How to learn programming - Advice for scientists | Clara Sousa-Silva and Lex Fridman 

About the productivity trap: I don't even spend 90% of my time improving my code, I spend 90% of time improving my Linux system like an Oldtimer car enthusiast and 9% of my time I spend on stack overflow to tell other people how bad their code is without providing actual improvements, like every regular user on this forum. With the last 1% I actually get some work done and earn my money at burger king.

As a fast typist, and as a programmer for 40 years, I agree that well written, well commented code should be fairly easy to revisit in the future, without documentation. My motto: Never sacrifice keystrokes for clarity.

I frequently question the amount of meta note taking I do while coding and while learning new concepts related to complicated project tasks. Comments like these from Clara really make me feel like I am not wasting my time though. When I want to go back to anything I have done, it usually doesn't take long to catch onto the whole picture of it so far, as I often am explicitly documenting the purpose of each object, action and task along side actually doing the work. Human memory is tricky

Sousa-Silva - "I would much, much faster hire someone who knows programming but barely knows where space is than teach programming to an astronomer." That is incredible. Really speaks to the difficulty of writing code.

Lex hit it on the nail. Ive made the mistake of focusing too much time on optimization.

Bad programmers are usually the people who decided to do it for the wrong reasons. I know many people I went to university with who were only CS majors because they heard you could make a decent salary with a CS degree. They were never invested in learning data structures and algorithms the right way and didn’t like coding and making stuff in their free time. To truly be a good programmer, you have to know data structures and algorithms, and also like to code when you don’t have to. For me, it was making video games that kept me motivated.

You wont learn programming in shool. You learn it at home. Find something that interests you. Music? Develop a music player. Games? Develop a small game with sprites. Thats the start. Then apply what you learn at shool. At shool, we should develop a program to calculated taxes. Where is the fun in that? Instead I have started with C++ and played around with a small game engine. Thats how it started for me.

There are only 3 things [to programming]: 1. Reading from a variable 2. Writing to a variable 3. Conditional branching Everything else is syntactic sugar. This is from another Lex interview (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-j-BVv0XW1H8.html.

I love Claras confidence and strong opinions, a brilliant person!❤

Her analogy that she would rather teach a programmer where space is, is spot on. Because, well space is there. There aren't 10,000 different form of space above us. But there are 10,000 different ways to code a single thing.

I still know as little about code as when I started the video but I did learn not to be obsessed over perfection.

You choose such fascinating topics to cover! Good talk.

I guess that depends on the person, I have a friend that is a Nuclear Scientist and he only knows one language (FORTRAN) but he knows it by heart because he loves speed. He refuses to use other environment or language, he told me that his compiler and the way he codes his Fortran is so optimized that anything that wasn't that fast with his formulas would drive him nuts.

Great programmers hold "getting the job done" much higher than having to use the perfect methods and tools.

Read Clean Code. Strongly recommend it.

get the job done first, i guess is more important later when there is time to revisit the code then improve it. I think that's my approach in life. In general it is better to be early than late? Probably.

Lex you are amazingly wise for your age!

I think for any programmer in general, taking the time to write comments about what the block of code is doing will save some of the frustration for you and others who have to read your code in the future.

After learning Elm I was happy. Then I had to go back to OOP.

Wow she is really well-spoken. Like her live sentences sound like writing

Look at those amazing knockers omg

Learning to properly debug code along with repetition, repetition, repetition.

Curious to say, just after hearing that people are still programming in Fortran because of legacy code, that in reality code (whether well written or not) will most likely very quickly become obsolete.

She’s spot on. If you can’t, then hire someone who can

Full var names and then alies them imo. Spreadsheet the var's if you can

The guy behind Stack Overflow is actually a programmer from the days when "optimization" wasn't a deluxe option :-) Maybe he knows someone who would be good with FORTRAN and COBOL :-)

i use a lot of comments in my code so i can understand it later. It is really awkward when you are called to explain your own code and you are blank

