GeePawHill

GeePawHill, 4 days ago

@GottaLaff As we've been seeing in the NY case, these prosecutors, federal or top-ranked state, a) do not suck, and b) do not like to lose, and c) are very very clever.

If she's reversed 3 times, the strength of the motion to remove starts to get real.

I'm sure the 11th circuit is already tempted, and they can do it at will, they don't have to wait for a motion.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Repeat: THERE IS NO GRID OBJECT INSIDE THIS CODE. It is done with maps, from omino-placement-position to coordinates, and from coordinates to omino-placements that occupy them.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Up until the last two years, when I grokked and implemented this algorithm, the prior "coolest algorithm of all time" for me was the heapsort/heapmerge, which is still a stunningly sophisticated algorithm that is immensely fun to implement. quicksort and shellsort get all the press, but heapsort is also O(n log n).

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Today, in my day job, we had a math guy come and tell us about his efforts at magic square generation. He is not a coder, but a math guy, and he has strictly limited himself to only exploring this problem by trial and error and pattern-matching and hypothesizing, zero internet lookups.

And we all just geeked the fuck out with him.

It was brilliant.

In my dayjob.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

I call that some right motherfucking livelihood. :)

But it got me thinking about astonishing algorithms I have known.

Hence the OP.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

What drove this? Our belief that teaching young people to become geeks requires us to teach them, not just syntax & semantics, and not just collaboration, tho those are urgent, but actual problem-solving.

We wanted to hear this guy who was not copy-pasting from the internet, but was actually solving the problem in front of him, not by first principles, but by experimentation and hypothesis.

Teaching people how to approach problems is much harder than teaching them where to put semi-colons.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Realistically, most problems confronting a professional developer are not math problems, per se.

Honestly, syntax & semantics disappear after a year or two of coding.

Collaboration, mmmm, slower to develop, but we have plans in place for that.

But beyond those two hurdles lies another target: solving problems by experimentation, hypotheses, pattern-recognition, and sheer fucking stubbornness.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Here's the thing: they don't pay us to solve problems they've already solved.

(They do sometimes pay us to solve problems other people have solved.)

The best geeks know syntax and semantics. The best geeks know collaboration.

And the best geeks know how to find solutions to problems other people have solved, and how to develop solutions that no one they can find have solved.

And here's the secret sauce: they don't just know how to do that. They revel in doing that.

Geek joy.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

The whole "geeks are just fancy-typists", a trend that's been at work for 2 decades, "and now we can use an LLM to replace them" thing is heading this trade towards a massive collapse.

The young and coming geeks we want to teach are the ones who will come out the other side of that collapse.

They will do so, if they have syntax and semantics, collaboration, and problem-solving under their belts.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

Burn it all down.

GeePawHill, 5 days ago

@gdinwiddie I appreciate where you're coming from, but it's not for me to decide who is Black and who is not, on the inside or the outside.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

Someone asked a question, and it triggers to tell me the serio-comic story of my discovery of my depression, when I was about 25 or so, say '85 or so.

I played racquetball with a guy, who was a kind of "friend you don't really like", and he was very good, and I was modestly good, and he kicked my ass and wore me out over and over again.

Coming out of the court one day, clambering up into the van, I got this intense aching bone pain in my forearm. I mean, like, deep owwie.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

Well that's fucking weird. And it was pretty bad, enough for me to notice that it had already started happening, before that, but was growing more severe.

So, I went to the doctor. (Total tangent: the doctor was a slightly older-than-me woman who was pretty and smart and kind and upon whom I was instantly becrushed.)

And she poked around, and she ran some tests, and we got nuffin', no clue. There is nothing wrong with me.

But the deep ache persisted.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

So then one day, my bestie, my ex-, but that part was over and resolved, was staying with me, having gone on sabbatical for six months, and just returning to the area, and she lived with me for a few months to get resettled, one night we got in a big argument.

I do not recall what the argument was about.

What I do recall is that, after a couple of hours, I realized that I was the asshole.

This, of course, necessitated an apology.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

Okay, I apologized, she slept up in the loft, and I was standing on the ladder, and I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, you're right, I was an asshole, and such like.

And you know, this my ex-, we knew each other pretty well, and she forgives me, and now we're just talking.

And the subject of this bone pain comes up, and I've been to the doctor twice, and we got nuffin'.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

And bestie says, "Well, did you tell her you're miserable all the time?"

"Noooooo, I'm not miserable all the time, I don't know what you mean!"

<lowers head, looks over glasses>

Now mind you, I was just in a big fight, where I was in the wrong and had to apologize, and I'm like, okay, okay, I'll tell her.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

So at the next appointment, I acted as any perfectly mature 11-year-old would act.

I stared at her feet, I dug my toe in to the ground, and I very quietly said, "My friend says I have to tell you that I'm miserable all the time."

The doctor said, "Oh, that's interesting. Hang on, let me get a little, just a little thing, it's a form, just fill out the form real quick, just take a second."

It was a questionnaire, 12 questions, and I filled it out.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

Always the over-achiever, innit, I scored 11 out of 12 correctly.

I mean, correctly for a person who is suffering from serious depression.

And that was how I got my first diagnosis.

True story: this doctor upon whom I had the most gigantic crush, looked at the questionnaire, and said, "Oh, honey. You are depressed."

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

These were prozac days, and I had my first meds within a week.

The bone pain went away.

Prozac lasted the longest of any of my meds, two solid years. No bone pain, less misery, it worked great, for as long as it worked.

Then I entered the long cycle of heavy doses and short-term failure that characterizes someone with organic -- was called clinical, now called major -- depressive disorder.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

Anyway, I gotta wrap this, it really is time to crash.

Lemme tellya, if you are having this kind of health issue, please please please talk to a medical professional about it.

And don't play that "no meds" shit. Give the meds a chance. There are a stunning number of possible meds to help, and some will work for you, and some won't, and it's different for everyone.

If you find one that works, fucking take it.

You're not weak for taking medicine. You're ill. Take the fucking medicine.

GeePawHill, 7 days ago

The deep reason I share the story of my illness -- I am in some mysterious remission for like 6 years, tho lately it has flickered up again -- is that we do not talk often enough or openly enough about this shit.

It's an illness. It's like cancer, or diabetes, or a broken leg, it's an illness.

It isn't happening to you because you are weak, or bad, or immoral. It's happening to you because illness happens to people.