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Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

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Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#31

Post by pat_punnu »

nollidge wrote: post #30
pat_punnu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'll just call myself a surgeon and pick it up as I go along. No problem! Who needs to spend time learning from best academic minds in CS? I can just tweet to some jackass Javascript 'rockstar'! I'll just teach myself philosophy by reading these library books! I don't need some stuffy Oxford tutor who has been doing it for their whole life passing on their knowledge one-to-one! Civil engineering? Making mistake…

I was with you until the last part. Pretty stupid to smear an entire group of people based on the views of a smaller chunk of its members.

I retract that then, but I honestly think that anti-intellectualism is a serious and disturbing problem in the tech community. It's like these people want to take us to a dark age of not really understanding anything beyond a superficial level.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#32

Post by hnriot »

127001brewer wrote: post #5

Another point would be to save . When you're young, it's easy to spend and not save. However, it's important to get into a disciplined habit of saving - don't depend on someone else to force you to save. Also, while it's financially advantageous to have a two-income family, once you have kids priorities might change. The better choice may be to have a parent at home with the kid(s) instead of utilizing day-care. You'…

this is very bad advice. saving money with a near nil interest rate is a huge waste of money. spend money on travel, do things with the money you have, life live. It is through expanding our horizons that opportunities present themselves which lead to a far more fulfilling live.

Simply hoarding cash for the rainy day scenario seems like such an awful way to live life. Sure, don't over spend, don't waste, and don't frivolously throw money away, but money is a means to doing things.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#33

Post by tokenadult »

I can't believe that five hours after this interesting essay was posted, none of the comments have yet mentioned Paul Graham's essay (also a commencement speech never heard at an actual graduation) "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005).

http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

I like much of the advice of that essay, which is the second Paul Graham essay local friends recommended that I read. I have all my children read Paul's essay, as we are a homeschooling family precisely to get out of the rut of the usual school pattern of learning.

". . . . In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.

"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.

"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

Great stuff, still good advice for young people almost a decade after it was first composed.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#34

Post by HCIdivision17 »

DanBC wrote: post #28
pat_punnu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'll just call myself a surgeon and pick it up as I go along. No problem! Who needs to spend time learning from best academic minds in CS? I can just tweet to some jackass Javascript 'rockstar'! I'll just teach myself philosophy by reading these library books! I don't need some stuffy Oxford tutor who has been doing it for their whole life passing on their knowledge one-to-one! Civil engineering? Making mistake…

I agree with you. Part of going to college is using their funding to get access to their equipment. Most people have no chance of getting to use a particle accelerator unless they go to uni or work with one. You also get to hang out with a bunch of people doing similar things. You compete with them; you learn from them; you learn by teaching them. You get to talk to people who have done important things in the field…

I'll save space, since you've covered my points nicely. I've taken apart a scanning electron microscope, built a transistor from scratch (with vacuum deposition and self-built masks), phase locked lasers, fully solved the hydrogen atom from first principles, and met tons of awesome people I'd never have had the nerve to meet otherwise.

College opens doors. It's as simple as that; no guarantees other than it surely helps. Some can be self taught and build their own doors, but the rest of us mortals don't want to wait two decades to be allowed to do engineering work. I'd rather play with toys _today_.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#35

Post by mjn »

pat_punnu wrote: post #31
nollidge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the last part. Pretty stupid to smear an entire group of people based on the views of a smaller chunk of its members.

I retract that then, but I honestly think that anti-intellectualism is a serious and disturbing problem in the tech community. It's like these people want to take us to a dark age of not really understanding anything beyond a superficial level.

I somewhat agree, but it's a very specific part of the tech community, not tech generally. Probably a part that's over-represented on discussion forums, though. I think of the anti-intellectual parts as mostly rooted in the startup community, especially the corners of startups that focus strongly on biz/money stuff and quick exits. Partly that's because their incentives almost require a quick-and-dirty approach: if your timeframe to product is 6 months and to exit is 3-5 years, you really can't do a lot of R&D work, but instead need to pick some off-the-shelf (or nearly so) tech, quickly productize it, and put most of your focus on finding market niches and developing business strategy.

There are other parts of the tech community with a much different tone. There's academia itself, of course: I'd consider folks like the machine-learning and robotics communities to be part of the "tech community". And in industry, there are places like Microsoft Research and some parts of Google, doing things like designing F# and advancing NLP. Even at less explicitly "researchy" places, a lot of companies value people with solid science/engineering fundamentals.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#36

Post by aasarava »

nzealand wrote: post #24
Jun8 wrote: post #10

Excellent points! I had my undergrad graduation more than two decades ago, so get to appreciate some of these a bit differently from the twentysomething "younguns" here. If I had to pick two most important, I'd say point 1 (with the caveat that his point is generalized to all socializing) and 7 (maybe not so for US but for countries where parents play a huge role in shaping kids' future career choices). I would also…

I have been thinking about the wisdom I want to impart to my son. It has inspired me to live my life differently. Lets see if I have the follow through. (just because you are older and have less spare time, does not mean you can't branch out a little)

What are some of the things you've been inspired to do differently?

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#39

Post by cjoh »

pat_punnu wrote: post #31
nollidge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the last part. Pretty stupid to smear an entire group of people based on the views of a smaller chunk of its members.

I retract that then, but I honestly think that anti-intellectualism is a serious and disturbing problem in the tech community. It's like these people want to take us to a dark age of not really understanding anything beyond a superficial level.

There is a huge difference between being anti-intellectual, and anti-institutional.

Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You

#40

Post by R_Edward »

hnriot wrote: post #32
127001brewer wrote: post #5

Another point would be to save . When you're young, it's easy to spend and not save. However, it's important to get into a disciplined habit of saving - don't depend on someone else to force you to save. Also, while it's financially advantageous to have a two-income family, once you have kids priorities might change. The better choice may be to have a parent at home with the kid(s) instead of utilizing day-care. You'…

this is very bad advice. saving money with a near nil interest rate is a huge waste of money. spend money on travel, do things with the money you have, life live. It is through expanding our horizons that opportunities present themselves which lead to a far more fulfilling live. Simply hoarding cash for the rainy day scenario seems like such an awful way to live life. Sure, don't over spend, don't waste, and don't fr…

True, money is a means to doing things. Things like paying for an unexpected extended hospitalization. Or a new refrigerator when the old one dies. Or a new roof when a tornado plays peekaboo with your attic. Or a new vehicle when someone slams into your old one. Or for that matter, putting food on the table when you're 79 years old and really don't want to do the whole 9-to-5 thing anymore.

While it's true that you can pay for most of those things with a credit card and make monthly payments, may I be so presumptuous as to point out that if you made those monthly payments before you incurred the charges--i.e., put the money into a savings account, even one earning only a quarter of a percent in interest--then when you pay the bill, you pay only 100% of the charges. If you wait until after you incur the charges, and make payments on your credit card, you're going to pay 120% or more of the charges.

Saving money with a near-nil interest rate may be a huge waste of money, but not saving it, and having to pay finance charges when high-ticket items need to be paid for is an even huger waste.

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