Why Science Majors Change Their Minds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.htm <comment><USER2> I didn't change my mind. I started as a CS major, ended as a CS major, and am finishing up a CS Master's degree. Possibly one day a CS PhD.

I have TA'd students and have long had an abiding interest in educational curricula, stemming from my experienced being homeschooled, where as I grew older, I was able to select elective materials to study in cooperation with my parents.

There are a few highlighter reasons I believe STEM education has issues, and please remember that these are interlinked, and other issues are present, which also interlink into these issues. I've picked these because I think they are standout.

* ROI on engineering vs. ROI on the MBA course. Non-founder engineers cap their salary potential in their career, in general, and spend gruelling hours in classes. MBA's salary cap is higher to non-existent, and can apparently skiv off pretty easy in undergraduate years.

* Math education is generally _broken_ in the US. That means that students are not ready for the rigourous thinking and numeracy demanded in STEM. They struggle understanding the basics of mathematics and computational thinking because they never have had it before, so the 'elite' students who do know what they are doing stand out.

* Hacker/elite snobs pissing on other classmates. This has happened to a few friends of mine, but not really to me. Some of the freshmen/sophomores really brag on their ability (i.e., they were coder geeks in high school) and this discourages other people. It's toxic.

* Gender imbalance and lousy social environment. A bunch of stinky guys geeking out over computers and video games which are outdated in a few years is not... primo.

* Young software engineers are expected to spend nearly every waking minute coding, just to have a chance to get a job. They need to get internships, contribute to open source, maybe build a mobile app, etc... and do well in class. This, as near as I can tell, is very rare. Only perhaps musicians have similar expectations. Spending this much time on your field is corrosive to your character and personality (see above two points).

* Culture heroes are entertainers and sports stars. Not makers of useful things.

* Focus on application instead of theory. Everyone wants to do something real cool right now, preferably yesterday, without any training. This is not realistic when laying the foundations for a solid career. Short-term thinking says, "pleasure now, pay later", which does not work well in STEM.

<comment><USER3> I also started as CS, and stuck with it all the way to PhD.

I think that CS, CPE and EE are different than the rest of STEM that students get to start playing in their discipline much, much earlier. I know from experience that CS majors are writing code their first semester. Continually creating new things in your discipline sets up a feedback-loop that keeps you interested. I don't think this was true for engineering programs like civil, mechanical or aerospace.

For science, the payoff is much more abstract, since you don't actually _do_ science as a science undergrad. You learn _about_ science.

There are, of course, undergrads who get involved in research projects or extra-curricular activities centered around their major that allow them to actually play around in their discipline early on. But I think those are edge cases.

<comment><USER4> Nah, EE's dont. They get divorced theory and math most of the first few years. When we do actually get to build circuits early on, they are to mintutiae- focused on some slew-rate characteristics of an op-amp at a given frequency rather than systemic perspective thinking that is needed in the real world with real applications. To much focus on analysis, nowhere near enough on synthesis. A modern EE education is geared toward training autistic, perspective-deprived drones.

<comment><USER5> Yes incredibly accurate and its a shame. I did have labs working on breadboards and even IC design but it was literally just following a well defined procedure so you dont screw it up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article is trying to figure out the solution to a problem that was solved over a decade ago. See: <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

Science majors change their minds once they find out that they will be required to take challenging courses, yes, but it is not this challenge, in and of itself, that causes them to "change their minds". It is that people who are smart enough to be in a position to take these courses, people who the article talks about as having great scores on the SAT etc, people like these are also smart enough to do a quick ROI calculation and realize that a comparatively easier (don't take this as a rip on people with these degrees, many of them are my friends, are very, very smart, and have made this very decision themselves) degree in econ, business, or law will yield vastly greater material dividends.

If you want people to stop changing their minds about science, you have to do something to change the ROI calculation that goes "I can work 2x as hard as my peers, graduate and receive 1/2 the monetary compensation or I can....not do that".

