The diminishing half-life of knowledge • Hacker News Board

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#21

Post by jampekka » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 10:58 AM UTC

eightnoteight wrote: post #14

while I agree that there is a half-life to certain type of knowledge but I think it would be overstating to reasonably apply to all knowledge. its very easy to retain a significant portion of the knowledge by building mental models. sure you will forget about the API surface of a technology, but you would surely remember the underlying knowledge models and you would surely apply it in many other contexts. like rememb…

Exactly. It's weird for me that jobs are so strongly focused on some narrow technology. E.g. "React programmers" or "Javascript programmers" or "Python programmers".

When you know the basic "underlying" model, switching from a framework or language to another is not a very big deal. Not much bigger deal than figuring out a new large codebase with a familiar framework/language.

Sure, it may take a few weeks of learning new stuff and being unproductive (or even negatively productive) during this phase, but this is to be expected in any job.

I don't think learning the more fundamental concepts is that hard but it does require some time (and interest) that is not immediately productive. Perhaps due to demands of being productive, as in churning code, all the time gets people (and the industry) to get stuck in such "local optimum".

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#22

Post by PeterisP » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 11:26 AM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #20

zer00eyz wrote: post #5

I often watch a pair of YouTubers who cover china, and they used to reside there. The one thing that they lamented often was a lack of maintenance, from historic buildings to lightbulbs in elevators. They tried to posit it as something more cultural, and I dont know if that is true or not for china. I do feel like the culture of tech has become one of maintenance not being part of what we do. When was the last time y…

>I do. We need to do better. We need to stop piling on more and strip back to clear and well understood. We need to value readable code over DRY, or Design patterns or what ever the next FOTM This sentiment is common in people that lack understanding why each of the stack elements currently in place has been put in there for. I'm not picking on parent specifically, but having been working for "big tech" for quite som…

The key part of curriculum design is prioritization because you generally have a fixed amount of hours for a degree - every important thing you put in requires taking out something else, and learning a topic in more detail requires learning fewer topics. And I'm not sure if most potential students would value spending a year on bare metal at the cost of throwing out a year's worth of stuff that is more high level. Like, be specific - count the things you're adding, take a look at the CS/SE courses in the program you had, and choose an equivalent number of courses that you would cut out to make space for your proposals - does it still make sense then?

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#23

Post by heavenlyblue » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

jampekka wrote: post #21

eightnoteight wrote: post #14

while I agree that there is a half-life to certain type of knowledge but I think it would be overstating to reasonably apply to all knowledge. its very easy to retain a significant portion of the knowledge by building mental models. sure you will forget about the API surface of a technology, but you would surely remember the underlying knowledge models and you would surely apply it in many other contexts. like rememb…

Exactly. It's weird for me that jobs are so strongly focused on some narrow technology. E.g. "React programmers" or "Javascript programmers" or "Python programmers". When you know the basic "underlying" model, switching from a framework or language to another is not a very big deal. Not much bigger deal than figuring out a new large codebase with a familiar framework/language. Sure, it may take a few weeks of learnin…

Switching frameworks usually implies learning all of the quirks if these frameworks/platforms, which is the long tail of problems

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#24

Post by ambrose2 » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #20

zer00eyz wrote: post #5

I often watch a pair of YouTubers who cover china, and they used to reside there. The one thing that they lamented often was a lack of maintenance, from historic buildings to lightbulbs in elevators. They tried to posit it as something more cultural, and I dont know if that is true or not for china. I do feel like the culture of tech has become one of maintenance not being part of what we do. When was the last time y…

>I do. We need to do better. We need to stop piling on more and strip back to clear and well understood. We need to value readable code over DRY, or Design patterns or what ever the next FOTM This sentiment is common in people that lack understanding why each of the stack elements currently in place has been put in there for. I'm not picking on parent specifically, but having been working for "big tech" for quite som…

I would love an easy way to learn all those things you mentioned. For my job I only need to know an API framework, Python, SQL, an ORM, really.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#25

Post by nemoniac » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 11:44 AM UTC

At the link below there's an interesting discussion of how an emphasis on competence-based education over knowledge-based education is not leading to an improvement in learning outcomes, quite the contrary.

