51–60 of 225 posts
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They invented space ships, for one thing. Russian was a scientific power in the 19th Century before Soviet Union, and continued during the Soviet era. The west had limited access to it, due to the Cold War. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Ru...
I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did punch above their weight. But Soviet Union census of 1970 lists 241,720,134 people, while the US census of 1970 lists 203,392,031 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census Is this statis…
I don't think anybody except you thought it was smaller. Why are you suggesting theres a widespread misconception instead of the more likely alternative - you made a mistake?
When my kid was three I encountered this lovely book and thought I'd read it to attempt to replicate something like it (despite all the warnings that it's a journal and not a guide); unfortunately I never got around to finishing the book (nothing against the book, just got distracted) and now the kid's already past seven :) But what little I read was delightful; thanks for posting this summary!
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> I suspect we'll see a continuous slow decrease in all aspects of quality of software as those who have a genuine love and passion for the field are replaced by those in it just for the money. This seems narrow minded. In the early days of software development, the barrier for entry was incredibly high. The possibility of people making high quality, unique software is greater than it ever has been. It's also narrow…
> the barrier for entry was incredibly high Hmm, for some values of "incredibly". John Carmack, a juvenile delinquent, dropped out of university and went on career programming, soon upending the game industry. Linus Torvalds released Linux while being a university student, five years before obtaining a master's degree. Vitalik Buterin dropped out of university and created Etherium, funded by a grant from Thiel founda…
As for Buterin, I have no idea who they are, so I can’t speak to them.
When my kid was three I encountered this lovely book and thought I'd read it to attempt to replicate something like it (despite all the warnings that it's a journal and not a guide); unfortunately I never got around to finishing the book (nothing against the book, just got distracted) and now the kid's already past seven :) But what little I read was delightful; thanks for posting this summary!
I have a similar experience. The book skips the first 20 weeks. Many of the activities require materials and I could have benefited from a more prescriptive curriculum. Some other math circle curricula are not as inspiring but are much easier to follow.
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Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. But immigrants you see were very really motivated to leave the post-Soviet hell, so they had to show excellent results. Math is taught horrifyingly badly in Eastern Europe. It presented as something extremely overcomplicated and most teachers, having a laughably low salary they barely survive on, don't care tea…
> Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. Most people everywhere are bad at math. However, Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. And it's not even close, if you look at math competitions. Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members.
My theory is that this is actually caused by sexism and gender discrimination. There are smart, intelligent women everywhere, but due to sexism many career options have been traditionally closed for women in these societies, while SWE (as a completely new field) isn't. Their high numbers can be explained by the lack of opportunities in other areas. If you're an intelligent woman in Pakistan, IT is one of the few ways to prosper, meanwhile a woman in the West has way more opportunities.
I think it used to be the same principle with science in EE. Like, you're a highly intelligent person, you strive for success and recognition. In US, the classic path is entrepreneurship, but that was pretty much closed / very difficult in the Soviet block. You could get into politics, but you have to bend the knee to the party line. Science is one of the few avenues where you can thrive intellectually, get recognition and keep yourself relatively unaffected by politics.
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Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. But immigrants you see were very really motivated to leave the post-Soviet hell, so they had to show excellent results. Math is taught horrifyingly badly in Eastern Europe. It presented as something extremely overcomplicated and most teachers, having a laughably low salary they barely survive on, don't care tea…
> Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. Most people everywhere are bad at math. However, Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. And it's not even close, if you look at math competitions. Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members.
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> Survivorship bias. Eastern Europeans are actually very bad with math, no better than your regular American. Most people everywhere are bad at math. However, Eastern Europeans and Asians have a larger percentage of people who end up good at math compared to the US. And it's not even close, if you look at math competitions. Immigrants and children of immigrants are over-represented among the US team members.
I've long pondered a similar question - why are there so many Indian and Pakistani women in SWE in comparison to western women? Are Indian/Pakistani women better than western women in engineering? Is the education there better? How are these countries successful in mitigating this gender gap? My theory is that this is actually caused by sexism and gender discrimination. There are smart, intelligent women everywhere,…
Usually the theory is that women everywhere hate engineering, but poor women may suck it up and go into engineering anyway because they need the money.
In fact, that was pointed out in this very thread a couple hours before your comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41716578
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> They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely. Nonsense, sounds like post-hoc rationalization. Maybe talk to some actual Slavic people. Sure the Russians had "math clubs" and "chess clubs" but it wasn't as if the US didn't have RadioShack and garage/ham culture. Talk to some of the older generations that still remember the Berlin Wall and you might also understand why so many women fr…
Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker. I'm not joking. But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. This was very much a cultural thing, pushed by the government (engineers are useful!). Another thing, there was a huge societal pressure to excel at school. It was common for parents to check their children's marks every day. There's a very famous picture about it…
But in the USSR, your ability to buy something was generally not limited by the amount of money you had. It was limited by whether you'd be allowed to buy the thing for other reasons.
> But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor.
Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's?