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yeah none of the doctors at this hospital know what a spleen is but they hardly ever need that knowledge in their daily work so it’s fine ... and it might be, too, but I’m not going to that hospital
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Sep 29, 2020 10:52
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Soricidus posted:yeah none of the doctors at this hospital know what a spleen is but they hardly ever need that knowledge in their daily work so it’s fine Do you think we don't know what floating point numbers are? Do you think all doctors know the technical details of each other's jobs? Do you think that nobody in a software development team knows the details of floating point? Do you think your work is as important to your employer as a doctor's is to their patient? Do you think that software changes are irreversible? Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 11:46 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 11:44
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Knowing how things run under the hood is not necessary to write software but is necessary to write good software The same with math- you can do about okay every day programming with the math you knew at 8 years old. But if you try to enter a field that require statistics or contability you are going to need more than that. So to be a generic programmer that never write anything but the 90% of stuff people write, you already know everything you will need at 8 years old.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:04
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Are we doing the "I can only imagine programmers in my niche, or adjacent niches" thing again? If so, can we explicitly say what our niches are, and be done with it? 
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Sep 29, 2020 12:09
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Tei posted:Knowing how things run under the hood is not necessary to write software but is necessary to write good software This idea that the only "good software" is confined to specific mathematical fields is exactly the sort of snooty elitism that got us here in the first place. There's more to life (and good software) than maths.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:11
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Jaded Burnout posted:Do you think we don't know what floating point numbers are? Do you think all doctors know the technical details of each other's jobs? Do you think that nobody in a software development team knows the details of floating point? Do you think your work is as important to your employer as a doctor's is to their patient? Do you think that software changes are irreversible? I think it’s important that professionals receive a rounded education that covers the whole base of their field, and exposes them to a range of concepts that they do not necessarily use every day. Which, yes, means learning more than ten seconds worth of information about how data is represented.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:19
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Soricidus posted:yeah none of the doctors at this hospital know what a spleen is but they hardly ever need that knowledge in their daily work so it’s fine This is more like saying that doctors should know what the spleen is and what it does and how to treat common spleen problems, but not all doctors need to know how to remove a spleen, and even fewer need to know how to make a spleen.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:24
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Soricidus posted:I think it’s important that professionals receive a rounded education that covers the whole base of their field, and exposes them to a range of concepts that they do not necessarily use every day. Which, yes, means learning more than ten seconds worth of information about how data is represented. This. It actually rules that there's so many self taught or generally non-traditionally-educated people in software, it brings diversity of background, experience, and expertise to the field. But the downside is that sometimes people who self teach, because they are starting at the concrete end goal ("ok i need to make a website") and working backwards, miss fundamentals and have a hard time generalizing their experience to other domains. This is isn't just oh you started with javascript you'll never be a real programmer elitism either - the number of electrical engineers I've seen rage about any code review beyond "uh it works i guess" is not small, and I personally even though I have had that educate struggle converting my knowledge into stuff like frontend layout. Generalizing knowledge is hard even if you're properly prepared. So specifically you shouldn't have to memorize floating point or 2s complement but I think some kind of fundamentals of digital logic class is something all programmers should get exposed to at some point, and once you take that you realize not only the mechanics of 2s complement but the motivation, and you start to see how floating point could work. Same with a numeric methods class (which I really wish I took and may look up a good one). Same with a lot of the basic CS courses. The goal is not necessarily to give you a finite countable set of facts that you can pull out of your memory like arrows from a quiver when you start work, but rather to expose you to the both theoretical and practical fundamentals of the field, on as broad a base as possible, and give you a base for intuition.
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Sep 29, 2020 12:54
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I'm pretty sure we don't rely on high school biology to teach doctors what they need to know about spleens.
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Sep 29, 2020 13:13
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Foxfire_ posted:I was thinking like someone working in drug trials, which I imagine is mostly knowing what tests to use and when, but I don't actually know anything about day-to-day. You don't need algebra for routine stuff, but if you need to come up with a different design from what's standard, you'll need group theory to engage with the statistical theory.
