171–180 of 206 posts
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I don't get it. Isn't it well-known that PhD makes only sense for people who want career in research? In this case, why "wasting years and years" doing research would be a waste of time?
You don't always get to work on what you want. Especially if it's outside what's expected in your field.
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Good read! That said, I don't know about self-mockery. A good line from the linked lecture transcript: > The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague. He seems to be addressing the issue of inflated egos influencing people to be " real programmers ". F…
That is good stuff (well he was Dijkstra). I think we've all seen such hubris play out. When you want to prove that you are intellectually superior you will demonstrate that you can master the most difficult tools (say category theory?) without understanding that your real goal should be to find simple solutions to difficult problems. A simple solution does not look like much because it is so simple, but it can take…
The problem with category theory, as I see it, happens due to a mismatch with our mode of creating. We tend to converge in our solutions from chaos to order. Formal systems don’t provide space to be chaotic in. We need to be right the first time.
We need languages and IDEs that will help us find abstractions. Static analysis saying: “this thing here is like all those other things if only you see it like so. Perhaps you want to structure it like those other things as well?”
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You don't always get to work on what you want. Especially if it's outside what's expected in your field.
This is just life in general. Some people get funding/support for their own ideas and some people do not. I don't think it is specific to academia.
> (waste years and years of their lives) sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited
Suggesting that incentives to do research that follows academic tradition do not aligign with the best possible outcomes of independent investigation.
Which is what we both point out.
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My wife is an organic chemist by education and for every R&D job she applied to, there were tens to hundreds of applicants with PhDs. Having "only" a Master's degree, she had no chance. Pretty much all her college friends went to do a PhD, just so they could get a job. She's a happy software tester now :-)
Is there something wrong in this? Better qualified candidates were preferred for a research job. Of course, if you argue that the job didn't actually require PhD-level knowledge/experience, then the problem is in oversaturated job market of the field, not in the PhD system.
Unfortunately there was a huge gap in what was expected of these people and what they could actually do. Save but a few they were pretty awful employees for the job. Not necessarily their fault, but it's one example of the gamification of the system.
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BASIC only ruins you if you have no intellectual curiosity. BASIC was my first language and with each new language I’ve learned since I’ve always been excited at the new possibilities and paradigms it opened up.
BASIC got a whole generation of people interested in programming. I've yet to meet somebody who got interested in computers through correctness proofs.
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They sure do. Here is Freeman Dyson; the Physicist without a PhD ( https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-puzzle-worthy-of-freem... ); Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their…
I don't get it. Isn't it well-known that PhD makes only sense for people who want career in research? In this case, why "wasting years and years" doing research would be a waste of time?
Having one in CS myself U can assure you are right for the IT field. Getting this PhD was about personal aspiration rather than career success.
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Well, the whole comment you link doesn't really deny that Dijkstra could be arrogant and dismissive, it just goes on to say essentially that he was a lovable old coot and that they listened to him only as much as they wanted; " Dijkstra was much more funny than annoying for anyone who had any sense of self. The two biggest problems in our not-quite-a-field were those who listened to him too carefully and those who di…
I read it more like people back then weren't so sensitive and didn't even take that kind of straight talk as arrogance and dismissiveness. But then maybe Alan Kay will show up and clarify. I'm just old enough to remember when corporate culture was like this too. It used to be OK to say when people were wrong or get mad when programming errors lit the building on fire. That started to become NOT OK in the past 15 year…
A good quote from Dave Evans (to faculty members who complained about a genius faculty member who could be abrasive): "We don't care if they're prima donnas as long as they can sing".
As I've mentioned in a few other places, including this forum, most people found Edsger to be funny. He obviously enjoyed wielding English for comments, biting, snide, and otherwise. He loved to project snide arrogance in his particular highly developed style.
A good friend of his was Bob Barton -- I think even more of a genius -- and perhaps even more idiosyncratic, pointed and neurotic. Barton was kind of on-stage most of the time, and had truly eloquent extemporaneous opinions.
But so what? Listen to Dave Evans, and then listen to what great and interesting people have to say.
One of the definitions for these people is that whether they are right or wrong, or whether you agree with them or not, what they say is so interesting that it absolutely demands to be thought about.
You can't beat that kind of help for your own thinking processes.
Backus literally inspired functional programming with his Turing acceptance and Dijkstra attacked him for it. Dijkstra attacked the paper that inspired Haskell and everything else that currently exists in FP. He tried to destroy it. He should be a footnote in history.
While Dijkstra's criticism probably does deserve to be called an "attack", the resulting exchange between him and Backus was highly thought-provoking and entertaining.
https://github.com/jiahao/backus-dijkstra-letters-1979/
https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your...
> He should be a footnote in history.
Please read the posted article, and educate yourself on his historical significance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra#Pioneering_...
I wish seeing the name Dijkstra didn't immediately remind me of his oft-quoted BASIC comment: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." The problem is it's quoted regardless of how much the BASIC dialect being discussed resembles the one he was talking about [1]. There…
Nevertheless Hamiltons software put a man on the the moon.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...
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Not at all true. The Dutch are famously known to be blunt and direct which seems to be a national trait(eg: https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/dutch-culture-brutal... ). Think of Dijkstra as Sherlock Holmes thought of himself; viz. My dear Watson,” said he, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self…
I Northern European/Germanic trait in general. As a Norwegian living in the Netherlands I found Dutch people very easy to relate to but I know many of my other fellow foreigner had major problems with their direct communication. But you see the same with Linus Thorvalds. His tone offends a lot of people in particular Americans. But as a fellow Nordic I think the passive aggressiveness often observed in America or fak…