Image Transcription: Meme
People in every profession: We know what we do
Programmers:
[“Awkward Look Monkey Puppet”, two images of a red monkey puppet from “Ōkiku naru Ko”. On the left, the monkey faces right and sideglances with wide eyes and contracted pupils, while the right image shows the monkey staring straight ahead.]
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You are an excellent human.
Good human
Related video, computer things cosmic rays messed up, including one voting case in Belgium - https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=AaZ_RSt0KP8
The medical professions are feeling this meme with you.
I understand 90% of the science behind what I do as a medical diagnostic technologist. It’s still fucking magic as far as I’m concerned.
CTs and MRIs? Atom spin/relax releasing detectable energy waves that are somehow able to be read and aggregated by algorithms into a high detail image of the inside of a human body? Tell me that isn’t magic and I’ll call you a liar.
I majored in Computational Physics and I can tell you with certainty that electromagnetism is magic, and any machine utilizing said magic must be, by definition, magic themselves. You’re right not to trust any of those “oh it’s actually very well understood” snakes
Fun fact: According to Einstein’s equations, electromagnetism arises when you add a fourth spatial dimension to your assumptions. String theory assumes between 9 and 11 and hypothesizes that the extras are curled up into tiny string that manifest as forces such as electromagnetism. HOW MUCH MORE MAGIC WOO-WOO CAN YOU GET
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Surprisingly I’ve never heard of “computational physics” (as a specific field), but it sounds intensely interesting.
I completely agree, though. You can’t look at a modern transistor (no really - you can’t) and tell me it isn’t some form of sorcery.
Don’t tell my parents, but “Computational Physics”, at least as implemented by my uni, was just a random mashup of physics, “pure” math, and programming classes. The idea is supposed to be specialization in creating simulation software, but unfortunately bridging the gap between intro to Java and C++ classes, and creating sophisticated simulation software does not really happen naturally for most people (me, I’m specifically talking about me)
It sounds very impressive on a resume though.
Well I’m still impressed, honestly. I took computer science, and I would have loved to lean further on the math/physics side. I’m one of those people that wants to know how a machine works from scratch, as foolish as that is, haha.
I recently saw a video that showed how the lightbulbs led to the invention of transistors, can’t remember the title or channel, but it was really interesting.
Seems that starting with 1800’s early electric technology makes it much easier to understand current, super miniaturized and specialized tech
Oh hey, I think I’ve seen the video you’re talking about (and also can’t remember the channel). Super interesting for sure.
I’ve always wanted to know how to create a simple computer entirely from scratch (in case of a time machine situation), but creating even a crude transistor from scratch is actually really hard, it turns out.
Ironically, that’s the part we understand better.
You break a bone, we put something to keep it in place and 3 weeks later it is unbroken? That is magic.
It may be similar for most professions. But the difference is that programming is much more accessible to everyone than medical stuff, or even car mechanics.
Lets take the example of someone finding solution X for [problem], but X is wrong, but not fatal:
- Medical: possible malpractice lawsuit.
- car mechanic: Lost $$$ buying wrong parts
- Programming: Error hopefully caught by tests / QA. If the issue made it into production, roll it back to the prev version.
But it seems very likely other professions will also “google the problem”
- Woodworker: how to do X joint, constructions for drawer, table,…
- Car mechanic: likely cause of X, how to diagnose faults. Especially if they work on all cars
- Repairman: same as car mechanic. Also diagrams, and pinout of chips.
- Eletrical engineering: Parts, pinouts, troubleshooting issues with design
- Cashier: What’s the number for Bananas? (ok, they don’t use the internet for that)
- Waiters: Where was table 69?
- Fast food worker: “Legal to get fired over eating a fry?”
You haven’t spoken to anyone in academia I see
Gets even worse the more years of experience you have. You end up being the solo dev trying to figure out a stupidly over complicated 20 year old piece of software written by a sadist that loves WCF and using tcp sockets to send data between classes in the same project
I know what I do.
I go to ChatGPT, type my problem and copy the solution to my codebase.
If it doesn’t work, I search my issue over Stackoverflow or DDG, and copy from there.
And once the code fails in production, which is always, I repeat the process again to find the new solution which will then fail in next iteration.
So don’t you ever tell me I don’t know what I do. I may not know what code I’m writing or for what, but I very well know what I’m doing.
This is called continuous improvement. Or so I tell my manager.
Copilot go brrrr
Google help you
Acoustics checking in with the same feeling.
