A CS degree also qualifies you for on-the-job training in writing code, that odious task that your professors find trivial but somehow are also terrible at it.
We just don't have time. Incentives are elsewhere. Any time devoted to writing good code for a paper is time we cannot use to work on the next paper, (shudder) grant application, or a plethora of other things that we are either forced or incentivized to do.
I miss coding from when I was in a more junior stage of my career and could afford time for it, and I think my fellow professors mostly feel the same, I don't think many would dismiss it as trivial or odious.
I’m inferring “odious” from the priority that is applied to it. Maybe “irrelevant” is better?
But when those junior engineers hit my company, they can do homework problems and that’s about it. “CS fundamentals” aren’t useful when you can’t quit vi or debug a regex. They get to be useful 2-3 years later, after the engineer has shaken off being a student.
Not the person you replied to, but I am aware that a functional programming course by CMU has had lectures (not exercises or content) freely available as YouTube recordings. https://brandonspark.github.io/150/
Hi Peter. Thanks for your AMAs, always a source of great value.
A couple of questions from me:
1. Which would you say are the top spececializations within tech that employers are most willing to sponsor visas for nowadays?
2. Would you say the willingness to sponsor tech professionals has lessened somewhat as of late? Given the economic climate, opportunities to hire remote globally, etc.
3. Are there any impactful immigration reforms we should keep a watchful eye for, vis a vis the 2024 US presidential election?
1. From my narrow/limited perspective, AI/ML engineers and technical product managers.
2. Again from my narrow/limited perspective, no, even with remote employment (because oftentimes those remote workers need to spend significant time in the U.S. and require work authorization).
3. I don't see any likely major changes. The action will come from executive orders and changes in the application/interpretation of law.
As a side note, Godot's Development Fund [0] is currently sitting at 51.1k euros/month. Does anybody know where it was at before the Unity pricing revamp announcement?
GeeksForGeeks is the bane of my existence and IMO a symptom that the entire system has perverse incentives. Fortunately, I've moved 90% of my code inquiries to LLMs, to great success.
Currently listening to the LOTR audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis. Highly recommended. His characters are heavily influenced by Peter Jackson's movies; it put me off a bit at first, but I've really come to like it now.
The Serkis ones are good, but I really love the old Rob Inglis versions. Someone described them as the closest thing to Tolkien himself reading the books.
Surprisingly I think some of his voices (eg, Gandalf) do match the vibe of the films better; even his Gollum isn't too far off.
I haven't heard Serkis's narration, but it's hard to beat Inglis. I certainly wouldn't object to narration influenced by Jackson's films -- though I have my share of problems with Jackson's adaptation, I think he did a fine job of casting and directing.
> It would be useful to give more clarity around your thoughts on the "Data Engineer" role. Is it also in decline? Is the market as a whole in a relative decline?
My thoughts: the tech job market as a whole has been in decline, as unanimously observed. There may be some signs that the slowdown is abating though. Next 6-12 months will be key to see how DS and DE rebound (or not).
> Most businesses' data engineering needs have been solved or will shortly be solved by managed services that 10 years ago would require endless and extensive self-built ETL pipelines, databases and tools. For the exceeding majority of businesses, this means they can and should focus on building capacity for business logic, analysis and predictions instead of data engineering.
Could not disagree more with your take of "DE demand will decline due to DE needs being already solved for most businesses". Apologies, but have you ever worked as a data engineer or even close to one? Pipelines break, requirements change, businesses expand, and infrastructure needs to be managed and optimized, etc. ETL processes, in the wild, are decidedly not one-off affairs.
The evidence points to demand for data engineers declining on a relative basis to other data roles, following the data science trajectory. Agree or disagree?
Maybe the analysis as to _why_ is wrong, but that is what I'm trying to unpack.
HN Guidelines: "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names"
Thanks for mentioning this. I don't get to do much writing in my time off work, since that time is devoted to (more) coding to try and make my side project into a business. So what I do to compensate is I make an effort and write all commit messages, descriptions, code review comments and documentation as if I were writing for an audience of top engineers auditing my work. I find this approach makes me enjoy the process more, be more deliberate about my actions, and how I communicate them. Even a dull runbook can be beautifully written.
