The title of this article should rather be "How I approach project management as a PhD student in a computer science research group". In my experience, there is no silver bullet for PhD projects. It really depends on the field, the advisor and the student.
If I'm not motivated enough, I would not dig into some particular code base just for fun. Usually I try to find out, how somebody else solved a problem or designed a system, which interests me. I often investigate different approaches of different projects, to spot similarities or differences. I also watch out for approachable and readable code, which corresponds with my level of knowledge. I like in particular small projects, with simple makefiles, a clear file organization and clean code.
The client which today is mostly used in private hubs is AirDC. It is optimized for efficient file transfer and comfortable file organization. For instance, AirDC lets you define different share profiles for different hubs, which is tremendous useful to satisfy different share rules for different hubs. To do so, AirDC makes heavy usage of the ADC protocol (http://adc.sourceforge.io), and they implemented nice extensions for it over the years. Recently, build a web interface. Now you can run AirDC on your server, and access it via browser from your smartphone. Otherwise, DC++ is still a legit choice. Both clients are active and maintained. There are other clients as well: ApexDC++ (modern client, but runs still on WinXP, as far as I know); ncdc (https://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdc) and eiskaltdc (https://github.com/eiskaltdcpp) both run at Linux and are maintained.
Concerning hubs: There are hublists, which include open hubs; but don't except quality and safety there. Most great hubs from the past went off the grid at least a decade ago. To go there, you need an invite. You also need to obey to draconic rules, like 24/7 uptime or 6 TB min high quality share.
I can relate to this, although I to do this only on a very moderate level. As a side note, despite the technological advances of the last years, you can meet quite a lot of collectors in private direct connect hubs these days.
Because the World War 1 allowed recovery. The war caused trauma, but basically everything proceeded like before after that. Climate change has the potential to induce a bifurcation, making it impossible to revert back to the world we know today. Think about the Neolithic Revolution, but backwards.
I didn't write the program, and I only looked from a distance of 10 feet. On the other hand, I've seen my share of papers with "obscure LaTeX glyphs". So yes, it is really really good, and I'm undecided whether this project is a serious attempt of forgery or just malicious satire.
You cannot compare a locally restricted war with the global disruption of the ecological, economical and social environment, which lies in front of us.
> I used to be very harsh with Germans collectively for having ‘allowed’ Hitler to come to power and for having been complicit in the crimes he perpetrated. But now I’m not so sure.
As a German, so did I. But my illusion of control dissolved in the face of doom. There is nothing you can do but hope for the best.
It's like watching a documentary about the last summer before World War 2. People enjoying themselfes, everything looks peaceful and fine on the surface. Some people suspect what is about to come, but don't dare to really watch into the abyss.
Only a few really know. Those people of back then, we are today. If you ever wanted to experience, how people in the past were so clueless and stupid to change the course of the future for the better, now you've got an VIP-ticket for the live show.
Having a PhD in math, I must say this is really wicked. Parsing through it, it looks legit to me. Proper typesetting, proper definition, theorem, proof structure. The usual phrases like "it is well known, that..." are used, the sentences make sense at a first glance. The only thing which looks suspicious are the formulas. They are too heavy and make no sense, as no explanation of the symbols are given. But kudos, this is really really good. Wouldn't be surprised if you can trick yourself in some low-tier journal using such a paper as template.
Fair enough, but I suspect most people are not under control of their working schedule. Also, most are supposed to work for at least 8 hours a day. Planning for 15+ minutes break every hour, that means a total of 2+ hours break in addition to the 8 hours work. Add the daily commute, and you easily end at 11-12 hours for "business". So I guess this approach makes only sense, if you can afford to do real work for 6 hours, and spend the rest for breaks.
The Hartz 4 reform is unpopular in Germany, because it created a rampant low-wage sector coupled with exploitative temp work. Hartz 4 is nothing but dehumanziation, authorized by the government. Meanwhile the so-called elite bluntly enrich itself. This can only be a puzzle for people, who profit from the system.
Automating stuff and writing little helpers is a great idea.
I would suggest to start with the command line.
I wrote a lot of tools for it. Basically everything in daily life, which involves repetitive math, like tracking finances, calculate taxes etc, has the potential to be transformed into some tailored script in your favorite language. Also everything which transforms or involves text, is appropriate. For instance, instead of using some random smart phone app to train memory, I wrote a program to practice the mnemonic peg system by using the shell. Once you start writing such a tool, you will quickly run into practical problems, which need to be solved. Usually this triggers creativity and a learning effect.
As a ground rule, I aim to reconcile different aspects of a "career", like work-life balance, salary, future prospects. This is an ongoing
process, there is no master plan for me. I don't aim for roles, money or status. I believe that most of that is by chance anyway.
