…instead of waking up New Year’s morning and saying, “I’m going to do X now,” then berating yourself a month later when that resolution didn’t work, remember: You’re doing nothing less than rewiring your brain. Approach change as if you’re learning a new language or a new instrument. Obviously, you’re not going to be fluent or play symphonies instantly; you’ll need constant focus and practice. Overcoming an unhealthy habit involves changing the behaviors associated with it and managing stress, because stressing about change (or anything else) will knock you off the wagon faster than you realize. Above all, get that dopamine system going: Find rewards–make them instant, and don’t be stingy. Your brain needs them. And I promise (well, Volkow, Schlund, Wexler, and Fleshner promise) it gets easier. That’s not a bunch of self-help nonsense. It’s biology.
To be considered with such an awesome group of people. I think Daniel Rubin deserves much of the credit for being the host of and inspiring the discussion.
One of the sections of the essay people focus on were six rules he listed on complexity. Rule number 5 is:
“Data dominates. If you’ve chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.”
To help us understand the context behind the rule, Pike cites Frederick Brooks’ “The Mythical Man-Month” p. 102. Here it is for your edification:
Representation is the Essence of Programming
Beyond craftmanship lies invention, and it is here that lean, spare, fast programs are born. Almost always these are the result of strategic breakthrough rather than tactical cleverness. Sometimes the strategic breakthrough will be a new algorithm, such as the Cooley-Tukey Fast Fourier Transform or the substitution of an n log n sort for an n2 set of comparisons.
Much more often, strategic breakthrough will come from redoing the representation of the data or tables. This is where the heart of your program lies. Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall be continued to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious.
It is easy to multiply examples of the power of representations. I recall a young man undertaking to build an elaborate console interpreter for an IBM 650. He ended up packing it onto an incredibly small amount of space by building an interpreter for the interpreter, recognizing that human interactions are slow and infrequent, but space was dear. Digitek’s elegant little Fortran compiler uses a very dense, specialized representation for the compiler code itself, so that external storage is not needed. That time lost in decoding this representation is gained back tenfold by avoiding input-output. (The exercieses at the end of Chapter 6 in Brooks and Inversion, “Automatic Data Processing” include a collection of such examples, as do many of Knuth’s exercises.)
The programmer at wit’s end for lack of space can often do best by disentangling himself from his code, rearing back, and contemplating his data. Representation is the essence of programming
Alex Hillman recently tweeted: “Twitter lists illustrate the most important shift in the internet: your bio is now written by others, and what they say about you.” He follows up with a longer piece on his blog.
Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D: It’s easy to see why many people who use it for the first time wonder what the big deal is–as I said above, you really need to try to accomplish something with it as part of a group before you understand what it’s good for.
Rafe shares the frustration he has trying to correct the the misinformation friends and family are consuming off the Web and from cable news media.
One way to really see this is when people on Twitter auto-update their Facebook (guilty as charged). The experiences and feedback on Twitter feel very different than the experiences and feedback on Facebook. On Twitter, I feel like I’m part of an ocean of people, catching certain waves and creating my own. Things whirl past and I add stuff to the mix. When I post the same messages to Facebook, I’m consistently shocked by the people who take the time to leave comments about them, to favorite them, to ask questions in response, to start a conversation. (Note: I’m terrible about using social media for conversation and so I’m a terrible respondent on Facebook.) Many of the people following me are the same, but the entire experience is different.
If you keep thinking about something like putting on a huge conference or being a Hollywood screenwriter and you find the idea terrifies but intrigues you, it’s probably a worthy endeavor for you.
You grow by doing what excites you and what scares you.
Stop assigning blame. This is the first step. Stop assigning blame and leave the past behind you.
You know whose fault it is that your life isn’t perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. Or even yourself. You know whose fault it is — you’ve been telling yourself your whole life. Knowing whose fault it is that your life sucks is an excellent way to absolve yourself of any reponsibility for taking your life into your own hands.
Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn’t real. “That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” If we’re not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn’t matter. Nothing can be done about it. If nothing can be done about it, then don’t spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.
1. Small is beautiful.
2. Make each program do one thing well.
3. Build a prototype as soon as possible.
4. Choose portability over efficiency.
5. Store data in flat text files.
6. Use software leverage to your advantage.
7. Use shell scripts to increase leverage and portability.
8. Avoid captive user interfaces.
9. Make every program a filter
Les Paul passed away last week, and I just wanted to post this little piece of thanks and to share something about his story that I had heard before, but seems extra relevant to my personal exploration into education and how we learn – his childhood music teacher told his mom, “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.” (NYTimes).
Yep. You read that right.
It sounds like his mom enabled him to keep at it. Read the entire NYTimes story. Not only did she enable him to continue to pursue music, it sounds like she empowered him to look at his entire house as a creative pallet. And he did. Minnesota Public Radio’s blog, “Trial Balloon” went so far as to say that “Les Paul’s Mom Invented Rock & Roll”. It’s hard to argue that.
Beyond empowering him, enabling him to continue when some indicated he had no talent was huge. Perseverance clearly became a core part of his story going forward, dealing with a car crash that would have eliminated his capability to play (he had his arm fused in position to be able to still do so), dealing with painful arthritis in his hands (he adjusted his playing style). He would cope with a myriad of life’s ups and downs and in doing so left so many gifts for the world.
Think about it. And think about how the world was changed because Les Paul believed in trying and trying again.
People believe either one of two things about intelligence and talent – either they are fixed traits – “it’s just the way someone is” – “God or genetics blessed or cursed them” – or they are something that is malleable and can be developed over time – with play, practice, and effort.
To determine your mindset, when you look at someone who has accomplished something, do you immediately attribute it entirely to something innate like talent, or do you admire the work and play (CNN Money) they put into it to make it happen?
Where you stand determines much. It effects everything from dealing with grades (NPR) to our children’s drive to try and try again (New York Magazine) to our capability to face our weaknesses head on with honesty (Malcolm Gladwell: “The Talent Myth”) or to deny we have any fiat over them.
Don’t think that those with high self esteem or low self esteem automatically fall into one mindset or the other. It’s not that simple (New York Magazine) or intuitive. Far from it (ScienceBlogs: Jonah Lehrer: Self-Esteem). .
I’m preaching to the choir in regards to many who read this blog, in particular musicians or programmers. We *exist* within a culture of learning and trumpet hard work to each other.
Observers of musicians or programmers however, routinely attribute what we do to innate ‘talent’ or ‘intelligence’ – when we know otherwise.
I’ve long had the following Calvin Coolidge quote on a page here:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
And lately, with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 program’s success, I reflected a bit on it.
It was Apollo 11. Not Apollo 1, that made it to the Moon. Not to dismiss the intelligence and resources of those assembled to make it happen, but Apollo 11 rested on the shoulders of at least 10 iterations of the Apollo program and the prior NASA program as a whole. Along the way there were lessons learned *while doing*. *While practicing*. While experimenting. These lessons did not come whole cloth out of the minds of those involved. In fact there was great tragedy and sacrifice along the way. Lives were lost.
Starting points do count of course. Context does count. The resources behind NASA were those of the country. The politics at the time were favorable. We can go on and on about that. And like persistence and grit, they are factors that get swept under the rug in a culture that likes to emphasize ‘great people’. But that’s a post for another day.
We were left inspired. And sometimes I think we fail to grasp what we should have been inspired of.
After all, for sure we can’t really control the cards we are dealt – but we can how we play them.
