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Burn the Programmer

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Re: Burn the Programmer

#191

Post by vram22 »

b0rsuk wrote: post #30

Another analogy that I can't shake off is True Name and search engines. Since the dawn of time folk tales placed emphasis on true name of people and objects. Knowing the true name grants one power over something or someone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name Knowing the true name of someone lets you put it in a search engine and find out about him/her. There are some sleazy smartphone apps which let you do even…

>Since the dawn of time folk tales placed emphasis on true name of people and objects. Knowing the true name grants one power over something or someone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name

Ha, interesting. I've read a few novels in which they say that people of some tribes think that is so. And (just guessing here) that may be why in some tribes, a person can have more than one name. I don't mean name as in First_name Last_name (which are treated as a single composite name), but as in Name1, Name2, ..., i.e. multiple different separate names. Also, the approach taken to giving names to people, in certain tribes or communities, is interesting, and varies by tribe.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#192

Post by citruscomputing »

arkh wrote: post #187
stryan wrote: post #10

Considering how many programming abstractions most programmers work above now, I'd say it's more like magic now then ever before. Draw the circle (add the boiler plate code), recite the words (dig up the proper API method), perform the gestures (compile with certain flags) and your spell (desktop app) will work. If you don't, it'll do nothing or worse, blow up in your face. As a side note, if anyone's interested in l…

If you like this kind of stories and don't mind a work in progress you whould try https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/61ya08/oh_this_has_not... where a nerd ends up in a fantasy world.

I love /r/HFY! Here are a few of my favorites:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/250m73/oc_no_graves_fo...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/249hj7/oc_invitation/

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/25qa83/oc_the_gods_sle...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/2b1vqr/oc_humanitys_de...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3baheq/a_kingdom_of_as...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3m704i/oc_cultural_exc...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3jfu5t/oc_assimilation...

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/4868zu/oc_janitor/

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/45tsrn/the_hunt_inspir...

Re: Burn the Programmer

#193

Post by jrs95 »

japhyr wrote: post #174

I teach high school math and science, and I fully recognize that most of my students will not end up in math and science-focused careers. So I think pretty carefully about my goals for these students. One clear purpose in everything I ask students to do: take away the sense of "magic" in technological things. I just finished teaching a math class, where the final project was a 3d modeling exercise. Students didn't al…

This is really cool. I had the good luck of having 2 really great math teachers in high school, and seemingly little things like this can really have a lasting impact.

One of them taught me both computer science and statistics, and did an amazing job at both. He went way above and beyond the minimum required curriculum for AP CS, so I basically picked up everything I needed to know to get a job just in that class.

And for stats, this guy did something I'd never actually seen a teacher do before. Over the course of one semester he'd managed to get the entire class of mostly average students to go from having a typical negative attitude towards math to being genuinely interested and capable of critical thinking that most adults I have met never do.

The other teacher taught a variety of math classes, but I had him for pre-calculus. He was really passionate about what he was doing and that rubbed off on everyone. He did an excellent job of relating everything back to real world topics and really seemed to make things click with people in a way that was highly unusual from my perspective.

The difference those two were able to make impressed me so much I almost decided to go into teaching, but I didn't have any means of paying for college. Fortunately I was able to get into software without a degree, in part because of the great work those two did.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#194

Post by 3pt14159 »

japhyr wrote: post #174

I teach high school math and science, and I fully recognize that most of my students will not end up in math and science-focused careers. So I think pretty carefully about my goals for these students. One clear purpose in everything I ask students to do: take away the sense of "magic" in technological things. I just finished teaching a math class, where the final project was a 3d modeling exercise. Students didn't al…

Someone whose name I no longer remember was a teacher of mine in highschool. Even though I knew how to program and had a nights / summers / weekends job programming I treated the CPU / motherboard as "magic". As if there was this dividing wall between the pure mathematical construct of a software program and the physicality of the bits moving through the motherboard.

The teacher taught us how to use NPN and PNP transistors to create very simple calculators.

Though I never went into hardware, that small demonstration was enough for me to see through the illusion and made it clear to me that the world was generally understandable if you just put in the time.

Even scary magical things like CPUs.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#195

Post by msla »

oillio wrote: post #160
blattimwind wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't, it'll do nothing or worse, blow up in your face. I assume I am not the only one who destroyed at least some amount of his personal data doing computer magic [1]. This would be analogous to a spell going wrong, burning the witches' hand or something similar. [1] Be it an incorrect incantation of rm, or just a poorly aimed flick with the pixie pointer.

I am showing my age here. I destroyed a CRT monitor once when I used the wrong incantation for xorg.

