Prior to 1970 most symphony orchestra musicians were men. Then around 1970 blind auditions (when you don't know who is playing or their gender) started to become common, and are now nearly universal. As a result, symphony musicians today are nearly evenly split between genders. See: http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orc...
I have interviewed prospective software developers in my career, and know that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to counteract my own prejudices even when I wanted to be fair. To be a woman interviewed for a job by someone with the views of the Google employee who believed women are genetically inferior for engineering would be devastating. Even someone with more even handed views undoubtedly harbors some bias.
I don't know if "blind interviews" for engineers will ever be practical, so maybe we are stuck with perpetuating our prejudices on hiring decisions indefinitely.
I'm coming in on this very late, but just wanted to comment that the headline that "Mandelbrot Zooms Now Surpass the Scale of the Observable Universe" is pretty misleading. The DOS-based program Fractint (which you can still run under DOSBox) achieved zooms of 10^1600 over twenty years ago. See http://www.nahee.com/spanky/ww...
That said, the animation linked with this post is remarkable and a worthy effort, and 10^227 is nothing to sneeze at.
Anyone in the field who hasn't figured this out yet needs to be let go.
What a laugh! Another slashdot story about how a development career is over when you are 50 (or 40, or 30, or 22)! I have no doubt ageism is a reality in our field, but...
I am about to turn 64, have intentionally avoided management my entire career (although I have had plenty technical lead assignments), and have learned an entirely new language and development environment in the last two years.
The secret is simple. I have bothered to learn about the technical domain of my industry, and am not just a programmer. This makes me valuable to my employer, a NASA contractor.
You joke, but if this were true, it would be poetic justice. If the (likely bogus) rape allegations were posted, this would just be what Assange does to others. Why are most Slashdotters so outraged by the rape allegations, but not outraged by what Wikileaks posts that can literally destroy lives?
Mathematicians, by and large, tend to be very unhappy people in my experience. Not all of them, of course. Some mathematicians have a certain "spark" that allows them to abandon mathematics temporarily and give themselves over to the pleasure of an interpersonal relationship; but even so it is still against their nature to do so, and they will always slip back into the comfort of a mathematical outlook sooner or later.
Even with qualification, this seems like a very rash generalization. I attended a doctoral program in Logic at the University of California Berkeley, where the names on the office doors were pretty much the same as the names of the most significant theorems. What struck me was the incredible diversity of how the best mathematicians' minds worked. Some saw mathematics as a meaningless game with symbols. Others had a vivid imagination for platonic realities that they captured in their work. Some were multi-talented, outgoing, and verbally and socially skilled . Others were introverted and poor communicators. I don't know what mathematicians you know, but your generalization that mathematicians tend to be unhappy makes no sense to me at all. I personally knew, and in a few cases worked for, a number who solved important problems. An example would be Julia Robinson (Hilbert's Tenth Problem) who certainly suffered from poor health and did have some difficult times earlier in her life, but at the time I knew her (1986-1972) could not be described as an unhappy person.
As an undergraduate in 1968, I did an independent study that estimated the size of the universal turing machine described in: Davis, Martin (1958), Computability and Unsolvability, New York NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. This was tedious but not hard. For any slashdotters ready to rush out and implement a working universal Turing machine, be forwarned that your parts list needs to include an infinitely long tape. Worse, when calculating the output of an arbitrary recursive function on your universal Turing machine, you won't know in advance how long the tape needs to be, in case you were cheap and bought a tape with finite length rather than the more expensive infinite one.
The universal Turing machine itself consists of a large but quite finite set of quadruples. The problem is the longish tape.
>It's an ugly fact, but Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
This poster is absolutely correct. Firefox 1.5 has caused my system to crash more times than I can count. Then I saw this article in Scott's newsletter that confirmed it wasn't just me:
My "solution" was to go back to 1.0.7, and use IE when I have to. But I am concerned about the lack of responsiveness of the Mozilla team that Scott's newsletter and the poster mention. I have seen the problems on two completely different machines, one running Win98SE and one running WinXP professional on completely different hardware. I have not had problems under Linux, but before all the slashdotters pile on saying it's just Windows, let me say that the two Windows systems are otherwise quite stable. This is discouraging for me because I would like to leave IE behind as soon as possible.
I work in the aerospace industry supporting the space program. I'm nearly 60, and so are some of my colleagues, along with some new hires in their twenties. In our industry, senior software developers have accumulated domain knowledge involving math, physics, and legacy space systems. That, along with the reality that the government is slow to adopt new languages and technologies, makes a long and productive software development career possible. An added benefit is that our work involves solving interesting design and architecture problems that extend way beyond coding.
