81–90 of 332 posts
I grew up in a remote rural area of a third world country. My mother & father taught me to read. And I developed interest in reading books at the age of 6 or 7. When I was 9 or 10 years old, someone (may be my cousin or my fathers' uncle) gave me a book on simple electronics (it was in my native language). That was the first time I read about P-Type & N-Type materials and some other physics. It was so fascinated to m…
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Math is certainly required to understand the theory and to synthesize experimental observations into a working model, but I wouldn't put it at more than 50-60%. Most of the math is fairly basic relatively speaking, even at the highest levels of physics.
Relative to what lol. What other applied field has more advanced math?
For example- I knew from an early age that I liked tinkering around on computers. However when I got to college, I found programming monotonous and boring. When I worked as a software engineer for a large boring company I hated it even more. To the point that I actually quit and switched careers.
Then, a few years later I discovered Ruby on Rails and development on a new Mac. These seemingly small changes to a new environment rekindled my love of computers to a point that I spent nearly every weekend for three years teaching myself Rails. I remember one weekend I flew to a bachelor party in New Orleans and all the way there I read a book on Rails. It wasn't work anymore, but a hobby that I truly loved.
This is not to say that everyone is cut out to be or will enjoy being a programmer with just the right tools. However I think a lot of people take a first glance at something and give up on it without having a comprehensive understanding of the reality of doing the work in an ideal environment. To this day it annoys the hell out of me when non-technical friends ask me questions about coding as if it is some awful task that has to be done- "Why would you ever want to do that?" These people never actually have tried it so they don't know what is actually involved or whether they might actually enjoy it.
That's a fair advice, but I wonder what if we start working on something that at first does not seem like work, but later we realize was merely a hobby? For instance, I enjoy cooking. I love figuring out the recipes of intricate Indian curries, and then I will cook them. I enjoy eating curries even more! :D However, if I was to translate that to a full time job, I would probably hate it. I love my job as a programmer…
I'm surprised that Paul Graham likes debugging. I tend to stereotype programmers into two camps: one that likes debugging, one that doesn't. I thought he was part of the latter group. Some programmers are engineers: they deal with the world as it is -- messy, inconsistent, evolved. They are good at debugging, because they are in tune with how things actually work (not how people SAY they work.) They like trying thing…
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As (failed) physics major, it sounds so strange to hear someone claim to be good at math but not physics. To me physics is 98% math. It's a few empirical facts from experiments and then bucketloads of math.
i was a physics major, too. the student in our year who was best at math had trouble with the "hand wavy" stuff we'd do. "well, this term is basically zero, so we'll just remove it" and then she'd pull her hair in frustration, like "how can you just do that? how is it still valid?" it wasn't enough to tell her "well it still gives us the valid results" - she had to be able to interpret every portion of an expression…
I've tried to teach friends with that hangup and found it difficult. Those people weren't good at math, though. I feel like with mathematicians, you should just be able to explain with limits.
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Eh, it's just a more verbose "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."
If there's one thing I could change, it's to know of something that I could do and not feel like I was working. If there's one thing I regret, it's not knowing about that something at a young age and letting it mold my life, decisions, and motivation. At 30 I've got nothing but a track record of jobs I hate.
This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…
I think that I have a reasonable aptitude for maths and I like solving problems, but I always felt like textbook problems more-or-less consisted of plugging the numbers into a standard template. Maybe my education was uniquely terrible but I'm surprised that there are people who can blast through textbooks and enjoy doing it.
This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…
I literally did the opposite of this. I went so far as to make deals with my teachers that if I got an A on every test, I wouldn't have to do any work outside of class. Maybe I figured it to be a challenge, maybe I was plain lazy. Whatever it was, that didn't prepare me for college.