<comment><USER7> I completely agree that PhD programs in STEM fields have become extremely uncompetitive with the professions (a RAND study on the supposed shortage of scientists and engineers that reached the same conclusion Greenspun reaches, though with a more data driven, less anecdotal approach.)

But keep in mind, we're talking about undergraduate degrees here, which is a different beast entirely. Engineering and physical science majors really do have considerably better employment prospects on average than humanities or social science majors.

That said, I suppose you still have to analyze it from the perspective of a student who is sure to attend professional school. If you know you're law- school bound, you're at a reputable university, and you have high grades in humanities and the ability to ace standardized tests, you can still have a high paying career in law without ever taking a serious math class.

Engineering/Sci majors are often more desirable on the way out - a law school graduate with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering has more options than one with an undergrad major in English.

Considering how much harder these degrees are, it could still be rational for a student to avoid these fields even at the undergraduate level - and if they harm your GPA, it might be best to avoid them (though some admissions officials do say they discount high GPAs in "easier" majors). And even if you can hack it, you'll work a hell of a lot harder in college. But if you're willing to put in the effort and have the ability, you do improve your job prospects with an rigorous Math/Sci/Eng major over a humanities major in almost every career scenario.

So on the balance, I think you can make a very strong ROI case for engineering in eng/sci/math at the undergrad level. MS, less so, but it's a short program. PhD? Well, the RAND institute already crunched the numbers better than I ever could, it's pretty hard to justify a PhD in STEM relative to the professions if you're going off career ROI.

<comment><USER8> I guess it depends how you measure ROI? People usually do PhDs in an area that interests them; if they then go on to an academic or research position, it's possible for them to spend their entire career pursuing their own interests. That sounds like a pretty good ROI to me, regardless of salary!

<comment><USER9> A very small fraction of Ph.D graduates land professional research positions.

<comment><USER10> It's not "very small", it's just significantly below unity. In, say, physics, I'd say that somewhere around 50% of PhDs wind up, long term, in professional research positions. That's 30% in academia, and the remaining 20% in government/military/commercial research labs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article sounds as though there's a lot of pressure on colleges to lower their standards in order to produce the required number of engineers. I was a math/CS TA for several years, and I don't think the problem is with tough freshman classes, low grades or a focus on theory.

Fundamentally, the main problem with students that come from the US educational system is a lack of background in math. The prospective science major who's having trouble with fractions and basic algebra is, unfortunately, a disturbingly common presence on college campuses these days.

It's hard to fix K-12 in this regard (especially as everyone wants to fix it in a different way). But if colleges really want to solve the problem, they should put more effort into remedial math classes, instead of lowering the standards (and reducing the theoretical content) for those classes they already have.

<comment><USER12> I think the remedial math courses that presently exist at the college level are probably sufficient. The problem is that there's a perceived stigma among young people in taking them. I retook pre-calculus and trigonometry when I started college after the military, and I doubt I would have graduated as an engineer if I hadn't.

<comment><USER13> Make them mandatory if you can't pass a screening test.

<comment><USER14> Nah, the real problem is just that other degrees, MBA, Law, etc, are just plain easier AND result in higher social status plus frequently more money.

Maybe in-demand engineers make more than the average lawyer, not sure about that. Maybe an MBA isn't really that much easier? But I'd say higher social status, especially in the USA holds true.

<comment><USER15> Can't speak much about new MBA grads, New grad lawyers are doing pretty awful these days (IANAL, but I have several friends who graduated from decent-but- not-amazing law schools this year, and had/are having a hard time getting fulltime jobs as supposed to temp/contact work.)

<comment><USER16> At the top 10-15 law schools, more than 50% the class will get a six figure job to start, and a big fraction of the remainder will have wanted to do public service to begin with. Even just a bit below that, at some of the top 30 schools like UIUC that drops to maybe 10%. At the same time, salaries aren't distributed normally, and the next mode is somewhere in the $50k range.

