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There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

wired.com

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Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#61

Post by MaxBarraclough »

grayhatter wrote: post #57
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers are 100% deterministic, from top to bottom. Not in every respect. Concurrency and C's undefined behaviour spring to mind.

It's still deterministic. It doesn't randomly do something different with the exact same IO. Just because it's hard to recreate the exact same state with concurrent processes on a modern CPU doesn't change it's determinism. Also, undefined behavior in C only means a compiler can do what ever it likes. It doesn't make it random. People need to stop pretending UB in C is magic. It's not going to delete your hard disk,…

Sure, but in both cases, the way to model it is with something like nondeterminism. Computers have no nondeterminism, but computer science does.

Formally verified C code is guaranteed to be free of UB, as this is necessary in order for there to be guarantees about the behaviour of a program written in standard C. The underlying compiler and hardware are still deterministic.

A similar thing happens with concurrency.

> People need to stop pretending UB in C is magic. It's not going to delete your hard disk, or make you a pizza unless that's already part of your program.

It probably won't delete your hard-disk, but complacency with UB is still a bad idea. C is a strange language. UB is permitted to travel back in time. [0] Even in the absence of UB, the optimiser is permitted (but not obligated) to eliminate empty infinite loops, so even a basic property like whether your program will ever terminate, may be up to the whims of the optimiser. [1]

Anyway that was a long way of saying I agree, computers are deterministic, but something akin to nondeterminism can happen in the abstractions we use.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/39915175/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13640636

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#62

Post by aaron695 »

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #54
aaron695 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. Yes we do. They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child. Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually under…

Read Muellers report, it's rather good and detailed. It just your "normal" meddling, the difference is that thanks to internet its so much cheaper and easier. Muellers report also revealed that Russians ran biggest BLM social media to they can divide you, should give you an idea what is going on right now in your country. Strangely enough media doesn't talk about it. There is no Russian connection there, it's all 'gr…

The HN link for the report was - [flagged] The Mueller Report [pdf] (justice.gov)

It's good, thanks. Learned a lot. It tried to quantify bot sizes between platforms for instance which was good. I now have many more questions, but I'll try and build on that.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#63

Post by juped »

tluyben2 wrote: post #31
mdoms wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never stop being amused by the original post about Dropbox here on HN, where a large contingent of the audience was so critical of it, it was destined to fail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

While funny, that is a little while ago. What is depressing now is that it became worse but people are not that vocal in public anymore. Many people I encounter say they can do things in days but when hired they really can't (not even close) (and these are seniors with proven experience doing things but just not very fast at all; I cannot figure if it's the frameworks as I know I could do it in days with jquery/lamp…

It's only possible to get hired by anyone (including, probably, by you - how do you select candidates, exactly?) by resume-padding with trendy largely-useless items like kubernetes microservices etc.

Be the change you want to see in the market.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#64

Post by amelius »

flohofwoe wrote: post #35
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agreed. What drivel. I couldn't even finish reading the article. We have senators grilling tech CEOs that don't understand the difference between an iPhone and an Android device. This is unacceptable to say the least.

To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? Both can make phone calls, both can display web pages, both can run apps. There's one fairly irrelevant difference because it's an historical accident so it will probably be eliminated soon: one platform owner already controls the platform completely, and the other not yet…

> To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer?

One is a device that works for the customer, the other is a device that works for advertising companies.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#65

Post by aaron695 »

willis936 wrote: post #49
aaron695 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we wouldn’t say that scientists don’t exist anymore. Yes we do. They don't exist as we have romantically understood them. Scientists used to take risks, play with the entire world, question things, actually be open, actually play with science as a child. Now they join the Facebook group "Fuck I love science" and be done with it because they are pushed into STEM as an ultra narrow career and don't actually under…

Spoken like someone who doesn’t interact with any scientists. I work at a university and have a friend group of chemists PhD students. Every single one of them fit your requirements for the romantic vision of a scientist, yet have far more accurate models at their disposal than previous generations of scientists. “You never see them.” because you choose not to look. You look at your algorithm driven feed and shape yo…

Of my science friends, a few in chemistry, with and without PHD's, no they don't do science. At best they fetishize science pop culture. They are very good at their specializations though.

My tech friends do however do science, obviously a subset of my tech friends, for a lot it's also a means to an ends.

Those tech friends mess with chemistry, mess with electric experiments, stay up and watch the Higgs Boson announcements and rocket launches. They make rockets with 3D printers(fail). And they mess with computers in their own time.

I would say "There’s no such thing as a scientists anymore", where's the HN for scientists?

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#66

Post by syshum »

opportune wrote: post #26
djcapelis wrote: post #12

US society, discourse, media, and government structures have sidelined experts to the extent we’ve finally managed to forget they exist. Instead we’re left with reporters who write articles that bemoan that since they’re lost and unable to determine truth in a sea of technology, we all must be.

Yeah, to me this just looks like a journalist complaining that they shouldn't be expected to understand the things they write about. There are hundreds of people who more or less understand any given product or project with large impact. Society just doesn't care what they think. Why listen to an accomplished engineer who might very well have lots of opinions on the impact of technology, when we can complain that our…

>>journalist

I dont think we have any of those any more, if we do they are few and far between and I would venture to guess that none of them work for Wired

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#67

Post by tluyben2 »

juped wrote: post #63
tluyben2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While funny, that is a little while ago. What is depressing now is that it became worse but people are not that vocal in public anymore. Many people I encounter say they can do things in days but when hired they really can't (not even close) (and these are seniors with proven experience doing things but just not very fast at all; I cannot figure if it's the frameworks as I know I could do it in days with jquery/lamp…

It's only possible to get hired by anyone (including, probably, by you - how do you select candidates, exactly?) by resume-padding with trendy largely-useless items like kubernetes microservices etc. Be the change you want to see in the market.

I have a feeling that many people I interview/test actually see this as an opportunity to learn these technologies, while normally it's definitely not, so I don't select based on that; quite the opposite. They won't have this on their resume often, but want to 'learn on the job'.

And yes, what you say happens also; for a recent project where we did need all this tech, sometimes I'm sitting with people with 'years of experience' in containerisation etc and during the interview it turns out they have no clue besides the absolute bare basics.

And ofcourse, this causes now that CTO's/CIO's not only see these terms in magazines online, but also see it on all their resumes so they start demanding the use in projects while there is no reason to do so.

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#68

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #64
flohofwoe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? Both can make phone calls, both can display web pages, both can run apps. There's one fairly irrelevant difference because it's an historical accident so it will probably be eliminated soon: one platform owner already controls the platform completely, and the other not yet…

> To play devil's advocate: What is the difference between an Android phone and an iPhone phone, and if there is, what does it matter to a customer? One is a device that works for the customer, the other is a device that works for advertising companies.

[deleted]

Re: There’s no such thing as a tech expert anymore

#69

Post by chiefalchemist »

syshum wrote: post #66
opportune wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, to me this just looks like a journalist complaining that they shouldn't be expected to understand the things they write about. There are hundreds of people who more or less understand any given product or project with large impact. Society just doesn't care what they think. Why listen to an accomplished engineer who might very well have lots of opinions on the impact of technology, when we can complain that our…

>>journalist I dont think we have any of those any more, if we do they are few and far between and I would venture to guess that none of them work for Wired

You're spot on.

This is a great reference, especially when I try to to reason with people who misuse and misunderstand the word.

https://kottke.org/20/01/jim-lehrers-rules-of-journalism-1

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