The problem that many people encounter when they decide to switch to software development is that they unknowingly make things harder for themselves. They jump into too many frameworks or learn programming languages without any particular system, going into the dense stuff way too early. In this piece you’ll find how to approach the new discipline without getting completely demoralised.
Why Elon Musk’s Neuralink isn't as bad as you think
Figure 1. Neuralink: undergoing brain surgery for every upgrade is going to be slightly trickier than getting a new model of iPhone
Think of the computer sitting on your desk in front of you. You fire it up, you launch your email software, you use its interface to create an email to your boss saying you’re at home sick. Well, you’re not at home sick, in fact, but sipping your bubble tea in a nearby cafe, busy catching up on your favourite tech blogs. Doesn’t matter. Yet think about the relationship you have with the machine at this moment. At every moment of sending that email you are perfectly aware who you are, and by looking at the computer interface you can tell whether the machine is receiving your cues when you type the text in. You can tell that you manifest your behaviour by clicking the “send” button on that email client, and that’s where your action ends, and machine action begins. In a way, there is a certain established pipeline of intention coming from your brain, to your physical movements that gets translated by the interface into the machine commands. These commands then convert into electrical signals, and so on, all the way to the electric signals generated by synapses in the brain of your boss. She’s inevitably getting upset to hear about you being sick and perhaps a little annoyed about the project deadline being missed today.
How to invent software engineering
Margaret Hamilton at Apollo 11 mission control room, 1969: Okay, I think it’s time I start calling this “software” engineering
Margaret Hamilton did not simply help put the man to the Moon. She had also invented the concept that would go along to create a major paradigm shift in ideas that people have about computers. She was the first person to make a difference between hardware and software. How do you come up with an idea of such scale and influence? - I was asking myself while watching through the video clip shared on Google’s blog a year ago. In the video, set in Mojave desert, California, we see a giant portrait of Hamilton. It is made out of mirrors that catch the moon light when darkness falls over the desert, illuminating all at once. The graphic qualities of the portrait aside, you can look at it and marvel at the tribute that earthlings pay to the legendary Apollo flight software designer, a team lead who made it possible to set human feet onto the Moon surface.