"Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" is considered the natural successor to SICP. I haven't tried it, but apparently it's a good deal harder.
106 karma · joined September 27, 2019
- The base is better on the wood fired oven. The Kodas stone doesn't get hot enough. I've read recommendations to replace the stone with a steel, because it's more conductive.
- The koda heats up in a timescale I'm ok with. Like, 20 minutes. For the wood fired oven, it usually takes about 2 hours for the oven itself to be hot enough, but you really want the oven to be completely saturated with heat. This can take over 4 hours.
- I've had the Koda about 6 months now, and used it about 20 times. It hasn't really registered on the meter attached to my 13 kg gas bottle, and this is the only thing I use it for. I'm not at all concerned about the gas usage, even when its used a refill is cheap.
- The wood oven, in contrast, goes through wood significantly faster than our wood burning stove.
- I can do more with the wood oven, like bread, or roasts. The profile of the Koda means my normal cookware doesn't fit, and while I'm ok with buying Ooni's low profile cast iron, I just haven't done it yet. That said, while I like the idea of cooking food under real fire with smoke and intense direct heat, I don't see that with essentially a big gas oven. I have other tools.
- I can take the Koda anywhere, but when my parents move house there's no chance the wood oven moves.
In this case though, I see someone who badly wants to be enjoying programming, but for whatever reason they don't understand they don't. It's probably a good time to talk to someone. Usually I'd start with my girlfriend, maybe my mum, perhaps take a few weeks off and then see how I feel. If that doesn't sort it, I'd probably want to talk to a therapist.
I think most people are immediately thinking severe asthma, COPD, recent or current cancer treatment; and while all of those elevate your risk, they aren't the most common comorbidities.
The key co-morbidities are high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
Only heart disease seems obvious - high blood pressure is almost standard, and diabetes is often managed well to the point of invisibility.
The cardiac link appears interesting. Patients who are given ECMO, a complete lung bypass alternative to ventilators, have still died after their lungs recovered.
If it's anything longer, then it's probably not a subject you should be using anki to learn or you're trying to remember too large a bloc of information at once.
I have absolutely no idea how this could be a form of procrastination, or how I could more efficiently memorize information that must be memorized.
The most useful advice for me has been to find a method, and stick with it. This is most important for organisation.
I prefer handwritten notes, and I only take notes on things I don't understand. I'm not writing a textbook - I don't need my notes to be a complete reference manual on the subject. Moreover, notest that explain how you went from 'eh?' to 'oh, yeah...' are so much more useful, and if you already understand something you don't have that moment to talk about. It's also a waste of time.
I use hardback notebooks. If I'm studying 3 things simultaneously, I have 3 notebooks running. When I finish one subject, I start the next a few pages later. I write the subjects on the spine (normally need a sticky label). The growth of my 'notebook library' has been quite satisfying!
My method of note-taking has varied a bit, I generally use the so-called 'Feynman technique'. I write the subject, leave a few blank lines, then go through the steps needed to understand the subject. I then write the 'summary' that I now understand in the blank space.
I might write a few exercises underneath, or reference a textbook, or something. Basically anything that will help me when I inevitably forget.
Often my notes are rewritten - my lecture notes are borderline unintelligable. After a while (at university) I gave up taking comprehensive notes, preferring to remain active in the class and then deliberately rewrite my notes using other sources later. This fuelled a powerful cycle - my other sources put me about half a lecture ahead, which helped me stay engaged in the lectures themselves, so I got more out of the lectures, and needed less study after. Lectures are like Shakespeare - knowing the plot enhances the experience.
With mathematical subjects, the best way to revise is to go back and do more exercises. So leave some there to go back to!
It's still hell, just a different kind of hell.
Bespoke is a genuine competitor. In the UK it's not uncommon for SAP implementations to cost several million £s, this could be used to build bespoke software.
There's a massive risk here though - there are thousands of ways bespoke ERP can go wrong. Underfunding the project causes problems, but arguably the worst projects were overfunded. Then there's recruiting the right people and developing the right culture - archaic business hierarchies are almost mutually exclusive with good software teams.
In other words, there isn't really a very good option. You can understand why business leaders, who are often not technology experts, would go with something that has 'worked' for them in the past.
