• Solve Small Problems

    It's fun to think of great moments in the history of science, particularly the ones that have a memorable anecdote attached to them.  In the 3rd century BC, a naked Archimedes ran down a city street, screaming Eureka, because he had discovered, in a flash, how to measure the volume of irregular solids.  In the 1600s, a fateful apple bonks Issac Newton on the head, causing him to spit out the Theory of Gravity.  In the…

    • Mon, Mar 28 2016
  • It's OK not to lead

    When I first entered the workforce, I was in awe of the programmers around me.  I'd spent 4 years of college learning how to implement Alpha-Beta pruning and various flavors of sort(), while these guys had been building things that real people used in the real world for years, or even decades.  I imagine it was, on a much smaller and more cerebral scale, the way a college football player feels upon turning pro.

    This…

    • Thu, Mar 3 2016