We work in teams where some of the programmers are old enough to be grandparents of others, and have a great time working together. Clearly something is lost in programming aptitude as you age, but in a scientific programming environment this is more than made up by technical knowledge accumulated with experience. And there's a lot of truth to "use it or lose it". Once you have gotten sucked into project management for several years, your ability to develop code may be lost forever.
My advice to any student who aspires to a long career is to get as strong a background in math, physics, and other technical domains as possible as possible.
The Altamont story about wind farms killing birds is old news. While true, the story is misleading because the vast majority of wind farms are in very different settings with a much lower thread toi birds. A much more reasoned analysis can be found here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pardo/birds/archive/archive 2/msg00468.html
Late forties! Hah! I'm in my mid fifties doing software development for a NASA contractor, and doing quite well, thank you! I'm always amused by these Slashdot posts agonizing about turning thirty...
Here's what works for me.
1. Position yourself so domain knowledge counts, don't just code. In my case I have learned about orbital physics, scientific modeling, and simulation. I do more than code - I architect systems, facilitate articulating requirements, design, code, and test. I also get involved in technical analysis projects that are solved using software.
2. Get a decent education. I have a strong background in mathematics, and I have gone back to school for more courses many times over the years, though I have yet to take a "programming" course.
3. Resist becoming a pure project manager. As the years of experience grow, the pressure to manage projects grows more and more intense. I decided a long time ago not to abandon a technical career. But I do mentor younger people and take on some project management roles.
4. Study, read, and learn, all the time. Not everybody continues their technical interest at home, but I do. I play with my home computer farm and participate in open source projects.
5. Be an advocate for change. NASA is incredibly conservative about computer platforms. This makes things easier for older programmers (C and Fortran still rule), but the amusing part is I find myself among those working aggressively to upgrade the software development infrastructure.
My personal experience is that aptitude does not diminish with age, but mental resistance to diving into something new increases. When you give in to that tired feeling, you are on the road to obsolescence. If you are out of direct technical work for even a year or two, it's hard to come back. When you resist the mental fatigue, if you are fortunate, you will experience once again the rush of submerging yourself deeply into a problem and solving it.
Oh yes, I have an advantage over the 20-and-30-somethings. My kids are grown up and gone, I actually have some time...
Slashdot Mirror
Prior to 1970 most symphony orchestra musicians were men. Then around 1970 blind auditions (when you don't know who is playing or their gender) started to become common, and are now nearly universal. As a result, symphony musicians today are nearly evenly split between genders. See: http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orc...
I have interviewed prospective software developers in my career, and know that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to counteract my own prejudices even when I wanted to be fair. To be a woman interviewed for a job by someone with the views of the Google employee who believed women are genetically inferior for engineering would be devastating. Even someone with more even handed views undoubtedly harbors some bias.
I don't know if "blind interviews" for engineers will ever be practical, so maybe we are stuck with perpetuating our prejudices on hiring decisions indefinitely.
I'm coming in on this very late, but just wanted to comment that the headline that "Mandelbrot Zooms Now Surpass the Scale of the Observable Universe" is pretty misleading. The DOS-based program Fractint (which you can still run under DOSBox) achieved zooms of 10^1600 over twenty years ago. See http://www.nahee.com/spanky/ww...
That said, the animation linked with this post is remarkable and a worthy effort, and 10^227 is nothing to sneeze at.
Anyone in the field who hasn't figured this out yet needs to be let go.
What a laugh! Another slashdot story about how a development career is over when you are 50 (or 40, or 30, or 22)! I have no doubt ageism is a reality in our field, but ...
I am about to turn 64, have intentionally avoided management my entire career (although I have had plenty technical lead assignments), and have learned an entirely new language and development environment in the last two years.
The secret is simple. I have bothered to learn about the technical domain of my industry, and am not just a programmer. This makes me valuable to my employer, a NASA contractor.
Someone just leaked the entire plot on Wikileaks.
You joke, but if this were true, it would be poetic justice. If the (likely bogus) rape allegations were posted, this would just be what Assange does to others. Why are most Slashdotters so outraged by the rape allegations, but not outraged by what Wikileaks posts that can literally destroy lives?
Mathematicians, by and large, tend to be very unhappy people in my experience. Not all of them, of course. Some mathematicians have a certain "spark" that allows them to abandon mathematics temporarily and give themselves over to the pleasure of an interpersonal relationship; but even so it is still against their nature to do so, and they will always slip back into the comfort of a mathematical outlook sooner or later.
