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Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

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Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#581

Post by abdullahkhalids »

satvikpendem wrote: post #398
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #220

Learning history / literature in school is important. I was a total STEM math nerd in school. I used to frequently complain how I don't get what's the point of it, or how it's a waste of time and I'm learning nothing. I still think the emphasis of school was off, but I get the point of it now. Stories are like code for humans. You can't tell someone what it means to be good or bad, or to give them a course in philoso…

Regarding literature, I'll give an opposite opinion. Being forced to read the classics in school led me to not caring about them at all because I just couldn't relate at all, I had not had the requisite life experience for them to make an impact on me. Now, being an adult and having the life experience, reading them again makes me think more deeply and I can actually relate. So I think in school, we actually shouldn'…

I think most educators and teachers know that students won't get the classics. The goal is to at least make the students comfortable with the difficult language of the classics, and make them realize that analysis of these books yields deep insights.

If they instead taught students easier books in schools, student would never develop the reading skills to tackle the classics, and a much smaller percentage of adults would ever bother rereading the classics or even acknowledge their power.

Of course, the teaching has to be improved so that students never hate it.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#582

Post by Transfinity »

PaulStatezny wrote: post #562
czx4f4bd wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't fully grok OOP until I saw how composition and dynamic dispatch can be used in real code to create abstractions and flexibly swap out different implementations for your interfaces. You could build a chatbot that supports Discord, Slack, and IRC dynamically at runtime, or a web app that can use multiple different database engines, or a social network with multiple types of posts that can all be rendered in a…

> I didn't fully grok OOP until I saw how composition and dynamic dispatch can be used in real code to create abstractions and flexibly swap out different implementations for your interfaces. > You could build a chatbot that supports Discord, Slack, and IRC dynamically at runtime... As a counter-point, OOP isn't necessary for dynamic dispatch. None of these dynamic features you describe are necessarily any harder in…

I agree. IMO, Java-style OOP conflates 2 different concepts, polymorphism and inheritance.

Polymorphism (including dynamic dispatch and duck typing) is a game changer, in that it encourages simple, stable interfaces, enables testing, encourages encapsulation, etc. It's a key technique for building big projects.

Inheritance is a tool for reducing the amount of code written by a human, among many others (things like code generation and composition) I haven't seen it unlock other important conceptual domains the way polymorphism does.

Unfortunately many undergraduate curriculums get overly excited about inheritance when teaching OOP. I guess animal-cat-dog is an easy example (though totally unrealistic), but the problems polymorphism solves don't often show up in classroom-sized projects.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#583

Post by bee_rider »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #568
bee_rider wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we shouldn’t fall for junk science, we also shouldn’t fall for cynicism as an excuse to stick to our priors. It might not replicate if you try to do so, but until someone does, we shouldn’t write it off.

Surely the burden of proof should be on the side making the claim?

I’ve in general grown somewhat averse to the “burden of proof points in some direction” line of thinking.

They are both making claims. (And I think usually most people are making some sort of claim, unless they are just nitpicking). One is claiming that they remember a study — pretty vague, and easily proven (as far as we can tell at least) by just showing us any study. The other is claiming that that study doesn’t replicate… without having seen it, which seems like a pretty high bar to clear.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#584

Post by satvikpendem »

kuschku wrote: post #577
satvikpendem wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I was doing sales, I would follow up with people seven times before they replied. I used to feel bad until I realized that it worked, then I just automated that part and didn't think about it further, the leads once they replied were sent to my CRM where I could then set them up on a call or some other action.

I've automated the opposite: three unsolicited mails, and I automatically send the sender's entire company to spam and reply with a friendly request to stop. Three more, and I send an automated cease and desist, threatening legal action (with receipt confirmation requested). If it still continues after that, I actually involve lawyers. Most people are only willing to do something after repeated attempts because they'…

Good for you but you're such a vanishingly small part of the population that it won't stop anyone in sales and marketing from continuing to follow up on people (which, by the way, is not illegal). You effectively don't matter.

And good follow up software will also stop once a reply has been sent from the recipient, which is then forwarded to a salesperson to triage.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#585

Post by abdullahkhalids »

aj7 wrote: post #303
thyrox wrote: post #237

The power of follow ups (especially in sales) One thing which held me back for a very long time was not following up with people who didn't show much interest initially. I wasted so many good leads thinking it is impolite to follow up with people after contacting them once. My whole life changed once I understood the power of follow ups and understanding that most people are so busy that it takes at least 6 reminders…

You were not trained well. The principal element in sales is asking for the order. Everything, and I mean everything, follows from that. If you had been trained this way, following up would be second nature.

I am not trained at all in sales. Can you expand upon this?

