HN user

tiberriver256

122 karma

Software developer. I enjoy learning new things.

I write about software development on my blog: https://tiberriver256.github.io

Posts4
Comments55
View on HN
How I estimate work 6 months ago

How do people get to "staff" without reading industry core reading?

Software Estimation: Demystifying the black art by Steve McConnell should be 1st year reading in any software development major in college...

We've largely "solved" this problem in the industry we just have a problem of getting people to read and read the right things

So glad to hear research is being done in that area.

I'm a dad of two autistic boys who I think would be very different categories. I have friends whose child isn't really autistic, they have a much more rare and specific diagnosis but it's so rare it's hard to get supports so they got him diagnosed as autistic because that criteria is so broad almost anyone can qualify.

Thank you for your work!

The full paper isn't open so I can only read the abstract, method and results.

The part I take issue with: "lower brain-wide mGlu5 availability may represent a molecular mechanism underlying altered excitatory neurotransmission that has the potential to stratify the heterogeneous autism phenotype."

Seems like the very premise is flawed, though. Searching for a single global identifier for autism would be like if we spent research time trying to find a single global identifier for cancer. Noble effort... Way harder than spending effort on subcategorization into "lung" and "heart" cancers and working on research for detection of those subtypes.

The only good categorization we have in autism now is severity.

The anecdote I always like to share is Temple Grandin.

She was hyper-sensitive to auditory and tactile senses. The cause for this hypersensitivity was cerebellar abnormalities in her brain. Right now, someone who is hypo-sensitive to sound and touch because of different cerebellar development will also be put in the same bucket diagnostically speaking. There's not gonna be any universal way to detect that though...

To quote her directly:

"It would be my number one research priority, but one of the problems we’ve got on studying this, is that one person may have visual sensitivity, another one touch sensitivities, another one, auditory sensitivities. And when you study these, you got to separate them out. You can’t just mix them all together." https://www.sensoryfriendly.net/podcast/understanding-my-aut...

Maybe they meant neurodivergent as a broader category? Like "some people are neurodivergent but don't have autism"

That would be a bit weird though...

EDIT: Neurodivergent is very much a broader category. What I meant would be weird is to state the obvious... Very much sounded like they were trying to say some people with autism may not want to get "cured" but using the wrong words

16 "autistic brains" were scanned and they are thinking this applies generally to all people with autism?

Shows how shockingly unaware even researchers are on how broad and nonspecific the diagnosis of autism is...

Were these 16 people hypo or hyper sensitive? Which of their five senses were involved? All? Some? Were some senses hyper and others hypo?

Need to start with categorization and specificity before we can make meaningful progress in research

It's targeting a very specific group of devs who like to follow trendy stuff..

To that group saying something is "made in rust" is equivalent to saying "it's modern, fast, secure, and made by an expert programmer not some plebe who can't keep up with the times"

3.7 did score higher in coding benchmarks but in practice 3.5 is much better at coding. 3.7 ignores instructions and does things you didn't ask it to do.

Props to you for wanting to learn and putting the question out there. No easy way out here, unfortunately.

I'm a father of two severely autistic boys. Check out my blog post on what I wish people knew about autism: https://tiberriver256.github.io/autism/as-a-father-what-i-wi...

TL;DR

Every autistic person is unique and different. Just like every other person you meet.

I highly recommend you:

- Take the time to get to know them

- Communicate your expectations clearly "I expected you to communicate in x fashion, because of y. You recently communicated in z way. That didn't work for me because of abc"

- Ask them what their preferred methods of communication are and have them explain why

- See if you can come together to find a communication style that works for the both of you.

The most rewarding aspect of having a direct report is seeing them grow. The most beneficial part of having multiple direct reports is the growth potential it gives you in learning from a diverse set of humans.

Don't miss the opportunity here. Good luck!