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I should have loved biology too

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Re: I should have loved biology too

#181

Post by [deleted] »

milesrout wrote: post #149
abletonlive wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's not an absurd take at all. The absurd take is that we "should not bend language around ignorance." That's precisely how language changes over time. Language is not a strict set of rules. It's based on understanding and consensus, so sometimes things that are "wrong" do end up being accepted. I suggest this as a great introduction into what languages are and how they evolve over time https://www.amazon.c…

Most mistakes remain mistakes, and do not become part of the language. The idea that mistakes generally get accepted as correct is simply untrue, which is what you are implying. I am sure people will make the mistake, as they sometimes do today. But it is a mistake, and will likely be recognised as one. It is likely that the language gets more cemented by automatic spelling and grammatical correction, including using…

[deleted]

Re: I should have loved biology too

#182

Post by ramraj07 »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #134
ramraj07 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my (possibly not the best) opinion the most important quality will be to not delude oneself with the idea that their method or field is the most important field in all of science. Unfortunately academic structures force you to think and believe that and then proselytize that way. But if you stay above it at least in my books you're above most folks. But then I'm a lowly guy in a corner lol. Practically what this m…

I once met a scientist who spent a week traveling to where there was a powerful x-ray laser. He used it to blast a thin film of something or other that was floating on the surface of some water. He left with a flash drive full of data and some FORTRAN titled LSQREFL, which allegedly could decode the laser results. He then spent the next 6 months trying to make it actually do that. Turns out you had to have a folder w…

Sounds like he was doing an xray diffraction experiment? The last time (in my opinion) XRay diffraction based structure results meaningfully changed scientific discourse that affects human life was probably in the 80s or 90s. While it's important work it's no more important for Healthcare than some physics guy doing things with a random metal alloy. The point is there are interesting things but one shouldn't delude that this is the thing that's keeping us from unleashing human health prosperity.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#183

Post by barrenko »

0_gravitas wrote: post #48
slicktux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole teaching the history of computers is a big failure at an attempt to Segway into computer organization and architecture. Nonetheless, I get what is happening. If it’s a pure Computer programming class then the goal maybe to have them understand the “basics”…like what is the hard drive vs RAM (memory allocation) or what is a transistor (Boolean logic) and what is a punch card (mnemonics and abstractio…

Personally, I struggled a lot in my earlier CS/Informatics education, partly because I never felt like I understood what was actually happening/how we got here, everything was just factoids in a void. When I took a gap semester between my A.S. and B.S., I finally studied/explored a bit of the history and it put a lot finally in perspective.

Well, you need to come up to something like analysis to appreciate something that's seemingly simple like the number line and that's a loot of math if done only in spare time.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#184

Post by 999900000999 »

bruce511 wrote: post #138
999900000999 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically found this in college too, I quickly gave up on computer science as a major. I'd rather just go out and learn how to build what I want to build versus hearing a 3-hour lecture about how the jvm works. The answer is it's magic and no one cares, now let's go build some games

Firstly, and this is worth pointing out, "computer science" is not about programming. It's about science, in this case specifically the science that makes computers work. At school I thought "computer science" meant "programming" - which it doesn't. So well done for recognizing this before wasting your much time. (Seriously, not sarcastic.) programming can easily be learned outside college. To other general readers h…

It depends on where you took computer science. I took a few foundational classes at community college.

It very much felt like a Wikipedia article on the history of computers somehow stretched out over an entire summer.

I have my own issues with the way college is generally setup. Do students really need a massive amusement park when self study along with 3 or 4 exams would provided the same value. Will spending 70k per year in total cost of attendence at said amusement park serve them?

I don't really like boot camps either, personally I'd like companies to be more open to actually training people again. I doubt it'll happen though.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#185

Post by dekhn »

bruce511 wrote: post #138
999900000999 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically found this in college too, I quickly gave up on computer science as a major. I'd rather just go out and learn how to build what I want to build versus hearing a 3-hour lecture about how the jvm works. The answer is it's magic and no one cares, now let's go build some games

Firstly, and this is worth pointing out, "computer science" is not about programming. It's about science, in this case specifically the science that makes computers work. At school I thought "computer science" meant "programming" - which it doesn't. So well done for recognizing this before wasting your much time. (Seriously, not sarcastic.) programming can easily be learned outside college. To other general readers h…

I think CS is math, not science. Computer engineering is science (using lots of math).

Re: I should have loved biology too

#186

Post by nightpool »

cherrybajan wrote: post #167
girvo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

As a non native speaker, given the prevalence of spelling "segway" in corporate, this is how I thought the word was spelled, until now that is!

