
What programmers can learn from economists: fundamentals and models - ash
http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/11/04/0/
======
suyash
It's just a rant with very few valid points. First of all the author is
confusing the readers by not making it clear the distinction between writing
code as a hobbyist programmer vs writing code like a Computer Scientist.
Computer Science first of all is more science than Economics. Theories in
computer science have mathematical proofs behind them, the arguments he is
making seem to be based on programming design patterns like Abstraction and so
forth which are of course always debatable.

~~~
barrkel
Economics is mostly microeconomics. The stuff you read in the newspapers is
not what most economists do. And of course most people who aren't economists,
or don't know economists, think that economics is little more than astrology.

~~~
bachmeier
> Economics is mostly microeconomics.

Please elaborate. Macroeconomics and econometrics are very much a part of
economics.

~~~
barrkel
I didn't say they weren't part of the discipline. What I meant is that most
professional economists are not making prognostications about the economy;
they are typically analysing costs and benefits at several degrees of
indirection, developing models from data, and more generally optimizing
choices - economics is the study of choice.

What I'm particularly arguing against is the idea that the average economist
is some kind of marketplace weather forecaster and that consequently, owing to
accuracy little better than chance, there's nothing worthwhile in the
discipline.

~~~
rz2k
Maybe I am misinterpreting your comment, but forecasting isn't the primary
function of macroeconomists. Most of what will determine the future hasn't
happened yet, or hasn't yet been measured. And yet, public policy, fiscal
policy, and monetary policy choices all have enormous effects, and those
choices are ideally informed by people who have actually studied the economy.

To put it in familiar terms, there is a difference between the climate and the
weather, and we are able to influence the economic environment for good or bad
in the same way that we could affect the climate by changing the atmosphere or
changing the distance to the sun.

------
pdkl95
At the end[1] of the talk[2] at 30c3 by Eleanor Saitta and Quinn Norton, "No
Neutral Ground in a Burning World", an audience member suggested that people
need spend time learning _basic historical knowledge_ about crypto.

    
    
        It disturbs me that there are books about cryptographic algorithms,
        there are books about early days of hacking, but I talk to people
        younger than myself who are in their teens and twenties, and from
        the people I've talked to there is an astounding lack of awareness
        of say, the first crypto war.
    

That's bad enough, but Quinn's reply is a simple, easy to understand, damning
indictment of the sorry state of the modern software culture:

    
    
        Can everybody in the room who has some sort of computer science degree
        or related degree put up your hand? Keep your hands up. Now, everyone
        who read Claude Shannon in school put your hands down.
    
        So all of you are people with CS degrees who didn't read Claude Shannon,
        one of the most fundamental voices in everything you do.
    

Unfortunately, learning from history takes effort, so it's a lot easier to
simply cargo-cult programming "knowledge" instead of actually learning about
these complex systems.

> economists

They have their own problems with over-reliance on models. Mark Blyth's
description of the problem from the perspective from inside the field has
quite a few similarities to the problems in programming.

> models

On the subject of over-reliance on models - especially overly-complicated,
buzzword-compliant models that cover up a total lack of actual research,
innovation, or really anything worthwhile at all - I want to suggest
listening[4] to the wonderful Tom Lehrer talk about Sociology.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWg2qEEa9CE#t=2367](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWg2qEEa9CE#t=2367)

[2] [http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-
burn...](http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/no-neutral-ground-burning-
world/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWbkPezgtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWbkPezgtU)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So#t=37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So#t=37)

~~~
scott_s
Most physicists have not read the _Principia_. But the contents of it have
been deeply ingrained in every physics curriculum in the world.

When work truly is foundational, it actually becomes the foundation of
curriculums, and it's not _necessary_ to read the original to learn its
material. It is perhaps _interesting_ , or even _enlightening_ , but not
_necessary_.

~~~
sanderjd
Thank you, was going to say this as well. I read (some) Claude Shannon in my
degree program, but I remember thinking how cool it was to see its influence
on all the other stuff I'd learned from textbooks and lectures, rather than
thinking, "wow, this is all brand new!".

