If this guy is lucky, maybe he’ll get tenure by the time he’s 120. Then he’ll be set for life!
> If this guy is lucky, maybe he’ll get tenure by the time he’s 120.
Nah - I'd wager he'll be an eternal postdoc.
Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
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Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#112Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…
> Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?"
Just like every interview with an Apollo astronaut starts with "what's it like walking on the moon?" I would imagine they get soooo tired of that one.
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started playing with Linux and C in 96. I was just an ignorant teenager. I didn’t know C was “hard”. I didn’t really care that Linux was different from Win95, I just knew Linux had fvwm2, gedit, and C compilers I needed for hacking on MUDs. I didn’t know chasing down obscure memory leaks was hard, I just linked libefence and did it. I was just playing and learning. Then I got offered a job doing web development wit…
This is beautiful. I had a similar experience growing up as well. At age 8, I learned QBasic (on an MS-DOS / Win 3.1 system). At age 13, I learned C, and wrote a lot of code in it as well. (I used to write tons of C code up until around the middle of age 17. I had grand plans for all sorts of glorious software projects.) But then, at the middle of age 17, a certain mild depression ("dysthymia") set in, and I lost a l…
Not many people anywhere make 300-400k. It’s a lot of money. 200k is a lot of money. You are doing great. As long as you can do what you enjoy the money isn’t a big deal anyway. 200k is waaay above what the average programmer makes. Im guessing you know this and your insecurity doesn’t stem from compensation directly, but an indirect prestige and “am I doing enough” type thoughts.
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#114Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…
How good is the record keeping in Medellín?
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#115Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…
I don’t know if I would consider living a long human life a hot streak.
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#116I just submitted my own doctoral thesis in fluids to Manchester! This is absolutely stunning, and my day (and life) is better for it.
This submission is about you.
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#117You can trial the cold shower experience by just a washing your face with cold water after you wake up every morning. Growing up in Bulgaria that was a standard practice for my whole family. It does wonders for the skin and is very refreshing.
Hi,
>> ... washing your face with cold water after you wake up every morning
I've been doing this. It sure feels great and the best part is you don't even feel your face after a couple of splash and the cold doesn't bother you anyway (Yeah! It's a "Frozen" reference).
Can't really say if it has something to do with wrinkles lessness, but take it as a commitment, give you a feeling of accomplishment and a thing to brag about ;)
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a premise here that deserves scrutiny -- that longevity (beyond reproductive age) has evolutionary benefits. Nature may well prefer that older individuals die off.
longevity has many evolutionary benefits, the biggest one being that older generation can pass on survival-essential knowledge and skill to the younger generations. this process exists not only in humans, but in most animals, and the improvement is continuous, it never stops. furthermore, the longest-surviving individuals (with the tightest bonds) are able to pass on the most survival knowledge to their descendants,…
A great example that's relevant today is that people in the West over 60 yo remember society pre-Social Marxism.
There's a lot of their Youtube videos on how successful families are constructed for the benefit of individuals and society, which is a "lost art" today.
Suzanne Venker (Traditional Family Counselling)
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you at all disappointed in the lack of discipline in younger programmers. I know when JavaScript first started to become a server-side language, I worked with a slightly older programmer, he was maybe 40 in 2014, and he hated it. I tend to stick with higher level easier languages for the most part ( JS, Python, C#)
Isn't that generalizing a bit too much? There's a plethora of younger programmers, some with good discipline and some with bad discipline. I know C++ programmers with no discipline and JS/Ruby programmers with amazing discipline.
I think the fact that there's so many more of us -- and that it's easier to get away with not having discipline -- that we probably have a fair bit less on average.
My dad would often have to wait days for a few hours of machine time in the middle of the night on one of his customer's machines in the 60's. That motivates one to be careful and methodical.
Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
#120Fruit and cold showers! Every interview with a centenarian asks "what's the secret of your longevity?" They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think maybe there's something to that cold shower thing after all . Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same. He no more knows t…
The most striking thing to me is the presence of his family (good relationships). Seems like such a contrast with the case of David Goodall, the 104 year old Australian who traveled to Switzerland to kill himself. He lived alone and lost his ability to see others regularly when he lost his office space at the university he was associated with. Says he traveled to see his family before killing himself. I think in general the important thing is to have good relationships on one's own terms, which Mr. Goodall did not seem to have at the end.