I think this just shows how IT is basically a service industry. Only a small fraction of coders are needed for the hard, interesting and creative parts -- the rest can just use these via libraries and frameworks.
The author doesn't seem to understand what math IS, how and why programming IS math. The author writes that you don't do a lot of algebra and such in typical web pages. Does your PHP script use SQL? That's algebra, relational algebra. It's not that you need to remember mathematical formulas; it's that have a half decent design for your software, you need mathematical THINKING. If your high school algebra homework was wrong, your sql is probably wrong too.
This. Math isn't a set of knowledge to be memorized, it's a way of thinking, and programming is pretty much the same. Studying math will help you think more clearly about a problem, even if you never use the specific math tools.
I went back to school to study pure math, and I keep having these a-ha moments when I recognize a programming concept in its classical math formulation. The crucial difference is how precisely they are defined, compared to the usual ways of learning programming from examples. It helps understand why many common things in programming are the way they are, and it also gives higher-level perspectives on things. For example, having studied functional analysis, I'm more comfortable manipulating functions with "higher" functions. I imagine proper CS courses will teach the same things, though (my background is in physics).
OTOH, specific math tools can also be enormously fun and useful, for example complex analysis in image processing (see sig).
Your false parallel is showing. You can always find something more compute-intensive, as much as necessary for any increase in compute-power to make a clear difference.
The gist of "MHz wars" was that smarter, lower-MHz CPUs were actually better at compute-intensive tasks, whereas something like Pentium 4 could only show higher numbers of MHz and watts.
To me, the real issue is that some of the best technology ends up in dumb consumer devices like phones, while people who write code and perform heavy scientific computing make do with old-school hardware. For example, try finding a laptop with similar efficiency and density of computing power and memory as phones. I'm struggling to understand what people actually do with their 4..8 cores and gigs and gigs of RAM on phones where the OS/UI doesn't let you do any actual computing. It's just perls before hogs.
You may have paid $30 for the machine itself, but you continue to pay every year for it in terms of power, maintenance, occupied space, and if your hobby time is limited, engineering time figuring out hacks to make it continue working.
Particularly if these are x86-64 machines that don't work with grub, suggesting that they were from around the first generation. If you recall that time in the 90's, those cpus were huge power hogs. I'd never encountered power supplies burning out (without a discrete graphics card) until I met those first gen 64s. Nowadays, you can easily power a magnitude more compute power with the same electrical power cost.
I understand the general sentiment, I was kind of expecting this. I'm rather power conscious in general, and all of my machines, including these old ones, have "laptop" CPUs in small form factor mobos (if not actual laptops). The old ones have a similar TDP to modern laptop ones. One of these mobos runs off a 80 W PicoPSU; the others have heavy discrete GPUs, so they have semi-regular (though fanless) PSUs.
I'm well aware that modern CPUs are more efficient, and I could actually use modern mobos with more RAM, but with these numbers and uses it doesn't seem worth it. I basically need relatively dumb machines to feed GPUs, plus some server usage (which I like to keep independent of GPU-related instabilities).
BTW, x86-64 was introduced in 2003. My "old" CPUs are Core 2 Duo T7200s introduced in 2006, which incidentally are faster at most workloads than my main laptop's Core i5.
you can probably emulate those old systems on a modern $300 computer
It's not about emulation, as these are plain x86-64 machines, not some old architecture. It's about cost. I paid closer to $30 than $300 for these machines, and they get the job done until I find a good reason to invest a few hundred in something more modern.
I still use LILO because some old motherboards won't boot with GRUB in 64-bit mode. GRUB actually stopped working when I switched the CPU to a 64-bit one and updated the distro on one mobo. This was around 2010 and I hadn't used LILO in years, so it was weird to go back, but it gets the job done so I don't mind.
I'd call it obscure because a lot of people seem to criticize it without actually knowing it. It has a reputation of being old and clunky, even though it has developed enormously, and many "modern" languages still lack the parallel math capabilities it had in the early 90s.
This is great advide to anyone, regardless of sudden wealth. Just because you graduated and got a real job doesn't mean you have to quit a frugal student lifestyle. With the money saved, you can afford a gap year to focus on fun things every now and then.
I have very simple "needs", but lots of interests.