Unfortunately in static languages this leads to an unholy amount of boilerplate:
public Result<SomethingGood, SomethingBad> PerformUpdate(int goodThingId, UpdateForm form) { ... return new Result<SomethingGood, SomethingBad>(error); ... return new Result<SomethingGood, SomethingBad>(obj); }
The type annotations were hell. Sometimes there were three cases we wanted to consider. We went back to using exceptions, and are keeping a keen eye on the new C# features.
So ultimately - I agree with the author that throwing exceptions is fine, when things actually go wrong. It's also not that bad when things kinda went wrong, but sometimes the effort required to fix it isn't worth it.
For one thing it's fun.
Another is that film genuinely has features digital cameras can't match. For example, if you overexpose most film you aren't left with massive pure white patches - there's still differentiation in those areas. This is particularly the case in colour negative film, other formats are more sensative. A lot of people prefer films grain to digital sensors noise and artifacts.
A huge (literally) benefit of film are the extra formats. Medium format film photography is accessible, but digital medium format cameras are mind-blowingly expensive. Even then, it's not the resolution. Larger formats require longer focal lengths, which means narrow depths of field are possible at long range. See David Burnetts superb portfolio from London 2012 - shot on 4x5 (inch) film. https://www.davidburnett.com/gallery.html?gallery=London%202....
You've also got all sorts of other odd formats, such as the 6x16 (cm) panoramic medium format (not cheap though).
But really, it's just a lot of fun. Nailing exposure using a light meter, rather than just trying again until you get it right. Not missing photos because you were looking at the screen. Watching b/w prints form. The long and tense process for turning b/w negative film into positive slides.
Duolingo is a feel good tool - it makes you feel like your learning, perhaps quickly, without really learning anything.
For example, it uses multiple choice questions. Presented with a word (ananas), it then shows a few pictures (apples, bananas, pineapples and pears, for example). You incorrectly choose 'bananas', because really who wouldn't, and the pineapple lights up in green.
This method is really at odds with the 'best' ways to learn. If your recall is dependent on contextual cues, you will struggle away from that context.
Additionally, the volume really isn't that great. Like a lot of 'feel-good learning' platforms, duolingo encourages consistancy over volume. It's better to study for 10 minutes a day, than for 90 minutes every sunday. That's true, but if you want to learn a language (no small feat), then even 90 minutes a week is woefully inadequate. Being conversant in multiple languages is something to be proud of, and things to be proud of tend to take substantial effort.
Vocabulary acquisition is almost the perfect problem for spaced repetition, so use anki. There's a few strategies here: english word -> foreign word, picture -> foreign word, foreign word -> foreign synonym, foreign word -> english options, english sentence -> foreign sentence.
Pronunciation is difficult at first but gets easier. Accents are tricky - they're verbal gymnastics. Its easiest if you can find a native speaker of your target language, and you should just converse with them. Don't focus on minor details, because you usually pick these up naturally over time.
Listening is easy - listen to their radio, watch their TV. Similar with reading.
But there's one thing I haven't mentioned. Grammar. You do not need to learn foreign language grammar. You'll pick it up. How often have you studied English grammar? Unless you went out of your way, probably never. You learned some basic rules in your first few years of school, but everything else you picked up.
Just sometimes I'll go 'display: flex; justify-content: center; align-items: center;' and the content will end up about 5px above center. I'll be like 'WTF?' for a minute, then run it in chrome with no issue.
The 'table of hard science' according to Alfred Nobel also includes medicine (not science, but we'll let it pass), literature (really not science), and peace (really really not science).
Anyway, the Nobel Prize for economics is not actually a Nobel prize anyway.
In the early pages, there's a brief summary taking up about a quarter of the page.
Later, A 1-3 page article. Often the issue will contain multiple papers on the same subject, this article is a simple-english aggregation of those subjects.
The research papers themselves are published later on.
For example, Nature published two recent papers on the determination of the Thorium nucleus's excited state. The papers themselves would have meant very little without a physics degree or some serious determination, but the accompanying article explains all aspects of the papers well. It explains the context (why are these papers significant), how the two papers relate to each other and the broader implications.
Having read the article, it's then much easier to comprehend the contents of the paper. Not easy, but easier.
Nature's not cheap (£198 a year), and it comes weekly which may be faster than most people can read it, but as a means of communicating the absolute cutting edge of all sciences I commend it.