Questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Questions

#211

Post by JepZ » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #121

hyperpallium wrote: post #44

> Is Bloom's "Two Sigma" phenomenon real? ... one-on-one tutoring using mastery learning led to a two sigma(!) improvement in student performance. When I tutored, I found students often had some misunderstanding, somewhere. So my task was to listen , to find that misunderstanding, so I could correct it. This "teaching" is listening, more than talking. The idea is they are lost, but to know what direction they need, I…

I tend to believe in some of Stephen Krashen's notions of language acquisition. Specifically that there is a difference between learning (being able to remember and repeat something) and acquisition (being able to use it fluently). Also that acquisition comes from comprehension. I also believe that language acquisition is no different than any the acquisition of any other skill. Many people don't agree with these ide…

There are other ways of making sure the student understood the concept. Recently I played the game 'The Witness'. The whole game is about learning new puzzle rules, and yet there is not a single dialog within the game or even text explaining those rules.

I am not saying that their technique is the most efficient (e.g., adding hints would undoubtedly increase the efficiency, but also ruin the game experience), just that there are other methods of making sure a student understands a concept. You don't necessarily need the one-on-one conversations. Those conversations are mostly useful to round up incomplete teaching material (again, I am not saying that creating perfect teaching material is easy).

Re: Questions

#212

Post by qaq » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

trimbo wrote: post #191

> The Empire State Building was built in 410 days At least one reason is that we have substantially different safety regulations since we're not accepting of deaths on a project like that. 5 people died on that project. 11 died to build the Golden Gate. Original Bay Bridge? 24. They actually had a rule of thumb at the time: 1 death for every $1M spent on a project[1]. Any metric like that would be absolutely unaccept…

This will sound horrible but is it rational? E.g. say you are building a huge hospital and due to the above it will take 4 years longer at 2x the cost so basically you could loose X lives due to hospital not being there and due to increased cost of care.

Re: Questions

#213

Post by sitepodmatt » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #212

trimbo wrote: post #191

> The Empire State Building was built in 410 days At least one reason is that we have substantially different safety regulations since we're not accepting of deaths on a project like that. 5 people died on that project. 11 died to build the Golden Gate. Original Bay Bridge? 24. They actually had a rule of thumb at the time: 1 death for every $1M spent on a project[1]. Any metric like that would be absolutely unaccept…

This will sound horrible but is it rational? E.g. say you are building a huge hospital and due to the above it will take 4 years longer at 2x the cost so basically you could loose X lives due to hospital not being there and due to increased cost of care.

You make a reasonable point, health and safety bullshit can go too far at times, but equally exploitation often goes further - in that the effort to save/pockets costs shadows the good will. Very difficult to quantify

Re: Questions

#214

Post by lisper » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #180

lisper wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This decision was made and become deeply entrenched long before Python came along. Python is pretty good, but even it is constrained by the decisions that went into the design of C, since Python is implemented in C. Its underlying data structures are C data structures. Its memory management is C memory management. The GIL is there because C.

The GIL is not there because C. It's there because of refcounting and Python guaranteeing that many nontrivial operations are thread safe.

Yes, but refcounting is there because it is impossible to build a proper GC in portable C.

Re: Questions

#215

Post by LeonidasXIV » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

mhjas wrote: post #179

foolfoolz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

before they build a new station.... do they do environmental impact studies? was enough time given for the study to complete and people to challenge the results? possibly with another study? are there community meetings to discuss the impact? does everyone in the area have a chance to voice their opposition at an open hearing? do all workers on the construction team have strict safety regulations? require certified t…

I would guess they do that in Denmark and Copenhagen has a very modern subway system.

It is modern but the metro is just 1.5 lines and the new ring line takes forever to build. Some of the other extensions are only planned to open by 2024. So it is quite glacial.

Re: Questions

#216

Post by ttul » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

sakoht wrote: post #147

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Because we are lying about inflation. It's not a conspiracy, just a mutually agreed-to delusion. By pretending inflation is lower than it is, the poor feel like they are standing still instead of sinking ...though instinctively they know. And the people just keeping up get to feel richer. Since technology and efficiency improve, the people staying in the same p…

I have read that the cost of education is going up because unlike other parts of the economy, which benefit greatly from automation, with education you still have to hire these costly human teachers.

So as the efficiency of everything else goes up, the cost of those things is depressed. But teachers cost the same. So relatively under an inflated environment, they become more expensive.

Re: Questions

#217

Post by nikki93 » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #163

Why are programming environments still so primitive? In different ways, Mathematica, Genera, and Smalltalk put almost every other programming environment to shame. Atom, Sublime Edit, and Visual Studio Code are neat, but they do not represent a great improvement over TextMate circa 2007. Emacs and Vim have advanced by even less. Why pretend IDEs don't exist? For my C++ development I couldn't be happier with Qt Creato…

C++ IDEs and Smalltalk / Lisp visual environments are in very different leagues. It’s worth giving, eg. Pharo Smalltalk, a shot.

Re: Questions

#218

Post by kodablah » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:37 PM UTC

While seemingly unrelated, I kept answering to myself "fear" as I read some of these questions. Afraid to fire, afraid of risks, afraid of haste, afraid of users, etc. In general with business trends of places with fewer startups, higher costs, less customization, slower delivery, etc it's almost always because the environment rewards the risk averse.

Re: Questions

#219

Post by Digory » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

sakoht wrote: post #147

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Because we are lying about inflation. It's not a conspiracy, just a mutually agreed-to delusion. By pretending inflation is lower than it is, the poor feel like they are standing still instead of sinking ...though instinctively they know. And the people just keeping up get to feel richer. Since technology and efficiency improve, the people staying in the same p…

Inflation/devaluation has always been that game. The question is why it’s been so uneven.

I think all of the areas Patrick mentions are places the government has decided are “multipliers,” and has directed spending or subsidy. I vaguely recall a discussion in undergrad macro that it was always an advantage to be at the place inflation is injected into the system. We’ve had these input points for 60+ years.

Tech is a mixed bag, but housing, construction, medicine, and education are all prime places for social “investment.”

Re: Questions

#220

Post by mmirate » Sun, Sep 30, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

unixhero wrote: post #47

chucky wrote: post #35

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm? Several reasons. First, you need to recognize that any Sweden-based startup will, when it gets to be known internationally, have a Stockholm-based office. So it's not about a city of 1 million inhabitants, it's a country of 10 million that's the true number here. As an example, I believe Spotify opened their original offices in both Stockholm and Göteborg more…

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of…

On the other hand, here on the other side of the Atlantic ... Silicon Valley is not only at a temperate latitude but also downwind (jetstreamwise) of an ocean; placing it in the middle of one of our continent's few bastions of reliably non-shitty weather. And there isn't much tech-related stuff happening on the north coast of Alaska or the northern regions of Canada, either.

So I daresay there's more to this than just the Arctic Circle.