Dijkstra had a lot of influence for some years on the UTCS undergraduate program, whose first undergraduate course for much of the 1990s was taught in Haskell and was a brutal weed out, at ~70% attrition for the first year courses.
The UTCS undergrad program has been "nerfed" twice since the 1990s - in 2001 and in in 2014. Various political interests during the first tech bubble - to produce more graduates - and later, to have more under-represented minorities, have dramatically reduced what Dijkstra pushed for.
I took that course in '96, as a lost liberal arts major, with no background in CS. If you paid attention & didn't get behind in course work, it was an easy A. Most of the people failing that class never bothered to do the course, or claimed to already know how to program. The lecturer I had was Richardson, and I used to model my courses in grad school after his; he was a gifted educator.
This was the key fact. They knew how to program Pascal from Computer Science AP and got 5's on the AP exams and came into UT Austin with abundant confidence but when presented with hardcore mathematical logic data structures and algorithm analysis in functional programming starting week 1 of college they got the rug pulled out from the under them. Of course, this was real computer science, not "infantile" imperative/OOP programming.
Ham "Haskell" Richardson was a total fanboy of Dijkstra!
I will note that the current 1st UTCS course is a serious joke - CS312 was a remedial course, non-counting for major, before 2014, called CS 305J. It's an embarrassment compared to Berkeley's CS61A.
A 70% attrition rate is awful. How many of those kids could become fine engineers if they had more runway to fail and learn without being weeded out?
All this tells me is that if CS concepts don't click for you instantly you were out - even though this is a terrible heuristic for who would make a good engineer (or good computer scientist, whatever the goal is).
Hm, it depends how "attrition" is defined. I read it the way it is done in german universities, meaning 70% and above indeed fail the weeding courses (usually math) at the first try, but you had 3 tries and still could attain the next semester, without passing.
But for quite some, it was indeed eye opening and they left for something else. It is a bit brutal, but effective and it gets the message across. If you don't want to struggle to learn the basics, you are wrong in computer science.
That doesn't mean, you cannot become a programmer, there is another formal path of doing so, but attaining a university does mean playing at another level. (or well, if should mean that, I got to learn too many who just learned to play the bullshitbingo)
> How many of those kids could become fine engineers if they had more runway to fail and learn without being weeded out?
This question is worth taking seriously. I've seen a study of a slower course that found that, nevertheless, there was no difference in the number of students who could understand basic variable assignments between the start and at the end; either they "got it" straight away or not at all.
I bet after that initial 70% attrition rate, the subsequent attrition rate was close to zero. As opposed to the current state of affairs, where people are slowly and painfully abraded away over the course of years (or graduate at a standard that may not have been acceptable, say, 20 years ago).
Perhaps, but also, UTCS = University of Texas Computer Science department, and universities don't make engineers, they make scientists and researchers...
Computer Science != programming. This memo by Dijkstra is pretty much agreeing with that (though complaining about the existence of non-CS programming).
UT's CS degree has been continually nerfed since 2014, with several reductions in the number of required science/math courses and an increase in the number of required "culture flag" (I forget the exact euphemism) courses, encompassing precisely the types of X diaspora/Y-ism studies courses you might expect. Source: graduated UTCS 2017, saw this happening real-time
I worked at a Radio Shack in 1986-87, sort of a dream job for 18 years old. Now I know what it would have looked like if I showed up for work one day on LSD!
Just anecdotal, but my life observation of DK is often highly intelligent and competent people in a particular field who then generalize that to pontificate and proclaim, directly or indirectly, superior understanding to certified domain experts (e.g., have directly related advanced degree(s), work in the field for decades.)
It thus seems more or as much a psychological effect - in short, people with a personality type of superiority and know-it-all, yet have never done the deep and hard work to gain or demonstrate any competency in said areas.
A common side observation is of course unfounded conspiracy theories, that the derided experts have sinister intentions.
Anecdotes are not data. Even in plural form. We can witness isolated instances of what seems to be a phenomenon without it actually being part of a phenomenon. Other posters have already established that some experts can overestimate their expertise as well. The study mentioned by the original post and in my comment seems to suggest that the overestimation bias is prevalent across a wide range of cohorts of expertise. Senior students are just as likely to overestimate their talents as freshmen for instance. This effect likely extrapolates to experts as well it's just hard to get good data.
No DK doesn't say no bluster, no proclamations or no artificial assertions of expertise. It doesn't even say that the overestimates are just as prevalent among experts as laypeople. All it says is as near as we can tell the effect size of the overestimation is the statistical autocorrelation and our best efforts to produce the same effect without relying on the autocorrelation have failed.
I think there are a lot of ways to accept the anecdotes you mentioned occur that need much weaker assertions than DK as a psychological phenomenon and would hesitate to jump to DK based on that information.
To be fair, I think the counterargument is that ostensible experts can overstate their ability/skill/knowledge to detrimental effect just as easily, and by virtue of the label ignore the reality of the argument/scenario at hand. That is, experts can overlook mistakes they're making, or conflicts of interest, etc because of their status, and because they overestimate their own ability. There's been studies of this in group decision making in crisis situations, where hierarchies can cause failures because the "leader" becomes overconfident and fails to heed warnings by others in the group.
This all gets really murky quickly in practice because of what "low" and "high" competence means, and what constitutes the actual scope of expertise with reference to a particular scenario.
>The V-tail design gained a reputation as the "forked-tail doctor killer",[16] due to crashes by overconfident wealthy amateur pilots,[17] fatal accidents, and inflight breakups.[18] "Doctor killer" has sometimes been used to describe the conventional-tailed version, as well.
