRF wrote: post #31

Anyone know what Julia is using for those handwritten slides? I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumptions about your level of technical competence. You could be a junior, mid, senior and still get something from most of her articles. Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of m…

Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#43

Post by TomasSedovic »

ant6n wrote: post #39
TomasSedovic wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Julia uses Squid for Android for her zines: https://jvns.ca/teach-tech-with-cartoons/#tools-that-make-it... Presumably, she uses the same to do the slides. Here she talks some more about her tools: https://usesthis.com/interviews/julia.evans/

Julia's now using Ipad with pencil and the Notability app. She previously used a Samsung Chromebook Plus with Squid. She actually wrote a blog post about reverse engineering the file formats when transitioning between them: https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/03/31/reverse-engineering-notabili... (btw, if you go through her drawings over the years, they got better and better. I think a lot of what makes them great nowadays is…

Ah right, I thought she was using an ipad, but I couldn't find the source so I blamed a faulty memory. Thanks.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#44

Post by Derbasti »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #22

Some of the best experiences I've had programming is when I thought of something I'd like to make, but it seemed impossible. Then I went and made it. You do that enough times and coding becomes like real-world magic. You know you can do it, you don't know how yet. Yes, there are places you can get stuck. Rules-processing, unstructured data, Markov Chains, ML, and so forth. But even that's a win. You start understandi…

I agree so much! It's good to remember that many things seem impossible until you do them! After all, if they were easy, someone would have done them already.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#45

Post by coldtea »

Wintamute wrote: post #42
AJRF wrote: post #31

Anyone know what Julia is using for those handwritten slides? I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumptions about your level of technical competence. You could be a junior, mid, senior and still get something from most of her articles. Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of m…

Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...

Generalizations are the basis of all thought and science -- it's all about abstracting the chaos into a cohesive taxonomy and laws.

Without generalization we are lost in paralyzing (and inane) case by case judging of everything. In CS terms, generalizations are basically pattern recognition.

Can they be bad? Sure. But not because they are generalizations.

I'm not even sure what you're getting at. That you can find all kinds of types in either group? I don't think anybody disagrees.

A generalization is still valid though if it recognizes larger tendencies in each group (where there's lot of overlap, but e.g. different peaks at different approaches).

Is your position that it's illogical to even consider this? Because a lot of scientific research (never mind the parent's empirical observations) disagrees.

The key is not to not make generalizations, but to try to make their as good as you can, and to not insist to apply them to some individual instance that doesn't match them. One should also improve their generalizations over time, as new data come in.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#46

Post by callahad »

Elrac wrote: post #41
saagarjha wrote: post #3

I do love it when people post their slides for presentations, because this means I can usually get the gist of it without watching the video. Thanks, Julia! Though one quick comment: you're drawing your slides by hand, which unfortunately makes it a bit annoying for other people to consume–copy/paste doesn't work, and I'd assume people with limited vision might even be completely out of luck. So a transcript would be…

I would have liked to see the slides, and I see a paragraph headed "Slides" but no link. Am I blind or is it my browser? Would appreciate a pointer.

It's a SpeakerDeck embed; your adblocker might be a bit overzealous? https://speakerdeck.com/jvns/build-impossible-programs

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#47

Post by Wintamute »

coldtea wrote: post #45
Wintamute wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...

Generalizations are the basis of all thought and science -- it's all about abstracting the chaos into a cohesive taxonomy and laws. Without generalization we are lost in paralyzing (and inane) case by case judging of everything. In CS terms, generalizations are basically pattern recognition. Can they be bad? Sure. But not because they are generalizations. I'm not even sure what you're getting at. That you can find al…

I agree with you. My admittedly snarky/oblique point was that these days it's personally, professionally and politically advantageous to make negative generalisations about males, but not about females. Just pointing out a fashionable double standard, as I see it.

Re: Build Impossible Programs

#49

Post by DennisP »

Wintamute wrote: post #42
AJRF wrote: post #31

Anyone know what Julia is using for those handwritten slides? I absolutely love everything Julia writes. She writes in a way that makes absolutely zero assumptions about your level of technical competence. You could be a junior, mid, senior and still get something from most of her articles. Anecdotally; Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of m…

Care to share any anecdotes that make sweeping generalisations based on gender that paint female engineers in a bad light instead? Nope, didn't think so ...

There's no generalization in this:

> Almost every female engineer I work with writes and communicates in this fashion and I really bloody wish more of my male counterparts

That's just reporting facts about the specific people he happens to work with. It would be generalization if just said "female engineers," without the qualifiers "almost every...I work with."

I guess you could claim that he's implying a generalization, but that's a claim someone could make about any reporting of specific facts.

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