HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Pyret

43 karma · joined December 15, 2014

submissionscomments
Pyret··on A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
Well, there is no shortage of very good and VERY SIMPLE and rigorous intros to analysis books out today:

How to Think About Analysis by Lara Alcock.

Understanding Analysis by Stephen Abbot.

Mathematical Analysis and Proof by David Stirling.

Numbers and Functions: Steps into Analysis by Burn.

Analysis: With an Introduction to Proof by Steven Lay.

A First Course in Mathematical Analysis by David Brannan.

Pyret··on A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
Note the OP chose typical why-books for math majors(Axler/Macdonald). Boas' is a how-book for physicists.
Pyret··on A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
I own this book and I'll tell you it's not easy learning math from this book. Most of it is just very light overview. There are much better rigorous textbooks that are simpler and more complete.

There are some great textbooks translated from Russian. Analysis by Kolmogorov, (rigorous) Linear Algebra by Shilov, Complex Analysis by Markushevich to name a few.

Pyret··on A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
Two things.

1) No such thing as universal mathematician in this day and age.

2) Engineer's PDEs(algorithms) are not the same as mathematician's PDEs(theory). Same as comparing a student in China who learned English to communicate with English speakers to English majors from English speaking countries.

Pyret··on Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results
“I didn’t want there to be an easy way out,” she recently told me. “I wanted him to fight.”

Attitude that keeps everything stagnant and backwards.

Pyret··on Most people probably shouldn't go to school
Colleges are great in that they offer nice infrastructure that's hard to find elsewhere: amazing libraries, laboratories, possibly, access to people doing research in the area you are interested in...Ultimately, though, everyone has to teach their own selves.
Pyret··on Most people probably shouldn't go to school
A degree also signifies you've given a certain subject a lot of thought.

If by that you mean a Bachelor's Degree, than I don't agree with you. First four years of college is just a glorified day care for young adults.

Pyret··on The woman who swapped home for a hut near Chechnya (BBC)
She was born in the West, yet she had no free will to flip her husband off and go live elsewhere in her town/Germany? What an odd story.
Pyret··on Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
I expect part of the problem is that people who are attracted by clear writing and thinking are turned off by the academic fields that suffer most from overly academic writing.

In math formal language is easier to read than the informal one. Mathematicians write proofs in informal, paragraph style while newcomers are taught to read/write proofs in the most formal way because the latter is much more structured and clear.

Pyret··on Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
Could it be because academic writing is simpler than the literary one? For example, in math, 'for all yada, there exists bla' is different from 'there exists bla for all yada'. So, you literally memorize these two cliches because they greatly simplify math. There are many other such very precise cliches in math you keep reusing over and over. Even though, it makes your life simpler, to an outsider you come off as an academic bore. That's my theory anyway.
Pyret··on LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? (2006)
Human biology is an extreme hurdle on our way to achieve the unachievable: having to sleep, eat, excrete etc. Are there any tech and drugs being developed to deal with these things? For now I'd be contempt to at least control my sexuality :D
Pyret··on What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
Is it always intimidation, though? I find programming unimaginably boring.
Pyret··on The Strange Life of 'Lord' Timothy Dexter
This is the funniest thing I read in a long time. I find Dexter admirable.
Pyret··on Please Do Not Be a One Trick Pony
Watch - in a near future there'll pop up an article explaining how you can't afford to study a little of this and a little of that. It will tell you need to focus on one thing only to be real good at it so that you can sell that one skill.
Pyret··on Terry Gilliam on the death of Hollywood
In the olden days there used to be 3 channels on TV max. That's how I see Hollywood. It has maybe 2 and a half concept it keeps selling whereas TV, let alone Internet, wouldn't be able to get away with it these days.
Pyret··on The two cultures of mathematics and biology
> On the biology side, I got ridiculed for all the 'hand waving' that seems to happen with the math. Biologists want to see concrete experiments and results.

How interesting. Usually, it's the math folk who ridicule everyone else for being sloppy with their reasoning. For example, physics = hand-wavery :D

Pyret··on So you want to learn type theory
What's Type Theory and how's it different from Set Theory and Category Theory?
Pyret··on Get into Clojure with ClojureBridge
How about LightTable?
Pyret··on Imposter Syndrome
That's what Brits call "being polite" :)
Pyret··on Coq: The world’s best macro assembler? (2013) [pdf]
I personally don't care about the bird, I am just into coq.
Pyret··on How You Know
I use Anki to remember and memorize the written info. Pretty effective.
Pyret··on Programming and Programming Languages
I see. I was typing my code on the left half of the window and expecting the result show up on the right half. It works now. Thank you.
Pyret··on Programming and Programming Languages
I'd like to learn from this book.

> If you ask Pyret for the value of this program, it will unsurprisingly tell you that it’s 3.

I am not sure how to do that. In [this tutorial](http://www.pyret.org/docs/latest/A_Tour_of_Pyret.html#%28par...) everything is a test. Is the program 3 supposed to be run as a test as well? Just running 3 in the editor does nothing. Where can I read up on Pyret syntax so i can follow this book?