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Sep 29, 2020 13:35
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I started this derail by accidentally being snobby to someone who said they shouldn't have had to learn twos complement in high school, because I mistakenly thought they were saying they shouldn't have had to learn it during a university CS education (I was reading the thread backwards on the reply screen like a noob). The whole point I was trying to make is that someone who goes into computer science and, by extension, programming as a general discipline (for which I used the term "programmer"), should have a well-rounded knowledge base of theory and practice. That's not gatekeeping, that's advice. You can get a job as a programmer without having immersed yourself in the discipline of programming and without mastering its finer points or basically any of it. You're fine, you're still a programmer, I just didn't mean to refer to you in the first place. edit: Except the floating point thing. Being familiar with this, particularly the section on error propagation, is just a plain good idea for anyone who has to apply arithmetic operators to floating point numbers, even if it's just CRUD. Volte fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 14:02
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Xarn posted:Are we doing the "I can only imagine programmers in my niche, or adjacent niches" thing again? If so, can we explicitly say what our niches are, and be done with it? No, no, it's "there's my niche (the difficult one that's only for very smart people) and exactly one other type of programming (the easy one for failures who couldn't hack it in my niche)." Typical values for the second field include "logic-free CRUD web apps" and "making LEDs blink with microcontrollers." Any resemblance to the Dunning-Kruger effect is completely coincidental. I read an intro to psychology book once, and let me tell you, it was all really simple. If Dunning and Kruger were actually smart they'd be solving tough problems, like the ones I deal with every day.
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Sep 29, 2020 14:21
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More like two's insult
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Sep 29, 2020 14:28
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"programmers should know [low level thing]" is 100% a justification for an expensive degree, the only real effect of which on the day-to-day job is you have to look up something on stackoverflow one one-thousandth less often that someone who doesn't have one.
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Sep 29, 2020 14:31
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NtotheTC posted:More like two's insult
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Sep 29, 2020 14:42
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Jaded Burnout posted:I'm pretty sure we don't rely on high school biology to teach doctors what they need to know about spleens. That's true, but they do rely on college biology (and chemistry) as a basis for understanding the more specific concepts they learn in medical school. We don't have a medical school equivalent, it's on the job training. We can, often do, and always expect people to, learn on the fly while working, but it does legitimately make it much easier if you have a grounding in the basics. e: I'm not saying you're a worse programmer. There's an astounding number of autodidacts or people who initially learned through bootcamps in programming, or people who were ill-served by traditional education and learned on their own, who are really good programmers. I just think that on average having that background knowledge helps you adapt to new domains, figure out surprising behaviors and bugs, and generally get a head start on things. Phobeste fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 15:06
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I might've learned 2s compliment in high school myself. I was definitely doing binary addition and some boolean algebra. They weren't required courses, but I was into computers and poo poo from a young age.
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Sep 29, 2020 15:09
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Phobeste posted:That's true, but they do rely on college biology (and chemistry) as a basis for understanding the more specific concepts they learn in medical school. We don't have a medical school equivalent, it's on the job training. We can, often do, and always expect people to, learn on the fly while working, but it does legitimately make it much easier if you have a grounding in the basics. Again, though, this started with me bringing up my high school computing class. Not college.
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Sep 29, 2020 15:17
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Jaded Burnout posted:Again, though, this started with me bringing up my high school computing class. Not college. I know I was kinda trying to steer the conversation away because that point seemed... silly
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Sep 29, 2020 15:24
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Turns out the real coding horror was our own egos.