FWIW, I did a quick search of our local slack and found 2x the the number of instances of "segue" compared to "segway". And most of the instances of "segway" (around 60%) refer to the actual device, with only a handful of mistakes (around 4). So I'm not sure that this spelling is more common in a corporate environment—maybe do a search for yourself and see!

Re: I should have loved biology too

#187

Post by brainzap »

tlb wrote: post #159
kleiba wrote: post #2

A while ago, I taught CS for a year in a local high school. I can very much relate to the notion of "astonishing facts were presented without astonishment": as a teacher, you don't have the freedom to teach whatever you want (of course), but you're very tightly bound to a curriculum that's developed by the state government. And for CS, this curriculum was so uninteresting and uninspiring (what a surprise: 13 year old…

What a horrendous crime, to turn a fascinating subject into a boring curriculum to be forced on teachers and children. I've received great intellectual satisfaction from various well-taught subjects. I would rather chop off a finger than lose them. So curriculum committees that make subjects boring are doing something worse than chopping off millions of children's fingers.

its a job, not a mission

Re: I should have loved biology too

#188

Post by nightpool »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #128
abletonlive wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's not an absurd take at all. The absurd take is that we "should not bend language around ignorance." That's precisely how language changes over time. Language is not a strict set of rules. It's based on understanding and consensus, so sometimes things that are "wrong" do end up being accepted. I suggest this as a great introduction into what languages are and how they evolve over time https://www.amazon.c…

I am not a native speaker, but the two words do not sound even remotely the same. How does this mistake happen so often? Can you explain people's thought process a bit? Is it just: "Something something 'seg...' ... ah I know, I will simply use another random word that starts with the same 3 letters and doesn't make sense in this phrase!"? Also this is the first time I see it.

Why would you opine on the way the words are pronounced if you've never seen them before and clearly did not take the time to look them up at all?

Re: I should have loved biology too

#189

Post by sdenton4 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #182
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once met a scientist who spent a week traveling to where there was a powerful x-ray laser. He used it to blast a thin film of something or other that was floating on the surface of some water. He left with a flash drive full of data and some FORTRAN titled LSQREFL, which allegedly could decode the laser results. He then spent the next 6 months trying to make it actually do that. Turns out you had to have a folder w…

Sounds like he was doing an xray diffraction experiment? The last time (in my opinion) XRay diffraction based structure results meaningfully changed scientific discourse that affects human life was probably in the 80s or 90s. While it's important work it's no more important for Healthcare than some physics guy doing things with a random metal alloy. The point is there are interesting things but one shouldn't delude t…

There's two kinds of ignorance which come into contact when people work across disciplines.

In my own work helping ecologists, I see plenty of CS/ML folks who think they'll change the world by throwing a transformer at the problem. (which problem? you think we haven't tried that?) It takes some time and exposure to figure out what kinds of problems you can meaningfully contribute on.

On the other hand, I've met lots (most?) of ecologists who underestimate the impact of looking at their work through CS/ML lenses. Effective automation can greatly improve iteration speed, which ultimately leads to better outcomes than a slow but 'perfect' process. (and, indeed, the 'slow-but-perfect' process may not be sufficiently benchmarked, and not be perfect at all...)

You can do a lot of good by working closely with a practitioner, and identifying the places where they are spending a lot of time doing 'boring' stuff, and finding ways to automate or approximate the outcomes of that boring work. As you work with more people, you'll be able to identify boring stuff that everyone in the field is stuck doing.

So, in short, an excellent goal is to find ways to save people time through bottleneck analysis. Improve iteration speed and you improve the speed at which we can accumulate knowledge / make discoveries / etc. When you're done, it's "just a tool", but beforehand it's a problem holding back discovery.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#190

Post by PicassoCTs »

immibis wrote: post #43
mlinhares wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely, destroying education as we know it without any plans for what the next thing is will definitely work. Developed countries really need a come to Jesus moment, because the disdain for everything that made them great places is unbelievable. People will understand, after great suffering, that destroying stuff is much easier than building it.

We're in the destroying phase right now. Unless you live in China - I hear they're mostly doing well. Or middle of nowhere Africa, where there's nothing to destroy because there's nothing there. But systems can rot from within too, or just decay naturally, and don't need to be destroyed. What if the core ideas that built our current civilization were ideas of the past, that we don't have any more, and we don't know w…

The do as well as the USSR did. Meaning "excellent" till the last day!
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