Have to disagree with Lex on the topic of optimization. I am a web developer-most of my projects are small, so optimization of my code gives very negligible benefits in terms of the user experience. Scientists, though, work in a completely different context. They have HUGE datasets. Optimization of their code could potentially be the difference between minutes or hours of processing. If scientists use programming, it is because they are doing really computationally heavy work. The James Webb telescope is one such example. The images we see are a result of really heavy computations. A lot of the time, good coding practices (good variable names, etc.) is not just for you, but for others on your team to meaningfully understand and contribute to your code. These benefits should definitely not be understated! I also do a lot of data analysis with R/Python. When I do such projects, even ones where they are one-off and temporary, I am constantly bitten by my own poor coding habits. I will recall "Oh a while back, I did a special aggregation in a previous project, would be cool to do that same data aggregation technique in my current project" and will instantly regret not having taken seriously writing good, clean code, and interpreting my own code from months before becomes its own chore. Scientists-it may not seem like it, but optimization is IMPORTANT. Coding habits are important. Moreso for you than me, given the datasets you work with. It is true that there comes a point where further optimization is not necessary, but again keep in mind the context. If you can cut down processing time *significantly* due to optimization, you are doing your company/firm/taxpayer a great service.

For Scientists, Applied Mathematicians, Quants, Engineers (Not CS Majors), Econometricians & Statisticians, Coding is only for simulation & computation of Mathematical, Statistical Models. Our main goal is 'Models' not 'coding'. We do code only for models to simulate.

Cool!

He better invites Dan Grossman. I also recommend his coursera course to anyone who wants to learn programming.

FORTRAN and cobol are both very obsolete It would be better to write translators that convert that source code into Python or Java

Comment you code!!! It's that simple.

LEX !. look into her eyes , look into her eyes !. you can do this !!

If I go ahead and learn Foretran, will that improve my prospects of getting it on with her?? That's the first question here

Go (Golang) would be a good language for a scientist. The visualisation side with it is a bit more difficult though. Perhaps use Ebitengine with it.

I studied cobol about 30 years ago but I won't be much help

So no one is going to talk about how cool the mug is????????

💯✨

My personal git commits often involve phrases like, “what is life?”

Just write comments in your code that explain WHY you did something ... seriously, best question to ask yourself when writing comments, "Why is this code here?" "Why is it doing what it's doing this thing?"

She speaks like Jordan Peterson, she has all the subtle nuances that he has, all the pauses and everything

Comments section is full of IT guys trying to teach a scientist to code. 😂😂😂. She is Computational Quantum Chemist & Astrophysicist. She has to simulate & compute models not programming as she said she is doing it just to get job (simulation) done.

How about not making it look cryptic?Ironically that is exactly what the image used for this video does. It looks confusing and complex and is nothing like what real code looks like. That will surely put the uninitiated off programming as it makes it intimidating.

I can break it down for you: step 1 - do a lot of it there is no step 2

lex basically described me lol

too much question I'm sorry sometimes I mistake

"People who write like MATLAB code... single letter variable names, those kinds of things" - I feel personally attacked Lex.

IT'S TOO HARD!! *starts weeping* PYTHON IS TOO HARD! I JUST WANT TO MAKE A CHESS GAME!! *starts ugly crying*

what i took from this as someone with a degree in programming leave comments in your code HAHA

Lost in the sauce, Lex. That's the phrase you're were looking for. "Some programers get programmers get lost in the sauce" - Gucci Mane

Yes she's a dream.

Refreshing yo have smart woman on your show!

I have no idea what their talking about

you're not a programmer, you're just someone who writes code

This is very unfair actually. I sacrificed my youth to become an aerospace engineer. No software engineer could ever be called an aerospace engineer.

why cant things be kept simple a monkey should be able to operate and a tool should be made to make as easy as possible i dont bother to learn because in the future does not matter what you learn it will be simpler to use, most things in the universe starts off simple and looks like its ended in a complex method..

As every intelligent person Clara doubt her coding skills but I don't believe that she is so terrible.

Clara Sousa-Silva needs to be interviewed by Neil Degrasse Tyson.

I completely disagree with Lex, and I'm shocked by his position... "Don't fret about details, variable names etc... just get the job done". This attitude is costing billions in man hours and is the bane of most software developers existence. Apparently Lex has never worked for a company that managed a code base that is over a few years old.

Is she hiring?

Where do you find these beautiful smart women

I wished mi gam gam was still around though ..she is dead now 🥺😡😡

Lots of talking, but no answer to the question "how to learn programming"...

Her comment about it being easier to teach science to a programmer than vice versa is complete bs. Both take years to master. You can definitely teach a programmer some basic stuff, but if will be on the same level as a scientist’s programming.

Does Lex poop?

Her job title and accomplishments make me feel small 😑

never take a woman for her word nor ever take advice from a woman on anything. they're clueless.