Code, data, stats, and physics… these are a few of my favorite things.
Hillsborough, NC
Joined February 2017
- Tweets 993
- Following 191
- Followers 67
- Likes 3,578
Eric Pfahl retweeted
Two of the hardest things about cognitively demanding work are:
1) You can’t really make it go faster. There are tricks to getting unstuck but it usually proceeds very nonlinearly.
2) It often looks like it could have been done in a far shorter amount of time when it’s over.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
Dijkstra on abstraction (1972):
The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
When did we lose this approach to building things?
Eric Pfahl retweeted
Good question. I've always said Musk is a) an asshole b) incompetent and c) nowhere near as smart as he believes but Twitter's making *really* clear how true all of those things are; will his fanboys just ignore it?
Eric Pfahl retweeted
I have never seen a company implode as fast as Twitter is imploding, at this rate they will fire-sale the entire company to Verizon or somebody by the end of next week.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
Rebuilt this graphic from @jakevdp using Elixir, VegaLite and Livebook last night.
#MyElixirStatus
Eric Pfahl retweeted
The media cliché “public-key cryptography (which is used to securely transmit credit card numbers),” despite being true, is deeply ironic because the very existence of credit card numbers that need to be securely transmitted arises from a lack of public-key cryptography
Eric Pfahl retweeted
I think when designing an organization to be healthy and inclusive, it's important for literally every person in a leadership or management position to care and do a lot of work toward that end, otherwise it never reaches the people who need it most
Eric Pfahl retweeted
“Once functional programming really clicked in my brain, I was like ‘why do it any other way?’” says Williams, who fell in love with functional programming during a college class that used the LISP programming language dialects Scheme and Racket. (Cassidy Williams @cassidoo)
Eric Pfahl retweeted
If you read Christopher Alexander and all you got was "traditional architecture good, modern architecture bad," then you didn't read him very closely.
🧵
Eric Pfahl retweeted
I will never be able to simply enjoy a JWST spectrum or image. it will always come with the knowledge that people like me are still unwelcome and undervalued at NASA.
Don't know about "hot," but I agree. Interviewing should be empathetic, constructive, and two-way information sharing, not gatekeeping and imbalanced power dynamics.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
2. "We need more people to execute" after a layoffs is a synonym for "we don't know how to prioritize and say no to the work we should no longer be doing."
If you have less people: do less work. It's how it all works.
I’m specifically talking about “live coding” sessions—either with the interviewer or on one of the online services that starts a clock. I’ve had decent experiences with take-home challenges that have very forgiving due dates.
Strong agree. I just went through this, and it was an awful experience.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
I've been thinking hard about the root causes of Roe's repeal and other social justice problems in the USA and I've come to the conclusion that religion is bad, a net negative for society, and we should stop pretending it's fine for people to believe things that aren't true.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
This observation comes seeing of my DoE and VPE friends struggling who are good managers... because the founder CTO/CEO is a terrible manager, breaks manager 101 rules (e.g. don't micromanage, don't step over your mgmgt chain on all the time etc) and now are leaving b/c of this.
Eric Pfahl retweeted
"Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point."
Fuull of wisdom!
This brought to mind Akin’s laws of spacecraft design: spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins…
Eric Pfahl retweeted
“Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.”
So true
This brought to mind Akin’s laws of spacecraft design: spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins…