Feynman: So good you slow down (Includes 2 bangers)

raddevus

Did you know you can read Richard P. Feynman's Five Easy Pieces online (Chapter 1 starts here) at the CalTech web site?

The book was actually created from a live lecture he gave his students in '61, '62.

I've been reading my favorite sentence from the first chapter of that lecture over an over:

Banger 1

The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth.”
~Richard P. Feynman

This hits so hard. It backs up everything I've ever thought about in Software Development over my 35 year career.
I've always used the REPL loop as I write my code. I want to know if it works and understand how it works (fails).

So many people (managers) along the way whose thinking is so faulty that they do not even consider testing as a part of development, has always blown my mind.

I often think of the Charles Babbage quote below -- another of my favorites.

Here's the OG Hardware Engineer saying the same thing:

Banger 2

“On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
~ Charles Babbage

Have you read Five Easy Pieces? Or any Feynman? He's great.

PIEBALDconsult

My little sister studied physics in the late 80s, so she had copies of two Feynman books e.g. "Surely You're Joking", and I read them.
But last month I watched a YouTube video explaining that:
A) They may not be very factual.
B) They are detrimental to young women studying physics.
C) "Feynman never wrote a book."

pkfox

@raddevus He was a fine bongo player too

PIEBALDconsult

Not judging from the clip I've seen.

Mircea Neacsu

My dad got me those when I was in last year of high school and I kept them until two years ago when I decided to throw away all physical books for which I had PDFs.

I still remember when I got them, I was full of rage - it is not unusual for 17 years old to be full of rage - but I was raging at those who can be so lucky to have a physics teacher like Dr. Feynman when I was stuck with very mediocre ones. I specially remember his lecture on Principle of Least Action, IMO the best example of what a great teacher he was.

pkfox

My favourite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA

raddevus

That's a fantastic video and actually quite related to Software Development.
This is very much like a Software Requirements discussion.
I remember having a BA (Business Analyst) come to me and say to me,

"We need a new Windows form that will allow us to put customer data in the database. So please go ahead and make that happen."

I said,

"OK, so here are just a few of the questions:

is there already a table for this particular "customer data"?

Is it just the first name of each customer you want to save?

Are you saying that any user can edit the customer data? So it's just wide-open so the data can be edited by anyone?

This one little thing the BA asked for explodes into innumerable questions.

Of course, the BA was like,

"Oh man, you are always so difficult!"

😆😆😆
Yes, that's it. I'm just difficult.

Of course, if the BA had done her job, it all would've been easy, because she would've already had all those answers. 🤓

PIEBALDconsult

I know there's a Dilbert for that...

Yes! The "Wally Reflector".

FreedMalloc

@PIEBALDconsult Probably several.

raddevus

@PIEBALDconsult wow! I searched for “Wally reflector”
That’s really uncanny how close that comic mimics my reality.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fswizec.com%2Fstatic%2F665ab1d5aa76308e26b6e10e3968c510%2Facb04%2FThe-Wally-Reflectorf8f3fh.jpg&f=1&ipt=6f92a7552c95e8716fd1d5ec56f150c1079198d3a549d81623d135a6eb0c5f10