I do not know the specific background of Mr Lee, but the thing I always tell myself is that you can teach programming to a microbiologist, but not microbiology to a programmer.
As an undergraduate, he studied maths at Trinity College Cambridge. Béla Bollobás said [1]:
> I certainly taught him more than anybody else in Cambridge. I can truthfully say that he was an exceptionally good student. I’m not sure that this is really known in Singapore. “Because he’s now the Prime Minister,” people may say, “oh, you would say he was good.” No, he was truly outstanding: he was head and shoulders above the rest of the students. He was not only the first, but the gap between him and the man who came second was huge.
> I think that he did computer science (after mathematics) mostly because his father didn’t want him to stay in pure mathematics. Loong was not only hardworking, conscientious and professional, but he was also very inventive. All the signs indicated that he would have been a world-class research mathematician. I’m sure his father never realized how exceptional Loong was. He thought Loong was very good. No, Loong was much better than that. When I tried to tell Lee Kuan Yew, “Look, your son is phenomenally good: you should encourage him to do mathematics,” then he implied that that was impossible, since as a top-flight professional mathematician Loong would leave Singapore for Princeton, Harvard or Cambridge, and that would send the wrong signal to the people in Singapore. And I have to agree that this was a very good point indeed. Now I am even more impressed by Lee Hsien Loong than I was all those years ago, and I am very proud that I taught him; he seems to be doing very well. I have come round to thinking that it was indeed good for him to go into politics; he can certainly make an awful lot of difference.
He then did the (now-discontinued) Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180722130213/https://www2.ims....
I dont know if he's good for Singapore but I mean, he did one of the most noble thing a human can do so I wouldnt blame him. I hope to do 1% of what this politician tried to do in my lifetime.
Solve sudokus?
Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong…
You can go online and ask Singaporeans all day about their opinion of Lee Hsien Loong, depending on how old they are they've voted for or against him and the PAP several times.
Singapore is a de facto one-party state, but it stays that way by (sometimes narrowly) keeping the ruling party in power by voting for it periodically.
The comparison to Kim Jun "um" is inept and insulting.
The early pandemic outlined how many politicians lacked even the ability to reason about exponentials (let alone scientific thinking!) I am very glad that there is at least SOME representation of great thinkers amongst our leader-class
From what I’ve experienced, the lack of corruption in Singapore is partly cultural and partly due to their heavy penalties for crime.
Does Taiwan count? I would hardly say it has diminished or fallen apart. Of course, that is only my humble opinion.
It's known that the ruling power in Taiwan is descended from the Nationalist government, it's perhaps less well-known that Sun Yat-Sen was a serious political thinker who designed that government, effectively singlehandedly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People
There's a visible mix of Western (by way of America and Britain) and Chinese thought in how the Yuans are structured.
Taiwan also inherited a large and functional civil service from the Japanese occupation, this is less immediately obvious in the structure of Taiwanese government, but you can find small traces everywhere if you know what to look for.
Singaporean here. It's mostly "reputable and highly regarded" if one gets a top-tier government scholarship [1], since that leads to civil service postings with more exposure and chances to take credit.
Everyone else is just a "farmer" [2][3]. :)
[1] https://www.quora.com/Are-scholarship-holders-more-likely-to...
[2] https://www.mycarforum.com/forums/topic/2675951-lousy-schola...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/7p5unh/degree_ho...
This is not a pervasive opinion. The prime minister has directly sued personally anyone who attempts to investigate the state wealth fund and there is a lot of questioning about the motives and conflicts of interest among Singapore's ministers and their families.
The lack of free press, and that it is illegal to investigate these government activities, is worth noting as well.
Note this ranking is based on "perception of corruption". Given that Singapore is a one-party state with extremely little press independence (https://theindependent.sg/singapore-in-bottom-20-countries-i...), citizens would be less likely to hear of any major corruption that occurred as the media wouldn't report it.
