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What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#61

Post by soup10 »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #53
ta75757 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As (failed) physics major, it sounds so strange to hear someone claim to be good at math but not physics. To me physics is 98% math. It's a few empirical facts from experiments and then bucketloads of math.

Math is certainly required to understand the theory and to synthesize experimental observations into a working model, but I wouldn't put it at more than 50-60%. Most of the math is fairly basic relatively speaking, even at the highest levels of physics.

Relative to what lol. What other applied field has more advanced math?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#62

Post by afarrell »

rabbyte wrote: post #11

Is it common for programmers to dislike debugging? I'm stunned. I never considered the possibility, it's always been something I enjoyed. I don't believe it impacts you either way in terms of capability but I imagine it impacts your desire to continue.

I enjoy debugging when I feel like I have some grasp on things. I hate it when I don't know where to look and don't have a good mental concept of the program in general.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#63

Post by FLUX-YOU »

ProAm wrote: post #28
pw wrote: post #17

I'm very glad to see that PG's departure from YC has led to a significant uptick in his essay output.

Eh, it's just a more verbose "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life."

If there's one thing I could change, it's to know of something that I could do and not feel like I was working.

If there's one thing I regret, it's not knowing about that something at a young age and letting it mold my life, decisions, and motivation. At 30 I've got nothing but a track record of jobs I hate.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#64

Post by DenisM »

flipside wrote: post #46

Edge cases, I love exploring edge cases and even better, the intersection of edge cases (corner cases?). The more edge cases there are, the more interesting something is and sometimes they lead to discovering entire new spaces. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled into an opportunity with my startup that I find endlessly fascinating.

I see a pen-testing career in your future.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#65

Post by Micaiah_Chang »

ta75757 wrote: post #42
dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

As (failed) physics major, it sounds so strange to hear someone claim to be good at math but not physics. To me physics is 98% math. It's a few empirical facts from experiments and then bucketloads of math.

There are some skills in physics which are sort of foreign to the math method of problem solving. (Speaking as a physics major)

For example, picking a nice reference frame in simple mechanics problems is something that a physical intuition is good for. Same with spotting symmetries in an EM problem. Also, in physics you need to have a good grasp of what to ignore because they have only a small effect on the solution or because it operates on a different scale (fringing effects, transient solutions in ODEs), which often relies on a very hand-wavey type of reasoning.

Essentially, physical intuition often does not map to mathematical intuition

I have not taken enough math to actually speak for them; this is mostly gleaned from talking with math major friends and my own speculations.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#66

Post by dilap »

ta75757 wrote: post #42
dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

As (failed) physics major, it sounds so strange to hear someone claim to be good at math but not physics. To me physics is 98% math. It's a few empirical facts from experiments and then bucketloads of math.

a lot of it is just cultural approach. math people tend to like to rigorously define everything they're doing, and work from there. physics is more like "what can we make up and fudge and twist and bend and then get the right answer." there's a lot of people who aren't as comfortable working in that less-defined context.

some of this is maybe inherent to the aim of physics, some of it is just physics machismo culture, and could be better, imo.

(i was a physics and math major at oregon.)

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#67

Post by TrysterosEmp »

Well this line of reasoning works beautifully for engineers, because solving the types of problems engineers love also HAPPENS to be extremely lucrative.

What if acting doesn't feel like work? Playing soccer? Hiking? It's extremely difficult to make money doing these things. "Follow your folly" career advice can work, or it can just make people feel terrible because they realize they're doing things they don't love because they can't make money doing the things they do love.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#68

Post by eutectic »

dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

I think that I have a reasonable aptitude for maths and I like solving problems, but I always felt like textbook problems more-or-less consisted of plugging the numbers into a standard template. Maybe my education was uniquely terrible but I'm surprised that there are people who can blast through textbooks and enjoy doing it.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#69

Post by dxbydt »

ta75757 wrote: post #42
dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

As (failed) physics major, it sounds so strange to hear someone claim to be good at math but not physics. To me physics is 98% math. It's a few empirical facts from experiments and then bucketloads of math.

True, but a lot of chemistry is mostly math too, and I flunked organic chemistry the first time. I think its because there is some domain knowledge involved in these subjects, which you have to actually care about. I don't particularly care which element has how many isotopes and what the valency is and how many other elements it can bond with, though I did memorize the atomic weights of all the elements in the periodic table and Avogardo number and few such stats. Those things helped a little, because I was ultimately able to pass my chemistry exams just by solving the numerical stuff and ignoring the chemical stuff. I handled physics in same fashion . There's something called the distance equation, where you can express the distance travelled by particle in terms of velocity and acceleration. We had to simply memorize that and use it in problems. I forgot what it was in the exam. So I just derived it from definitions. The teacher was quite surprised, because at that stage we hadn't been taught calculus, so how did I derive it ? Well, I had solved calculus problems by myself, so I just did this - http://pastebin.com/T6PrePh8

These things helped me get by.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#70

Post by tegeek »

I grew up in a remote rural area of a third world country. My mother & father taught me to read. And I developed interest in reading books at the age of 6 or 7.

When I was 9 or 10 years old, someone (may be my cousin or my fathers' uncle) gave me a book on simple electronics (it was in my native language). That was the first time I read about P-Type & N-Type materials and some other physics. It was so fascinated to me that I used to read it all the time to understand. The book also included about very simple digital logic design and concepts like NAND Gate etc.

I didn't understood at all what it is all about. But It developed my interest in Physics and Electronics.

By the age of 13 or 14 I learned myself about soldering, creating very simple chips and some LEDs on-off work. I never learned any math or could develop any mental model about true electronics but all that work created an infinite desire to know about the nature of "materials" & physics behind everything.

My parents put me in school which was 12 KM from my village, I used to bike every day 24 KM two way with some other friends no matter if it was summer with 43 degrees or winter with -2 degrees. And I was just 9 years old young kid. I started skipping school and start searching more books like that great Electronics books. I bought many but couldn't understand the foundations at all.

That same book had chapters how you can create a sequence of LEDs which keep going on & off one after other and make some interesting visual. I opened every electronic device at home and tried to understand its chips but couldn't get at all what is going on.

None of my friends studies beyond class 8 but I kept going. I started studying physics at the age of 15 at school but it was all so bookish and memorisation that I never liked school at all.

But I studied Physics, Biology & Chemistry myself and enjoyed every single moment of that time. That was the only time I studied Sciences and developed an intuition about the scientific world.

My parents took loan and sent me to a bigger city for my Bachelors degree. But the education was so artificial that I couldn't learn anything more at all. Every single book was in English (which is not my native or national language) I feel so empty & everything useless. At the same time my parents were sending me more money than they could afford.

I went into depression & at some point in my Bachelors' degree I found out about Internet & "Software". I started learning about Web Site development. I learned HTML, Adobe Dreamweaver & Fireworks. Then I learned a bit of C++ & C#. (I remember I started learning about C# in April 2002).

I got a job as a programmer in an off-shore office of a USA company. I then saved some money and escaped from that country and came to Sweden because of free education.

I studied Computer Science & developed an intense love with Mathematics (even though I'm not good in maths) & Programming Languages. Now I'm working as a Software Engineer but I have deep love with Electronics & Physics. And that all goes back to the days when I was reading that simple electronics book.

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