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Dean Roddey wrote: and code you'll never be able to write.
Conversely, there's code I wish I never had written. Not that the code was bad per se, but rather the industry / technology / management which I endured writing the code. Two industries I've worked in so far that I will never ever do again: financial and insurance. I found both to be evil and soul sucking, especially as I learned what went on behind the scenes.
Favorite industries: commercial satellite manufacturing, security (video surveillance stuff back in the 1990's), control systems / sensors (mainly high speed, low light level, and multispectral cameras), and of course the "lay in my arms" industry -- lots of cool hardware (*cough*) to play with there -- bill acceptors, fingerprint readers, barcode scanners, annoying receipt printers, etc.
Basically, my favorite industries involve innovation, hardware, and UI / UX / usability challenges, and the ones I loathe involve writing SOAP calls to get some number that is used to increase some rate that the consumer has to pay which basically just lines the pockets of "the man."
Latest Article - Azure Function - Compute Pi Stress Test
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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I look at apps in my phone and sigh... maybe someday.
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Quote: Back in 'my day' when we coded by rubbing sticks together, a single person could pretty much encompass almost all of the art and science.
Back in the early 80's when I was a Professor of Computer Science I probably knew, or knew about, 85% of what tech there was to know in our industry. These days I might know as much as 0.85% of what there is to know after over 40 years of experience it in!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Do we hate ourselves for the code that we never wrote more then the code that we tried and failed at?
Or put - do you want to spend 5 years figuring out how to code a neural net to convert "Hello" into audio speech.
Or use existing work to improve a neural net to play a game with your kid while you sleep?
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I'd rather put in the time and understand it, honestly. That's always been where my interests lie, in implementing OO frameworks, not using them.
Explorans limites defectum
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"But things like AI and serious DNN based speech recognition, which I am very interested in, I've dug into enough to know that I won't be able to go there. They are already too 'mathematics doctoral thesis'-like for me to take on in the time I have left, at least without completely discarding any existing obligations which ain't too practical."
I think you might be selling yourself short there, unless by "time you have left" you mean "I only have 6-months to a year before I die" - even then, I'd still say to go for it.
Really, it isn't as difficult as you think. With today's tools and frameworks, while you do need some understanding of what is going on under the hood, it's not like you need to have deep level calculus knowledge (that would really only come into play for implementing such frameworks). It's kinda like making a 3D game - you can either spend the time writing an engine, or just grab one already made (with scenegraph, etc) - and get down to writing your game.
Personal anecdote:
In the fall of 2011 it was announced that Stanford was sponsoring a couple of online learning classes, being taught by three top-tier instructors. These classes were called "AI Class" and "ML Class". I managed to get myself enrolled into both.
It's been said that they didn't expect a huge amount of response from people to take these classes, but they were completely blown away by the number of people who eventually did enroll.
The "AI Class" was being taught by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun. The "ML Class" was being taught by Andrew Ng. Do any of these names seem familiar? They should...
These online classes were not a new thing, but they did succeed in showing how to do it properly. Prior to this, online classes tended to be more ad-hoc affairs, cobbled together from pieces, or just courses uploaded for others to browse, but nothing structured properly, outside of a very few paid and expensive offerings. These two courses were really the pioneers of what we call MOOCs today.
Anyhow, I took them. It was a struggle. To make a long story short, I completed the ML Class, and got about halfway thru the AI Class before I had to quit due to some personal issues that I won't go into. But I was doing well at that course (though it was right at the edge of my skill and knowledge base).
As an example of what a student managed to accomplish via what they learned in the "ML Class":
How I built a self-driving (RC) car and you can too.[^]
In 2012, Thrun and Ng each founded their own online MOOC "schools" if you will - they are known as Udacity and Coursera (respectively).
Coursera initially offered (and continues to this day) the same course that was the "ML Class":
https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning[^]
Udacity, on the other hand, could not (for some reason, I suspect there was some kind of licensing or other issue with Norvig) release the "AI Class" as a course. Instead, a new course was developed, called (at the time) "How to Build Your Own Self Driving Vehicle" - and now known as "AI for Robotics":
Artificial Intelligence for Robotics | Udacity[^]
It's very slightly different from what I took in 2012 - mainly the "final project". It was very challenging, but I learned a ton from it.