As an example, PM Lee's wife was CEO of Temasek, the national investment company, for many years. Consider, of all the five million plus people in Singapore, what is the probability that the prime minister's wife just happens to be the most qualified of anybody in the country to manage the country's money?
Probably irrelevant, but I wanted to add that Ho Ching is his second wife. The first Mrs Lee died three weeks after giving birth to his first son [1].
[1] https://wiki.sg/index.php?title=Death_of_Wong_Ming_Yang_(198...
I spent some time there and I honestly believe that corruption is probably on par or better than other developed countries. They take it very seriously.
However, as you mentioned, if there was corruption, you’d probably never know. With the libel laws and control of the media, I doubt many would be willing to speak out.
Singapore’s system has worked so far, but all it takes is some corruption within for the whole system to rot to its core. It’s not setup to self-correct. It seems like a well oiled machine on the surface but that’s just because you’re not allowed to see all the warts.
She somehow also finds the time to make hundreds of Facebook posts a day: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/g33rvv/how_is_ho...
Even if you know you have to keep your eye open for it. E.g. my personal favourite is that I 100% did not spot until it was pointed out to me that the printing dwarfs in The Truth are all named after fonts...
https://www.linkedin.com/in/haoyi-li-3b3291182?originalSubdo...
/s, obviously, my dad is actually very proud of me.
edit: this attempt at a sarcastic jab pissed some people off I guess. My point was that sure, the critique that issue of "people who understand one thing think they understand everything" applies disproportionately to programmers (and STEM people in general), but trying to defend against that by acting smugly superior about your own domain of expertise isn't going to fix that, that just makes you a problem on the other side of the coin.
I don't know if microbiology is special in some sense, but I have witnessed several times during my career cases of programmers turned into domain experts(in Logistics for example).
Obviously you don't became an MD that way, if that was your point.
Plenty of people still live in a world where coding is low prestige.
For me the answer is I've only seen it where there is an absurdly narrow selection process: professional sports (all of them), admission to certain universities (Ivy League/Oxbridge), certain specific jobs (SEAL team, investment banks, etc).
For everything where there's no gatekeeper, I'd only count out very few people from the start.
And got in reply: I also thought anyone could learn to code at at least a basic level, until I worked for a year as a computer science instructor...
You then produced a no-true-Scotsman argument to the effect that students don't qualify as a counterexample.
It's also often true that instructors don't know what's going on in all the students' personal lives. People who are pressed in other ways don't always make it known, so you could easily see how you might mistake someone who didn't learn it with someone who couldn't learn it.
The material was about the fundamentals of programming (loops, lists, dictionaries). I found it hard to stay focused because the applications and usefulness of the concepts weren’t immediately obvious (any problem I could solve at that point could easily be solved better with a ‘no-code’ solution). Some of the concepts also took a few days to understand, while I was struggling with maintaining motivation.
I’ve since used other learning materials, and now I better understand why new programming courses nowadays (like Harvard’s CS50) like to start their courses with the Scratch language. It communicates earlier the usefulness of the fundamentals (e.g. using if and while statements to animate a cartoon character).
This lack of immediate useful application (until months of study later) might not be the only reason, but it may well be a major one. It can cause people to give up even if they are diligent and dedicated in other fields (where the rewards arrive earlier).
Yep, I had that experience with electronics, but I applied the lesson you’re pointing to - you need to have practical projects that are relevant to you (that you care about), and then learn by working through problems and concepts as they present themselves on the road to solutions. I guess that makes me a hands-on learner, though I appreciate the conceptual once I have enough practical exposure to provide context.
If you were to ask me, programmers can't learn it because what they are learning is based on complete misunderstanding of organic chemistry (which has not been updated with the modern understanding of physics)... so it is bound to drive anyone who tries to make sense of it crazy. The only way to learn it is to accept all the rules and ALL the exceptions to the rules as the foundation and go from there, which not a lot of people are willing to do.