Engineering is both less segregated (people at MIT aren't all making Google salaries and people at Penn State can get still top jobs) and less bimodal (the top jobs don't pay 3x as much as the median job, and even people who do poorly grades-wise can often find some sort of employment).

So if you're looking at a top engineering program like Berkeley versus doing a bullshit humanities degree followed by a top law school, you'll likely come out ahead monetarily pursuing the latter option. On the other hand going to a decent state engineering school is probably a better bet than aforementioned humanities degree and a decent state law school.

That being said, even someone who went to aforementioned state law school and is working in "small law" for $50k can make a lot of money if he can bring in business. And if you went to that big firm and can bring in business, you can get paid millions while still doing legal work. On the engineering side, you either have to go the startup route, get an MBA and go into management (which involves not being an engineer anymore), or be content hearing "we couldn't possibly pay an engineer as much as a manager!" It's changing a bit with the Google's and Facebook's of the world, but is still the basic reality for most non-software folks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I sometimes regret not switching out of my aerospace engineering major. I went to a good undergraduate engineering school (Georgia Tech), and frankly the educational experience was terrible. Professors who weren't engaged, TA's who couldn't speak English well enough to easily convey the material, exams that were unrelated to what was taught in class, etc. I had a few great professors, but they were few and far between.

When I left engineering to go to a smallish private law school, I had a totally different experience. Classes taught entirely by professors. Maximum of ~60 students per class and more typically 20-30 in upper-level courses. Professors who would engage the class in hypotheticals rather than just dryly recount the rules. Exams that actually tested the material we learned.

The fundamental problem is that engineering schools, especially the big state ones like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, and Georgia Tech, are research factories. They crank out certain amount of BS's to meet industry demand for engineers, but their investment in those graduates seems minimal at best.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think an undergraduate degree in engineering is still the best way to go (as long as you can hack the math and it won't kill your GPA). Even if you ultimately want to do law, finance, or consulting, people really do take you more seriously. But at the same time, I really can't blame people when they stay away from STEM majors, especially ones that test well and know they will be able to go to a top graduate school with their liberal arts degree.

<comment><USER17> You're also seeing a difference between undergraduate education and graduate education. The class sizes and professor interest are night and day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3196377>

</comment><comment><USER19> _"You'd like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed," he says. "But if you take two students who have the same high school grade- point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree."_

This is interesting. Could it be that at more selective schools, when students encounter difficulty in STEM courses, they are less hesitant to switch to an easier major because they figure that their degree will still have value due to the name recognition of their university, while their counterparts at less selective schools don't have that luxury? That's one hypothesis...

<comment><USER20> No, it's just that Berkeley STEM courses are harder.

<comment><USER21> Not just material-wise, but also in terms of competitiveness

<comment><USER22> This is a valid point. The EECS department at Berkeley essentially sets the distribution of letter grades that will be assigned at the end of each course[0], so there will always be many damned smart students who end up getting really low (or failing) grades because of their performance relative to their peers.

I majored in CS at Berkeley, and there were only one or two professors that I can recall who strayed even slightly from these departmental guidelines. For me, the harsh curves essentially ruined what would have been an amazing educational experience. It was basically a perpetual preparation for the next exam, because you were always competing for your spot on the grade scale.

This is a very real deterrent for not only students who need a decent GPA (e.g. for grad school), but also for those who want to actually enjoy their time at university.

[0] <http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml>

<comment><USER3> I dunno, this distribution seems reasonable to me: _17% A's, 50% B's, 20% C's, 10% D's, and 3% F's_

Are you saying that the caliber of student in the EECS department of Berkeley is so high that even the bottom 13% of the class would have gotten C's or B's at another school?

