ahewett

I know this article is about google but I only had a good Apple anecdote so there you are.

I truly truly wish you the best of luck in your futile endeavor.

My wife HATES all her apple products but still won't switch. Similarly, while I love Macbooks, iPhones make me sick and developing for them is like Apple personally giving you (the dev) the middle finger every time there's an update.

I don't know the solution. Wish I did. Wish the internet was as free and wild as it used to be. But you could have a foghorn go off on an iphone every 3 seconds and people still wouldn't switch.

No. I would give the same advice to an 18 year old. I can't speak for aerospace, but can expertly speak on BCI, medtech and AI. And bank security.

What I would honestly recommend doing is a bootcamp for full stack, or even just backend or frontend, or native, React Native, etc. Start there. You must learn the basics of code first. Not only that, but you will need to know how a non-academic team works. Github for starters. Also if anyone ever tells you that "elegant" code in one line is better than "readable" code in 10 lines, punch them for me. That is not how reality works in the workplace. Clear variable names. Clear function names. An understandable architecture for what is trying to be accomplished. These are the most important things, not reducing a perfectly understandable algorithm to something akin to calculus.

I actually made some of the first BCIs for the PC a long time ago, but already was a certified architect in C#, Microsoft, etc. These days you want to go for Node/JS or Go or Java, etc. Once you learn one language it is simple to learn another, particularly C-based languages (JS/TypeScript/C#/Java/ObjC/Swift and so on - notably they use brackets instead of indents or words to denote functions and objects.

I used to do AI work, but mainly medtech these days like digital therapeutics, and paradoxically I also do bank security (startup I was working with got bought by a bank, thus the disparity between the two. hey, you make friends along the way, help them out, and occasionally a hustle becomes your job)

I highly recommended becoming intimately aquatinted with databases, both relational and otherwise. And learn how to optimize them. You WILL have to work with a relational database at some point and thus you will need to learn SQL, indexing, etc.

Along the journey of my life, I've become quite the physicist and like to think I have a deeper understanding of math than most people. The only benefit I see to a degree is you might learn some of that. Physics, signal processing (from an EEG for example), and so on, are unavoidable. HOWEVER, there are a TON of libraries that will do all of that for you, and along the way you will learn it. I highly doubt anyone writes their own Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) these days, but to use it you have to understand how it works, what it's giving you, and what it's not, in order to avoid egregious mistakes. I've had to correct many people on what a Fourier transform actually does, many of them who have related doctorates. There are some truly stupid highly credentialed people in the world. IMO even the wikipedia article on it has some serious mistakes.

Honestly? Everything you need to know you can learn yourself online very cheaply through online courses. Get yourself a mentor or two. People LOVE teaching others. A bootcamp, however, will land you your first job.

As far as getting a job, when it comes to programming or engineering, "the proof is in the pudding". I've interviewed hundreds of programmers. At first I read all about their achievements at MIT and all of what they are experts in. But, in the end, EVERY INTERVIEW will consist of a live coding session. 90% of the people I interviewed could not write a solution to total softball questions like, "Alphabetize this text" or "Parse this JSON". I would even let them google and they still couldn't do it. I've had people right out of bootcamp that were better coders than the most highly credentialed CS graduates.

Which brings me to my final notes: 1) Live code as much as possible. Learn to love it. I failed the crap out of my first live coding interview, but faced my fear and now I'm the only one in the bank department I'm in that live codes. As I'm sure you can imagine, product and design LOVE IT. 2) FORGET ABOUT LEETCODE or any other such crap. If I was ever given a leetcode question in an interview I would tell them point blank that people just memorize the answers to these, they are not applicable to real-life application, and then I would walk out because that company is clearly not serious. 3) Whiteboard interviews are also going to happen. Super easy. Flow chart with how the frontend connects to the backend, branching enough into each until they know you know what you're talking about. 4) Don't forget the old school! If someone asks you what "PUT" means in a request and you don't know the answer, that's pretty embarrassing. Learn about basic networking, from old to new. 5) LEARN DEFENSIVE CODING: This will give you a leg up because I've never met a programmer who knew it who hadn't also been a hacker at some point in their life. Basically what this means is how to reduce vulnerabilities, but also how to straight up trick would-be hackers. For example, error messages. If you have an error message that says "License invalid", it will be ludicrously easy to find that string and thus where the license code is likely to be. Instead, screw with them. Say your program detects that a user has hacked into your app, if you simply cause a crash or exit that just gives them an easy way to find and remove the problem. Instead, perhaps there is a commonly used number in your app. Change it so they get weird data. Or maybe division of numbers is needed at some point. Change the divisor to 0 to cause a random crash. Some defensive coders will simply use a timer, set it to a random value, and then cause a crash in some way. Whatever you decide to do, use multiple defensive techniques, and always always screw with the hacker so they have no easy way to determine where to look to bypass your protections.

