You and Your Research
Its not always about the money I earn now, or over the next two weeks. Looking at thing from that perspective is not just a narrow minded way of looking but a very destructive thing over the longer run. I push 16 hours work day packed with productivity at the extreme, why? Sure I don't get paid for all that immediately. But bear in mind incrementally over the years I have learned tons more than the average guy. I am also better trained to perform on my current job than my peers. The chances of me doing some thing big are higher, I am better aligned to a good job/promotion or a…
From "You and Your Research" by Dick Hamming: Now Alan Chynoweth mentioned that I used to eat at the physics table. I had been eating with the mathematicians and I found out that I already knew a fair amount of mathematics; in fact, I wasn't learning much. The physics table was, as he said, an exciting place, but I think he exaggerated on how much I contributed. It was very interesting to listen to Shockley, Brattain, Bardeen, J. B. Johnson, Ken McKay and other people, and I was learning a lot. But unfortunately a Nobel Prize came, and a promotion came, and what was left was the dregs.…
> I want to study data science, maths, devops and find that my desire is driven by fear of becoming outdated and irrelevant. [..] and conquering the anxiety of ever changing rules to the game. If that is your genuine concern, I'd suggest focussing on timeless topics. Two easy rule of thumbs: (1) if it's been around for a while and still relevant, it's probably going to stay that way (eg compilers/parsers, operating systems). (2) if it's hard and math-y, it has a good chance at staying power, even if new. In any case, do what adyus said: pick one thing, and ship, ship, ship. Some…
Mostly not blog posts, but for the last years I tend to revisit the same resources over and over again for inspiration: - "You and your research" by Hamming, and his video lectures which expand on topics in the original talk: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 - "On teaching mathematics" by V. I. Arnold: http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html - "Undergraduation" by Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html - "Learn and relearn your field", and many others in the same category, by…
Reading material: 1) You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html --- "There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt…
A perennial. Here are the threads with comments. They're not very large are they: You and Your Research – Richard Hamming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27451360 - June 2021 (1 comment) You and Your Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242617 - Nov 2020 (1 comment) Richard Hamming: You and Your Research (1986) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24171820 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) You and Your Research – A talk by Richard W. Hamming [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558974 - June 2020 (1 comment) You and Your Research by Richard Hamming (1995) [video] -…
First, please see my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13572547 I think your disagreement with Graham is over a definition of words. You seem to be saying that creation of value is the indivisible sum of efforts to (a) decide what to build, (b) build it, and (c) sell it. He assumes a and b can be isolated out. In any case though, take any highly successful company. Imagine if all the marketing people and product/engineering/design people were suddenly segregated, and forced to work without the other. Who's more worried? I'm not at all saying marketing people are useless,…
Interesting take on this from Hamming's essay "You and Your Research" (http://paulgraham.com/hamming.html): Another personality defect is ego assertion and I'll speak in this case of my own experience. I came from Los Alamos and in the early days I was using a machine in New York at 590 Madison Avenue where we merely rented time. I was still dressing in western clothes, big slash pockets, a bolo and all those things. I vaguely noticed that I was not getting as good service as other people. So I set out to measure. You came in and you waited for your turn; I felt I was not getting a fair…
Executive summary: Smart kid can't find a direct way to tell faceless companies his smart ideas so they can implement them, so he founds a startup in the vein of Halfbakery, Get Satisfaction or UserVoice where companies can track that sort of thing, and people can write their ideas up. Translation from Bitter Whiz Kid to English: self-important child gets no traction on his resume so starts a web site that he thinks will obviously make the world stampede to his door and he won't have to get a real job. Which is great, because even though this idea is nice, it'll fail because: 1. Companies…
"But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes, said, ``I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.'' Well I said to myself, ``That is…