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Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#311

Post by herodotus »

bobosha wrote: post #257
herodotus wrote: post #197

When I was a CS prof, many, many years ago, our undergraduate lab had Macs with floppy disks. I asked the University to pay for installing 10MB Hard Drives in the Macs. I was asked to present my case to the deans council. At the meeting, I said that the students used the floppy to load their development environment. I said that, with a hard drive, it took 10 secs to load and be ready. With the floppy, I said it took…

> When I was a CS prof, many, many years ago, Curious what you do now.

Left university and joined a startup, switched jobs to a different company, that company was acquired by Apple, worked there for about 12 or so years, now retired, but work on an App.

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#312

Post by herodotus »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #208
herodotus wrote: post #197

When I was a CS prof, many, many years ago, our undergraduate lab had Macs with floppy disks. I asked the University to pay for installing 10MB Hard Drives in the Macs. I was asked to present my case to the deans council. At the meeting, I said that the students used the floppy to load their development environment. I said that, with a hard drive, it took 10 secs to load and be ready. With the floppy, I said it took…

So simple yet so perfectly executed. Curious but did you have anything else planned in case that didn't make your case? :)

Can't recall - too long ago!

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#313

Post by vvillena »

twtw wrote: post #146
StavrosK wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more to learning than memorization.

There's more to exams than memorization too, and cheating because you don't like memorization is childish. If the exams really test only memorization, drop the class.

Not every academic system allows to freely drop classes, to drop a class without an economic penalty, or to drop a class without falling behind in your studies.

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#314

Post by all2 »

feanaro wrote: post #275
quadcore wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My humble opinion. University is about learning (not, for example, status). Learning is something strictly personal. There is nothing fundamentally universally wrong to cheat at an exam beside the fact you may be harming yourself. Now since we need a little order for various secondary reasons, we promoted exam cheating to illegal and that's ok. We need order. But there is nothing someone should feel guilt for imho, a…

I agree with this. I would further suggest that the modern conflation of two orthogonal functions (teaching and certification) in universities is rather misguided. These would be better served by two separate types of institution.

> These would be better served by two separate types of institution.

For a long time, they were. A technical school certifies someone to do something. A university teaches you how to think about hard things (supposed to, anyway).

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#315

Post by simonbarker87 »

ehnto wrote: post #139
simonbarker87 wrote: post #53

Fixing a SRAM 11 speed GX rear shifter on my mountain bike. I was on a downhill MTB holiday and fell off, snapping the thumb trigger on my rear gear shifter. Replacing the shifter is usually like a £30 part, but I was in an alpine resort in summer so the shops that stocked them were charging nearly £100! I had my tools and some super glue so sat down to repair it. The snapped part fixed in two minutes but getting tha…

Are you making YouTube videos of your mountain biking adventures or just videos for fun? I would be keen to see them as I am getting into it now myself.

We had been planning on doing a couples MTB channel as my wife was looking for something outside of work to make up for a lack of interesting projects at work. In the end she landed up getting a job at Aston Martin and now I just use the gimbal for fun with our friends when riding.

I recommend BKXC and Seth’s Bike Hacks as good channels that avoid all the Gnar downhill stuff

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#316

Post by dahart »

yholio wrote: post #90

I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. So I used an analogue wireless headphone, an induction loop around my neck and a mobile phone. Since I lacked an accomplice to dictate, I read aloud the hundreds of pages and recorded myself, careful to preserve and properly serialize things like complex formulas. This was before the era of iPods and SDCard pl…

That is unbelievable! How did you index the audio? What did you have to do to access them during a test, and how long did it take? Did you find that you had accidentally memorized some of the lectures after having read them aloud?

> I rejected memorisation on principle, that's not what an university should be about.

The lengths you went to to avoid doing it the easy way are incredible. You’re not alone, but I have to say I think this idea - that university should not involve memorization - is a common misconception. If you think about it, a good education requires memorization. What we’re learning in all fields in large amounts - even in math - is some degree of human history, and some degree of human notation and convention, neither of which can be derived by logic. Think about language, becoming a fluent speaker, especially the first time, is almost entirely learn by rote.

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#317

Post by yxhuvud »

austincheney wrote: post #133

A simplified universal parsing format (AST) that equally describes all languages. It needs to allow seamless switching between different languages in the same file and also allow recursively nesting of different languages within each other without resulting in a deviating from the simplified parse format. The solution is written and it appears correct and viable. As in all things related to parsers the devil's in the…

How do the switching happen? You just allow a node in one language to be some root of another, or is it more complicated?

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#318

Post by simonbarker87 »

ArthurN wrote: post #86
simonbarker87 wrote: post #53

Fixing a SRAM 11 speed GX rear shifter on my mountain bike. I was on a downhill MTB holiday and fell off, snapping the thumb trigger on my rear gear shifter. Replacing the shifter is usually like a £30 part, but I was in an alpine resort in summer so the shops that stocked them were charging nearly £100! I had my tools and some super glue so sat down to repair it. The snapped part fixed in two minutes but getting tha…

I empathize! These kinds of shifters are SUPER hard to put back together. Quite literally, so many moving parts in such a tight space. If you inadvertently bend the springs or coils too much, you could end up ruining the whole thing. I had a similar situation happen to on a Shimano Deore shifter, which is even less complex than the SRAM you mention. For others who have never had this "joy", it looks like there's at l…

That video was released a month after I fixed mine! Could have done with that.

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#319

Post by zerr »

herodotus wrote: post #197

When I was a CS prof, many, many years ago, our undergraduate lab had Macs with floppy disks. I asked the University to pay for installing 10MB Hard Drives in the Macs. I was asked to present my case to the deans council. At the meeting, I said that the students used the floppy to load their development environment. I said that, with a hard drive, it took 10 secs to load and be ready. With the floppy, I said it took…

I guess that trick would be harder to reproduce for my problem - bringing down compile times from 4 hours to 1 :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?

#320

Post by sonnyblarney »

F_r_k wrote: post #301
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admitting to significant academic fraud during a job interview is a very, very bad idea. Furthermore, I would question the ethics and morality of any company that said "Wow, you solved an incredibly tough problem in order to commit fraud. Boy, are we the place for you!"

I find your point of view very narrow minded. I even admitted cheating in my bachelor's during my Master's thesis presentation. It was in Switzerland, and culture is different; maybe we're less black and white.

If you cheated on an exam, it's a very bad negative signal for integrity there's no question about it.

This is not very grey.

If you were caught you would probably be kicked out of your Uni, this is a serious thing.

I understand there are extenuating circumstances, people are young, they do crazy things, we all have. But it's not something we run around talking about, certainly not in an interview.

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