<comment><USER16> The problem is the 3.0 median. At my law school, where most people majored in social sciences at places like Berkeley, Michigan, etc, 3.0 is a bottom of the barrel GPA in terms of getting admitted. I think the median is like 3.8. Our peer law schools won't even take someone with below a 3.2-3.3 or so. Meanwhile, 3.3 was a great GPA at the engineering department at Georgia Tech when I was there.

You can complain about grade inflation, etc, but at the end of the day you're telling that 18 year old kid: "don't even try to major in engineering, because even if you keep up with your highly qualified peers you'll still kill any shot you might have had at a non-engineering graduate program."

<comment><USER3> I was comparing that distribution to the schools I've been a student and taught at (Virginia Tech, William and Mary) in CS. It seemed on par. Then the point is not about Berkeley, but all engineering departments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I went the other direction. After finding math and science easy before college, I avoided science classes in college to avoid being too nerdy.

By junior year I realized I loved science too much, overcame being bothered by what other people thought, majored in physics, and got a PhD.

My last two years of the PhD I ended up starting a company and became a successful entrepreneur in media, which is, I guess, the payoff to the economy of someone going into math and science.

Check out this irony. I've come to create art with my medium and taught a couple art courses at art schools to MFA and BFA candidates. The _art students_ learn programming, circuits, entrepreneurship, design, and such.

I'm talking about programs like NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Project and Parsons' Arts, Media, and Technology program.

We created these displays, which is pretty techy and beautiful. \- <http://joshuaspodek.com/tag/unionsquareinmotion> \- <http://joshuaspodek.com/new_bryant_park_in_motion_videos>

<comment><USER24> I'm surprised that you were able to decide to major in physics your junior year. At my school, if you didn't take physics your first year, you simply could not graduate as a physics major in four years (at least without getting a special exception to double up on courses, which would require you to be nearly super-human). Perhaps this phenomenon contributes to the low numbers of science majors, as well. Lots of people don't figure out what to major in until they are a year or two into college, which rules out a lot of STEM possibilities if you happened not to take the correct courses in your first year.

<comment><USER23> Exactly.

I had to double up on classes and take some subjects on my own over the summer. Two classes one semester literally overlapped by about fifteen minutes and I had to get special permission to show up late for it. I got a passing grade for it, but finished it afterward.

It wasn't a matter of being super-human, just loving the subject. I agree, though, that if your passion isn't overwhelming, you can't do it. You can with many non-STEM majors.

The first couple years of graduate school were brutal. I had taken twenty math and science classes undergrad. Typical Russian and Chinese classmates had taken thirty to fifty and they blew me out of the water. The one guy in the program who took nineteen courses dropped out, so I was right on the border.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Personally I stepped away from pre-med because I couldn't stand the idea of my major determining my life for the next ten years - graduate programs, internships, residence, all that stuff, it's daunting when you're 21 and all you want to do is STUFF. Going premed would mean what I'd done was just the beginning not an accomplishment in and of itself. That was daunting and a bit demoralizing. The fact is it's not for everyone, and not just because of the difficulty (I never excelled in math or organic chemistry), and people like me who get in because it's interesting often find that the career paths that present themselves are strictly defined and entail a lot of drudgery. I remember perceiving this very clearly in my 3rd year after doing a lot of prep work and it was an easy decision. I ended up majoring in Psych with minors in Neuroscience and Cog Sci, for the record, which was hard as hell anyway, but technically a BA and not applicable to STEM-type employment.

</comment><comment><USER26> The article certainly identifies an important issue, but seems simplistic in it's assessment of the root causes. As a a bio major, who wavered between pre- med and business aspirations, my main gripe with science education was the theoretical framework it was taught in. It's mostly complete rote memorization of thousands of inane details, without any practical context to understand the relevance or application (no, labs do not fulfill this purpose).

If the implications of bio/chem theory were taught in a more practical, problem-solving approach, (a la computer science), I feel people would develop a better passion for science (as they did in High School with science fairs as the article describes), and stick with it longer.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the analysis is a little superficial.

