51–60 of 84 posts
I'm probably biased but the thought "my life might not matter much but at least my skills are in need" is pretty common here next to Russia's border.
Cold climates encourage indoor activities.
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Apart from the former communist math teaching being much better, I think it is cultural as well. Being an engineer in a former communist country was (is) a ticket to good life, similar lifestyle to a doctor or a lawyer. In the US being an engineer is seen as boring, and something only nerdy un-socialable people do. Also there are more attractive alternatives to pursue for smart people in the US. Basically, it boils d…
On the other hand, a lack of math teachers could be explained because people who have decent math skills can now live off that skill by being an engineer much more easily than before when they would have been math teachers.
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Here is my experience with this: I grew up the eldest sibling of a struggling single Mom. We didn't have very much. We had to make every penny count. She spent every spare penny we had one year on our first computer to teach herself to program to get herself a better job so we could have an easier life. I was 8. It was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K. She had to sacrifice a lot to afford that computer. In comparison, I wa…
> A hacker is more like a farmer who doesn't have an unending budget to buy the exact right tool for every little job they need done. Yes. The definition should be someone who excels at doing more with less. "Hacking" with lots of resources is something else entirely.
The core mindset still comes from the same place. Understanding everything. Understanding the implications of bugs and features of known systems, using that for grand exploitation to achieve things they weren't designed for.
What inspired them to start hacking in the first place may or may not have come from a place of not having everything. Perhaps their trigger of interest were movies or TV shows: War Games, Hackers... or James Bond or the nerdy guy from NCIS, 24, Bourne Identity, MI5 or countless other TV shows and movies where hacking is glamorized.
The start of that career path is the same, regardless of what brought you there - a need to understand your tools, deeply.
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The article uses 'hacker' to mean 'programmer', not cybercriminal.
That's really confusing. And although I love HN, I find the term "hacker" to refer to any sort of programmer or software developer to be increasingly idealistic (bordering on lame), especially when there are very real and very destructive hackers out here.
Russian-American here: in Russia you don't get to choose what to study, mostly. Certainly not in middle or high school -- everyone studies the exact same set of subjects. In college you don't get to choose individual subjects, you choose the profession, and that comes with a set of courses already baked in, some of which you'd never take on your own. Whether you're good or not at something, that's something you cant…
I would love for the US to have a viable vocational education path. So many students in high school prepping for college who don't want to be there.
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>The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes If your theory was true, Chinese devs and hackers would have the same reputation for pr…
There was perhaps also the aspect that when the microcomputers showed up on their side of the curtain, they didn't get a market for boxed software to go with it. So either they wrote their own, or cracked western software. Either way they got intimate with software innards.
It might be that the economic constraints imposed on the former USSR states by their failed experiment with reagonomics is in fact themselves the reason why they produce more programmers and fewer failed athletes and actors then America.
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It seems math textbooks in the US are 2-3 grade levels easier than those in East Asia. SAT Math is considered a piece of cake even by non-top but good students there. I heard Russian math is similarly rigorous. This reduces the level of logical thinking skills most American children get to practice from school. Programming well requires good abstract and logical thinking which is easier to develop from a young age. T…
The 2-3 grade delta sounds about right. I was a good but not too math student in (Eastern European) country before moving here. I Didn't have to open a math book again for about 3 years. Most of my friends from the same generation of immigrants would give the same number. More was simply expected of us. Not "hoped for" or "aspired to", but expected. And parents weren't at loggerheads with teachers; what teachers said…
If you were scolded by the teacher, there was a good chance you would get another scolding back at home once your parents found out about the incident.
Unfortunately (or not?), through what seems to be a western influence, this is slowly degrading.
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> Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it. I think the problem is expecting some "nice" (friendly, etc) way of teaching math, which dilutes their content (like Disney-fying a novel). The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "bett…
I advise taking a look at the mir titles or the Israel Gelfand books. Looking from it, Russian are really good at producing top notch popular science. Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few e…