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Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

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Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#71

Post by aglionby »

azhenley wrote: post #38

CS Education - Virtually everything is unsolved. How do we teach people how to code? What is the progression? Do we teach them how to "think" algorithmically first or just dive into a specific language? How do we assess their learning? Which skills are transferable?

Relatedly, I'm curious about different ways that CS education can be framed. Speaking to teachers, one of the main reasons why many kids (and, crucially, parents) aren't interested in CS is the misconception that you can't be creative with programming. When kids find out that this is not the case, engagement rises. (There's also the point that CS seems to invariably be folded into programming, but I'm not sure this is the biggest problem.)

I wonder what the impact on uptake would be if the focus was shifted towards CS as a venue for building things and being creative and away from lines of monowidth code and indecipherable errors. More to the point, I wonder how this might be done.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#72

Post by kawzeg »

linguae wrote: post #6

Here is a problem that I've been thinking about for some time: suppose I express using some type of logic that I want the shortest path between two vertices of a graph. Given this logical description of the problem, is it possible for a computer program to emit Dijkstra's algorithm or some other efficient algorithm? One of the things that have interested me lately is logic programming, but I'm wondering if there has…

I remember minikanren being able to generate expressions that evaluate to a value.

In general, I guess the search space of all algorithms that might or might not solve a problem is simply extremely huge, so you'd need some good heuristics to find an interesting algorithm.

I can't think of any reason why there would be a theoretical limit on this, but I'm no expert in this.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#73

Post by austincheney »

Here are some that come to mind:

* Professional Software Developer Certification. Software developers do not have an industry recognized certification or accreditation program. Every other professional industry has this. Truck drives have this. Here are some specialized subcategories.

    - Web Development
    - Security Remediation
    - Operating Systems and Systems Automation
    - Applied Mathematics Applications
    - Data Management
* Heat Energy as Electricity. We waste and expend so much energy in the form of heat that could, if captured and stored, be converted to electricity.

* Energy Efficient Hydrogen Capture from Water. Currently it takes more energy the shatter a water molecule than you would gain from burning the resulting hydrogen. Liquefied hydrogen is a wonder fuel whose energy efficient combustion yields water as its waste product and could power spacecraft deep in space.

* Obesity. Obesity is caused by a combination of 3 things: insufficient exercise, preference for carbs over fats as the primary energy source, and unhealthy fat sources. The third one can be solved with a combination of science, agriculture, and economics.

* Mental Health Therapy. There are a tremendous number of people who need mental healthy medicine but never get it (for many reasons). By tremendous I mean an utterly astonishingly significant percentage of the population. Those who do get medicine are often prescribed drugs instead of therapy when therapy is generally more effective and doesn't have negative side effects. Also the sheer quantity of mental health medications is detectable in the public water supply.

* Rapid Oil Metabolism. Oil is a necessary part of the modern economy. Crude oil is refined to make plastics, and so it will be with us well into the future. Oil spills are nasty though. It would be nice if there were micro-organisms that could consume oil so that oil pools could be removed organically in months instead of decades/centuries.

* Space Entry. We are currently limited to using rockets to enter space (or exit Earth). That is horribly fuel inefficient. Any alternative would most certainly be cleaner and more energy efficient, but there aren't alternatives yet.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#74

Post by jonfw »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #45
mpfundstein wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OP schizophrenic? Can wr please stop this theirs b llsh t. Write his or her if you want to be PC. Otherse you are right

Lucky 10000: Some 1-2% of the population is neither male nor female. Hope this helps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

1-2% includes people who have extremely minor deviations from the norm and requires you to use the most strict biological definitions of 'male' or 'female' that we could possibly use. The vast majority of these 1-2% are still easily assigned a gender.

From your wikipedia article-

> If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births [0.07–0.05%]. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which won't show up until later in life.[132]

There are some percentage of people who aren't overwhelmingly male or female, and it's important to consider them with our speech, but I don't think 1-2% is a fair representation.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#75

Post by _Microft »

londons_explore wrote: post #32
pjc50 wrote: post #18

Mathematics is the best field for this because a list of unsolved problems is kept, and many of them are relatively easy to explain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m... Chemistry/materials science: room-temperature superconductivity is probably the big one. There are a whole host of problems in the energy space which would benefit from improvement; while "electricity+CO2+water => fuel" is…

> electricity+CO2+water => fuel Considering fuel => electricity+CO2+water is financially viable today, the reverse can never be financially viable unless the prices of the inputs and outputs shift quite a bit...

The actual problem is that the downsides of turning (fossil) fuel into anything else are not priced in. If the damages done by emitting carbon, particular matter, nitrous gases, sulphur, ... had to be paid for by the producer, then fossil fuels would have a very bleak outlook.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#76

Post by woodrowbarlow »

neilsimp1 wrote: post #70
btbuildem wrote: post #8

Software development: how to make realistic estimates, and deliver a solution on time.

I am a developer. My go-to answer for "What is your weakness" type interview questions is that I am bad at estimates.

interviewers want an example of a problem you've identified and are actively mitigating. they want to hear what solution you've created to deal with your own weakness. if you're giving the same answer you would've given a year ago, i have doubts that you're providing a compelling answer to the question.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

Taek wrote: post #17
btbuildem wrote: post #8

Software development: how to make realistic estimates, and deliver a solution on time.

Only possible if you don't do anything novel. If you are building a website that's got all the same patterns as the previous 5 websites you've built, then you can provide a solid estimate and deliver on time. If you're building something that nobody has ever made before, you've got unknown unknowns, and your best bet is intuition, which is inevitably going to miss the mark a bit.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#78

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dschadd wrote: post #34

I work in logistics building a transportation management system. Our unsolvable question is not technical - how do you get trucking companies to use technology? It is more unsolvable than the 7 Bridges of Koningsberg.

You show them that they can make more money by using technology. Out of several thousand trucking companies, a few will try it. If it pays off for them, then some more will try it.

And, really, if it doesn't pay off for the few that try it, why should the rest use it?

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#79

Post by pjc50 »

londons_explore wrote: post #32
pjc50 wrote: post #18

Mathematics is the best field for this because a list of unsolved problems is kept, and many of them are relatively easy to explain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m... Chemistry/materials science: room-temperature superconductivity is probably the big one. There are a whole host of problems in the energy space which would benefit from improvement; while "electricity+CO2+water => fuel" is…

> electricity+CO2+water => fuel Considering fuel => electricity+CO2+water is financially viable today, the reverse can never be financially viable unless the prices of the inputs and outputs shift quite a bit...

There are times and places where electricity has a negative price, and potentially a carbon pricing scheme could subsidise taking it out of the air. But a big factor in this is the cost of the plant; nobody's going to spend £100m on a plant that runs 5% of the year. Hence the desire to simplify the process.

The US navy also has a use for this: at-sea refuelling of planes and other ships from the spare power from the nuclear aircraft carrier.

Re: Ask HN: What's an unsolved problem in your field?

#80

Post by simonw »

austincheney wrote: post #73

Here are some that come to mind: * Professional Software Developer Certification. Software developers do not have an industry recognized certification or accreditation program. Every other professional industry has this. Truck drives have this. Here are some specialized subcategories. - Web Development - Security Remediation - Operating Systems and Systems Automation - Applied Mathematics Applications - Data Manageme…

Truck driving doesn't change a great deal. Software development still changes on an annual basis. As such, it feels to me that certification would go out of date extremely quickly.
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