------
platz
> The entrepreneurial hacker and the MIT-style hacker are two different beasts

subtle reference to [https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-
better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)

------
laxatives
Maybe not a primary component of economics, but its sad how little statistics
is a part of CS. Dealing with things at scale makes statistics/probability
integral and many of the most interesting ML algorithms don't come from CS
backgrounds, but from statistics (Random Forests) and Convex Optimization
(EE/Math).

~~~
grayclhn
I'd like it to be a bigger part of economics training, but most econ majors
have about a year of formal statistics/econometrics as a year of their
coursework.

------
ilaksh
Why can't I downvote posts? This is a baseless attack on programmers. He just
claims that we can't reason. Its obviously bullshit (colorful language
intended and warranted).

I personally think economics may not be a science at all, since it is mainly
based on models with very little physical evidence to back them up. Which I
would hesitate to make a statement like that, or a rant with many of them,
because obviously it is unfair and offensive to economists.

~~~
grayclhn
I wouldn't call that view "unfair and offensive to economists," just not super
original or useful. There are huge financial and societal rewards to producing
"better economics" than we have now (i.e., you'd do the world a lot of good
and get paid a lot of money) so if you have specific improvements in mind,
please please please try to work on them.

------
HillaryBriss
... appears to have been written by an economist. Is any other comment
necessary?

~~~
grayclhn
Definitely not by an economist. Statements like

> Economics is divided into many schools, in turn leaning neoclassical,
> heterodox or other

are a pretty big tipoff because

1: non "heterodox" economists do not care enough about heterodox economics to
mention it as a "school."

2: "heterodox" economists almost certainly don't think that "more formal math,
like mainstream economics" is a good recommendation for any field.

(I am an economist, don't agree with the article.)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
I didn't refer to "heterodox" as a school, but rather a higher taxonomic rank.
Nor did I ever make the case for formal math specifically.

It is true I am not an economist.

~~~
grayclhn
I just meant that an economist would have written differently in a lot of ways
orthogonal to the point you were making. I didn't mean it as a value judgement
(i.e. that an economist would have written it better), even though my post
might have been read that way.

------
abc_lisper
Agreed. Where do I signup? What concrete steps should I take to break this
cycle?

~~~
Absentinsomniac
Presumably we have to make access to historic CS papers more readily available
and research past implementations of concepts before diving in, and what not.
This seems sensible. Probably very few programmers actually check the
literature before doing _anything_. Online maybe, but a good deal of the
scientific papers in the field are paywalled etc.

I don't even know what fundamentals besides basic ideas of programming might
look like.

~~~
abc_lisper
You mean, like this?

[http://paperswelove.org/](http://paperswelove.org/)

------
carsongross
> "No one predicted this." Memorize this phrase.

> Government jobs are very stable.

> Apply math to all problems, regardless of the appropriateness. When two
> theories are in conflict, the one with more math wins, unless it conflicts
> with the interests of the people who are paying you.

> Normal distributions. Everywhere.

~~~
KingMob
Are those quotes? They're not in the linked article.

------
yarrel
It's not called the dismal science for nothing.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's called the dismal science because a slavery proponent disliked the
abolitionist conclusions of economists.

~~~
sanderjd
That reminds me of the thing about how Chicago was originally called "The
Windy City" because of all the political gossip rather than the actual wind.
That may be true, but it's also super windy there, which is more relevant for
the nickname in contemporary parlance.

But thanks, I didn't know that, and it's super interesting!

------
AC__
Economics is pseudo-science. I refuse to recognize a man made construct as a
valid scientific field. I used to argue with my BBA room-mate, I asserted
markets were fixed, he would try to counter with law of demand. HA! Libor
scandal, crude prices, utility price fixing honestly I could go on for days.

~~~
crzwdjk
So computer science is a pseudo-science too?

~~~
AlphaSite
CS is an intersection of arts, science, engineering and maths. The algorithms
and data structures are the maths and science side, HCI is the arts/social
sciences portion and of course applications, teams management etc are more
where it intersects with engineering.

HCI is a less grounded than the maths portions which are as much a science as
any part of maths is. But still have a grounding. The engineering side is
probably a lot more wishy-washy and concerned with anecdotes than empirical
evidence.

That's my opinion as a generalisation.