K-12 education in the US channels a lot of really bright kids onto a highly time consuming and sequential STEM track, and the idea that anything other than a STEM major is for wimps is not uncommon. In addition, STEM majors is where such students are directed by guidance counselors.

I went off to college to major in EE. I had a 3 minute conversation with my academic adviser which consisted entirely of him telling me exactly which 15 hours to take. I walked out and changed majors to CHM, where the academic councilor explained the various degree options and discussed electives over the course of about an hour.

But it turns out, though I loved the theory, I really fucking hated laboratory sessions. Organic synthesis on paper was an interesting problem - I just didn't care for going through the motions, cleaning glassware and pretending I was conducting a meaningful experiment.

It took me several years to decide that there are lots of worthy intellectual endeavors and challenging problems outside of STEM [YMMV]. I believe my choice to pursue a liberal arts degree is among the best decisions I ever made.

Personally, I think the problem is that the US educational system narrows the funnel toward the STEM field too early - for all practical purposes it's already narrowing way down into the primary grades...even though the it is obvious that people can find their way into the more "open" STEM areas (such as programming) without being channeled academically toward a STEM career.

In other words, the primary reason that a person first exposed to algebra at Junior College is less likely to become a mathematician is lower expectations, both on the part of the academy and on the part of the student.

<comment><USER2> FYI, there is a whole branch of chemistry that exists outside the lab and dealing with the abstract concepts and mechanics.

<comment><USER27> Yep. Unfortunately, you can't get there without cleaning a lot of glassware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why are the students afraid of lower grades? If you don't go to a PhD program, does it matter all that much? I think this emphasis on grades is something we should work to undo. You can learn, you can relearn and get extra help, but if the grades cause you to quit too early then grades are not having the effect we want.

<comment><USER29> A significant portion of the undergraduate population at my school receive scholarships that are recurring on the condition of maintaining a 3.0 GPA. We're talking non-trivial amounts, on the scale of $18-22k scholarship money per year for a school that costs ~$45k/year. For students receiving these scholarships, grades matter significantly, and it can become an economic question of whether they'd rather continue pursuing the engineering degree and graduate tens of thousands more in debt, or switch to an easier set of courses that will allow them to retain the scholarship.

I think a lot of it also has to do with expectations from parents. For a lot of students, graduating with an engineering degree and a 2.5 GPA will leave mom and dad less happy than an English degree with a 3.5 GPA, even though the former is more likely to be useful in the job hunt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think this is a valuable alternate perspective. Students will become discouraged from time to time and this will vary by field. Frankly, most professors don't care about undergraduate education. I know this from direct experience. They will typically list their priorities as: research and grants, graduate students, and only then, undergraduate teaching. And teaching is hard enough even when it's a top priority. You always lose some students without dedicated effort put into teaching and that will be worse in harder classes. High school doesn't prepare students for a rigorous college experience and if we don't bridge that gap somehow that will be one more reason someone will get out of a tough curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think this in an interesting problem you don't really have in a lot of tertiary education systems else wear (that said, I still think the ability to pick and chose a diverse set of classes is a great model, and better than most).

I studied in the UK, so you apply from high school to do, "Computer Science" or, "Physics" or, "English". And that's what you do. You have some choice in terms of the classes and courses you take, but (generally) they're all totally within that sphere. I think having some options to do other courses would be really valuable, but equally it means people don't typically chose to switch from an STEM based degree to something else, and people stick it out (or just drop out).

</comment><comment><USER31> _The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who typically leave STEM fields if their hopes for medical school fade._

I don't know that including pre-meds in the analysis is worthwhile. While medicine is certainly quite technical, I don't really consider it a STEM field. The economic multipliers from improved medicine (increasing productivity for each of a doctor's patients) is qualitatively different from those for "real" STEM fields (increasing productivity for potentially anyone who can get the discovered knowledge).

