Slashdot Mirror
Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: "Programming Will Make You a Better Doctor"
cylonlover writes "After a handful of days of furtive suggestion, spring made its presence felt in London today, where the second Technology Frontiers conference got underway. The Economist-organized event sees leading technologists and cultural figures take to the podium in front of some 250 ideas-thirsty business persons. Among them was Raspberry Pi Foundation founder Eben Upton, who extolled the benefits of learning to program for all professions. He went into some detail as to the inception of the Raspberry Pi and the need for more computer programmers."
I'm a doctor, not a programmer!
Raspberry Guy: "Programming will make you a better doctor."
You green blooded, inhuman...
-Doctor, my kid is sick!
-Have you tried turning him off and on again?
Solving problems (programming) can help improve problem solving skills.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
You can just download Python and learn to program just fine with that. I don't need a piece of hardware for that.
It is actually a bit curious how dubiously suited the rPi is to its theoretical objective(compared to the obvious strategy of just running freely available software on the ridiculously powerful beige wintels that clutter the world); but how much of a giant kick in the ass it gave the 'dev boards that aren't either weedy microcontrollers or $1500, just call our sales team' market.
Twoddle... I am a doctor, and a programmer. Doctoring involves lots of repetitive tasks, the problem being that individuals are... individual and you have to tweak the process slightly every time. This involves intelligence, and means that many medical tasks that should on the face of it be easy to automate, aren't.
There are lots of doctor-led initiatives out there. For example, when I refer patients to a famous cardiology center I have to fill in an online form and specifying lots of details such as how long it is since they had chest pain and the results of particular tests for an MI. The problem is that my patients may have a different diagnosis - e.g. endocarditis - so I am forced to make details up to make the computer accept the referral, then call the person who gets a printout of the referral form in order to tell them which details are invented. I might also want to tell them some test results that the computer didn't ask for. Another program sometimes swaps patient details - e.g. if you start work on a letter, then look up another patient's results, then return to the letter, the second patient's details are shown at the top of the letter. Ouch. Then sometimes you want to discharge patients home directly from intensive care. Not frequently, but it happens. It's not something that the computer allows for and you have to admit them to a regular ward (at least electronically) before sending them home.
There are also real concerns with liability and permissions... A few years back I wrote a program to help us copy patient's blood results from the results program to our patient lists (basic medical summaries of all our patients in Word). This saved us about 2-3 man hours a day and was a huge relief as the previous team had been averaging about 5 hours unpaid overtime each for a team of 3. I had to write the program in Excel because I didn't have access to a suitable programming language on the hospital systems and I wouldn't have gotten anything homebrew installed. However, even had I been able to use a program of my choice, it's unlikely that I would have been allowed/able to access the confidential results database directly which is what would have been necessary in order for me to further improve my program. When I returned to do a locum shift in that hospital a year later, I found to my delight and horror that every team in the hospital was now using my program. A few versions were corrupted by people who didn't understand it and it was now behaving slightly erratically. What is my liability should something go wrong in the future? It was something I considered at the time, but the temptation of going home earlier was too great.
There is huge opportunity for computerisation to streamline healthcare, but in general it is done very poorly and I do not know how long it will be before the systems help more than they hinder. I have just moved to a stone-age hospital where we use paper almost exclusively. Despite being an old-school nerd able to program in assembly language, C, Matlab and a bit of Java in my free time, it's a huge relief to be able to use computers less at work.
Interesting. I was thinking the opposite.
I once studied law, intending to become a lawyer, then realized that would make me a lawyer, and I wanted a career where I could sleep at night. So I became a programmer, and I've spent many nights in front of a glowing terminal... but I digress.
I feel that learning a bit of law has actually helped my programming. Lawyers spend much of their time picking which rules best apply to a particular circumstance, while programmers pick which algorithms are best suited to a task. Lawyers then submit their case to a judge for consideration, while the programmers simply run the compiler. Lawyers work around contract loopholes by covering them with other clauses, and programmers work around (some) bugs by covering them with better-written wrappers.
Many problem-solving disciplines use similar skills. Programming, being nearly pure logic mixed with a bit of language, can contribute marginally to a wide variety of other fields, including medicine, law, or even politics. It is important, however, to not become too obsessed with the programming approach. A perfectly-written contract that programmatically describes an agreement can still be thrown out by a judge if he thinks it isn't fair.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Now if we could only get the 3D printer crowd to have your level of insight and honesty... Let's see, it's 10:07PM here, I wonder how fast I'll get -1?
If it's one thing the world needs, it's more lawyers.
Can you imagine a world without lawyers?
