11–20 of 64 posts
I wonder what Feynman would be working on if he was a programmer today.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/325051-well-mr-frankel-who-s...
I guess you haven't read the book, take a look.
It's also amusing to think of how "small" science was only just a few decades ago. I guess that's what exponential growth is.. (plus, I guess, survivor bias) Here we have one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century working at a startup for a bunch of wet-eared kids from MIT. But oh, looking at the wikipedia page of Danny Hillis (co-founder of Thinking Machines, author of the article), his thesis advisors were (drumroll) Marvin Minsky, Gerry Sussman, Claude Shannon. Not exactly nobodys either..
A nice essay. This paragraph stood out for me: "By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit st…
I came across this a long time ago, but read it again, and laughed out loud several times. It's a good read. It's also amusing to think of how "small" science was only just a few decades ago. I guess that's what exponential growth is.. (plus, I guess, survivor bias) Here we have one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century working at a startup for a bunch of wet-eared kids from MIT. But oh, looking at the wikip…
Maybe because it was discussed 24 times on HN already, as observable when clicking "past."
I like Feynman stories nevertheless, even to re-read.
A nice essay. This paragraph stood out for me: "By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit st…
Feynman is great, very amusing and obviously brilliant. But I've also worked with folks like him before who end up as fish out of water in fields they don't know the conventions for and can't be bothered to learn. Lots of time is wasted trying to figure out how to get the rest of the company to communicate with the lone genius, and it's obvious that they're smart enough to go away for a week and learn enough of the f…
Well he had a Nobel prize in physics on his hands for starters, that's one way to tell the difference. Granted, noone's infallible, but it's a good predictor. Not that it would have spared him from fizzbuzz on the interview these days..
I was fortunate to be able to write code for version 1 of the Connection Machine (that was the SIMD device) and I would prototype code on my Mac in Star Lisp. Good times that I am grateful for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feynman is great, very amusing and obviously brilliant. But I've also worked with folks like him before who end up as fish out of water in fields they don't know the conventions for and can't be bothered to learn. Lots of time is wasted trying to figure out how to get the rest of the company to communicate with the lone genius, and it's obvious that they're smart enough to go away for a week and learn enough of the f…
> He turned out right in the end of course, because Feynman, but there's lots of people who think they're Feynman and aren't and it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Well he had a Nobel prize in physics on his hands for starters, that's one way to tell the difference. Granted, noone's infallible, but it's a good predictor. Not that it would have spared him from fizzbuzz on the interview these days..
I'd hope an interviewer would view an applicant's fizzbuzz as a pleasant surprise if it came with a bit of casual mathematical proof.
I've never seen this article before, and I love how the author managed to leave me delighted in the same way, feeling much smarter than I actually am, especially about theoretical physics.
Good but old: 1989. Should be stated in the title.
Feynman died almost 30 years ago ... I think it's pretty safe to assume it's not recent news, even without the (1989)