This sounds like an extraordinary claim, especially since organic chemists work along physical chemists and chemical physicists who presumably have a strong modern understanding of physics. It would be better for an expert to chime in, but I don’t see the incentive where organic chemists would be content to let their field stay out-of-date.
I believe that any good organic chemist must have strength in physical chemistry (both to excel in the field, plus it's typically a degree requirement), and physical chemists are well-informed of quantum mechanics (also typically a degree requirement, with at least an introduction to QM in most introductory chemistry courses in the unit about atomic bonding).
However, it's more plausible to believe the claim (re-interpreted) that many microbiologists don't have a strong foundation in organic chemistry or modern physics. Still, I'm skeptical that those who make it to a tenured professorship can still have these weaknesses, as I'm under the impression that the field is cross-disciplinary with collaborations with biochemists, who can then bring in their stronger background in chemistry (and thus organic chemistry, physical chemistry, and physics). Leading microbiologists (e.g. those tenured at MIT and other top institutions) who influence the field should also have familiarity with these subjects.
However, there is a substantial barrier for a programmer to switch careers and become a microbiologist: access to lab equipment. Part of the job of a microbiologist is to work with (usually expensive) scientific equipment to carry out and design procedures for experiments, and it’s hard to study independently without owning a lab space or the equipment. I’ve also found less educational material for self-study online.
Contrast this with self-study in programming. The required equipment is also just a low-end computer, and you don’t need a laboratory environment to develop your skillset. Educational resources (e.g. Automate the Boring Stuff With Python) are also not only widely accessible, but often free.
A) any microbiologist may eventually need to learn very basic coding to do their job/tasks effectively;
B) a programmer likely won’t be interested in learning even basic microbiology unless hired by microbiologists.
I’m a software engineer/programmer by profession and schooling, but I have a life-long fascination with little critters, especially insects, and especially Apocrita and Lepidoptera among insects. I’m an avid participant on iNaturalist and have almost as much reputation on Biology StackExchange as on StackOverflow. I also enjoyed proofreading oncology papers for my brother in law when he was doing his PhD because that stuff is fascinating when you have somebody who can explain it to you.
I’m not spending more effort in biology or entomology mainly for three reasons:
1. lack of time, especially since getting married and having kids;
2. lack of mental energy partly due to kids, partly because I’m tired enough fighting inane requirements or some stupid half-assed TypeScript “framework” du jour every day at work;
3. I’m not confident I can make as much money in entomology as in I.T.
Lack of interest has never been one of the reasons for me.
I tried to use the word “likely” to avoid these points being perceived as absolute laws. I think it’s simply less likely that any random programmer will have motivation to learn microbiology than it is for a microbiologist to learn some programming techniques.
The microbiologist may be compelled by functional requirements for their job to learn some coding while the programmer, unless working on business problems in that domain, would never be professionally compelled to learn microbiology to reinforce their profession aims.
In the telco industry I've heard several people say "I think it's easier for someone used to circuit switched to learn packet switched than the other way around". Every single time I heard that was from someone who knew circuit switched, and did not have one single clue about how packet switching worked, but thought they did.
If it's your field it's very easy to see people come in and think they've learned it when they haven't.
I've seen it in mathematicians, too. They very often think they can program when they can't.
Or in other words: You can teach a programmer to be a microbiologist to the point where I will believe they're a microbiologist. But I am not one.
And same with programming, except you'll only convince the microbiologist that you succeeded.
And when it comes to software development, the actual writing code part of it, I'm confident you need to have a knack for it.
Mind you, there's plenty of jobs in software engineering that don't involve writing code. We're desperately looking for a manager for example, because our current "self-managing" team is far from effective.
You can’t teach height.
- or -
Are are you saying that height is something you can't teach and of course anyone can learn microbiology?
I see utility in focusing on interdisciplinary skills