purpledove

The implication being that he is too good to waste his time on math.

I can't take this seriously - blaming an individual, especially a CEO, for destroying a corporate culture is ridiculous. I know essentially nothing about the history of HP, but what I do know is that the board bears ultimate responsibility for big decisions, for example a massive layoff.

There is also the distinct possibility that the 'HP Way' was sacrificed to save the company. Again, I know nothing of the history, but putting out a hit piece like this right before the election is just crude.

Please see Dennis M. Ritchie's short bio: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bigbio1st.html

He has deep mathematical talent.

Ken Thompson also has deep analytical abilities as demonstrated by his contributions to computer chess: https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Ken+Thompson

Guido van Rossum holds a master's degree in Math and CS.

I'd say that it is common sense that mathematical talent is correlated with coding talent provided that the person receive substantial training in coding. Generally speaking, everyone is a terrible coder for the first 2 years, it doesn't matter if you are a math genius, you still need to learn how to crank out good code.

The real question is: is there extra correlation between math talent and programming talent beyond both being correlated with g, the general intelligence factor.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

Clojure, like Lisp, has terrible syntax that is difficult for human beings to read. This is one of the reasons the academic community kept Lisp alive - independence from industry, ability to weed out weaker programmers, flexibility.

I'm well aware that I'm posting this on Hacker News, a site founded by an individual who made gazillions on a website powered by Lisp --- I think it is safe to say that it is the exception rather than the rule.

In order to be widely accepted, a language must do many things well enough. If it fails badly at one particular thing, in this case syntax readability, its ability to gain followers will be severely diminished. It may, however, gain a strong following in academia.

If you disagree, then do this thought experiment: who currently uses serious parallel processing power? I can think of a few: Blizzard's WoW servers, government research labs, and bio-informatics operations. How would you convince them to try out Clojure? What problem do they have that Clojure solves so much better than anything else out there that it would gain a foothold?

By the way, I learned CS from Abelson and Sussman and Scheme was my language of choice between 1996 and 2004.

I'm 30, and I've worked at various corporations, both small and large, for 5 years. I've never once been told "I can't do things". Not once. Rather the opposite - I've worked with people who went on to found start-ups, and I've learned a great deal from my colleagues.

The larger question is: should a person in a position of power be encouraging young people to drop out of school? It strikes me as irresponsible.

All of the fears he mentions are present all of the time when coding - fear of working on the wrong thing, fear of not being able to solve problem X, etc... Those fears are healthy and there for good reason - to enable the planning and execution of software projects from small to large. In fact, a developer who did not have, say, the fear of working on the wrong thing would...spend a lot of time working on the wrong things.

I'm not really sure I buy the idea that any of these fears would be substantial enough to impact the allocation of time on programming unless the person in question had some issues to work out such as procrastination.

Afraid of what others will say? Don't tell them. The practice is still going to be worthwhile.

Afraid of not finishing? Break down the project into small chunks, write tests to make sure the small chunks work properly, and iterate between planning out the next steps and executing the next step in the queue (in theory, any number of subsequent steps can be added, removed, deleted, or re-arranged after executing any single step).

Afraid you won't know how to solve a problem? Which problem? Did you read the Wikipedia article and consult the relevant textbooks?

Afraid you're not working on the right thing? First figure out what the right thing is, and justify why it is right. If you're working on anything else, stop. Now start planning how to approach the right thing. You are now working on the right thing, for a discussion on when to transition to coding, see Code Complete.

This is an excellent suggestion. Other suggestions: read the wikipedia articles on Simple LR and General LR parsers; google "python descriptor" and read the top results.

I fail to see how Chris was a "casualty of the system". I have a little trouble buying his stated desire to transfer to a vocational school for training mechanics...in any city there are plenty of mechanics around, and you just need a little guts to up to a bunch of them and say "I want to be a mechanic, please tell me how". Sooner or later, you're going to get a lead. They may or may not take you on, but I find it difficult to believe that you can't become a mechanic if you show at least some of the signs of being worth an investment in time - maturity, respect, willingness to work hard, motivation, some relevant experience like, say, fixing other things that are less expensive than but share some characteristics with cars, etc...

I get the impression that Chris' journal writings have more to do with his gang aspirations than his desire to live an honest life. Gangs are known to deal in stolen cars, and they deal with shady characters who perform a variety of roles to support this illegal business - ripping cars apart, putting together knock-offs, making illegal modifications, and so on. With a little work, I have no doubt Chris will be able to satisfy his love of cars as a gang member.

Being a gang member is a high risk / high reward proposition, but it has a variety of perks: money, women, and cars among them. This leaves the issue of morality untouched - clearly gangs are evil and mechanics are good...but you can't teach someone to be good.

Oh wow, overload. Tempted to leach, but...

Anyway, here is a recommendation:

2006.03.26 - This is a good long mix I listened to many times.

I agree - there is a vagueness issue with the rule, and it is not obviously falsifiable. But as stated, the rule does not discuss unpublished works - it is a statement about published work, and the statement is that each scientist is throwing the dice when they publish, and there is nothing the scientist can do to increase his chances.

Quite right - he goes in the second list.

The equal-odds rule is simply wrong. A few examples: Andrew Wiles, Charles Darwin, John Forbes Nash. These people produced a small amount of work, but they shook the earth. Some people are geniuses, and some are not. It appears rather that some geniuses are prolific while others are not. Examples of some prolific ones: Einstein, Serge Lang.

Edit: A commenter pointed out that Charles Darwin goes in the second list.

It wasn't a comparison of companies, it was a rebuke of Microsoft's leadership. The criticism is certainly valid, and all the more convincing because Microsoft HAS shipped high-quality products, so they are CAPABLE of doing great work, they just get LAZY.

Speaking of evil, let us not forget Goldman Sach's treatment of Sergey Aleynikov. Makes Oracle look like Mother Teresa.

She is saying that the start-up mythology of success, which is vital to keeping up the spirits of the best of us, can lead the good-but-not-great astray in their lives.

She is saying that ideas are powerful, and internalizing the wrong ones can cause damage.

I recently saw pg give an interview wherein he discussed how much more Y Combinator focuses on who the founders are rather than what the idea is. This is a great start, and I think there is a lot of fertile ground that can really be developed into a powerful message that will reach many young people.

I recommend A. K. Dewdney's "The New Turing Omnibus". It is a series of articles and is very easy to dip into.