Later on, in 2016, I took the first iteration of Udacity's "Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree":
Self Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree | Udacity[^]
Now - would I classify any or all of these courses as the most challenging you could have when it comes to AI/ML?
Probably not - but they were all very challenging for myself - but also enjoyable (well, except that I b0rked my computer setting up CUDA for my GPU for the nanodegree - but that was on me); your mileage may vary.
But they should give you a good introduction.
If I had to pick any one of them to start with, it would be the Coursera Machine Learning course. It gave me an "aha!" moment about how neural networks actually worked, about how to look at problems better for parallel computation using matrices and vectors, and how neural networks related and used such technologies.
The first Udacity course gave me the basics on what and how to implement SLAM, what Kalman filters were for, and a number of other techniques and ideas to explore for self-driving vehicles and robotics.
The nanodegree took that information, and coupled it with learning how to utilize OpenCV for vision processing, object and lane tracking, plus a number of deep learning tasks. At one point we had to train a neural network to drive a virtual car around a track by building a training set of data from driving the car around the track as it captured snapshots of the track, plus data from the steering wheel (angle) and accelerator/brakes. Using these inputs, plus a custom neural network (I ended up basing mine on a very simplified version of NVidia's "End-to-End" CNN), you trained a model to drive the car around the track. Very fun and exciting (and super frustrating at the same time).
It also introduced me to TensorFlow, Keras, and ROS.
...and that was something in the middle of the entire course. There was a ton of new stuff I learned from that course, and I am glad I took it (though it wasn't cheap).
In the end, all of these courses have taught me there are some things that I don't know that I need to find time at some point to rectify (particularly: Calculus and Probability/Statistics). Someday.
But if I can do this, and it only took a total of about a year's time - and I walked away with more knowledge and understanding that has allowed me to now read better some of those inscrutable AI/ML papers that looked like gibberish before - then anyone else can easily do it too.
But there is something - even those courses aren't for the "faint of heart". Usually - though I never got any real hard numbers - the courses always started out strong, with a ton of students at the beginning. But the first few weeks were the "weed out" phase, and the numbers would then drop precipitously over the time of the course. If you are able to make it to the end of any one of them, you have really accomplished something from what I understand.
Anyhow - good luck!
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Is a Holy Roller the man who makes bagels?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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At yeast he doesn't slice them like this
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He can bialy kneeds to be, easily rising to the occasion.
If he also sells bagels, he could take part in a schmear[^] campaign.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Let's hope he wears a hairnet, no one likes bagels and locks.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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That was shear genius. A cut above the rest.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I figured I was walking a razors edge, if people didn't like it, I might be given the chair, I don't want to dye just yet.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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W∴ Balboos wrote: A cut above the rest.
Yep - the crew is really buzzing over that one.
Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway. (Glenn Reynolds)
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They charge the same for those so you actually get more bangs for your buck.
Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway. (Glenn Reynolds)
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Nightwish - Nemo[^]
An old one from my teen years this week.
Not sure how I got there, but for some reason I got into the metal I listened when I was still in high school.
Nightwish is definitely one of the more melodious and listenable of those bands 
Nemo is pretty much the single from the album that made Nightwish known to a wider audience.
It's also the last album with singer Tarja Turunen and I must admit I haven't really listened to them since.
Their current singer is the Dutch Floor Jansen
Anyway, great track from a great album!
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This week Metal Fleetwood Mac
and some cheese from the chinese charts that I'm too ashamed to post.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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who had that idea, if it 'aint iot it's not going to sell isit?
Message Signature
(Click to edit ->)
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Tch! It's obviously for shaving your tongue ...
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Bleeding edge technology 
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Wouldn't that be for mornings after having too much of the grape, hops, or other grain the night before?
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Can you recommend some broadband ...
with a good guitarist?
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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No time for such things since I got a seat on the breadboard of the baker's guild.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Ah breadboards! That was a while ago...
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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