A week-long programming retreat • Hacker News Board

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#101

Post by bsenftner » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

blt wrote: post #28

This post made me appreciate being a graduate student a lot. I have many weeks like this!

I've structured my life like this. Remote employer in a time zone 10 hours away, I get months long tasks I simply update boss on progress and am left to focus so deep my health suffers because I naturally obsess over my work, which I love. And working from home, my wife also works from home (freelance film producer), so we just immerse ourselves, have meals together, but otherwise we both obsess over our work. No commuting makes this very enjoyable.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#102

Post by gonehome » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #98

gonehome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point about NN and ray tracing being simple systems that allow for complex outcomes is something that seems to be a deeper truth about the universe. Stephen Wolfram and Max Tegmark both talk and write about this - it also shows up in old cellular automata like Conway’s game of life. It’s pretty cool that so much complexity can come from a few small rules or equations.

You could say that physics is a relatively simple program that allows for outcomes as complex as the universe.

In his book Max Tegmark makes this argument, though he says it’s math rather than physics.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#103

Post by rhacker » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

It's actually super refreshing learning that even programming masters like Carmack are just now learning NNs and watching Youtube Stanford classes like the rest of us. These are actual people, not gods :) Everybody poops!

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#104

Post by hotmilk » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #88

"I initially got backprop wrong both times, comparison with numerical differentiation was critical! It is interesting that things still train even when various parts are pretty wrong — as long as the sign is right most of the time, progress is often made." That is the bane of doing probabilistic code. Errors show up not as clear cut wrong values or crashes but as subtle biases. You are always wondering, even when it…

Reproducing known results goes a long way.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#105

Post by plg » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

The idea of programming something from "scratch" (whatever your definition, and programming language) is the best way to really understand something new. Reading about it, hearing someone speak about it is one thing ... but opening up a blank .c file and adopting a "ok, let's get on with this" approach is something much different.

It takes time though and one has to combat the "how come you're reinventing the wheel" comments from co-workers, spouses, bosses, etc., which can be a challenge.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#106

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #76

petercooper wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexual abuse and IP crime are very different in terms of their stigma, and rightly so, in my opinion, so I don't see what's surprising about your final paragraph.

Surprising part is that even on HN people disagree with "hackers should be judged by his/her hacking".

[deleted]

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#107

Post by kazinator » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

sanxiyn wrote: post #56

z3phyr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this comment critique the posted write up? People fawn over John because he shows a great spirit of the hacker. A hacker should be judged by his/her hacking.

I 100% agree that hackers should be judged by his/her hacking. On the other hand, I found that many people consider me wrong when I judge a hacker by his/her hacking when he/she is accused of sexual abuse. But apparently they are okay with someone accused of IP crime.

You can separately judge the abuse or the hacking.

If you judge the person as such (that entity which you're calling "the hacker"), then, though both are part of the person, the abuse is more relevant than the hacking. At least, I would guess, in most people's estimation.

Referring to that person using the noun phrase "the hacker" rather than "the abuser" doesn't make the hacking a more relevant measure of the person.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#108

Post by Humdeee » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

jakecrouch wrote: post #18

United857 wrote: post #4

Good writeup -- and one of the main reminders for me is this: People throw around words like "revolution" for the current deep-learning push. But it's worth remembering that the fundamental concepts of neural networks have been around for decades. The current explosion is due to breakthroughs in scalability and implementation through GPUs and the like, not any sort of fundamental algorithmic paradigm shift. This is s…

The best way to advance AI is probably to make the hardware faster, especially now that Moore's Law is in danger of going away. The people doing AI research generally seem to be fumbling around in the dark, but you can at least be certain that better hardware would make things easier.

I am not in the AI space at all, but I am under the impression that python is the most used language for it. If workload is becoming an issue, wouldn't the low hanging fruit be a more performance driven software language?

With how fast things are evolving, developing something like an ASIC ($$$) for this might be outdated before it even hits release, no?

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#109

Post by munificent » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

deepaksurti wrote: post #8

>> I’m not a Unix geek. I get around ok, but I am most comfortable developing in Visual Studio on Windows. This is a lesson for me and probably many others. Don't get hung up on tools, ship!!!

I think the subtext of your comment here is something like, "Look how productive he is without mastering the real tools we Unix hackers use! He can get by with second rate Windows stuff!"

Maybe I'm reading you wrong. But if I am right, it's good to take a look outside of the Unix bubble. Visual Studio is literally the world's most sophisticated developer tool. More human hours of engineering have been poured into it than likely any other piece of software we use on a daily basis.

Windows isn't my jam, but VS is incredible.

Re: A week-long programming retreat

#110

Post by geofft » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #53

justonepost wrote: post #26

Pretty awesome! If I ever had to say the one thing that differentiates successful people from unsuccessful people it wouldn't be intelligence, or even perseverance, or passion. It'd be focus. With focus, you can be amazingly successful in so many types of occupations. (That being said, passion / perseverance / intelligence can often lead to focus)

IQ tests seem to suggest otherwise.

Aren't IQ tests rather reflective of things like how well-off your parents are? That's certainly correlated with success...