Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Carmack
Michael Abrash paved the way for Carmack. Carmack is great, no doubt, but Abrash wrote the book (literally.)
I think they both work together now at Oculus.
Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
311–320 of 351 posts
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember Norvig course on udacity. Every problem I solved, after that there was a video with his solution. It was so much simpler.
What was the title?
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#313> If you're thinking about joining a startup, how do you tell if the founders are like Larry and Sergey or if they're an Elizabeth Holmes? Right, that's the worst combination: smart and full of s t. I think you have to interview them a little bit. Ask hard questions and see if they give direct, insightful answers, or if they're evasive and dismissive. What are some examples of "hard questions" that we can ask?
How are they going to get money
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing to consider is that most of time, brilliant people make complex problems look simpler. which means their solution will look like the problem was simpler in the first place, and so there’s no merit in having a good solution. That’s one thing that makes them really hard to recognize by non technical people. I would say that to recognize them and admire their work, you have to bang your head against the same p…
I remember Norvig course on udacity. Every problem I solved, after that there was a video with his solution. It was so much simpler.
[deleted]
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#315> I didn't have to work that hard, and one day I had this realization while sitting in my gray cubicle (I was in a sea of gray cubicles surrounded by gray walls, listening to white noise and all alone): I'm like, “Man I am so tired. I need to go home and take a nap.” I went home, but as soon as I got there I realized, “I'm not tired anymore.” Is there a name for this type of fatigue (or perception thereof)? I'm curio…
Dale Carnegie, in his book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", raised a similar point. I won't quote directly, as I read it in Polish; the following is based on my notes: In one the latter chapters, he has a rule about "summoning your own enthusiasm". The primary observation in that part of the chapter was that it's really hard to truly exhaust someone physically, and even harder to exhaust them mentally, if the…
There are certain things I just can't do after a while. Like writing. I can't mentally bring up the energy to write after 4-5 hours.
But as soon as I switch to another task, such as coding, my mind lights up again.
Task switching should be incorporated into your routine if you find yourself getting bored by your work.
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I feel the same way you do. Please, leave me with nothing to do; I'll manage. Left to my own devices, I have 20 ideas 5 trains of thought to explore per minute. > I see in a side comment you were concerned about undiagnosed ADD, I'll admit I'm somewhat concerned with _overdiagnosing_ ADD. I get it. Child AD(H)D seems definitely overdiagnosed in the west; from what I read, giving medication seems to be the easie…
Try listening to a police scanner on broadcastify. I like the nypd bronx ones, its the sufficient level of quiet dead time with some action too.
I tried listening to police bands on actual radio over where I live (in some places they don't encrypt their comms yet). Gave up after hearing way more PII than I was comfortable with.
There's a similar problem with taxi bands, though it's been improving over the years (in particular, the new wave of pay-through-app taxis helping). It used to be that drivers would read full card data aloud to transmit it to the base - in-the-clear.
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would strongly disagree on the Bill Gates part. The early Microsoft compilers (yes, Microsoft started out as a compiler company) were by all accounts not that great. The really successful and technically impressive Microsoft projects have always been acquisitions. The technically best (or the only decent, depending on who you talk to) Microsoft product is SQL Server, which started out as a Sybase fork.
Original interpreter Gates wrote was pretty hard. Imagine flipping switches to enter a program to do entire BASIC interpreter. You are literally entering machine code, not even Assembly. In those days doing any compiler or interpreter was a monumental amount of work and there was a reason Gates was able to sale his work to establish fairly profitable company standing on just one product: BASIC interpreter. He is not…
He wrote his interpreter on a larger machine (PDP-11 I think), and tested it on an emulator they wrote. When they got to MITS to show off their code that was the first time it ever ran on real hardware.
They did not develop BASIC by flipping switches.
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I feel the same way you do. Please, leave me with nothing to do; I'll manage. Left to my own devices, I have 20 ideas 5 trains of thought to explore per minute. > I see in a side comment you were concerned about undiagnosed ADD, I'll admit I'm somewhat concerned with _overdiagnosing_ ADD. I get it. Child AD(H)D seems definitely overdiagnosed in the west; from what I read, giving medication seems to be the easie…
ADD is not over diagnosed. It's probably more prevalent in the population than we think it is. The medications are not specifically harmful in a potential misdiagnosed case... they are just not effective. And there's multiple medications which have difference efficacies for different people. That being said 80% of people with ADHD find medication effective. Dr. Russell Barkley has a book on it and also several talks…
It can be simultaneously underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/17/joint-over-and-underdia...
> Suppose that 3% of the population has ADHD.
> Suppose that of people with ADHD, 50% of them realize they have ADHD like symptoms and go to a psychiatrist to get checked out.
> Suppose that of people without ADHD, 10% of them falsely believe they have ADHD and also go to a psychiatrist to get checked out.
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get hired at any place where good engineering is done, or at a startup where no engineering is really done and you get to make the calls about how engineering is done. Work for 10+ hours a day, and on your free time read about engineering from blogs or books, see conference videos, and go to conferences. After 4 or 5 years of doing this you'll maybe know enough about how "everthing works" and what books says how to d…
Yup. You have 2 choices: Imposter Syndrome or Dunning-Kruger. I'll take imposter syndrome please.
That sounds like 2 extremes. There has to be a delicate middle ground.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a strong feature of Attention Deficit Disorder as I understand it. Hyperfocus often comes hand in hand with extreme fatigue and brain fog in the presence of tasks that don't motivate enough, to the point that you can feel it physically. I often get it myself, feeling like I can't physically write another line of code until I move onto one of my own projects, then I'm good to concentrate for another 6 hours. I ha…
I have ADD (diagnosed) and this happens to me every day at work. Around three o'clock in the afternoon I get so sleepy I start to literally fall asleep at my desk, but if I go home I'm immediately refreshed and back to full capacity for another eight hours.
Similar here. (I was never tested for ADD; maybe I should.) And the worst thing for me is having a meeting.
Work at least keeps me somewhat awake. Over years I have developed some coping strategies, for example when I feel sleepy I open a text file and start writing detailed notes about what I am currently doing and why. That way I can continue to work, because when I fall asleep for a moment and lose the current thread of thought, I just read what I wrote recently and continue. Also, the act of typing, and seeing changes on the screen help to keep me awake.
But once in a while we have a long meeting, often in dark-ish and not well ventilated place, and that is like feeding me sleep pills.