promovicz, 20 days ago (edited 20 days ago)

@recursive Brainstorming, broadly:

• full-model 3D engines
• math/algebra kernels
• fast interpreters
• databases
• UI toolkits
• web browsers
• proof engines/solvers
• real-time control systems
• garbage collectors

My background is in "system programming" (self-taught broad CS).

recursive, 20 days ago

Given how many of us have CS degrees ( https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2020#developer-profile-undergraduate-major-professional-developers2 ) I naively think we should be a bit less afraid of it, but, based on my own experiences, I'll speculate why we're afraid of it (esp from a large university bias):

• exposure to related topics in frankly bad courses: intro physics lectures taught to everyone in large lecture halls, calculus courses for engineers that fail to connect the material with any kind of first principles
  [2/?]

karlhigley, 20 days ago

@recursive i had all of these but the one my peers hated the most was discrete math as a prerequisite weed out course

(i took number theory as a teenager, loved that class, and eat over 10000 spiders a day)

recursive, 20 days ago

@karlhigley I think I disassociated all the way through the intro discrete math course but did okay at it

karlhigley, 20 days ago

@recursive i hated all the the things my peers were fine with and vice versa. almost failed several semesters of calculus in a row, never attended modern algebra and set the curve. i literally got carded to turn in my exams but also desperately needed a tutor 🤷‍♀️

recursive, 20 days ago

@karlhigley I will again point to Talia Ringer's blog post https://taliaringer.wordpress.com/2023/07/22/full-circle/ because it's one of the things recently that made me understand that all the times people around me thought less-abstract things were easier, much to my confusion, it wasn't something broken about me.

recursive, 20 days ago

Actually I had a few more, but I realized I was lost in the weeds and I reflected on my time a decade later pair programming with new engineers on a large codebase and realized this:
At least in my experience I was missing a vital component of learning and becoming confident about my abilities -- I've never taught much of that material. I think my radical proposal for a more ideal system of education is one where you're required to teach more and sooner.
[3/3]

recursive, 20 days ago

Do I blame the vast business demand for CRUD/ETL apps for distracting young minds from learning all of this other stuff? I'm not sure. But I certainly saw plenty of people whose attitude was "I don't need to know all this, I just want the respectable piece of paper." And given the economic system we live in, I can't blame those individuals.

promovicz, 20 days ago

@recursive I used to blame the Bologna reforms. Now I'm leaning more towards blaming neo-liberalism in general, and its shift away from "humanism". Then again, I come from an academic family, and it seems like a bit of a culture argument. Then again, those do matter?

recursive, 20 days ago

There's probably some loosely connected commentary around how people who don't feel confident doing these things will feel confident sprinkling some AI magic on anything at all, showing an interesting result, and shipping the result

Paxxi, 20 days ago

@recursive I think it's pure logic combined with societal factors.
For every compiler backend engineer there's 10-100 000 crud developers. Combine that with bad math teaching and how math is treated in general and you basically end up steering people away from math heavy topics.

I don't have a CS degree and math is by far my weakest area