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It takes a PhD to develop that

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Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#131

Post by dr_hooo »

moralestapia wrote: post #8

This reflects a lot of what goes on in Academia as well. Also, if you think you can counter a "that's not possible" with a working proof of said thing working, think again, most people don't like to be shown they're wrong, particularly tenured professors. That's one of the fastest ways to sabotage your own developing career. "Yes men" climb the ladder much easier, but then work doesn't do itself so that's the catch.…

I would really be surprised if any tenured professor would shut down a solution to a well known hard problem just based on his ego. More likely the solution is not as well presented, researched or thought through as it seems (I'm assuming we're not talking about astrophysics here).

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#133

Post by yobbo »

> I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively…

Yes, it might be seen as combative since it amounts to saying "you guys seem to be clueless". When proven in experiments, it means that the combativeness was justified.

Imo, the language in this quote is almost unacceptable. It's a roundabout way of saying "stand back little peon, you are not important enough to be thinking about problems that concern us."

It's inevitable that when people overestimate their competence and judgement, the moment when humility is forced on them is experienced as painful. Adjust prejudices and move on.

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#134

Post by Jensson »

siva7 wrote: post #129
Jensson wrote: post #119

The worst part is that the kind of arguments he was met with is exactly the kind of arguments people use to get headcount and climb the ladder within corporations. Spending a little time writing a well designed and fully working solution => Good job, now take the next ticket! Spending a lot of time explaining why something can't be done with this budget => Promoted to manager! Spending a year of time explaining why t…

This is neither the problem nor what the article is talking about. Your argument is so overgeneralized that i don't even know where to start taking it apart.

Cultural issues are almost always tied to performance evaluations at a company, so it is highly relevant.

If this wasn't the problem then their manager would have reprimanded them for posting such nonsense. But either these objections were made by the manager or the manager agrees with them. Why would a manager who is fine with such bullshit still have his job? Because it goes all the way up the chain, otherwise someone would have cut it off a long time ago.

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#135

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I tihnk I generally agree with this, but also wonder what the alternative is.

If you step outside your own industry, do you want plumbers that have a hobbiest appreciation of the intricacies of fluid dynamics, or do you want someone to come and unblock your toilet in the middle of the night?

There's possibly a middle ground where the geniuses invent toilet technology in such a way that it is easy to install and maintain, and "normal" people do all the other boring bits, like stocking warehouses, transporting it, selling the house it sits in, answering the phone etc. It feels like we've generally got there in both plumbing and in software and is that a bad thing overall?

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#136

Post by mnl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
Hnus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I saw this mentioned on HN I immediately knew this kind of comment would be there because something along the lines and I am paraphrasing "its probably fast because its not enterprise enough" was repeated in every place the refterm was shared by different people even multiple times even after showing all the proof in the world that its in fact the opposite they almost refused to believe that software can be that…

Seconding. It takes doing some low-level gamedev[0] stuff, or using software written by people like Casey, to realize just how fast software can be. There's an art to it, and it hits diminishing returns with complex software, but the baseline of popular software is so low it doesn't take much more than a pinch of care to beat it by an order of magnitude. (Cue in the "but why bother, my app is IO bound anyway" counter…

I find it striking that a decent modern laptop would have been a supercomputer 20 years ago, when people used Office 97 that was feature complete already IMO. I can't help this constant cognitive dissonance with modern software; do we really need supercomputers to move Windows out of the box?

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#137

Post by crispyambulance »

jiggawatts wrote: post #20
onion2k wrote: post #7

A few hours later another programmer came up with the prototype of a much faster terminal renderer, proving that for an experienced programmer a terminal renderer is a fun weekend project and far away from being a multiyear long research undertaking. I have no idea if this is the case here, and I suspect it might not be, but pretty much every time I've seen a developer complain that something is slow and then 'prove'…

This particular case was discussed at length on Reddit and on YC News. The general consensus was that the Microsoft developers simply didn't have performance in the vocabulary, and couldn't fathom it being a solvable problem despite having a trivial scenario on their hands with no complexity to it at all. The "complaining developer" produced a proof of concept in just two weekends that notably had more features[1] an…

> The "complaining developer" produced a proof of concept in just two weekends...

That developer also was rather brusque in the github issue and could use a bit more humility and emotional intelligence. Which, by the way, isn't on the OP blog post's chart of a "programmers lifecycle". The same could be said of the MS side.

Instead of both sides asserting (or "proving") that they're "right" could they not have collaborated to put together an improvement in Windows Terminal? Wouldn't that have been better for everyone?

FWIW, I do use windows terminal and it's "fine". Much better than the old one (conhost?).

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#138

Post by _trampeltier »

csande17 wrote: post #42
choeger wrote: post #10

Counter argument: If the experienced programmers stay where they are, software development will forever remain craftsmanship. A single developer can only tutor so many juniors. In fact, I think that teaching and encouraging to learn is the most important thing in SE. And that has to begin with leadership figures that don't believe their own knowledge gets obsolete after one year just because the latest framework got…

> SE should not be an art form. It should be founded in solid science and abstraction should allow us to keep our knowledge applicable. Software engineering can never be anything but an art form! A lot of fields of endeavor have both mechanical "science-based" components and creative "art form" ones. An inexperienced chef can get some productive cooking done by mechanically following the steps of a recipe someone els…

If you look closer everybody who create something on work, like every craftsman, is a kind of an artist. But it pays very badly, so even for people who like the job, are forced to step up into the office, because of the better pay. That is part if the reason, why you almost can't find a good plumber or electrician. If you can count to 2, you are forced out of the job. As you long, as you write software by yourself, you are not much different than a plumber .. you work with your hands.

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#139

Post by daemin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Yup, this. Something I've been ranting about[0] for a while: there is no technical progression ladder. The Senior->Principal-> ... path seems to be a faux-management track, with all the managerial responsibilities and little of the authority. Software is shitty in big part because it's mostly written by juniors, as almost anyone who has any clue moves over (or gets pushed over) to managerial or faux-managerial roles.…

There is that joke about the University Professors talking about the best high level language, throwing out various languages until one just replied with "Grad Student".

It does make a lot of sense, you describe the problem in a very high level and abstract way and at the end of the process you get an executable out of it.

But yeah, as you go up the ladder, even the technical one, you end up needing people skills more and more than any technical or programming skill. Usually by senior level you're the best that you'll ever be at technical topics (hand wavy description here, don't nitpick), and the only way to progress up is to improve communication. No amount of extra technical knowledge will help you if you cannot communicate well.

Re: It takes a PhD to develop that

#140

Post by maficious »

avereveard wrote: post #104
jiggawatts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular case was discussed at length on Reddit and on YC News. The general consensus was that the Microsoft developers simply didn't have performance in the vocabulary, and couldn't fathom it being a solvable problem despite having a trivial scenario on their hands with no complexity to it at all. The "complaining developer" produced a proof of concept in just two weekends that notably had more features[1] an…

I just launched "dir" https://i.imgur.com/lkbOR3i.png can't even print properly the decimal separator. maybe it wasn't that easy.

The font, m8, the font. Use monospcae font and it works like a charm.
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