thevirtuoso1973

There is a difference between arrogance and dissatisfaction. I will attribute _most_ of my successes to the latter and all of my failures to the former.

I think the reverse psychology approach is most effective as motivation when (A) the task is described as hard, but also (B) there is no direct implication that you can't do it.

I was trying to think of some impressive sounding examples when someone-said-I-couldn't-do-something-but-I-did-it-anyway but I can't think of any. It's more common that (A)+(B) occurs for me.

You and your senior coworker are allowed to not know things, and furthermore, allowed to talk about things that you don't know much about.

Was your role or the senior person's role related to compilers? You don't have to authoritatively know something to talk about it, and I never assume anyone knows anything authoritatively if they talk about it nonchalantly.

Can anyone elaborate on how CS Ph.D.'s are 'free'? Does this apply to UK universities?

I'm aware of scholarships but I'm not from an under-represented background nor am I a genius. I suppose the student loan would cover the costs but I don't consider that free.

I just tried that out for a couple sentences when I realised that this is /precisely/ what I would do for English Literature classes, years ago. Perhaps it is no coincidence that that subject that seemingly trains you to 'bullshit' is then also related to intelligence.