Hazel WeaklyThe two hardest problems in Computer Science are
1. Human communication
2. Getting people in tech to believe that human communication is important
ocratato@hazelweakly
I am quite certain that the "Computer Science" qualifier is redundant.
I am quite certain that the "Computer Science" qualifier is redundant.
Reg Braithwaite 🍓@hazelweakly In the veterinary drama "All Creatures Great and Small," the vets desperately need one of the new postwar antibiotics, and eventually get them from a 200 year-old firm of chemists. They express surprise that a veteran rep working for a traditional firm is able to keep up with rapidly changing times.
The rep smiles. "I find," he says, "that the things that matter most are the things that change the least."
"And what are those," they ask him.
"People."
nadja@hazelweakly The third hardest is I presume then to get people in tech to understand that 90% of all ‘technical’ problems are instead socio-political ones and that neither political nor social problems have technical solutions?
Rocketman@dequbed @hazelweakly a lot of people in tech would do well to realize that they’re essentially plumbers and bricklayers, working for a few rich landlords.
@slothrop @hazelweakly and both parts of that. Tech people are *just* plumbers and bricklayers. They help build infrastructure but they're no better than a bricklayer building a bridge.
Kat (post-Hallowe'en edition)@dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly ...which leads to looking back at the bridges you've built, and hoping they've been used more by good people to do good things, than by any other kind. But also being afraid to look.
crazyeddie@dequbed @slothrop @hazelweakly We are engineers and scientists.
Fuck the haters. ;)
Ain't nothing wrong with being a plumber. The equivalent in IT would probably be the network administrators. Similar levels of education and certification requirements. The plumber is probably more regulated by law, but the expectations are similar.
I really don't understand the human obsession with labeling wide groups of other humans and then group hating on them. It's weird. We're just people.
Bee O'Problem 
@dequbed @hazelweakly reminds me of someone crowing about how blockchain would magically solve issues of warehouses losing packages. Literally zero awareness of stuff like theft, workers not filling paperwork properly, stuff getting missed on the back of a shelf, boxes falling off of conveyors etc. Warehousing databases don't lose inventory, people do.
Zillion@beeoproblem @dequbed @hazelweakly It's not (entirely) the people, but the system that keeps the people poor enough to steal, too tired and hurried to be careful and to take care of each other and check each other's work, and that prevents fixing the shelves.
Peter 🔻@hazelweakly There's no C in IT
Fabos (not an OS) @ 39c3@hazelweakly human communication is important?!?
@fabos @hazelweakly Not for everyone. There are several greats who found solitude offered them much more. Authors, philosophers, scientists, mathematicians... When you think of a great mind in human history it was probably thus.
Humans rate themselves way too highly.
ShadSterling@crazyeddie @fabos @hazelweakly … might explain why so much of philosophy is so out of touch.
Sure, being able to focus and think things through is valuable, but there’s a reason Einstein said “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
@ShadSterling @fabos @hazelweakly I really doubt that's what he had in mind when he said that--seems more like an attempt to relay a fundamental concept of math that most people don't get--but everything is relative, including interpretations.
Nick Silkey 📻 N5ILK 🪓🪵 🪣💧@hazelweakly Business School as well, Hazel! 😉✌️
Francis Cook@hazelweakly can I venture a 3) not every goddamn thing is a tech problem.
GrandTheftUrkel@hazelweakly You forgot:
3. Off-by-one errors
3. Off-by-one errors
Paul Sutton (zleap)Is it just people in Tech? People in Tech need people to think otherwise so they keep buying new tech. Perhaps we need everyone else to understand how communication is important and we can communicate without technology then reasses how we do things and create the right balance.
Ron Jeffries@hazelweakly got that right!
Matt HallHey... We have the same scars! <3
webshinra@hazelweakly TBH the first problem in any field is always humans.
🐜@hazelweakly it's worse for me with my disabilities:(
Arnel Šarić Sharan 
@hazelweakly if only in computer science.
Em 
Pseudo NymI thought the two hardest computer science problems were:
1) naming things
2) cache invalidation
3) off by one errors
(To be clear, I fully agree with the "communication" point. Just couldn't pass up the set up for a joke.)
Robert Kist 🇦🇹🇸🇬@pseudonym @hazelweakly I've seen 1 and 2 being caused communication issues, and I'm sure there's probably examples for cache invalidation too, somewhere
jer@hazelweakly
Not having management laying off the interns/juniors.
Not having management laying off the interns/juniors.
linear cannon@hazelweakly i think that might actually just be one problem
deliverator@hazelweakly I fully admit to HATING the mandatory "arts" courses (English lit, sociology, history, etc) I had to do as part of my uni degree. If I were doing it now I would probably have chatgpt'ed my way through most of the essay writing. Which is what I worry is happening with the next generation 😬
I'm at the point in life/career where I realize these were actually really useful.
how do we actually illustrate the value of these subjects to future generations? For me I know part of the issue was time management - trying to focus on reading a book and reflecting on it while also juggling all the "engineering" course work. Separate them into their own year/semester?
Zimmie@deliverator In my engineering degree plan, an engineering ethics course was mandatory. We discussed some high-profile failures like Bhopal and Chornobyl, as well as some lesser-known ones like the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse, the THERAC-25, and the Gimli Glider incident. We also spent significant time on how IBM and other big companies built machines which powered Hitler’s extermination camps.
The programming and IT degrees available at the time didn’t include any ethics courses, which is part of why I’ve never felt people doing either should be called engineers.
@bob_zim yup, definitely part of the whole thing. Canada (or is it just Ontario?) has rules about having "engineer" in a job title. Some people complain about artificial gatekeeping, but words are supposed to have meaning. I don't think we've actually figured out what "software engineering" means, let alone have a means of doing it and validating it.
skry@hazelweakly 3. Binary thinking
@hazelweakly Does not help that many are like myself - Aspergic - and that the inside-code and outside-application views and logistics are so often massively different. Tiny user change can take forever ...
Harry W.@hazelweakly something ironic about tech enabling such fast commutation, while really sucking at using it appropriately / at all 😅
Bonus@hazelweakly Definitely acutely struggling in design with this currently.
[MARX_IN_SPACE]@hazelweakly Absolutely One Hundred Percent.
canleaf08 ⌘ ✅加拿大葉子@hazelweakly 3. people who say « computer science is obsolete due to AI. »
Queen 1066@hazelweakly been in CS since 1991 and communication has always been an issue but I worked on it and got to be the person managers used to communicate between them and IT. I still call people arseholes to their face just don’t use that word.
Lou 🏳️⚧️@hazelweakly
Funny enough, at my company, the tech team is the one doing its best so that everyone communicate 🙃
Funny enough, at my company, the tech team is the one doing its best so that everyone communicate 🙃
craignicol@hazelweakly see also: the most important language to know in computer science is your own native tongue. (Or whatever your organisation uses to communicate)