Getting your Workers to Subsidize the Hiring Process

The thing about programs like HackReactor is that they are methods for the big tech companies to gain access to a kind of super-technician programmer.  There is a huge problem in finding and hiring competent programmers.  I've seen it myself.  There is typically no good way for a company to really know if a given candidate is really a capable programmer or not.  There's also a huge downside to hiring someone who then turns out to be not very good.  In fact people speak of "negative productivity" and it's a real phenomenon.

In order to combat this issue, and to take advantage of the folks who want to want to try to catch the brass ring (of a well-paying career in the software industry), they've come up with this idea of a programming "boot camp".  They basically get people to pay for their own probationary term and then filter them for those people who are likely to do well as junior "technician" developers.  The students are, in effect, subsidizing the hiring process.

In this case, the reason why HackReactor can boast of such high rates of their "post-grad" hiring is that they are very very careful up front about who they let in.  That "interview" process they talk about is designed to vet people based on how well they can pick up tech and software stuff.  It's openly acknowledged that there are people who "just get" computers and people who really struggle.  HackReactor are very careful about only accepting people who are already strongly biased toward being able to "hack it" (no pun intended) and then teaching exactly what they want them to know, so that they come out of the program already proven (to some degree) and trained.  Of course they get hired. :-)  That's what the program is really for: finding and supplying a work force.

I would recommend attempting the "interview" because you will learn a lot just from that, however, unless you are just wanting a job as a mid-level software technician the actual program would probably be a waste of your time and effort.

As a counter-example you could learn everything they are teaching from a community resource such as the Mozilla Developer Network.

Fostering Good Character

Given the advent of ultra-powerful technology (fusion power with nanotechnology) the crucial problem before us today is the fostering of good character.

Religious folk (the ones who are doing it right in my estimation) understand this as the continual obligation and joy of remembering God and living in a goodly fashion.  Atheists, agnostics, and non-religious but spiritual folk can understand that only wise and good people can be trusted with such tremendous physical power.

We must discover and use whatever means we can to foster good character and wisdom.

Oh Sailing

OooooOOOOOOooOOoOOAAAaaaah!  NOW I get it. Sailing.

The first passage I made on the Adios was from South Beach Harbor just south of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco to the Berkeley Marina in, you guessed it, Berkeley.

I wasn't sure of my sailing chops so I figured I would just motor over and I left the sail under wraps. At first I tried to go around the west side of Treasure Island but as I got closer to what they call "The Slot" (the way between Angel Island and Treasure Island which faces the Golden Gate directly and catches all the wind and current) the waves became just high enough to give me pause and I went back around the east side of the island.

After that it was fairly smooth sailing (I should say motoring) until I got out towards the Berkeley Marina and was approaching the ruins of the old Municipal Pier, which stretch west through the water off of the marina for a surprisingly long way.  I came out from the lee of Treasure Island and the waves picked up again. They were not a danger to the boat but they kept raising the stern high enough to bring the prop out of the water and cause the engine to rev uncomfortably.

I got in to the protection of the breakwater and things calmed down, but it left me with the jarring feeling that I might also have gotten into more than I could handle.



It turns out I was doing it wrong.


In fact, the trick to travelling in a sail boat is to sail it. Who knew?

The next passage I made was from Berkeley to the Emeryville Marina, just next door and within sight of each other.  Kids go sailing there in tiny little sailboats for fun and practice, so I figured it would be safe enough to try to actually sail there myself.

I readied the mainsail but left it furled because the wind was astern (coming from behind) and making it difficult to raise it in the berth.  I left the headsail down. One thing at a time.  (You don't have to have the headsail up to sail, it just helps you go faster.)

I cast off and used the motor to get out into the main open part of the marina then hoisted the sail, letting the motor push us very slowly into the wind and towards the main opening from the harbor into the bay.  With the sail up and ready I motored out from behind the breakwater and into the bay.  I went south through the gap at the end of the still-accessible part of the Berkeley Municipal Marina, which process they call "threading the needle", and switched off the motor.

Now I was sailing, and it all made sense.

You pay attention, then you think, then you set the sail and the maybe the tiller, and then...  then the very forces of Nature herself carry you and your boat gently along.  It's quiet, it's peaceful, it's transcendent.

It's sailing.

Everything's Okay: DON'T PANIC!

As if living(-ish) on a sailboat and getting paid to work on robotics isn't cool enough, I am now learning Blender (the cool open-sourced 3D system) as part of my job. (I'm going to do mock ups of the robots using it!)

Now there's an interesting thing that my screwed up nervous system will do. All afternoon I have been on the edge of panic.  Weird, right?  I should be stoked.  I'm getting paid to learn Blender which is awesome and will enable me to do more awesome stuff, and this is totally okay.

Except my nervous system keeps trying to freak out and tell me that there's something really important that I'm forgetting that I need to do and I can't just sit here lighting up metaballs and rendering them all day! Dude, you have to get a job!

Whoa there neurotransmitters! Steady on, little glands! I've checked and re-checked and we're all okay.  There is, in fact, nothing I can think of that I should do today (it's Sunday afternoon) that I've left undone. Maybe call my mom. But it really is the order of the day to sit here and mess with Blender, and that will pay my bills.

Wow.  Just breath deeply. Everything's okay.

If you don't know what you're doing, stop doing it...

I just wrote this to a friend and it resonated with me enough to want to post it here:

Really the issue is not so much coding as "policy", i.e. figuring out
exactly what the client wants and typically educating them as
to how they can actually achieve it with computers.

I'm reluctant to work with people these days because no one seems to
want to know how things work, they just want to have you (me) "make
things go".  I just don't respect that anymore.

Despite being in a fairly desperate situation here I have been turning
down work rather than committing...

People are not getting it...

There is a Universal Language

Over the last century a small group of researchers, working largely independently and in isolation, have discovered and refined an Universal Language.

This is a logic-symbolic notation, not a spoken language (i.e. not like Esperanto), that captures and expresses the essence of logical reasoning in a direct and unmistakable way.

The rules of logical reasoning (and Set Theory, etc.) expressed in the Universal Language admit of a decision procedure that is of unprecedented simplicity and power.

It is the alphabet of thought.

I'm still gathering threads and learning but I've compiled a few links and a bit of history:

• C. S. Pierce, Existential Graphs, circa 1890
• Spencer-Brown, "Laws of Form"
• Bricken, http://iconicmath.com/
• Shroup, http://www.lawsofform.org/
• Burnett-Stuart, http://www.markability.net/

For your sake and the sake of the children, go read this, and tell the people.

Everybody Knows

So it turns out everybody knows.  So why doesn't everybody know?


I was reading "Boundary Algebra: A Simple Notation for Boolean Algebra and the Truth Functors" Meguire 2007 last night and he lays it all out, better than I ever could.  He mentions the NOR-gate thing in a footnote.  Everybody knows.


So why doesn't everybody know?


If there is only one utterly simple and direct notation interpreted in a few straightforward ways that opens the door to Logic (all kinds including circuits) Set Theory, mathematics, every kind of structured thought that we've been separately developing, doesn't it make sense to say that there "is only one" notation?


Aren't the others historical artefacts of the journey, the life, of ideas that led us to the place where we could articulate the Laws of Form?


Why not rebuild the edifice on such a foundation?  I double-dog dare you.