I'm having a kind of gap year from work, to focus on stuff like arts and music, but also academic studies. While I don't have tons of money to throw around, I think I can understand some of the issues here to some extent. It's great to have hobbies or voluntary work where you meet people from different backgrounds. That way you don't have to explain things like where you work or how much you make. It generally helps to have meaningful things in your life that are not dependent on your wealth. I guess if you have a shitload of money, you can think of it as a backup that lets you extend your gap year indefinitely.
Basically, I'm just repeating the parent post. Do what you like doing, be it work or studies or whatever. I guess a more general issue is that when people suddenly find themselves with a higher status (e.g. due to graduation, promotion, etc.) they feel a pressure to do grand things. That would explain why sudden wealth might feel like a burden -- you feel like you have to invest it in something world-changing, and if you fail to do that, you'll be more miserable than before all the wealth. But like any peer pressure, you can ignore it an focus on what you really like. Maybe some of those things will grow into something grand and world-changing, with or without all the money.
At the moment I'm working on a math thesis, and I have an art exhibition and a musical play coming up. None of this is groundbreaking in any way, but I feel it's more fun than complaining about the state of Linux drivers.
I use a standing desk, you insensitive clod! I can easily demonstrate an id10t problem without the use of a chair-shaped projectile. This BEGS THE QUESTION, though, what if Mr. Ballmer had used a standing desk?
Strategically placed serifs improve the rhythm of the monospaced text by eliminating large gaps on each side of narrow characters and help to distinguish glyphs like the lowercase l and number 1 at small text sizes.
To me, the i and the l are rather ugly. I wouldn't even call those one-sided hooks serifs. The word reminds me of "sheriff" and Wild West newspaper titles with those big bulky I-beams in capitals. Kids these days, they wouldn't know what a fscking I-beam is, given all these unmanly fonts on their Iphones (back in the day, we used capitals in the beginning of proper nouns, and only in the beginning).
With those semi-serifs on top and the lower turns, the i and the l have too much of a Z character (right, down, right). Similar hooks are OK in some fonts, but these take the idea too far.
If you really want to avoid irregular spaces, just don't use a monospace font.
So that explains why my best shoes were missing for a few weeks. They smelled a bit funny too. I wanted to let you know how funny, so I set up this propeller to transfer the olfactory information. I call it the "FYI fan".
That's nothing...one time I moved a file from one place to another using only the command line.
I think I know how you did it. It's true you generally need a mouse and a GUI to actually _move_ a file, as you need to drag it one pixel at a time, otherwise you run into Zeno's paradox. You can't just instantly quantum-leap a file into another position, at least not without reversing the polarity and crossing the streams. However, there are command-line utilities such as xautomation to control the mouse pointer, so presumably you used one of those to automatize the movement.
I've never understood why stepping down is the responsible solution for CEOs, politicians or whatever after a major embarrassment or mistake. Maybe it's because I think like an engineer. If I make a mistake, I should be the one to bite the bullet and fix it. Instead, the CEO/politician solution is to walk away and let other people clean up the mess. This way, real issues in society are never actually fixed. It's as if "saving the face" is more important than actually fixing broken things.
I didn't read the summary or the article, but I see these comments about overwhelming toolchains. To me, the important bit is understanding some general concepts (it helps to have some electronics experience first) and the language (Verilog is probably easier than VHDL). Fpga4fun and its tutorials were a great introduction to these.
For those of you who think FPGAs are a waste of time compared to small/fast/low-power CPUs, there are plenty of reasons to learn them anyway. The key idea is that you design your own circuit, instead of running your code on someone else's CPU design. If you have any electronics background, you'll appreciate the idea of basically writing your circuits in code, instead of the painstaking and error-prone manual assembly. It really bridges the gap between software and hardware in many ways.
One interesting side effect to me is that FPGAs helped me write and understand parallel code better. In an FPGA, you often write genuinely parallel circuitry, and you need extra care and thought to make it work at all. That kind of thinking will carry over to your software projects too.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this just shows how IT is basically a service industry. Only a small fraction of coders are needed for the hard, interesting and creative parts -- the rest can just use these via libraries and frameworks.
The author doesn't seem to understand what math IS, how and why programming IS math. The author writes that you don't do a lot of algebra and such in typical web pages. Does your PHP script use SQL? That's algebra, relational algebra. It's not that you need to remember mathematical formulas; it's that have a half decent design for your software, you need mathematical THINKING. If your high school algebra homework was wrong, your sql is probably wrong too.