Instead, I let myself be guided by my interests, and try to be open for opportunities at the same time.
Most of the time I try to save energy and to avoid pressure. But if I sense something worthwhile, I can work really hard and go for the extra mile. For instance, at some point I realized unexpectedly, that I was aiming for a good university degree. So I pushed hard, and in the end my thesis was among the very best. This suddenly enabled my PhD studies, which enabled some grants, insights and relationships. I didn't plan to do a PhD, but it turns out that having one is also very useful outside academia. Therefore, instead of being powdered in the post doc mill, I left academia timely. Now working in industry, I lay dormant until I sense another capture.
Again, I more or less do, what currently interests me (C/C++, Linux stack). This might change soon, and I would switch then in a heartbeat.
So I would advice you to avoid doing something, what you struggle against.
Don't let yourself press or lure into some fixed scheme you don't like. Instead, find out what is important to you, what interests you, and go with the flow. Be patient, but don't hesitate to switch, if there is a good opportunity. As a software engineer, there should be plenty of it.
I know some people, who are in complete paralysis thanks to (overly) analytic thinking. On the other hand, from all the people I know having a major depression, nobody was able to advance simply by analyzing, deciding, acting, and without help. That said, it might worked for the author, but I doubt that it would work that smoothly for the majority of people with problem paralysis, let alone depression.
I agree in so far, that the "ability to listen with a purpose" is invaluable. I have a couple of (senior) co-workers, which are technically skilled, but simply won't listen or empathize very well. They react to given trigger words in a knee-jerk way, then reeling off some kind of (technically) story. Often enough the information they give you is buried deep in noise, is not there, or worse, turns out to be wrong. Poor communication between people strikes me as one the biggest bottleneck in our company.
For me it is frustrating to work with, and I really need to pay attention to not joining their mannerisms.
Good article. I remember that in the second year at university, our math professor explained "It boils down to Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that we [mathematicians] won't be automated away". Never been worried about AI, singularity or automatization since then.
I think the "raise [..] of our baseline of acceptable human suffering" will at some point escalate very quickly. It is exposing, concerning the refugees in Germany, how fast compassion shifted to outrage. Way before the climate change hits western Europe with full force, we will experience an
age of barbarism.
Renewables can't save the planet from a mathematical point of view. For example, to satisfy the current energy demands of Germany with wind energy alone, one would need more area of land to build turbines, than Germany actually has (and as the article states, there is still the problem of storage for renewable energy). I didn't do the math, but I'm pretty sure that many other developed countries simply burn more energy, that they have space available to host renewables. To attain some kind of equilibrium, they would need to import renewable energy from other countries, or to degrowth their energy consumption (and therefore there economy).
Creating something significant is certainly a good idea, but is also not easy at the same time. Standing out is certainly hard. Standing out by a meaningful creation, is in my opinion very hard and needs much work and luck. Only very few novice developers will fall into that category. I would not expect to recruit such people on a regular basis.
For instance, in my case, it's very clear that my CV weights much more than my creations on Github, if they weight something at all.
Ok, so this guy created something, which was interesting enough for his first employer. After that, he bootstrapped himself to the next jobs. This has nothing to do with "start creating", but rather with "having luck". It is the same as having luck to have the right relationships. Or having the luck to have a CV interesting enough for an employer. And it that regard, it makes more sense to concentrate on a strong CV, starting with a useful degree.
I find it amusing, how Hollywood movies concentrate on factor "external shocks" (alien invasion, diseases,...), ignoring the other factors. Usually in the movies, the problem(s) then gets fixed with the use of nuclear weapons, technology or other science fiction magic. This reenforces the narrative of "even if shit hits the fan, we can still fix this eventually". It neglects carelessly the real dangers of climate change, complexity, environmental degradation and the history of human failure, as described in the article.
No, to the contrary. It rather drains my ability to paint a picture or to play music. After staring on a screen full of compiler errors for 8 hours, there isn't much left to be joyful or creative.
Personally no, because that's what the 6 month trial period is for in Germany. On the other hand, I rejected offers which required this, and I know quite a few stories from friends where it was required too. In the end it depends on how bad you want/need the job.
I would say the overhead of time tracking, as a deliberate productivity tool, is barely worth the trouble. For instance, I use Emacs org-mode, where you can schedule and clock tasks in sophisticated ways. It took a long time to setup and get used to the stuff. I thought it might scale in the future. Turns out that pen and paper is much more efficient and effective for me to get anything done on a daily basis. Now I use it more or less to get reminded for some important dates, and to satisfy the sunk cost fallacy. I would only use it as time tracker again, if forced by my employer.
At least in Germany, even if you are pursuing a CS degree at an university, you are supposed to teach yourself how to code anyway. Hence it makes more sense to get an degree in mathematics or physics, which have much higher prestige than computer science.