Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Proof you can do hard things

blog.nateliason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 330 posts

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#141

Post by hardware2win »

>You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices.

If somebody says stuff like this, then they do not understand math, imo.

Im a little bit sad whenever somebody argues for math by using "no phone available at the moment" argument.

Math is insanely powerful world modeling tool.

Starting from calculating right amount of fence for your garden, to estimation of 500km route arrival time while taking traffic statistics into the account, to data science, ML, whatever more complex.

Since math modeling is everywhere in "modeling" industries like engineerings, financial-ish jobs and other

Then you basically not only get better tools to operate (model) in real world, day2day life, but also it opens you doors to highly paid careers.

But the goal is not to have fancy jobs, but being able to do real world modeling.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#142

Post by jononor »

pcwelder wrote: post #123

So you proved to yourself that you can do hard things, what then? You don't need to continue proving the same, doesn't then that stop being a fuel for motivation? That's what happened to me at least.

Are you not hungry for more? Don't you want to find out what other hard things you can overcome?

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#143

Post by jononor »

codersfocus wrote: post #36

There will come a time when you have enough money, enough of everything, and deeper questions will arise. What is the meaning of existence? Why is there anything instead of nothing? You will see that math plays a very fundamental role in our reality, and once you start seeing it in such a manner it may begin to interest you.

There is no end to things one cab learn, to what one can (attempt) to master. Hmm... Perhaps I am addicted to learning to avoid thinking about existential issues.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#144

Post by lqet »

bruce511 wrote: post #102

This resonates a lot with me. At school I coasted, ignored all home work, never studied, and was a consistent C. I was continually told I could fo better by putting in some work (an objective viewpoint I agreed with.) But i had better things to do. I started programming in grade 7, from a book, with a Apple 2 (circa 1982). There were no forums, no Internet just me and a thin booket that came with the computer, plus l…

> At school I coasted, ignored all home work, never studied, and was a consistent C. I was continually told I could fo better by putting in some work (an objective viewpoint I agreed with.)

That was me 100%. I passed elementary school with flying colors without ever doing any homework or actively participating in class (I had better things do to: reading comics and building LEGO contraptions) and simply continued this approach in highschool, with much, much less success. But neither did I care nor did I have any time for studying or doing homework - I taught myself programming in Batch and BASIC in the 90ies from the MS-DOS manpages, and later, when we had access to the internet, Delfi, Visual Basic and C++. I had finished a small tool with a few 100 users when I was 13, and I had to take care of them and fix bugs. There simply wasn't time left for any school work. University was just a natural extension of this childhood interest into adulthood. It didn't feel like school at all, and there I quickly discovered that math (well, computer science math at least) is actually pretty easy, and all you need is practice.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#145

Post by raincole »

hardware2win wrote: post #141

>You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices. If somebody says stuff like this, then they do not understand math, imo. Im a little bit sad whenever somebody argues for math by using "no phone available at the moment" argument. Math is insanely powerful world modeling tool. Starting from calculating right amount of fence for your garden, to estimation of 500km route arrival time whi…

I don't think you need calculus to calculate right amount of fence for your garden.

> Since math modeling is everywhere in "modeling" industries like engineerings, financial-ish jobs and othet

In other words, certain career choices, as the OP says.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#146

Post by raincole »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #18

I hate the framing of problems or domains as hard, since it kept me from pursuing them further for many years. And the years later when I tried my hand at those problems, I found that it wasn't nearly as hard as it was being made out to be. Historically many problems have also been hard until people figure them out, and then they stop being considered hard problems. In recent years this has been mostly true of AI-rel…

> People will talk about how they don't have full mastery over the language, but you don't need anything close to that in order to be effective.

My daily work is 80% C# and 20% Python (to make internal Blender tools for our artists). And I'm really bad at Python. I don't know any of itertools. I don't know zip() besides its name. I don't even use lambda.

The result? My bad code can be easily understood by some of more tech-savvy artists.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#147

Post by bruce511 »

szundi wrote: post #108
bruce511 wrote: post #102

This resonates a lot with me. At school I coasted, ignored all home work, never studied, and was a consistent C. I was continually told I could fo better by putting in some work (an objective viewpoint I agreed with.) But i had better things to do. I started programming in grade 7, from a book, with a Apple 2 (circa 1982). There were no forums, no Internet just me and a thin booket that came with the computer, plus l…

True when you happened to find just one of the soon best paying new activities. Catching butterflies would have worked out less awesome probably.

Yeah, it didn't hurt that my interest co-incided with history.

But there are lots of professions that can start as teenage interest. A friend of mine was obsessed with birds, he went into nature conservation, started in a bird reserve, and has had a long career climbing the ladder in that space. And also tour-guides bird watchers.

Sure, not everything works out, but if you can turn your fun into your job, then you're one off the lucky ones.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#148

Post by bruce511 »

59nadir wrote: post #126
bruce511 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This extends into life as well. I play golf (for fun [2]), which cunningly has a scoring system that tells me I'm objectively rubbish, and getting (mostly) worse. I've found this professionally useful in combating the seductive idea that "because I'm -really- good at one thing, I'm good at everything. " I've seen the opposite in customers sometimes. Doctors who are very good doctors, have strong feelings about UI (th…

I've found that one of the best ways to dismantle an overblown ego is to play StarCraft (Brood War or SC2, the result will be the same) or really any other 1v1 game. The direct feeling of being beaten, potentially overrun completely, time and time again, especially after putting in hard work is very humbling. Fighting games are very good for this except they've always invited a certain mental block in people where th…

Golf might be better because its me against me. No excuses about the other guys ability. But sure, as long as you find your fun, and your humility, it doesn't really matter where it is.

I console myself by believing that Tiger Woods is pretty bad at CSS :)

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#149

Post by keerthiko »

hardware2win wrote: post #141

>You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices. If somebody says stuff like this, then they do not understand math, imo. Im a little bit sad whenever somebody argues for math by using "no phone available at the moment" argument. Math is insanely powerful world modeling tool. Starting from calculating right amount of fence for your garden, to estimation of 500km route arrival time whi…

IME a big part of this misdirection stems from school focusing on the mechanics of math, rather than the intuition of math.

In the long run, the mechanics of math (how to do long division, or differentiate an expression, or expand a geometric series) are important only insofar as to help us model and predict and analyze the world, intuitively. However, students who do not intuitively see the power of mathematical intuition as a tool for understanding and modeling the world better, think that they are taught the mechanics of math just for the sake of "no phone/calculator/computer available" circumstances.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#150

Post by jokethrowaway »

hardware2win wrote: post #141

>You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices. If somebody says stuff like this, then they do not understand math, imo. Im a little bit sad whenever somebody argues for math by using "no phone available at the moment" argument. Math is insanely powerful world modeling tool. Starting from calculating right amount of fence for your garden, to estimation of 500km route arrival time whi…

I don't get why calculus is always brought as an example. It wasn't particularly hard, the entire class had to learn it in high school. We all had it (in a slightly harder shape) in every university course (no matter how detached from what we actually needed)

I forgot all my calculus after high school, had to relearn it in uni and then I promptly forgot again.

Exactly as the article says, it was more about proving we had the capacity (proxy iq test?) to learn it.

You don't need calculus in real life and I think the focus on calculus is ridiculous when we could explore other more practical areas, like category theory (which only my lucky friends who did advanced math got to play with)

Post reply on HN