Category: thoughts
Letter to an incoming CS Undergrad
Dear Jiana,
I heard from your mother you are enrolling as a Computer Science major in undergraduate.
First of all, I want to congratulate you on successfully getting to college. Though it might seem “everyone goes to college these days”, that does not diminish your achievement in the least. Comparisons matter, but by definition only relatively. The work you put in through 12 years of schooling and then college application and everything else were tasks given to you as a child explicitly or implicitly. Maybe you did or did not like them, but what matters is you saw things through to completion. So again, congratulations.
Second, I want to welcome you to the field of computers. It’s a friendly field; the hacker ethos means there is always someone willing to reach out and help – as long as you put in the work first ;). It’s also, very surprisingly, very accessible. Programmers like nothing else than to extoll and trumpet their works; fortunately for programmers, they also invented the internet. You will soon hear and see and meet many many bright, talented and industrious persons in this space that you can learn from. Have fun making new friends!
Third, it’s alright to take a while to being “good”. Maybe you won’t even want to be a good programmer. But if you do, it takes time. There’s no instant cheat code. The only cheat codes I know are to study a lot, do side projects a lot, meet and follow interesting people and see what they’re doing alot (find “Hacker News” and make it your daily ritual to skim through the headlines). Admittedly, I’m not very good or was very late at doing any of those, but maybe you can make use of it. There’s no cheat code to being “good”, work hard!
Fourth, I think the aspect that makes programmers fall in love with programming is the freedom. With software, you have freedom to do almost anything. If you can think of it, it can be done. I’ve been doing this for 5 years now (including time in college), I don’t think I got it until this year, so don’t fret if you don’t get it right away. The freedom to do what I want is honestly intoxicating. I am only limited by my thoughts and transferring them to my fingers. I hope you will find that freedom as well.
Finally, it’s ok to switch direction. I was in chemical engineering for 2 years in college before I landed on computers. At first, I thought CS would be my minor. That intro class got me hooked and I went all in. Maybe for you it would be the other way, you don’t like computers at all, you hate looking at screens all day, your posture has gone bad and your eyes hurt, you just don’t enjoy it the way others seem to. That’s fine. Don’t make decisions you feel you will regret later. Do things because they make sense to you and your priorities. Be careful of sunk-cost fallacy. People’s advice are just that, advice. Remember that it’s your life and your future. At 18, you became an adult legally, that comes freedom and responsibility to yourself. Lookout for yourself!
Finally, the only concrete advice I’ll give you is going to be in this paragraph. get a Mac computer or install Linux on your machine and know that Windows sucks. Use the command line. Put all your homework and notes and diaries and projects on GitHub or something similar, even if they’re only private to you. Use the command line. Self-marketing doesn’t have to be icky, think of it as “increasing the surface area for luck to land on”; or, in other words, start writing a blog and share. Use the command line. Protect your eyes, I suggest doing something physical once every two days at least. Use the command line. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and we must be as fast as possible because it’s always better to be fast; so learn how to type faster, learn how to read faster, learn how to learn faster. Use the command line. Read Hacker News. Use the command line.
Good luck and hack on!
from your mother’s colleague,
Viet Than
experimental films with Linh p1
I had nowhere to go by Douglas Gordon is an audio experience where I wince as a man continually hack a beet dangerously close to his fingers and have a staring contest with a chimpanzee. Also, entirely carried by the tales of Jonas Mekas’s escape from war-torn Europe and his early years in New York City.
binge
About 4-5 weeks ago, it started with Legend of the Northern Blade, well really it starts with /r/manga. Now, of course that little few chapters won’t get me anywhere, so next came Red Storm cause it’s martial arts, and ki, and that was oh so so exciting! But the ending was a little weird, and the mentor character was interesting but not explained, thankfully there is Peerless Dad which is set in the same universe. That was Korean, and martial arts excitement hasn’t ended, of course we’ve got to at least check out Gosu S2 a little bit. At this point, I am a little bored with manga/pictures, so we have to swtich to webnovels of course. The first one was Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, but that was dark and depressing by the end. Not like horrifying, more like gut-wrenching in how people would sacrifice themselves for others. I clearly needed something way lighter to cleanse my palate. That’s when I stumbled on A Stay-at-home Dad’s Restaurant In An Alternate World, that was a light, easy read. But very frustratingly, it didn’t have an ending. Can you understand that? like reaching for the “NEXT” button but nothing’s there. It was close to finishing the thirst. I took the plunge and browsed Completed on b o x n o v e l. Finally, I landed on Rebirth to a Military Marriage: Good Morning Chief. I felt complete, I felt really complete then. It was an amazing novel. An amazing amazing story.
