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Smart India Hackathon: Horrible experience
Background:- Our task was to do load forecasting for a given area. Hourly energy consumption data for past 5 years was given to us.
One government official asks the following questions:-
1. Why are you using deep learning for the project? Why are you not doing data analysis?
2. Which neural network "algorithm" you are using? He wanted to ask which model we are using, but he didn't have a single clue about Neural Networks.
3. Why are you using libraries? Why not your own code?
Here comes the biggest one,
4. Why haven't you developed your own "algorithm" (again, he meant model)? All you have done is used sone library. Where is "novelty" in your project?
I just want to say that if you don't know anything about ML/AI, then don't comment anything about it. And worst thing was, he was not ready to accept the fact that for capturing temporal dependencies where underlying probability distribution ia unknown, deep learning performs much better than traditional data analysis techniques.
After hearing his first question, second one was not a surprise for us. We were expecting something like that. For a few moments, we were speechless. Then one of us started by showing neural network architecture. But after some time, he rudely repeated the same question, "where is the algorithm". We told him every fucking thing used in the project, ranging from RMSprop optimizer to Backpropagation through time algorithm to mean squared loss error function.
Then very calmly, he asked third question, why are you using libraries? That moron wanted us to write a whole fucking optimized library. We were speechless at this question. Finally, one of us told him the "obvious" answer. We were completely demotivated. But it didnt end here. The real question was waiting. At the end, after listening to all of us, he dropped the final bomb, WHY HAVE YOU USED A NEURAL NETWORK "ALGORITHM" WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED? WHY DIDN'T YOU MAKE YOU OWN "ALGORITHM"? We again stated the obvious answer that it takes atleast an year or two of continuous hardwork to develop a state of art algorithm, that too when gou build it on top of some existing "algorithm". After listening to this, he left. His final response was "Try to make a new "algorithm"".
Needless to say, we were completely demotivated after this evaluation. We all had worked too hard for this. And we had ability to explain each and every part of the project intuitively and mathematically, but he was not even ready to listen.
Now, all of us are sitting aimlessly, waiting for Hackathon to end.😢😢😢😢😢25 -
Do NOT be overwhelmed nor discouraged when you realized how little you know.
after all software dev is still a work in progress :)6 -
My devGoals for 2018:
- Build a RESTful API with NodeJS just for learning.
- Finish my first product (electronics sideproject).
- Convert more people to use CraftCMS or at least not use Joomla or WP.
- Get a raise.
- Add Continuous Integration to more projects.
- Add more unit testing where appropriate.
- Create and release a mobile app.
To be continued...
*playing to be continued meme sound*9 -
In Italy (Milan)🇮🇹, job hunting is a fucking hell for misfits like me:
• Young(26)
• 1 year(working) experience + continuous learning/improvement at home
• Skillful and adaptable full-stack
• Willing to do greater things with software without being payed like a monkey
This is the last week working at my current company (from which I rejected the renewal of the contract for 26K€/13 months) and almost every time at a new interview everyone tries to down sell me by default or because of the fucking little time that I've been inside companies without even looking at my skills/capabilities.
Also many little companies made by the CEO and a technical manager that are looking for someone from which being provided food 😒(metaphorically).
(On another side, in one month, me and my gf need to move to a new apartment, the renting process sucks, and she has issues to find a non-slavering job because she is a foreigner(with good knowledge of English and Chinese) with very basic understanding of Italian and I see her crying often in my arms because it's hard and stressful for her to become economically independent as she would like to be)45 -
I need to convert lots and lots of lengthy hard-coded entities into backend objects, as I'm tired of pushing new commits every time something superficial needs to change.
Also, I need to figure out continuous integration. The guy who was going to help with that just left the company, and I was using his eventual forthcoming help as an excuse not to take responsibility for learning about it myself.
I need to learn golang and start converting some code to it, to see if the performance compares to the perl that's currently in place. Perl is brilliant, but aside from me, only old people know it, at my office. That definitely creates a longterm supportability issue.2 -
I hate the fact that our university is hiring ex-developers from the year 1990-2000 to teach us. They are knowledgeable about many stuff like datastructures and algorithms, but when they force a project on us where we have to use some new tech, the students become the teachers. Heck, one of the requirements of the project was to set up a continuous integration server and we had to explain to them that we needed a server and how git was part of it. (classmate even had to explain how git worked to them).
I know that adapting and learning stuff yourself is part of the education, but why are we the ones who should explain the stuff we MUST know to get our degree to the teachers who are supposed to actually, in my opinon, be experts and knowledgable in what we have to know and learn..2 -
This is so nice..💙😄
<Heading>
Synopsis of Gita (religious book of Hindus)
<Stanza 1>
Code is an illusion
Today you are coding
Tomorrow someone else would do it
Thereafter someone else
<Stanza 2>
What did you learn
That is helping you in this Project
What are you learning
That will help you in your next Project
<Stanza 3>
Bug is the truth of life
It is today, and will remain forever
You think you have debugged the Bug
You are wrong
<Stanza 4>
It is continuous
In various new forms
It pops up
Recognise it Parth (Son of Hindu God)
<Stanza 5>
That's why go on making Codes
Don't think about the Bug
They will come to you
On their own1 -
<<prev. #wk235 advices>>
~ Study the Error log deeply, Google each line if needed. Don't give up.
~ Learn by doing. Don't just read/watch.
~ Practice breaking down the problem statement first in different components and hierarchies. Don't jump into coding right away.
~ Write some, review some. Don't put off review for later.
