Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this.)

    • khalid_salad@awful.systems
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      5 days ago

      I think you would need to deliberately choose a mathematical problem to solve, otherwise the most difficult thing youā€™ll come across will be binary representations of numbers and why floats are FUCKING BULLSHIT (seriously though they can be tricky if you think they are just ā€œnumbers in a calculatorā€).

      If you want to really understand programming language theory, or computer science more generally, you will definitely need mathematics. But if the goal is ā€œI want to tell this chip what to do,ā€ you donā€™t need to learn a lot of math, in my opinion.

      Edit: also, if you need help with any math, feel free to DM me. I am a former math teacher and sometimes teach algorithms (basically screaming ā€œwhat is your induction variableā€) at the undergraduate level.

    • sc_griffith@awful.systems
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      4 days ago

      most people who are considered skilled programmers seem to know very little math (by my arbitrary standards), so I wouldnā€™t worry about it. if you get that the remainder of 8 divided by 5 is 3 then youā€™re 99% of the way there

      • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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        4 days ago

        There are three kinds of programmers. From smallest to largest: Those smart enough to write good math-intensive libraries, those dumb about to think they can, and those smart enough to just use what the first kind made.