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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?

#831

Post by Agingcoder »

I learned classical piano, and a bit of music theory, which was mostly about analyzing what I had in front of me.

I always found classical music to be a bit dead - beautiful, but dead : I guess I see it as a dead language, like latin or greek. The jazz I was given was fully written, so it was dead too, except in a few cases where I was supposed to magically improvise.

Then I 'got' Jazz, 25 years later : it's entirely about learning the language and grammar and vocab of music, and speaking it, creating new sentences and expressing yourself. The process probably matters more than the style itself.

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

#832

Post by rramadass »

monero-xmr wrote: post #796
rramadass wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, you are stating "opinions" without any basis in facts; hence it is hard to take you seriously. Separation of Concerns, Modularization, Reusability, Type Hierarchies, Type Composition, Interface contract-based programming, Frameworks etc. were all made mainstream by OOD/OOP. These are things taken for granted by programmers today. As somebody who has been doing OOD/OOP since the early nineties i can tell…

The major reasons software exploded are the internet and the ubiquity of computing devices that get cheaper, faster, and smaller. Language had nothing to do with it, with or without OOP. I was formally trained and cut my teeth in OOP code bases and my latest company we are very light on classes. 99% is plain objects and modules that operate on them. Everything is very straightforward and logical. In my side projects…

>The major reasons software exploded are the internet and the ubiquity of computing devices that get cheaper, faster, and smaller. Language had nothing to do with it, with or without OOP.

This is putting the Cart before the Horse. Computers, Internet etc. can't do anything without the Software to drive them. That software is written in some Language/Tool using some Paradigms and Software Engineering principles. The ease of use, ease of structuring, ease of understanding etc. of these are what drives Creation, Adoption and Expansion of Computing and Devices.

>I was formally trained and cut my teeth in OOP code bases and my latest company we are very light on classes. 99% is plain objects and modules that operate on them. Everything is very straightforward and logical. In my side projects I’ve stopped using classes as well and it’s so much cleaner.

If you think merely using a syntactical structure like "class" (and Design Patterns) is what makes code OOP, then you don't understand OOP. You can do various degrees of OOP without language syntactical support. This is why i listed the principles and not some syntactic sugar in my previous comment. It is a way of thinking and Software Engineering which has given the most "bang-for-buck" so far in the Industry.

>This is opinion and preference. If I hired a guy who wanted to litter the code base with AbstractUserBeanFactoryFactories I’d have to let them go because it’s a situation I don’t want anymore.

Opinion and Preferences must be based on facts else it is only as good as "Flat Earther" category and nothing more can be discussed.

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

#833

Post by igravious »

adamnemecek wrote: post #357

The fact that essentially all concepts in math, programming, physics etc. are just applications of fixed points which is predicated on the idea of nilpotence. Fixed points go by many names like invariance, spectra, diagonalization, embedding, braids etc. By fixed point I mean something like the "Lawvere's fixed point theorem". https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Lawvere%27s+fixed+point+theore... I have a braindump on this…

Also Brouwer's fixed point theorem, and the Y combinator?

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

#834

Post by bee_rider »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #755
bee_rider wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

I can offer [1-3] in support of my position. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.440 [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620924051 [3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617736887

One sort of annoying thing about this site is that it seems to be convention to ask for sources, but conversations quickly fall off the front page and so when you come back with the sources, nobody is left to respond! But this looks at least to me to be some good stuff, the second link appears to be at least somewhat of a replication.

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

#835

Post by ldx1024 »

thesnide wrote: post #125

Working with others. Really. I was super annoyed and insanely annoying to work with for years. Then I understood that difference is hard to cope with, but more often than not, good. As it trades some short term efficiency to long term one. Same with your output. If it is dumbed down to a level everyone can understand it, you really learned it.

Reminds me of the saying "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together." But an important corollary is that you should be very selective about who you travel with. In some cases, like a corporate setting where you have no control over the randos you are thrown together with, it can indeed be the least painful option to go it alone. The alternative is knowing that if everyone does their best you can all aspire to be ... mediocre.

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

#836

Post by jononor »

mikrl wrote: post #829
btown wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is the main character in their own story For those with anxiety, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received (that also took me years to internalize!) was the corollary to this: nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself, because they are their own main character. Which is incredibly freeing, because the anxious person’s assumption that one embarrass…

>nobody is thinking about you in a critical way, at the level that you are criticizing yourself I think there are shades of this, which is to say the level of judgement can vary. I feel that in a smaller city my social anxiety is not as strong as when I’m in a larger city. In larger cities, I feel much more evaluated and judged ie eyes on me looking at my clothes, checking me out, etc despite being a much more detach…

They might not judge you more in a large city, or be any more interested in you per see - they might just be a little bit more eager to check if you might be dangerous. As in places with many encounters with many people, the risk is higher.

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

#837

Post by carapace »

icepat wrote: post #799
carapace wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have any actual experience with NLP do you?

No, but I'm trained as a scientist, so I know how to read research, data, and scientific studies. I don't need to have experience with Scientology to tell you that, based on the available evidence, it's bunk. Nor do I need experience with homeopathy to tell you that water-memory is unscientific and nonsense. Direct, personal experience, isn't how the scientific community collects data, and converts that data into kno…

>> You don't have any actual experience with NLP do you?

> No

Thank you. That's really the best I can hope for in conversations about NLP with skeptical people. I'm not going to convince you, you're not going to convince me. But I appreciate your honesty in admitting you do not have first hand experience with NLP.

I am not a scientist myself, and I'm not quite comfortable calling myself an "amateur scientist". However, I am very very pro-science. I consider science to be one of the most important human activities. I also value skepticism. (E.g. IMO James Randi is a hero in the intellectual life of humanity.) However, that said, this is an area where science is out of the loop. This stuff works. It's rigorous and repeatable. It's not even hard to do.

> NLP has been subjected to [rigorous study, and testing], and it has failed to stand up.

That can't be true.

I don't know what the boffins did, but if they can't replicate these simple patterns and techniques they just make themselves look foolish.

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

#838

Post by carapace »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #826
dang wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack or name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What name-calling did I do? I said it is how cultists behave.

FWIW I wasn't offended.

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

#839

Post by heavyset_go »

Dalewyn wrote: post #700
ShredKazoo wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a white guy, I'd certainly encourage you not to worry about this -- if we're talking about an upper middle class, professional-ish activity, you can be fairly sure that all those white people feel self-conscious about their group being so white and would welcome you to join them. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear more about the psychology of this. I remember when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in California,…

[flagged]

MLK also said this:

> I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

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

#840

Post by flippinburgers »

pstuart wrote: post #825
flippinburgers wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the underlying tone that comes across to me whenever these subjects come up. Effectively pushing against the idea makes one a "racist" or a "white supremacist" as far as I can tell. I don't know how to respond to that kind of labeling because I don't find myself disliking people because of something as superficial as their skin color.

> Effectively pushing against the idea makes one a "racist" or a "white supremacist" as far as I can tell. Your wording is a wee bit vague. There's nothing wrong about pushing back on the notion that if one is white than one is guilty of crimes committed in the name of white superiority (because that's actually racist too). But it also doesn't discount the fact that racism is still very much a problem.

I am not vague. What is vague is the shadowy threat of being called a racist for stating ones opinion while having the wrong color of skin. It is a problem. Just a wee bit.
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