~ Even if you don't exactly follow the best security practices - always ensure that your program is safe for use. Especially for user-inputs, etc, pay attention.
~ Never distribute code with passwords/keys written in it.
~ Don't hard code stuff, use Config file, environment variables, etc.
~ Try to automate repetitive stuff like build and deploy etc
~ Save and backup you code.
~ No one knows everything, also, today's knowledge gets outdated tomorrow. Continuous learning is synonymous with this field.
<<next #wk235 advices>>1 -
are you able to give 1/+ hour to any hobby project/self learning (technical, that could help you in infuture switch) ? if yes, HOW??
I want to create this website , but i keep on delaying that. i just have a faint idea of how the assoc technologies would be used , but putting even 1 hour aside becomes difficult once i come back from the gym in the evening. plus the effort to open laptop, refocus self and do something only to close laptop after an hour feels very less rewarding. I can't achieve anything in 1 hour, i need a continuous slot of 6+ hours to achieve something and plan for the next day.
do share any better mind makeup9 -
Okay, my initial revulsion for ABI has receded. All things considered, my options aren't that bad. I just had to change my perspective from "huge downgrade from static linkage" to "huge upgrade from a message channel".
Just like a web API, I have to draw a continuous line through the program that separates specific concerns of interest that must fall on one side or another, and which can only cross through things with specific properties.
There are several crates shipping a number of different binary-compatible types, even generic types. Not everything can cross, sure, but maybe not everything should cross either. Maybe a DLL should receive an opaque handle for certain things, such as interpreter internal code representations. Maybe having these separated is important enough to justify having a translation layer.
I'm sure there's much woe ahead, but I'm learning to stop worrying and love the ABI. -
Learning to tech to speed up learning.
Using a new cooperative learning technique, AI Lab researchers cut by half the time it took a pair of robot agents to learn to maneuver to opposite sides of a virtual room.
A combination of deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms are responsible for computers achieving dominance at challenging board games like chess and Go, a growing number of video games, including Ms. Pac-Man, and some card games, including poker. But for all the progress, computers still get stuck the closer a game resembles real life, with hidden information, multiple players, continuous play, and a mix of short and long-term rewards that make computing the optimal move hopelessly complex.
Image: Dong-ki Kim
1 -
The integration of technologies project I have this year. Not yet finished but I already learned a lot of very cool stuff.
First, I learned a new programming language + framework (Ruby on Rails)
Second, for the first time, I implemented a continuous deployment pipeline with Capistrano and Travis ci.
Third, first time I programmed a Restful API.
And more cool stuff coming up ! :D
I freaking love learning ! -
I need some advice to avoid stressing myself out. I'm in a situation where I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place at work, and it feels like there's no one to turn to. This is a long one, because context is needed.
I've been working on a fairly big CMS based website for a few years that's turned into multiple solutions that I'm more or less responsible for. During that time I've been optimizing the code base with proper design patterns, setting up continuous delivery, updating packaging etc. because I care that the next developer can quickly grasp what's going on, should they take over the project in the future. During that time I've been accused of over-engineering, which to an extent is true. It's something I've gotten a lot better at over the years, but I'm only human and error prone, so sometimes that's just how it is.
Anyways, after a few years of working on the project I get a new colleague that's going to help me on my CMS projects. It doesn't take long for me to realize that their code style is a mess. Inconsistent line breaks and naming conventions, really god awful anti-pattern code. There's no attempt to mimic the code style I've been using throughout the project, it's just complete chaos. The code "works", although it's not something I'd call production code. But they're new and learning, so I just sort of deal with it and remain patient, pointing out where they could optimize their code, teaching them basic object oriented design patterns like... just using freaking objects once in a while.
Fast forward a few years until now. They've learned nothing. Every time I read their code it's the same mess it's always been.
Concrete example: a part of the project uses Vue to render some common components in the frontend. Looking through the code, there is currently *no* attempt to include any air between functions, or any part of the code for that matter. Everything gets transpiled and minified so there's absolutely NO REASON to "compress" the code like this. Furthermore, they have often directly manipulated the DOM from the JavaScript code rather than rendering the component based on the model state. Completely rendering the use of Vue pointless.
And this is just the frontend part of the code. The backend is often orders of magnitude worse. They will - COMPLETELY RANDOMLY - sometimes leave in 5-10 lines of whitespace for no discernable reason. It frustrates me to no end. I keep asking them to verify their staged changes before every commit, but nothing changes. They also blatantly copy/paste bits of my code to other components without thinking about what they do. So I'll have this random bit of backend code that injects 3-5 dependencies there's simply no reason for and aren't being used. When I ask why they put them there I simply get a “I don't know, I just did it like you did it”.
I simply cannot trust this person to write production code, and the more I let them take over things, the more the technical debt we accumulate. I have talked to my boss about this, and things have improved, but nowhere near where I need it to be.
On the other side of this are my project manager and my boss. They, of course, both want me to implement solutions with low estimates, and as fast and simply as possible. Which would be fine if I wasn't the only person fighting against this technical debt on my team. Add in the fact that specs are oftentimes VERY implicit, so I'm stuck guessing what we actually need and having to constantly ask if this or that feature should exist.
And then, out of nowhere, I get assigned a another project after some colleague quits, during a time I’m already overbooked. The project is very complex and I'm expected to give estimates on tasks that would take me several hours just to research.
I'm super stressed and have no one I can turn to for help, hence this post. I haven't put the people in this post in the best light, but they're honestly good people that I genuinely like. I just want to write good code, but it's like I have to fight for my right to do it.1
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