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#586

Post by scruple »

feoren wrote: post #252
theptip wrote: post #189

Domain Driven Design. The book by Eric Evans lays out a bunch of concepts and as a developer that had not owned the architecture of a big domain, it was hard for me to see exactly where they fit. But after reading the book a couple times, and then encountering a few tricky domain modeling challenges, I started to see where these patterns add value. Also, as I started trying to describe the cohesive domain architectur…

I had the exact opposite reaction to this book. It seemed like great stuff when I first read it, but over time, I realized it's really misguided in a lot of ways: - Aggregates are too heavy. You need to make the decision about what is or is not an aggregate way too early in the design process. Boundaries are fuzzy. - Actual concepts don't exist in nicely packaged bounded contexts. Concepts overlap a lot. You need to…

> Aggregates are too heavy. You need to make the decision about what is or is not an aggregate way too early in the design process. Boundaries are fuzzy.

I've had the exact same complaint. I think there's a lot of great stuff to take away from DDD -- I also hear myself frequently making the same point about it's ubiquitous language -- but going all-in on some of its concepts, especially early in a projects life, is probably always a mistake that may well end in disaster.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#587

Post by satvikpendem »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #581
satvikpendem wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding literature, I'll give an opposite opinion. Being forced to read the classics in school led me to not caring about them at all because I just couldn't relate at all, I had not had the requisite life experience for them to make an impact on me. Now, being an adult and having the life experience, reading them again makes me think more deeply and I can actually relate. So I think in school, we actually shouldn'…

I think most educators and teachers know that students won't get the classics. The goal is to at least make the students comfortable with the difficult language of the classics, and make them realize that analysis of these books yields deep insights. If they instead taught students easier books in schools, student would never develop the reading skills to tackle the classics, and a much smaller percentage of adults w…

That's also true. To be honest, I don't know what the midpoint should be. For Shakespeare, we watched movie adaptations which made a lot more sense than just reading a somewhat dry play.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#588

Post by quacked »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #564
quacked wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I answered you clearly. Ethnic homogeneity is a smoke signal. Ethnic whiteness is exceptional. You're past my line with ascribing what I think and who from in a way that's literally just you ranting your imagination at me. You have no idea my mind on any of these things based on our conversation thus far. Talk about the self report...

If you were teleported back to the year 0 and went to what is now the US and encountered a large ethnically homogeneous tribe, what exactly would that smoke signal to you?

(Editing: as far as "ascribing what you think", the only things I've ascribed to what you think that you think that ethnic homogeneity in post-European white population is morally improper, which is exceedingly clear from the phrasing of the first comment you posted when you called it a "problem", and that you believe your community was racist, which is clear from the second comment you posted.)

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#589

Post by throwaway290 »

vidanay wrote: post #316
fortituded0002 wrote: post #196

1. Everyone is the main character in their own story. This manifest in all sorts of ways - from people not being there when you need them the most, from friends dying off as soon as proximity changes, to how and why get people get promoted in jobs. This isn't necessarily bad, but if you don't know how to navigate this it can be quite painful and confusing. 2. Representation matters. I knew this for a long time, but i…

#3 really hits home when you realize we have rules for killing each other (war). And we have separate legal trials to determine if someone broke those rules while trying to kill someone else. The penalty for breaking the rules about killing someone often is to be killed.

Probably most rules that we have are there to prevent us (admittedly this applies mostly to men) from killing each other.

That's why "rules are just constructs we humans created" rings stupid/horrifying. Obviously they were created by humans but that is also why they matter. I prefer "rules were written by humans, mostly in blood". It took years for OP to get the first part, here's to them getting the second part faster.

One doing something wrong to another would get families into an infinite loop of mutual revenge--until we got around precisely to create rules and put up a trusted authority to ensure justice without the need for vengeance. Rules is how our civilization functions and its only hope.

Re: Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?

#590

Post by UncleMeat »

thewebcount wrote: post #404
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #220

Learning history / literature in school is important. I was a total STEM math nerd in school. I used to frequently complain how I don't get what's the point of it, or how it's a waste of time and I'm learning nothing. I still think the emphasis of school was off, but I get the point of it now. Stories are like code for humans. You can't tell someone what it means to be good or bad, or to give them a course in philoso…

I was fine with literature, but yeah, history, what a snooze-fest. Why do I care who fought what war 1,500 years ago and who won? It seemed like it mostly came down to a bunch of pompous elites having dick-measuring contests a lot of the time. Then one day the teacher didn’t want to teach and instead showed an episode of Connections, and I was blown away. Learning about how and why our science and technology became w…

Even if there is no connection to our own time, history is one of the most effective teachers of the process of empathy out there. It requires you to be able to place yourself in another time, place, and context. I'll also note that military history and "elites having dick-measuring contests" is far from the trendy side of the last four or so decades of history research and writing. Cultural history, microhistory, and even history of science are all hot topics.
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