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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3623 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 25, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm studying Physics but I want to appreciate programming and Computer Science more. I must admit that the two programming courses I've taken were quite boring and deluding, and I don't know if it is because they sucked or because I find programming boring in itself. My problem is that I do not really know what a programmer and computer scientist should be able to do, both in an academic and marketability sense[1], in other words how do I create a self-study curriculum to follow?

[1]like: What are jobs that programmers do? What are some beginner to advanced projects that I could implement on my laptop?

Since you are a physics student I will make you a suggestion that should be close to home. Lofty demonstrations of algorithmic beauty won't faze someone who doesn't naturally find programming and CS interesting.

Ever thought solving long equations were a bitch (lol)? Play around with SymPy. It's a python package for symbolic manipulation. Check out the link to the video above, it's by a physics student showing you how to use SymPy to solve common physics equations and some of them are extremely difficult if not impossible to solve by hand. The sheer usefulness of it speaks for itself. You can solve the equation, plot it, solve a 1000 different variations of it, generate LaTeX renderings of it, "lambdify" it and put it into production, and so much more with TRIVIAL amounts of effort.

And don't get spooked by syntax/idioms you don't understand quite yet. As an Electrical Engineer who had to hand solve his fair share of Maxwells Equations, Take Fourier/Laplace transforms and solve some retardedly long control systems problems, letting the computer do all the hard work so that you can focus on the larger task at hand is a blessing of the likes a student might not even appreciate yet. Ain't nobody got time to hand solve shit, we have computers for a reason. Programming is not harder than Physics, do not be scared.

In an ideal world you should probably be a decent enough python programmer or programmer in general before using specialized packages because otherwise, you will stumble against the language itself. But in your case let's hope the reverse works out. You might find SymPy so useful that you venture out into other programming use cases.

For those wondering, why not just recommend MATLAB since it comes "built-in" with symbolic manipulation and a whole host of other things a physicist might find useful? Well... FUCK MATLAB that's why.

And what do programmers do? Come on man, you are typing this out on a fucking website, which didn't appear out of thin air. Just look around you.

Well... FUCK MATLAB that's why.

I've been trying to get this point across to some of my coworkers. A few don't get it.

I had a PhD advisor who used to make me prototype things I wanted to do with python (which I am very good at) in Matlab so he could understand what I was doing. One of the most frustrating months of my life (and part of the reason I quit!).

Also fuck matlab

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