This. Math isn't a set of knowledge to be memorized, it's a way of thinking, and programming is pretty much the same. Studying math will help you think more clearly about a problem, even if you never use the specific math tools.
I went back to school to study pure math, and I keep having these a-ha moments when I recognize a programming concept in its classical math formulation. The crucial difference is how precisely they are defined, compared to the usual ways of learning programming from examples. It helps understand why many common things in programming are the way they are, and it also gives higher-level perspectives on things. For example, having studied functional analysis, I'm more comfortable manipulating functions with "higher" functions. I imagine proper CS courses will teach the same things, though (my background is in physics).
OTOH, specific math tools can also be enormously fun and useful, for example complex analysis in image processing (see sig).
No.
Your false parallel is showing. You can always find something more compute-intensive, as much as necessary for any increase in compute-power to make a clear difference.
The gist of "MHz wars" was that smarter, lower-MHz CPUs were actually better at compute-intensive tasks, whereas something like Pentium 4 could only show higher numbers of MHz and watts.
To me, the real issue is that some of the best technology ends up in dumb consumer devices like phones, while people who write code and perform heavy scientific computing make do with old-school hardware. For example, try finding a laptop with similar efficiency and density of computing power and memory as phones. I'm struggling to understand what people actually do with their 4..8 cores and gigs and gigs of RAM on phones where the OS/UI doesn't let you do any actual computing. It's just perls before hogs.
I believe you would be using it incorrectly.
I'm sure he's drooling in a well-defined pattern to make an array of small droplets on the screen. And that's why people don't like lenticular 3D.
Get some exercise. The sleep of a laboring man is sweet.
That's some facepalmy advice for a person with cold, especially if they have fever.
You may have paid $30 for the machine itself, but you continue to pay every year for it in terms of power, maintenance, occupied space, and if your hobby time is limited, engineering time figuring out hacks to make it continue working.
Particularly if these are x86-64 machines that don't work with grub, suggesting that they were from around the first generation. If you recall that time in the 90's, those cpus were huge power hogs. I'd never encountered power supplies burning out (without a discrete graphics card) until I met those first gen 64s. Nowadays, you can easily power a magnitude more compute power with the same electrical power cost.
I understand the general sentiment, I was kind of expecting this. I'm rather power conscious in general, and all of my machines, including these old ones, have "laptop" CPUs in small form factor mobos (if not actual laptops). The old ones have a similar TDP to modern laptop ones. One of these mobos runs off a 80 W PicoPSU; the others have heavy discrete GPUs, so they have semi-regular (though fanless) PSUs.
I'm well aware that modern CPUs are more efficient, and I could actually use modern mobos with more RAM, but with these numbers and uses it doesn't seem worth it. I basically need relatively dumb machines to feed GPUs, plus some server usage (which I like to keep independent of GPU-related instabilities).
BTW, x86-64 was introduced in 2003. My "old" CPUs are Core 2 Duo T7200s introduced in 2006, which incidentally are faster at most workloads than my main laptop's Core i5.
you can probably emulate those old systems on a modern $300 computer
It's not about emulation, as these are plain x86-64 machines, not some old architecture. It's about cost. I paid closer to $30 than $300 for these machines, and they get the job done until I find a good reason to invest a few hundred in something more modern.
I still use LILO because some old motherboards won't boot with GRUB in 64-bit mode. GRUB actually stopped working when I switched the CPU to a 64-bit one and updated the distro on one mobo. This was around 2010 and I hadn't used LILO in years, so it was weird to go back, but it gets the job done so I don't mind.
I'm afraid that's Parseltongue, not Python.
I'd call it obscure because a lot of people seem to criticize it without actually knowing it. It has a reputation of being old and clunky, even though it has developed enormously, and many "modern" languages still lack the parallel math capabilities it had in the early 90s.
This is great advide to anyone, regardless of sudden wealth. Just because you graduated and got a real job doesn't mean you have to quit a frugal student lifestyle. With the money saved, you can afford a gap year to focus on fun things every now and then.
I have very simple "needs", but lots of interests.
I'm having a kind of gap year from work, to focus on stuff like arts and music, but also academic studies. While I don't have tons of money to throw around, I think I can understand some of the issues here to some extent. It's great to have hobbies or voluntary work where you meet people from different backgrounds. That way you don't have to explain things like where you work or how much you make. It generally helps to have meaningful things in your life that are not dependent on your wealth. I guess if you have a shitload of money, you can think of it as a backup that lets you extend your gap year indefinitely.