Even with qualification, this seems like a very rash generalization. I attended a doctoral program in Logic at the University of California Berkeley, where the names on the office doors were pretty much the same as the names of the most significant theorems. What struck me was the incredible diversity of how the best mathematicians' minds worked. Some saw mathematics as a meaningless game with symbols. Others had a vivid imagination for platonic realities that they captured in their work. Some were multi-talented, outgoing, and verbally and socially skilled . Others were introverted and poor communicators. I don't know what mathematicians you know, but your generalization that mathematicians tend to be unhappy makes no sense to me at all. I personally knew, and in a few cases worked for, a number who solved important problems. An example would be Julia Robinson (Hilbert's Tenth Problem) who certainly suffered from poor health and did have some difficult times earlier in her life, but at the time I knew her (1986-1972) could not be described as an unhappy person.
As an undergraduate in 1968, I did an independent study that estimated the size of the universal turing machine described in: Davis, Martin (1958), Computability and Unsolvability, New York NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. This was tedious but not hard. For any slashdotters ready to rush out and implement a working universal Turing machine, be forwarned that your parts list needs to include an infinitely long tape. Worse, when calculating the output of an arbitrary recursive function on your universal Turing machine, you won't know in advance how long the tape needs to be, in case you were cheap and bought a tape with finite length rather than the more expensive infinite one.
The universal Turing machine itself consists of a large but quite finite set of quadruples. The problem is the longish tape.
>It's an ugly fact, but Firefox is the most unstable program in common use.
This poster is absolutely correct. Firefox 1.5 has caused my system to crash more times than I can count. Then I saw this article in Scott's newsletter that confirmed it wasn't just me:
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/75.htm#ff15
My "solution" was to go back to 1.0.7, and use IE when I have to. But I am concerned about the lack of responsiveness of the Mozilla team that Scott's newsletter and the poster mention. I have seen the problems on two completely different machines, one running Win98SE and one running WinXP professional on completely different hardware. I have not had problems under Linux, but before all the slashdotters pile on saying it's just Windows, let me say that the two Windows systems are otherwise quite stable. This is discouraging for me because I would like to leave IE behind as soon as possible.
I work in the aerospace industry supporting the space program. I'm nearly 60, and so are some of my colleagues, along with some new hires in their twenties. In our industry, senior software developers have accumulated domain knowledge involving math, physics, and legacy space systems. That, along with the reality that the government is slow to adopt new languages and technologies, makes a long and productive software development career possible. An added benefit is that our work involves solving interesting design and architecture problems that extend way beyond coding.
We work in teams where some of the programmers are old enough to be grandparents of others, and have a great time working together. Clearly something is lost in programming aptitude as you age, but in a scientific programming environment this is more than made up by technical knowledge accumulated with experience. And there's a lot of truth to "use it or lose it". Once you have gotten sucked into project management for several years, your ability to develop code may be lost forever.
My advice to any student who aspires to a long career is to get as strong a background in math, physics, and other technical domains as possible as possible.
The Altamont story about wind farms killing birds is old news. While true, the story is misleading because the vast majority of wind farms are in very different settings with a much lower thread toi birds. A much more reasoned analysis can be found here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pardo/birds/archive/archive 2/msg00468.html
Late forties! Hah! I'm in my mid fifties doing software development for a NASA contractor, and doing quite well, thank you! I'm always amused by these Slashdot posts agonizing about turning thirty ...
...
Here's what works for me.
1. Position yourself so domain knowledge counts, don't just code. In my case I have learned about orbital physics, scientific modeling, and simulation. I do more than code - I architect systems, facilitate articulating requirements, design, code, and test. I also get involved in technical analysis projects that are solved using software.
2. Get a decent education. I have a strong background in mathematics, and I have gone back to school for more courses many times over the years, though I have yet to take a "programming" course.
3. Resist becoming a pure project manager. As the years of experience grow, the pressure to manage projects grows more and more intense. I decided a long time ago not to abandon a technical career. But I do mentor younger people and take on some project management roles.
4. Study, read, and learn, all the time. Not everybody continues their technical interest at home, but I do. I play with my home computer farm and participate in open source projects.
5. Be an advocate for change. NASA is incredibly conservative about computer platforms. This makes things easier for older programmers (C and Fortran still rule), but the amusing part is I find myself among those working aggressively to upgrade the software development infrastructure.
My personal experience is that aptitude does not diminish with age, but mental resistance to diving into something new increases. When you give in to that tired feeling, you are on the road to obsolescence. If you are out of direct technical work for even a year or two, it's hard to come back. When you resist the mental fatigue, if you are fortunate, you will experience once again the rush of submerging yourself deeply into a problem and solving it.
Oh yes, I have an advantage over the 20-and-30-somethings. My kids are grown up and gone, I actually have some time