So despite the fact that knowledge may have a half-life, it may be even more important to acquire the skills to learn that knowledge.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38590888

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#26

Post by joshuaissac » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

The article references the following IEEE Spectrum article:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/an-engineering-career-only-a-young...

> Given a choice, many employers would rather hire a couple of inexperienced computer programmer and spend a few months training them than hiring (or retaining) a more experienced but expensive programmer.

In the very next paragraph:

> In addition, many employers aren’t interested in providing training to engineers or programmers who may start becoming obsolete, for fear of seeing them leave or be poached for employment elsewhere. [...] employers looking for experienced workers have fallen into the habit of poaching employees from their competitors as opposed to spending the resources to train from within their organization to meet a specific job skill.

That directly contradicts the preceding paragraph, so I find it hard to trust the other claims that it makes.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#27

Post by pylua » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 12:17 PM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #26

The article references the following IEEE Spectrum article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/an-engineering-career-only-a-young... > Given a choice, many employers would rather hire a couple of inexperienced computer programmer and spend a few months training them than hiring (or retaining) a more experienced but expensive programmer. In the very next paragraph: > In addition, many employers aren’t interested in providing t…

There does seem to be quite the inconsistency here. I feel like the truth lies somewhere near the truth of the no wants to work mantra which may simply be a refusal to raise wages.

I wonder if the so called knowledge half life exists because everyone is working in very niche, specialized area these days. Those skills are simply less transferable to even similar jobs in the same field.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#28

Post by roenxi » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

As a counterpoint, it is impossible to discuss this topic without coming to some definition of "mastering" a tech stack. The concept itself seems suspicious. That is like saying "I mastered fashion". What, exactly, does it mean to master something that is in constant flux? How do we differentiate between a master and someone who read the documentation a few weeks ago?

It is a mug's game trying to master a tech stack anyway. The clever thing to do is master problem domains. Then if you encounter the problem you can just solve it using old tools and be happy.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#29

Post by marginalia_nu » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

heavenlyblue wrote: post #23

jampekka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's weird for me that jobs are so strongly focused on some narrow technology. E.g. "React programmers" or "Javascript programmers" or "Python programmers". When you know the basic "underlying" model, switching from a framework or language to another is not a very big deal. Not much bigger deal than figuring out a new large codebase with a familiar framework/language. Sure, it may take a few weeks of learnin…

Switching frameworks usually implies learning all of the quirks if these frameworks/platforms, which is the long tail of problems

There's something to be said for having a deep familiarity with a language. In terms of just churning out basic tasks like churning out CRUD endpoints it maybe doesn't matter so much, but it's both a force multiplier for productivity and an enabler of building something altogether less trivial.

Arguably a lot of the ways modern software sucks is a direct consequence of developers not understanding the tools and languages they're using. It's a bakery that bakes bread by scraping the toppings off frozen pizza.

Re: The diminishing half-life of knowledge

#30

Post by sshine » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 12:23 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #9

sureglymop wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind listing those youtubers which cover China? Sounds interesting. Also I'd like to kindly ask you not to use "ADHD child" in that manner because I think it stigmatizes it although I do understand the point you were trying to make there.

Here is them covering the topic directly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9eXi3RL8q4 AS for the ADHD thing, I get it, it's also a pretty accurate description of how I feel some days working in this industry. Its hard not to be a technological magpie collecting shiny rocks!

For context: both of these YouTubers were eventually denied stay in China and turned their channel into bashing China full time for a living.

I really valued their insight and perspective (rural China by motorcycle, for example, is not a common perspective in the west), but eventually had to unsubscribe from their toxic bitterness.