It's baffled me for years that Russia is making such an obvious geopolitical mistake by not becoming an EU style country aligned in that direction. Culturally, Russia and China are dramatically different and Russia is going to end up as a glorified North Korea under its current leadership. Putin and his cronies just want to loot all that they can while they can.
There is nothing to be baffled about. There was a time when Russia would have gladly joined the EU and or NATO but they were rebuffed. Why? The real reason is Russia united with Europe would enable a true Eurasian competitor to the USA to arise. The subjugation of Europe by the United States seven decades after the 2nd world war is rather pathetic.
After the fall of communism there was a time when western Eurasia could have united. But some people deliberately stoked nationalism (in Yugoslavia, the Baltics, etc) so it was not to be. The war in Ukraine is a late repercussion of this path taken.
The idea that Putin is in it for the money is stupid. When you control a nation state for life money doesn't matter much.
Money is a proxy for power for those lacking real power.
"The real reason is Russia united with Europe would enable a true Eurasian competitor to the USA to arise." -- this is plainly ridiculous.
Russia was not able to join the EU at the time due to its oligarchy and systemic corruption, very weak democratic institutions, lack of understanding and enforcement of some basic human rights. It was clearly incompatible with the EU values and has actually severely degraded in that regard since then.
"Russia was not able to join the EU at the time due to its oligarchy and systemic corruption, very weak democratic institutions, lack of understanding and enforcement of some basic human rights. It was clearly incompatible with the EU values and has actually severely degraded in that regard since then."
All these apply to an even greater extent in Ukraine.
> Why? The real reason is Russia united with Europe would enable a true Eurasian competitor to the USA to arise.
You have to be joking, have you been in Russia and EU countries at the time? Europe an Russia are incompatible always been, always will be. Ukraine is a culturally European country because for centuries it has been egalitarian autonomous and self sufficient, since the times of Ukranian Cossacks. Russia and Muscovy culture is authoritarian, so it's that simple.
You have to be joking. Ukraine has existed as a "country" only for a few decades.
The very name means borderland. Pull up a map from 1930 show me the country Ukraine? How about 1830? How about 1730 (then a big part was still under the Turks). How about 1630?
America has existed as a country longer than Odessa has been a city.
The USA certainly tried to, but were rebuffed by the superpower of the time, Britain.
Anyway, back on topic, I don't think the corruption in Ukraine can be denied. Its every hit as bad as in Russia, and it could also be a wealthy country.
It's slightly more democratic than Russia, but only slightly.
Not a German, but their official language on "turning point" is very precise. The close relationships between government and industry means everyone has accepted to take their medicine. Germans are better at doing this than others.
The speculation is that the CIA has stealth drones that are hitting key Russian targets at night. There is also incredible intel filtering down to Ukrainian command and control. Ukrainian special forces now behind enemy lines are likely doing severe damage to supply lines, guided with excellent instructions.
Supposed video of one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1PlldjfHs
The CIA dronestrikes sounds made-up, but a US combat surveillance aircraft had its transponder on and was publicly announcing its flight path as it patrolled south of Crimea.
Not stealing any credit - this should embolden the Ukrainians, if they are indeed getting this level of support from the USA. As I wrote, speculation as this stuff would be top secret. Don't you think we have stealth (to radar) drones if we have F-22s and F-35s?
I was wondering about this. The US said they won't be sending troops to the Ukraine, which I believe. But the technological gap between Russia and the West is now large. Look at the phones behind Putin here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-says-ukraine-attack... He is is trying to project am image of strength, yet us sitting in front of technology so old your average western teenager would struggle to recognise it.
What I don't know is if the technology matters in a war. But it does seem possible. The US has been fighting a proxy war with various Islamic militia for over a decade now, with the US "combatants" sitting in the USA piloting drones taking out one target after another. And it looks like after a decade they were largely successful. So perhaps technology does matter. A similar thing happened to Russia in Afghanistan. They were holding their own until the west put SAM's in the hands of an rebels. Then Russia did the same thing to the US.
If it is happening, I'm not sure we or Putin would know. These smart weapons are launched from km's away so no one knows who pulled the trigger, and Ukraine would have some anyway. Earlier it was looking like the Western leaders wouldn't have the collective will do to it, but the financial markets have shown otherwise. Maybe that dilly dallying they put on was just for show, as it isn't in the Western leaders interests for Putin to think they are attacking him directly. But I'm guessing the nuclear threat means Putin already suspects.
If technology does make a big difference, it's likely to be a blind spot for entire Russian military. They are so far behind technology wise they have no experience with it. It would likely be as much of a surprise to them as it is to me, and they would have reported the odds of winning as though it didn't exist.
Youtube has a (more or less reliable depending on the cases) automatic translation. Turn on subtitles/close captions, then use the subtitles settings to auto-translate it.
It's true that condos as a class don't appreciate but if you buy one in the right gentrifying area they can be a fantastic deal. Some condos in Austin Texas have increased 400% in price in the past 5-6 years. Particularly in zips 78741 and 78704.
If Vancouver overall is as dense as SF then 4 plexes won't matter much. But there are many other cities - even LA - where I would think it would. Yet LA has vast amount of low rise commercial on 4 lane streets with bus lines that could support widespread 1+5 podium style designed buildings.
However, by 2001, the failure rate was so high that the department moved to Java, much to Dijkstra's chagrin: https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java/
The UTCS undergrad program has been "nerfed" twice since the 1990s - in 2001 and in in 2014. Various political interests during the first tech bubble - to produce more graduates - and later, to have more under-represented minorities, have dramatically reduced what Dijkstra pushed for.