From 392348ab535a7f33d23ba5479179614a972fc3fd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: kammitama5 Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2023 17:16:04 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] Update 2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md --- _posts/2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/_posts/2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md b/_posts/2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md index cd0ad663df392..7b4c37b944a4e 100644 --- a/_posts/2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md +++ b/_posts/2023-12-27-Wednesday-December-27th.md @@ -47,7 +47,7 @@ research network, and to be able to work with people I want to work with! So in ## Thoughts being at the intersection of Maths and Computer Science - Computer people can make Maths people feel stupid when it comes to "computer things". I had a conversation with a really cool functional programming group, and one person suggested that part of it is the power that comes with being "that computer guy", and how that might affect someone's self-esteem, so sometimes some people don't want to let that go. Anyways, because I work at the intersection of Computing and Mathematics (these days, I spend a lot more time working with Mathematicians), I had two such situations this year where I got to see the interactions between a "Computer person" and a Mathematician. In one, a Mathematics grad student was trying to troubleshoot why their internet was not connecting and the IT person was asking them about their MAC address, and they thought because they had an Apple computer (you know, MAC could mean MacIntosh to the uninitiated and that's a reasonable intuition tbh; they were also not a native English speaker), this had something to do with that. The IT person responded by being really condescending, and I motioned on their computer to where they could find it and they resolved the issue, and the young mathematician thanked me profusely. I was frustrated by the way the IT person had treated them. In another situation, a friend of mine who is a mathematician wanted to install Mathematics software, and the instructions just were too confusing. It made me a bit angry. - I want to normalize that Mathematicians do code, because they do (many people in scientific (or even liberal arts) disciplines these days do *some* degree of coding or computational thinking. And it's something that can be learned, especially if one has a project goal. -- I really like working with mathematicians in general, and I wish Computer people could be a bit better with respect to this regarding communication between Mathematicians and Computer Scientists. I look at some of my PL friends who are frustrated that their tool of choice wasn't adopted as a proof assistant en masse the way say, Lean has, but I understand why now. That community must be doing something right, and as someone who started the journey in the PL community, and then felt excluded by my own peers because of elitism and insecurity (i.e. "you need to take X classes or you aren't a real PL person"...even though I've been attending POPL and went to like, 3 PL summer schools since 2017?), Lean was that community for me that got me back into really learning a proof assistant in a serious way. It's an exciting, vibrant community, and it's filled with some of my favourite people! I really liked that they didn't distinguish between what type of Mathematics you came from, too! There is so much that can be learned about that! +- I really like working with mathematicians in general, and I wish Computer people could be a bit better with respect to this regarding communication between Mathematicians and Computer Scientists. I look at some of my PL friends who are frustrated that their tool of choice wasn't adopted as a proof assistant en masse the way say, Lean has, but I understand why now. That community must be doing something right, and as someone who started the journey in the PL community, and then felt excluded by my own peers because of elitism and insecurity (i.e. "you need to take X classes or you aren't a real PL person" and "clearly you suck at Maths if you don't just *get* this" (never mind these individuals studied the entire textbook the entire summer before taking the class!)...even though I've been attending POPL and went to like, 3 PL summer schools since 2017?), Lean was that community for me that got me back into really learning a proof assistant in a serious way. It's an exciting, vibrant community, and it's filled with some of my favourite people! I really liked that they didn't distinguish between what type of Mathematics you came from, too! There is so much that can be learned about that! ## Happy New Year - I'm finally starting to enjoy just doing research and being left to my devices, with people