POLYMATH PROGRAM P5 16 SOFTWARE
Space shuttles, trajectory calculations and fuel usage? Someone has to write software for them. Medicine? Those machines and reports and medical records? Someone has to write software for them. I’m just approaching it from all kinds of angles. So I’m working harder on getting better at it. If you haven’t figured it out, programming is creative work. The moment I stop being curious, then I stop learning, and I stop trying to make a difference.Ĭreative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work. It’s about cultivating the habit of being curious. It’s not about “I can learn to do X when I need to do X, not before”. Making better user interfaces? Creating better software so there’s less toxic emissions?īut I do know that curiosity plays a part. I don’t know how as a programmer I can contribute to making the world a better place. With the rise of technology, and its usefulness to our lives, I believe a programmer can do much more to help. Be curious, and to make the world a better place. Am I setting myself up for failure by creating a newsletter that’s even broader in scope? I don’t know. My blog seems to be stretching to cover a lot of topics, even if they circle around mathematics and programming. Psychology-related articles too, since I’m fascinated by human behaviour. I may not write about those topics, but I can certainly provide links to people who wrote great articles on them. I plan to also touch on marketing, sales, and other business-related stuff (I got interested because I wanted to know more about how my employer operates). Actually I’ll be covering a lot of ground. I still want to include stuff from both the arts and the sciences. I didn’t keep to the once-a-fortnight schedule the last time, so there’s no reason to believe I have the fortitude to come up with 3 newsletters in a month… Maybe twice a month, if there’s a lot of material to cover. This time round, I’m treating it more like an informal lesson plan to myself. I can easily include images and videos on the blog.
The topics seem to overlap very much with the blog topics, and I felt the blog format worked better. I know, I know, the last time I started a newsletter, it didn’t quite work out. I kind of miss the feeling of learning something because I’m interested and excited about it, and just because I’m learning something new. Which isn’t too bad if it’s restricted to only coding.
Truth be told, I feel like I’m stagnating. Much of the software work I do nowadays are quite simple… after I’ve done the heavyweight thinking that is. I find myself talking and writing and thinking more about software than actually coding. There’s so much I want to learn, and I have the usual excuses of too little time, little motivation, little interest… There’s a bunch of stuff I want to share and somehow they don’t make it here to the blog.
Polymercation aka Polymath Programmer Publication So, have you encountered any high level puzzles? Share in the comments. Perhaps I’m more willing to try out typing randomly or aimlessly clicking the mouse on an application screen. The user on the other hand, was supposed to be familiar with the application. I have never seen or used that particular section of the application before. The details of the selected record came up, and the delete button was enabled. I fired up the application, selected a record, and indeed the delete button was disabled. I got a level 1.5-ish puzzle lately… The user said he couldn’t use the delete button.
POLYMATH PROGRAM P5 16 CODE
Sometimes, you have to really push for lots of hints, like clarifying the user’s query, ask for screenshots ( even if sometimes they aren’t enough…), and dig through code archives. Sometimes, it’s a level 1 puzzle, where you don’t even need to fire up your code editor to glance through the code to answer, or give more than a few seconds to think through. Every time the user asks you to help him solve a software related problem, he’s giving you a puzzle. The user didn’t really mean to give you a level 5 puzzle to solve.