Basically, I'm just repeating the parent post. Do what you like doing, be it work or studies or whatever. I guess a more general issue is that when people suddenly find themselves with a higher status (e.g. due to graduation, promotion, etc.) they feel a pressure to do grand things. That would explain why sudden wealth might feel like a burden -- you feel like you have to invest it in something world-changing, and if you fail to do that, you'll be more miserable than before all the wealth. But like any peer pressure, you can ignore it an focus on what you really like. Maybe some of those things will grow into something grand and world-changing, with or without all the money.
At the moment I'm working on a math thesis, and I have an art exhibition and a musical play coming up. None of this is groundbreaking in any way, but I feel it's more fun than complaining about the state of Linux drivers.
gamers. hahahahaha!
Fixed that for you. Enjoy your corporate entertainment while we Linux guys work on creating something new.
I suspect the PEBKAC.
I use a standing desk, you insensitive clod! I can easily demonstrate an id10t problem without the use of a chair-shaped projectile. This BEGS THE QUESTION, though, what if Mr. Ballmer had used a standing desk?
Strategically placed serifs improve the rhythm of the monospaced text by eliminating large gaps on each side of narrow characters and help to distinguish glyphs like the lowercase l and number 1 at small text sizes.
To me, the i and the l are rather ugly. I wouldn't even call those one-sided hooks serifs. The word reminds me of "sheriff" and Wild West newspaper titles with those big bulky I-beams in capitals. Kids these days, they wouldn't know what a fscking I-beam is, given all these unmanly fonts on their Iphones (back in the day, we used capitals in the beginning of proper nouns, and only in the beginning).
With those semi-serifs on top and the lower turns, the i and the l have too much of a Z character (right, down, right). Similar hooks are OK in some fonts, but these take the idea too far.
If you really want to avoid irregular spaces, just don't use a monospace font.
Hey anonymous Scandinavian neighbor.
I have myself been in your shoes
So that explains why my best shoes were missing for a few weeks. They smelled a bit funny too. I wanted to let you know how funny, so I set up this propeller to transfer the olfactory information. I call it the "FYI fan".
Actually, log(year()), it looks closer and closer.
No, it doesn't, at least if we're talking about time TO nuclear fusion, not time OF. Log(2016) > log(2015). The OP should just have said "10 years".
That's nothing...one time I moved a file from one place to another using only the command line.
I think I know how you did it. It's true you generally need a mouse and a GUI to actually _move_ a file, as you need to drag it one pixel at a time, otherwise you run into Zeno's paradox. You can't just instantly quantum-leap a file into another position, at least not without reversing the polarity and crossing the streams. However, there are command-line utilities such as xautomation to control the mouse pointer, so presumably you used one of those to automatize the movement.
He's the witch^Whacker! Burn him!
I've never understood why stepping down is the responsible solution for CEOs, politicians or whatever after a major embarrassment or mistake. Maybe it's because I think like an engineer. If I make a mistake, I should be the one to bite the bullet and fix it. Instead, the CEO/politician solution is to walk away and let other people clean up the mess. This way, real issues in society are never actually fixed. It's as if "saving the face" is more important than actually fixing broken things.
Well I just wrote this shell using nothing but Bash, so nyah nyah nyah!
I just spewed iced tea through my nose
Ah, that's a well known condition. Don't forget to apply for your disability money.
I didn't read the summary or the article, but I see these comments about overwhelming toolchains. To me, the important bit is understanding some general concepts (it helps to have some electronics experience first) and the language (Verilog is probably easier than VHDL). Fpga4fun and its tutorials were a great introduction to these.
For those of you who think FPGAs are a waste of time compared to small/fast/low-power CPUs, there are plenty of reasons to learn them anyway. The key idea is that you design your own circuit, instead of running your code on someone else's CPU design. If you have any electronics background, you'll appreciate the idea of basically writing your circuits in code, instead of the painstaking and error-prone manual assembly. It really bridges the gap between software and hardware in many ways.
One interesting side effect to me is that FPGAs helped me write and understand parallel code better. In an FPGA, you often write genuinely parallel circuitry, and you need extra care and thought to make it work at all. That kind of thinking will carry over to your software projects too.