PS: Wed Jun 1 2022, lol, let’s also add The Legendary Mechanic
PPS: Sun Jun 26 2022, ok, let’s really really end this binge-ing with Tales of Herding Gods. Which is so good I would re-read and do a YouTube channel on it if I could.
Rob of Cinelabs
In tech, we use many words for old hands at coding that can weave miracles out of scraps such as wizards, greybeards, or Old [insert name here]. Today I met a wizard, and as such I would like to write about Robert Houllahan of Cinelabs.
I was at a “swimming party” for film processing, “swimming” because manual processing so much film takes boatloads of water, and found my way to the couch with some salad for dinner with my gf. My girlfriend then tugged on my sleeve and pointed out a quiet, unassuming man, definitely 50+, maybe even 60, beer belly showing with a camera in his side bag and one of those camo pants with lots of pockets. Oh and a man bun. Go see his linkedin for a profile lol. “That’s Rob!” she said, “That’s Rob!”. “Who?” I asked. “Rob of Cinelabs! All Vanderbilt’s student films get scanned there and I remember writing a long email to Mr. Houllahan for the first time asking…..”. (Imagine a Kpop fan seeing a kpop star from afar). Somehow, Rob came to sit next to us as we had dinner, just ambled himself onto the armchair next to our couch.
My girlfriend, obviously, had to introduce herself. And then Rob told us that he is the man that helped setup Steve Cossman’s scanner that I wrote about in niche tech in film. At that point I am piqued. One simply knows that Rob is gonna be absolutely delightfully interesting. And so 25 minutes of scanner tech talk begins.
From resolution dimensions, lens specifications, stabilization software, databus sizes, storage problems, SSD vs HDD and accompanying tools, operating systems, to supply chain origins, UI/UX improvements, historical (brief) walkthrough of scanner tech history and recent developments. Rob lists every detail on any topic, in a chain unending. There might be an intro to his answers? maybe a topic sentence? but never a conclusion. Sometimes, I knew I had to cut in because time is short (party conversations has a certain energy gauge you have to ascertain constantly), but I was enthralled. Here was a master, and even though I only understand about 33% of what’s going on, I had to ask them.
At one point, Rob stood up and goes to get more pizza. I think that meant my time was up. I had a feeling Rob is a solitary man, and goes where he pleases (even if he really doesn’t show it). We didn’t interact much afterwards but I did get a handshake before heading home. His hands were warm.
Last note: Researching online about Cinelabs, I get a distinct feeling modern filmmakers are sometimes frustrated about the lack of communication when put in an order. I think they don’t realize the work that goes in processing millions of feet of film a year in such a tightly run ship. Also, since it’s so very very unlikely that Rob would see this blogpost, I like to hypothesize, based on my short interaction with the glacier that is Rob Houllahan, that the man could be on the spectrum. He is a wizard though, that’s for sure. Not to mention, he is a site sponsor of cinematography.com, and is ALWAYS ONLINE! Seriously, check his profile! He even has a tiktok!.
how do you database?
At my previous job, govtech/tax-tech, the database was just as important as the code. Now what do I mean by that? Mooney explained it best on this exact topic:
Given how much thought and effort goes into source code control and change management at many of these same companies, it is confusing and a little unsettling that so much less progress has been made on the database change management front. Many developers can give you a 15 minute explanation of their source code strategy, why they are doing certain things and referencing books and blog posts to support their approach, but when it comes to database changes it is usually just an ad-hoc system that has evolved over time and everyone is a little bit ashamed of it.
I believe the quote above is true. Admittedly, I’m only a 1+ YOE software engineer, but having jumped ship from a govtech consultancy to a startup, I find there is a lot to compare between how databases is treated and how this leads to a better developer experience.
What follows is a series of features I found missing at my current place of work.
1. Version Control
Schemas have version control. The system detects any changes made to the schema (In fact, the company never taught you to alter tables with SQL) because you would make table structure changes through the system. Deleting/removing columns, adding or editing comments, addibg/editing indexes (and probably many more), local changes are “synced” with the shared work server, where it assigns a version number for your structure. Migrations from local to testing environments and then, ultimately, to Prod, is simply having the environment point to the right version.
society is not ready 2
I had a thought the other day, that if there really is a Superman. he would have used his superhearing and hear the cries and whispers of people locked in cellars/basement all over the world.
I dare WarnerBrothers to make a movie about that.
Why write blog?
Steve Yegge already say this better than I do.
Starting a log
So I’ve noticed that I read alot, share what I have read a lot, but I don’t store them anywhere for searching later. So I’m using GitHub Pages to do it. Should be fun.