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Sep 29, 2020 15:32
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Jaded Burnout posted:Do you think we don't know what floating point numbers are? Do you think all doctors know the technical details of each other's jobs? Do you think that nobody in a software development team knows the details of floating point? Do you think your work is as important to your employer as a doctor's is to their patient? Do you think that software changes are irreversible? I mean, ideally the people who works on the software that takes your MRI and displays it onscreen would know how to work with floating point. Industry experience tells me this is not a safe assumption. Bruegels Fuckbooks fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 15:52
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I never use floating point, I just multiply everything by 100
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Sep 29, 2020 15:55
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I'm sorry everyone, I am bad at reading, sorry 
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Sep 29, 2020 15:59
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Jaded Burnout posted:This idea that the only "good software" is confined to specific mathematical fields is exactly the sort of snooty elitism that got us here in the first place. When I say "what is under the hood" - I am talking about OS design and "culture" about hardware There are people just now that don't know or consider the different between a integer and a float number-- Their software will work - it may even have zero know bugs but it also may have some window that take 9 seconds to load and users and devs have no idea why it take that long People that don't see what is the difference between storing a ID has a string or a integer - "3455122" vs 3455122 - they may ignore how many bytes the computer need to store "3455122" vs 3455122 or how many cycles the cpu need to compare two strings vs two integers- they may not know or care - their software may still work but he! This is just a example- more subtle problems may exist where a programer do things that is like throwing a wrench in the hardware Tei fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 16:49
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Sep 29, 2020 16:54
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Foxfire_ posted:Saying it's not practically useful is like a statistician saying "I've never used group theory in my career, so it was a waste of time including it in my generic Mathematics degree". Persi Diaconis has entered the building (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4355560?seq=1)
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Sep 29, 2020 17:02
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Jaded Burnout posted:Turns out the real coding horror was our own egos. Ah, yes. Macro-dose salvia before every coding session, got it.
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Sep 29, 2020 17:14
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NtotheTC posted:More like two's insult
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Sep 29, 2020 20:31
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Jaded Burnout posted:I'm pretty sure we don't rely on high school biology to teach doctors what they need to know about spleens. To complete the doctor analogy, writing code should require an advanced degree and several years of internships, and if you write horrific code you should get sued for coding malpractice
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Sep 29, 2020 20:58
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QuarkJets posted:if you write horrific code you should get sued for coding malpractice I carry £10 million in professional liability insurance for exactly this. I'm not joking, it's a contractual requirement.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:59
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Jaded Burnout posted:I carry £10 million in professional liability insurance for exactly this. I'm not joking, it's a contractual requirement. That's something I hadn't thought of but makes perfect sense. If I hang up a shingle and start contracting again I'll need to do this.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:06
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New definition: The difference between a junior programmer and a senior programmer is a junior is still surprised when a 200 post argument over floats breaks out.
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Sep 30, 2020 16:35
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Jaded Burnout posted:I carry £10 million in professional liability insurance for exactly this. I'm not joking, it's a contractual requirement. What code do you write?
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Sep 30, 2020 20:35
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Doom Mathematic posted:What code do you write? Websites, mostly backend system stuff.
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Sep 30, 2020 20:43
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Jaded Burnout posted:Websites, mostly backend system stuff. What does the insurance cost?
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Sep 30, 2020 21:07
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Ola posted:What does the insurance cost? About £30 a month, maybe? As a business expense.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:21
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Bruegels Fuckbooks posted:IEEE-754 is relevant to CRUD-'N'-Javascript development because the only numeric type available in javascript is 64-bit floating point, following the IE-754 standard. So I would hope anyone who programs in Javascript knows what problems that can cause. YOWCH that's awful. (You can tell I bounced off the Javacript tutorial several times.)
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Sep 30, 2020 21:23
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it's not a big deal, we just implement our own ints using strings
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Sep 30, 2020 21:27
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Jaded Burnout posted:About £30 a month, maybe? As a business expense. Ah ok, well that's nothing.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:30
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Aren’t javascript numbers not actually 64bit? I thought they were something dumb like 52 or 54 and that leads to fun interop problems with languages that don’t suck (as much as javascript, anyway)
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Sep 30, 2020 21:32
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