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't think it,the curriculum, is too difficult, but the professors that teach the lower level general curriculum freshman year in most universities. I mean I had professors that were literally out in left field, and don't get me started on the foreign TAs. There was always major communication barriers during my first two quarters in EE. Enthusiasm coming from professors is contagious, but so is boredom.

</comment><comment><USER33> I thought this was posted a week ago. Don't upvote this!</comment>


Show HN: Emacs in the browser with Dropbox, GDrive, Github, etc. - <AUTHOR> http://brettcvz.github.com/ymacs/demo/

<comment><AUTHOR> I felt like the vim guys got too much love from the post a while back, wanted to bring the emacs community to the web too!

</comment><comment><USER2> Super cool, great work brettcvz! Just one note: ctrl-n doesn't work as desired - instead of moving the point to the next line it opens a new (browser) window, as that's the binding in the browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome. Always wanted this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too! By the way, the core of the editor is YMacs (<http://www.ymacs.org/>). Source is at <https://github.com/brettcvz/ymacs>

<comment><USER4> This is great, I really love the integration with my Dropbox folder!</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I'm writing the European version of Founders at Work - <AUTHOR>

Being inspired by Jessica Livingston's "Founders at Work", I've begun working on a book that will tell the stories of the most successful tech founders in Europe: how they started, what were the challenges they faced, what lessons they learned and so on.
If you're asking yourself who these founders are, let me name a few of the companies they built: Skype, last.fm, Bebo, lastminute.com, MySQL, MoneyBookers, Spotify, PollDaddy, Yandex and others.
I'm planning to self-publish it and use Amazon's CreateSpace (.com) as a distribution channel and for on-demand printing.
===
I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on this that you would like to share. If you'd rather do it in private, feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
I believe there's a huge interest for this book and I hope it will inspire young entrepreneurs as much as Founders at Work has inspired people.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. Have you considered blooking it? I mean publishing interviews as you do them one at a time on a blog and putting them together in book form in the end. I really think writing and publishing books in the traditional way is completely out of sync with how people read now. I say this having just finished writing a book in the old way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're considering this approach because it's not traditional and it can generate more buzz. On the other hand, I believe that this might decrease the final excitement, when the entire book is done.

So maybe interview excerpts as we go along?

We definitely want to experiment! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like a really interesting project, Ill be interested in hearing updates as you go along, a domain / twitter account would be useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're still debating over the title but, once we have it, we'll get a site & twitter account.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GetHTTPSforFree.com, a no-install browers-based Let's Encrypt client - <AUTHOR> https://gethttpsforfree.com <comment><USER2> Very cool. Like what devhxinc said this is hugely useful. I was not looking forward to trying to decipher let's encrypt at home. I'm impressed how quickly this was put together.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is neat tool especially for people like me who run custom web servers or web server software that is not supported by the Let's Encrypt client.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the difference in this against StartSSL? It's free, automated, and open ?

<comment><USER5> Well for one StartSSL charges to revoke certificates.</comment></comment>


Bing Previews a More Beautiful Search Experience in IE9 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2010/09/15/bing-previews-a-more-beautiful-search-experience-in-ie9.aspx

<comment><USER2> "I swear, if he says 'The power of IE9' one more time, I'm gonna..."</comment>


The Rust Compilation Model Calamity - <AUTHOR> https://pingcap.com/blog/rust-compilation-model-calamity/ <comment><USER2> Glad lots of bright minds are working on this, and the problem isn't being downplayed by the community.

This is one instance where I think we can learn from Go's "ergonomics first" principles, even though that strategy has cost it a place in the benchmark rankings. I'm very curious about how Jonathan Blow's Jai language will turn out, as it supposedly has a dedicated backend for debug builds which is naive and doesn't optimize, and produces (apparently; the compiler isn't public, so there's no way to verify this) compilation times on par with Go.

Anyone know what happened around 2019-09-01, when all the compile times dipped quite a bit in the graph?