My sympathies. I remember the feeling in my gut I got when I had to manipulate XFree86 (what distros shipped with when I had to do this the last time) and worrying that I'd lose my one and only monitor, but it never happened to me.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#196

Post by Jach »

ben_w wrote: post #131
derefr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the people whose jobs are being displaced by automation?

I get the impression that right now they’re too busy blaming offshoring and immigrants to realise that their jobs have been automated and nobody is doing them.

Or figuring they'll just get another job, or their job will have them do something else instead of whatever it is that got automated.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#197

Post by ocschwar »

marsrover wrote: post #3

You know, us programmers like to refer to ourselves as wizards but I really wonder if non-programmers think the same or is it just like any other profession they're not knowledgeable of? I don't know anything about chemical engineering but I've never considered chemical engineers to be magical. I do like thinking of myself as a wizard, though.

> I don't know anything about chemical engineering but I've never considered chemical engineers to be magical.

For a layman who's curious about computers, he can just go to a computer and try stuff. Worst outcome from there is loss of some data.

If you're curious about chemical engineering, you're restrained a bit, because you're not really going to go near equipment that can easily blow you up, burn you, freeze you, or poison you.

So without the tantalizing hints that IT drops near you all the time, you're not going to wonder whether chemical engineers are wizards.

Re: Burn the Programmer

#198

Post by groby_b »

b0rsuk wrote: post #51
dkarl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people look at skilled construction contractors and assume they could be just as good with a very small amount of study and practice. People see us as having a completely alien ability that they intrinsically lack. That makes us like Harry Potter wizards, people with an inborn gift that makes us capable of learning things that are beyond the reach of normal people. The difference between us and wizards i…

That's quite true. When you say you're a plumber, people can at least ask half-assed questions or provide a story when they were doing that themselves. When you say you're a programmer, the conversation usually ends with "Oh.". They have literally no clue how to get into the area. How many of you have girlfriends who are genuinely interested in your craft and regularly talk with you about it ? Say, once per week. But…

I love talking to my partner, even though she's got an MBA (and works as an artist. Long story :)

It helps me improve my communication and teaching skills. It's fun, because it highlights the parts I don't clearly understand as well. She cares about it because it's so fundamentally different from anything she does, it's an entirely different world. (Vice versa, too. She's given me beautiful explanations on color theory, for example)

Yes, it requires work, from both sides. But for me personally - if your partner doesn't care enough to ask (or you don't care enough to explain), why have a relationship in the first place?

(Sidebar: s/girlfriend/partner/g, please.)

Re: Burn the Programmer

#199

Post by mcguire »

amatecha wrote: post #190
oillio wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am showing my age here. I destroyed a CRT monitor once when I used the wrong incantation for xorg.

Whoa, what? I'd be curious to hear more about that... How could some software config harm a display? Incorrect sync rates or something? ...and yeah, I am old enough to have used CRT displays for many years of my life, just never seen one get damaged like that! :)

Used to be, you configured X for your monitor and video card by editing a config file that specified the assorted timings and so forth. Yes, you could make your monitor very unhappy with the wrong settings.

This is probably the most useful thing ESR ever wrote: http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/

Re: Burn the Programmer

#200

Post by msla »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #97
mikegerwitz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do like thinking of myself as a wizard, though. This doesn't address your first paragraph, but I wanted to comment on this. I identify as a hacker. The terms "wizard", "incantation", etc are fairly ingrained in our culture. But if I do something and someone refers to it as "magic", it actually makes me uncomfortable; it means that they don't understand what I did or how I did it, and rather than trying to underst…

> if I do something and someone refers to it as "magic", it actually makes me uncomfortable; it means that they don't understand what I did or how I did it It occurs to me that the first steps I take in most new-to-me established projects are basically magic - I'm looking for specific shell commands that the other dev(s) use to perform certain actions: build, run, test, deploy, etc. What's more, there are often undoc…

> It occurs to me that the first steps I take in most new-to-me established projects are basically magic - I'm looking for specific shell commands that the other dev(s) use to perform certain actions: build, run, test, deploy, etc. What's more, there are often undocumented environment dependencies - env vars that need to be set, certain executables that must be installed on the dev's system and in the path, etc.

I fully agree with this. In fact, I've reified it into a pattern I use to learn new things: Copy, Paste, Break, Fix. Start with copying and pasting, to make sure I know what happens ("My environment is broken! Their code is broken! I've found an ancient tutorial and the example is broken!") then, once I know it's good, break it somehow, and fix it. Then I make changes to the example, fix what breaks there, and then iterate until I've gotten a good end result.

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