TITLE: Getting My Groove Back
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: March 31, 2006 12:19 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
To soothe my
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-03.html#e2006-03-30T16_47_36.htm">
   bruised ego</A>,
yesterday evening I did a little light blog reading.
Among the articles that caught my attention was
Philip Greenspun's
<A HREF="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2006/02/26#a12936">
   Why I love teaching flying more than software engineering</A>.
People learning to fly <EM>want</EM> to get better;
I'm guessing that most of them want to become as good
as they possibly can.  (Just like
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2006-02.html#e2006-02-16T15_23_31.htm">
   this guy</A>
wanted to make as good a product as possible.)  Philip
enjoys teaching these folks, more so than teaching
students in the area of his greatest expertise,
computing, because the math and computing students
don't seem to care if they learn or not.

I see students who will work day and night until they
become really good software developers or really good
computer scientists, and the common thread through their
stories is an internal curiosity that we can't teach.
But maybe we can expose them to enough cool problems
and questions that one will kick their curiosity into
overdrive.  The ones who still have that gear will do
the rest.  Philip worries that most students these days
"are satisfied with mediocrity, a warm cubicle, and a
steady salary."  I worry about this, too, but sometimes
wonder if I am just imagining some idyllic world that
never has existed.  But computer science is so much fun
for me that I'm sad that more of our students don't feel
the same joy.

While reading, I listened to Olin Shivers's talk at
<A HREF="http://startupschool.org/">
   Startup School</A>
2005, "A Random Walk Through Startup Space"
<A HREF="http://wiki.ycombinator.com.nyud.net:8090/presentations/Olin_Shivers.mp3">
   (mp3)</A>.
It had been in my audio folder for a while, and I'm
glad I finally cued it up.  Olin gives lots of pithy
advice to the start-up students.  Three quotes stood
out for me yesterday:
<UL>
<LI> At one point, Olin was talking about how you have
     to be courageous to start a company.  He quoted
     <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac">
        Paul Dirac</A>,
     who did "physics so beautiful it will bring tears
     to your eyes", as saying

     <BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
     Scientific progress advances in units of courage,
     not intelligence.
     </EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

<LI> Throughout his talk, Olin spoke about how failure
     is unavoidable for those who ultimately succeed.
     
     <BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
     ... to start a business, you've got to have a high
     tolerance for feeling like a moron all the time.
     </EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

     And how should you greet failure when you're staring
     it in the face?

     <BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
     Thank you for what you have taught me.
     </EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
</UL>

Next, I plan to listen to Steve Wozniak's much-blogged talk
<A HREF="http://wiki.ycombinator.com.nyud.net:8090/presentations/Steve_Wozniak.mp3">
   (mp3)</A>.
If I enjoy that one as much as I enjoyed Shivers's,
I may check out the
<A HREF="http://startupschool.infogami.com/Presentations">
   rest of them</A>.
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