<comment><USER3> > Anyone know what happened around 2019-09-01, when all the compile times > dipped quite a bit in the graph?

The dip is roughly in the center between 2019-07-01 and 2019-09-01, so I'd say it was somewhere in the start of August.

As the usual suspect for speed improvements nnethercote seems to have gotten no merged PRs in that date range, I suspect it's the impact of pipelined compilation [1]. The PR that enabled it for rust's nightlies [2] was merged on Aug 1 so the date would fit quite well.

[1]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/7143](https://github.com/rust- lang/cargo/pull/7143)

[2]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/63181](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/63181)

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I was referring to the dip that ends 2019-09-01 and then reverts to the earlier value, i.e. an apparent regression.

<comment><USER3> No idea why the dip ended at that day.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will Millennials Be the First Generation to Stop Fearing Death? - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/death-will-millennials-be-the-first-generation-to-stop-fearing-death/ <comment><USER2> If you're already dead inside, might as well take care of the formalities.</comment>


The Principals of 'Pataphysical Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.illposed.com/philosophy/pataprogramming.html

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't get very concrete, and given the origins of "'pataphysics" as parody I'm not sure how seriously to take this.

On the other hand, treating software systems as realities in their own right – with only incidental mappings back to our reality – is a fascinating idea. (Obviously an entirely self-contained reality is no good; I/O are pretty fundamental.) I guess the question is, what happens when we stop requiring software _model_ things, and instead let it _be_ things?

<comment><USER3> Based on the prose examples the article gives (the chess/lunch story and the crucifixion/bike race story), it looks like a truly 'pataphysical system wouldn't need IO at all. Instead, you'd have a program of some sort, that was simultaneously doing 'pataphysical computation and mundane computation. In the story of Jesus and the bike race, the narrative never shifts between the story of racing up the hill and the story of Jesus being killed on a cross, the story is both at the same time throughout. By analogy, I suspect the article would like us to consider what kind of system we'd need to construct in order to, I suppose, be a story about a bike race (or something else equally removed from programmer's usual domain) _and_ an application to serve web pages at the same time.

Of course, given 'pataphysic's status as "the science of imaginary solutions" I won't be holding my breath for a 'pataprogrammatical Rails-killer anytime soon, but it's a fun idea.

<comment><USER2> I did have the thought that if OO is clearly metaphorical, it could be argued that all abstractions within the program are 'pataphysical. That is, we can say "an agent sends a message to another agent" or "the function passes control to the current continuation", and we're actually describing concrete reality in program-land, rather than metaphors for real-world objects.

In that sense, 'pataphysical programming might be more common than we realize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't make any sense to me. Either there's some assumption about self I don't get, or they're just making shit up. Cuz after reading that, I'm. No closer to reproducing it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat off-topic: What does the Chief Philosopher of a software company do? And how do I get that job?

<comment><USER6> If you start your own company, you can give yourself any title you like.

edit: That doesn't mean people will refer to you as such, or respect you, but that's a different issue altogether.

On topic, a Chief Philosopher probably would serve a role between product manager and evangelist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm running into Poe's Law here: <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law>

</comment><comment><USER8> The footnote is broken; you can find a copy at [http://web.archive.org/web/20080311215730/http://www.pataphy...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080311215730/http://www.pataphysics- lab.com/sarcophaga/daysures/Jarry,+Alfred+-+The+Crucifixion+Considered+as+an+Uphill+Bicycle+Race.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Principles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Principal principles.

<http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/principal.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's a joke.</comment>


What actually happens when you plug in a USB device? (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.technovelty.org/linux/what-actually-happens-when-you-plug-in-a-usb-device.html <comment><USER3> On a related note: back in a previous, embedded incarnation, I was once tasked with writing a USB driver. Not the kind that might first come to mind - <USER2> was for the /device/, for which documentation is rather less easily found. With the aid of this resource (no, no spam), I was able to make our gadget come up as a fully compliant composite HID/microphone device.