I feel that learning a bit of arboristry has actually helped my programming. Arborists spend much of their time picking which things best apply to a particular circumstance, while programmers pick which algorithms are best suited to a task. Arborists then execute their decision, while the programmers simply run the compiler. Arborists work around branches and leaves by climbing or crawling, and programmers work around (some) bugs by covering them with better-written wrappers.
I feel that learning a bit of plumbing has actually helped my programming. Plumbers spend much of their time picking which things best apply to a particular circumstance, while programmers pick which algorithms are best suited to a task. Plumbers then execute their decision, while the programmers simply run the compiler. Plumbers work around pipes blockages by clearing them with their tools, and programmers work around (some) bugs by covering them with better-written wrappers.
.. everything starts to look like a nail.
I don't think those examples fit quite as smoothly as a lawyer does, but yes, that's the point. Study across a wide range of subjects can contribute indirectly to an otherwise-unrelated field, because there are isomorphic problems whose solutions will rely on similar techniques. Getting back on the topic of TFA, I think that programming can indeed help make better doctors, simply by offering a different perspective on some problems.
Beyond programming and law, I also enjoy live sound reinforcement, robotics, dance, architecture, and I've recently developed a taste for cooking. I don't know yet how those will all benefit me, but it's likely that they will.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Jokes aside, the "getting justice" days are unfortunately accompanied by the "no idea what's right" days and the "just ruined someone's life" days. I much prefer to work on programming low-impact applications, where I can utterly botch a routine or two and the worst effect is a few new tickets.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
To be fair, in a different way it made Alsup a better judge than some others. I guess that's what GP is talking about.
A few years ago I got to do program reviews in local high school in Rhode Island. In one class they were learning the Microsoft Office suite.
All fine and good, but on that particular day they were working in Excel. The teacher had them doing a payroll spreadsheet. Ok, that works. But then the teacher mentioned the cheat sheet to get the tax amounts.
Based on that I asked the teacher if there was any intention to teach these kids Visual BASIC for Applications (VBA). The teachers answer was that you needed advanced math to be able to program a computer. I wrote this on my report and said that it would actually benefit the kids understanding of mathematics if they knew how to program in MS Office apps. I also said that the act of programming would actually enhance their mathematics skills. Let's face it, for most programming the math you need is to know the basic four functions, maybe modulo, E notation, and exponents. Pretty basic stuff.
So start getting these RasPi boards out there - start getting kids interested in programming on them. You might be surprised what you get out the other end of a project like this.
Here you go fuckwit! http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~klee/misc/slashdot.html
Lawyers learn to phrase and interpret things for what theyd' like them to mean, regardless of reality.
Programmers learn to phrase and interpret things according to reality, regardless of what they'd like them to mean.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I once studied law, intending to become a lawyer, then realized that would make me a lawyer, and I wanted a career where I could sleep at night. So I became a programmer
I'm sure the lawyers who help get justice for rape victims in India or who prosecute war criminals sleep perfectly well at night. Charities need lawyers, plenty of victims of the powerful and wealthy need lawyers.
Thinking in one dimensional stereotypes is not a good advertisment for the benefits of being good at programming.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Indeed. If it weren't for lawyers, who would be there to help us navigate the colossal tangle of bureaucracy that lawyers invented?
Lawyers and bureaucrats are the price we pay for civilisation.
I know that the rugged individualists on slashdot would prefer a society ruled solely by the law of the market and gun, but some of us prefer sanity.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You should have come up with a car analogy too. Then we'd have known what you were talking about.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Always good to hear directly from our Dice overlords.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That's actually not true. Lawyers, like programmers, learn how to analyze complex systems that require interaction in specialized language, and learn the precise uses of the specialized language necessary to produce desired results.
Lawyers -- far more than programmers -- also are required to learn quite a bit about ethical codes of when it is and isn't right to use particular invocations from their craft.
Sure, there is unethical lawyering, and it can be quite disproportionately visible. But the same is true of programming. Its not like malware, despite the biological analogies often made for it ("worms", "viruses", "infections") is a naturally occurring threat.
Both from not having time and stress of the odds they are facing, those kinds of lawyers are less likely to sleep well (or at all) at night than the amoral sociopaths who do whatever it takes to make the most money.
Most skills have some marginal crossover benefits, the question is rather what is the opportunity cost in time. Do you become a better programmer by learning a bit of law or more programming? Does the lawyer become a better lawyer by learning a bit of programming or more legal theory and case study? You need the width of knowledge to work with others, but you also need the depth to really know your stuff. Or rather I feel it's the other way around, if all you know is IT I can have a business-to-IT translator give you work but if you don't have any in-depth skill then you're almost usable to lots of things, but only almost. And if you got width and depth, well you're probably too busy even though you'd be perfect for my project too. It's a team sport, make the players you have exploit their strengths because you'll never get around to fixing all the weaknesses.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings