florabuzzword's comments

I find no bias in this language. To me, this reads as suggesting mere correlation.

Education as entertainment means that the goal is to get the consumer to feel good about himself, to feel like he learned something. You're getting paid (in money or kudos or whatever) to engage the consumer's narcissism, not his curiosity.

This is a profound observation. I’m not sure it only applies in entertainment.

I’ve heard it put other ways, but your version, if applied to education as a whole, might be a pretty big deal. There’s no shortage of evidence, either; from Ivy League campuses to niche interest subcultures.

Maybe “narcissism” isn’t the best word, but some sort of similar tension related to confidence seems to be associated with successful educational environments. We commonly attribute it to a one-way causal relationship, but you’re articulating the opposite. Likewise, we are used to acknowledging that ‘not giving up’, or ‘belief in one’s self’ is a necessity, but again you’re making a separate claim.

You’re saying, in so many words, the confidence in and of itself defines the will as well as the curiosity. And I can’t argue with it. I want to, but I’m not sure I can.

I’m fairly new to programming so would be interested in hearing if someone else does this too...

On a walk this afternoon (for some reason), I realized I had a visual shape in my head for most design patterns. Some of them look a lot like a knot-tying diagram, for example. I’m not sure I had realized that before.

I also realized the shape representations are about as close to implementation as I would prefer to store design patterns in my mind. Beyond that, they might be limiting or, at worst, strenuous to use as guidelines. They’re surely more useful (to me) than UML or even code.

But the best part is I can tell they’ve been there all along. I wasn’t trying to make them up. I was just mapping out a project while on a walk. I was pretty relaxed at the time and maybe that’s why this came up.

For what they are, I was a little disappointed how long it took to parse the Elements of Reuseable OO Software book when I was just learning to code. And then when I had used the patterns and knew them, I found it a bit sad they were communicated through such rigid forms.

Art actually contends with the same sort of conceptual divisions. There’s the medium which is rigid and cumbersome, the form which is more pure, critical in the abstract but medium-agnostic, and the application, being the interface or the thing out in the world.

So I do agree the ability to transpose these concepts between form and implementation is what matters, but it’s the back and forth that matters, not where one begins.

From his website, which is linked to in another comment:

Is This Legal?

Yes! According to the Vermont Constitution and the Vermont Attorney General, you only have to have lived in Vermont for 4 years or more on the day before the election. Ethan has lived here for 14 years.

Blatant ageism!

uncommon != inappropriate

I’m only slightly kidding. I am thoroughly impressed with his comments thus far and would like to hear more of what he has to say.

On one hand, I remember thinking I knew a lot more than a I did when I was 14. On the other hand, he is not me!

The best upgrade I’ve made for my video editing workstation has been going to 4x GPUs for DaVinci Resolve.

> With electronic voting, the counting is done by machines and the mechanism is obfuscated and unverifiable.

Could a blockchain not address that with public/private keys? Why is this ridiculous?

That’s all I’ve got.

OpenVDB was a crucial step. It’s hard to live without it these days.

- The architectural style?

- The social housing traditions that birthed the architectural style?

- The contemporary literalist misappropriation of the term to reference dystopian urban infrastructure which punishes the needy? (like spikes under bridges)

I’m hoping it’s the first and will be pleasantly surprised if it’s the second. But not getting my hopes up.

Were there any projects outside of the VFX Platform (vfxplatform.com) you could point out?

As mentioned in this article, it seems that the VFX studios, even the small ones, are very siloed and protective. Of the studios with Github accounts, the software they release is usually stuff they don’t use any longer.

When I get hired this way, I always feel a little bit of guilt because I know they actually hired somebody else.

What can be done? I’m not sure, but I can say one thing: my level of discomfort is multiplied by the number of strangers in the room. Does this ever get considered with interviews?

I am far more comfortable coding in front of 1 or 2 people who each give me a little bit of background about their coding experience; just so I know. If they are experienced engineers, it’s probably not going to change what I say aloud, but it just makes me more comfortable. I guess more overlap of technologies in our background does help. It’s nice to not feel pressure of worrying if my solutions reflect general programming conventions enough to be language agnostic. I have never really used Java, for example.

I have just never done it before, and I think this is the first time I have seen the concept, so the first thing that popped in my mind we’re all the things that can go wrong. But, also all the things that can go right.