[http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb1.shtml](http://www.beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/usb1.shtml)

<comment><USER4> That is a great link. Also USB Made Simple is good addition to that.

It's pretty amazing that the protocol works in the first place. It's a multi- driver, differential bus with 3 valid states (not including bus arbitration). It does all sorts of dirty things, like in order to identify a device as a USB1.0 or USB1.1 device, a resistor is either applied to D- or D+. In order to determine if the host/device should switch to USB2.0 mode, the host computer will drive both lines to low (SE0) and the device will send high current "chirps" back to the host. Essentially having multiple hosts driving the line at the same time.

[http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/](http://www.usbmadesimple.co.uk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ... and then, on Windows, you get to the Plug-and-Play stack, and horrible, eldritch things happen, many of which involve registry entries.

Also, when I found that "SetupApi" was The Way you got to USB devices on Windows, I wanted to strangle somebody.

<comment><USER6> > many of which involve registry entries

You say this like it's a Windows-specific thing. In Linux, a lot of the USB support is exposed through /sys—pretty much the same idea.

<comment><USER7> Aren't, in this case, the window registry entries involved are more similar to udev rules?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The first thing that happens when you plug in a USB device is you sigh in relief that the thing finally went in, on the third attempt.

 _Then_ all this other stuff happens.

<comment><USER9> No you have to observe the plug first, then it'll go in:

[http://imgur.com/ZG4L1nc](http://imgur.com/ZG4L1nc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oddly (for how detailed it is in other places) this skips the actual wire protocol side of enumeration -- reset device, read descriptors, assign address, etc.

Enumeration is an interesting process -- newly reset devices accept transfers to address zero, until the host assigns a non-zero addres. Then the next device (if their are additional devices detected on a hub, or if the just- enumerated device is a hub with devices below it) can be enumerated (initially responding at 0 after reset), walking the entire tree of hubs and devices (and revisiting it as necessary when hubs report connections and disconnections).

<comment><USER11> (original author here)

Yeah, it was done after I was asked to run a short course on writing drivers, so the focus was on understanding that sort of layer.

But you want to know how old this is? I actually used the word "palmtop" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related is this talk on reverse engineering USB devices from 28c3: [http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2011/28c3-4847-en- revers...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2011/28c3-4847-en- reverse_engineering_usb_devices.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Ok, I', not _that_ young but WTF is a "palmtop" and when did such a thing exist?

<comment><USER11> When I wrote this, I'm not sure if the iPhone had been released; certainly at that point if you were carrying around something computer-like in your (large :) pocket (more powerful than a PalmPilot) it was something like a Jornada [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jornada_(PDA)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jornada_\(PDA\))

This sort of form-factor came directly out of things calld "palmtop pc's" like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX)

<comment><USER14> To me "palmtop" strongly connotes something handheld, with a clamshell or a slide-out keyboard, and running a desktop-style OS. That HP 95LX is a good example; the OQO was a more recent one (2005 ish?).

A device with a similar form factor but running a mobile OS would have been called a "MID" (mobile internet device) or possibly a tablet - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_770_Internet_Tablet) for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how much of this applies to Darwin systems.

<comment><USER16> Basically none of it, beyond the information in the "USB overview" section and a few scattered sentences elsewhere. This article is talking about the Linux USB stack in particular, not USB in general.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for debugging JavaScript (e.g., Firebug)? - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting to take JavaScript more seriously and learn it (not just jQuery or a framework), and I'm not sure what the best tool is for debugging it. I use Chrome as my default browser, and noticed that both it and Safari have their own developer tools that appear similar to Firebug for Firefox.<p>Are any of these necessarily better than the other, or does it come down to personal preference? <comment><USER2> They are close to equal in features, as of the last round of browsers. I prefer firebug just because I have used it forever and am a creature of habit.</comment>