michaell2

there is math, and then there is math. In Russia they have a saying "beat a rabbit long enough and it will eventually learn to take derivatives, but integrals are another matter". For many people areas involving spatial reasoning like college physics for engineers is that "another matter", while (simple) integrals are still no biggie.

As for the original article, the implication that somebody having trouble with basic algebra can be "great scientist" sounds dubious to say the least. Like I said, there is math, and then there is math... there is stuff that anybody claiming any meaningful level of intelligence should be able to handle.

or perhaps the silent majority of the "HN community at large" mostly agrees with me, but a small, entrenched, vocal minority successfully bullies its way to impose its own view of what is and is not "inspiring" on everybody else. "Gimme money" Nigerian letters are not inspiring, not even when done by a Kenyan who allegedly knows (or wants to learn?) how to program.

I can name quite a few low score threads in the "New" section that are more interesting and relevant to the hackers amongst us than this. IMHO there is something rotten about the outcomes of the HN frontpage promotion mechanism nowadays.

the website organization seems targeted to "special education student at incompetent guidance counselor's office" level of intellectual ability. People who have the smarts to do any serious contribution to Mozilla probably prefer reading meaningful articles, not being spoonfed fortune cookie BS.

Hacker News and Slashdot are doing fine, thank you. HN, in particular, must be providing some benefit to its owners even though it contains no overt ads of shampoo or anything else.

two thumbs up. Next time these Purdue kids dare make a stupid video, they better hit the right counts for all the demographic tokens. Also, from now on the assistant dean for diversity should review all student videos and other publications and censor those with the wrong percentages, stereotypes, feelings etc.

well, the latter two of them seem to have created their domains from scratch, back in the day. Now that they are done with the trailblazing and lots of other smart people crowded in, who knows where they stand in comparison to the right tail of the bell curve.

in related news, "Report: Unemployment High Because People Keep Blowing Their Job Interviews" http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-unemployment-high-be...

yep, that's why my comment mentioned using a text file for notes, not paper. I usually edit it using IDE rather than text editor to take advantage of the convenient cut-paste a line of text with CTRL-X / CTRL-V without highlighting by mouse.

Then again, my nestgrid project http://www.nestgrid.org (the desktop version) is IMHO, among other things. the future of this sort of notes taking but I have not yet gotten around to using it "in production".

why does managing classes in basic computers and administering school servers require 2 years of python experience?

IMHO it's strange that we are discussing hiring Mr reality distortion field for a technical position here. If he were reincarnated and looking for a job now, he would probably go into sales. What do they care more about in sales, team playing or closing contracts for new leads? Then there is the "motivational speaking", another fruitful and remunerative area of endeavor for this sort of people :)

one of the tradeoffs involved is between general expressiveness of the framework and ui unobstrusiveness. E.g. direct manipulation "naked objects" interface with fully automated objects placement on screen is quite generic but fairly ugly. My http://www.nestgrid.org user interface pattern improves on that by allowing free form editing of quasi html page, hence providing for mostly manual placement of objects, but it's still no more "unobtrusive" than Excel is. That is, it takes getting used to.

don't know of any such tools, so instead I perform the task manually. If I want to better understand how some feature works, I write down in a text file what methods are involved, what method calls which etc. That way at any given time I have to answer fairly simple questions, but the accumulated info in the notes can then be used for more sophisticated reasoning. In other words, analysis :)

so have I got a deal for you :) Anyway, my recently published "nestgrid" framework is precisely that (among other possible uses). A mix of xml editor, spreadsheet, direct manipulation of objects ui, and all around cool thing; flash demo included. See http://nestgrid.wordpress.com/nestgrid-paper/

EDIT: fixed url as per @nocman's advice.