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Ok so I've overwhelmed you and you may be rethinking your decision. Don't. Jump right in! Learn as you go, keeping the above advice in mind, and you will succeed. Take a few courses on the basics of the actual reality of working in the private sector, so you know the basics of github, but make no mistake: show me a coder that says he doesn't google at least once a week, I'll show you a damn liar.

As far as aerospace, I've no clue. I have friends at NASA who are bored out of their minds, but the are all credentialed. Even so, the exactly University you go to barely matters, as far as I can see. Again, coding and the understanding of fundamental concepts is something that can and will be tested during an interview, and maybe even before the interview with a take-home project or a general phone call.

Above all, have confidence in yourself, and walk out of an interview that is stupid or has a bad culture. EVERYONE has imposter syndrome. Make THEM court you. I've straight up never gotten a job I wrote a cover letter for. Usually out of some company that is truly interested calls YOU. They can see your resume on LinkedIn like everyone else. Which reminds me, up your LinkedIn game big time. Yeah yeah everyone hates it but you start writing things, people invite you on podcasts, the snowball starts rolling.

Well that's all I've got. I hope it helps!

Good luck!

Giovanni responded to the main thread. I asked him to respond to this specifically but he's super busy. This is his response:

"He doesn't know what he is talking about. Means do not have to be a standard deviation away to make the result significant."

Hey, thanks! I appreciate that. I played classical guitar as a kid - still do. And Bach is definitely a favorite, though one of the most difficult. You just know he composed those lute pieces on his damned organ, where he could use 2 hands and 2 feet ;)

Yeah, I have to say it has not been a great experience here at HN. But, maybe I'll win them over yet. After 13 years, we're finally taking off, and the first thing I did was pour everything in the science, so we'll be there soon.

Well, enjoy Brain.fm! And feel free to drop me a line with an update any time.

- Adam

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Was wondering if I was going crazy.

Completely agree! We're on it. :)

Definitely don't want you to be wary of the skip button. That's an important feature. You should love the music you're playing.

So here's a pro-tip: as an anonymous user, play the session for just a little bit without moving the slider more than a minute or two. Click skip within that time period and you're golden.

The skip does have more leeway if you just register. It's free! Plus, as an anonymous user you're not going to get near as much variety. Every time you come back in incognito you'll get the same stuff. We have so many people doing this, but I don't know how they stand it! Truly though, I do not care if people go incognito.

But we just kinda need to know a bit about you to make sure you get the right sessions, instead of generic one-size-fits-all sessions. Yeah, I know how that sounds, as if I'm just dying to get your email or something, right? Use a fake one, who cares. I only need the survey information for one reason: Everyone's truly is - to quote Tyler Durden - a beautiful and unique snowflake ;)

It gets better and better afterwards and the more you use it.

Enjoy :)

- Adam from Brain.fm

So much inspiration in this thread. I mentioned this further down the page, but it's a hobby of mine to ask what music people work to.

This is a goldmine for me.

Thanks a lot for posting, and for trying it out. Would love to hear your feedback, or anyone else's from this thread. Email me any time. Just my first name and brain.fm.

Next week I go back to working on more music themes. We hired a new guy a month ago and he's ready to take over the app, so, this is perfect timing.

Let's see what me and the AI-guy can come up with. :)

- Adam from Brain.fm

Great, so glad it's helping! Wait till you get the headphones... a whole new level. Keep me updated. I had Aaron get in touch with you but please feel free to send me any updates directly. Just my first name and brain.fm

Don't stop exercising though ;)

- Adam

This is actually great feedback. I can definitely create some trance, house, etc. There is techno/electronic music already in there, but only at around 120bpm, and probably won't be as bass-intensive or dramatic as you're used to.

Junaid my co-founder shares a lot of your taste, and so does my sister, so I have a few willing guinea pigs :)

- Adam from Brian.fm

It's actually a very very good result for the tests we did. A similar study using a boatload of caffeine couldn't reach statistical significance. Also I believe strongly that if we'd compared it to say, classical music or some random ambient album, it would have been an even stronger result. The placebo in this study was still generated by the AI, so it followed the same rules - rules that naturally help people focus. The only thing it lacked was the brainwave stimulating modulations. We did see a big difference on an EEG because of that, but the fact is that part of what makes the sessions work is that they follow strict rules, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just makes it harder in this case.

But I actually like it like that. I want a double blind study with identical-sounding placebo and more subjects. After that we can study how it compares to regular music commonly used as study-aids.

Regarding the statistical analysis, result interpretation, etc, I feel I should let Giovanni himself defend his paper. He's dealing with family / health issues right now, but I hope to get him on here as soon as possible. I promise he will respond eventually and clear this up.