joe42

imap jk <Esc>

Hitting jk in insert mode for escape is wonderful.

> there's a certain amount of tedium in any endeavor.

Yes, I'm cherry picking a bit here :)

I think I was a bit too hard on physics in my previous comment. I've definitely loved it before, and I still do occasionally. I think the frustration I feel is partly due to school's tendency to suck the fun out of any subject (computers, too--I never really liked any of the programming/algorithms classes I took, but I enjoy learning a new language or algorithm on my own time). And once I'm done with my problem sets and things, I can't think of my physics books as being "leisure" reading (like I do with programming books). It would be just my luck, if I switch careers, to fall out of love with computers and end up courting Jackson on the sly!

I think I'm most dissatisfied, right now, with the school/city/people. There's nothing interesting within a 6 hour drive, and I haven't made any friends--I've met a lot of people, so it's not for a huge lack of trying, but I don't really like any of them as much as I liked my friends in undergrad. I've thought about switching schools, but with all the hassle of re-applying and somehow explaining "I don't like anything about this place--would you write me a letter of recommendation?" coupled with my other reservations, I feel more inclined toward a career switch.

It sounds like we have, at least, narrowed it down to a decision of personal preference. Which puts a lot of pressure on me! But still, progress.

Thanks again!

Agreed. I guess I'm just trying to weigh the "worth" of the degree (not just money) against the "cost" of it (not just money). Lots of intangibles in the equation.

It sounds like the consensus is not "Absolutely do X, or you'll regret it later," but "(Either one will be fine;) do what you love." So it's comforting that I probably can't screw this up too badly with either choice, but I'm going to have to do some introspection.

It's mostly the course work and preliminary tests (studying for them) that I'm not liking and dreading, which are supposed to take another ~2 years. At that point, the sunk cost fallacy would probably keep me in for the whole thing.

> worth in terms of cherished personal values

Yeah, that's probably part of it. I guess The Internet can't help me with that one.

> I ended up deciding against choosing a narrow specialty and becoming a miner, so I headed to industry to become a maker.

I like this. Sums it all up quite nicely. Thanks!

> SV type stuff?

I was being purposefully vague--I just meant the Silicon Valley scene. I have a college friend who just got a cool job there, and some family friends, too. It sounds like a fun place from the culture side, but also from the technology side--specifically, I'm amazed by what a small team can do in a 48-hour hackathon with today's technology. The one that comes to mind is that "Infinite Scrabble MMO" from about 18 months ago. 150 man-hours can produce that? Wow.

I did research in undergrad (mostly over the summers, but a bit during the year). I had a lot of fun, and it was motivating work. But it was programming work! I wrote a bunch of data analysis code and did a little bit of GEANT simulation stuff, and it all felt more like programming than physics. And the "physics research" (experimentalists) that I have seen looks more like engineering (designing/building some apparatus, then fixing all of the problems...).

It just seems so slow-moving compared to the software industry. There's a lot less room for individualism, and it feels like you've got a lot of really smart people doing a lot of menial, commodity tasks (I'm thinking of every PhD candidate and postdoc I've ever known).

I'll have to give theory a closer look. It's hard to see myself in it any time soon, because there's more material I'd need to learn first.

(I think I'm rambling to myself now.) All this, I think, is to say that I'm pretty sure the physics charm has worn off. Unless there's something really exciting around the corner, I think I'm over it.

I seem to have written this comment as if there's some point I'm trying to prove. Habit. Sorry about that! Thanks for the advice and encouragement, and I'll keep my eyes open!

Yep, it was something of a revelation to me this week, that "hang on, I could actually quit if I wanted to!" feeling.

Powerful, but I'm afraid it's dangerous.

That's pretty much the decision I had to make a year ago, and I ended up in the PhD program.

But if I knew then what I know now (that I'd not be having a good time), I'd be leaning closer to the software job.

The remaining unknown (to me) is what the degree is worth, in the end.

Really, I suppose, I'm just not looking forward to telling everyone (friends and family) that I'm quitting. It's admitting a defeat/failure/mistake, and that's hard, so I'm trying to find a good reason to stay.

(At risk of hijacking this thread) I'm a first-year physics grad student (so ~5 years to go, for a PhD), and I'm pretty sure what I want to do is software engineering, SV-type stuff, and I've been seriously considering quitting the physics thing for most of the past year.

Compared to business school in the post:

* I've got about 5 more years of school,

* school isn't costing me anything (I get a ~$20k/yr stipend; no tuition),

* I'm not enjoying myself at all (lots of hard core classes, required to pass preliminary tests in a limited number of sittings, boring city, boring people, boring school, no friends),

* the payoff is slim-to-none. I can't find evidence that a physics PhD is worth much in, say, software engineering. An MIT PhD student just told me he's heard ~$120k typical-ish starting salary in software engineering with a physics PhD (and he was trying to talk me into staying). That doesn't sound worth it at all! "Starting" salary!--if you don't count the 5-7 years of school (basically work).

I could go on, but I'm interested if anyone's got an opinion or some advice. It's a bit similar to the MBA decision.

It's fun to imagine large social networks of bots which are indistinguishable (from Pinterest's/Facebook's/Twitter's P.O.V.) from human social networks. Here, it could be a 1-man spamming operation, but you can imagine government-scale astroturfing.

I absolutely agree that the hackish (you know what I mean) aspect of this feat makes it impressive, but I'd really like to see him work without the handicap.

Given his/her choice of tools, most people would probably be more expressive with Photoshop/GIMP than MS Paint, or AutoCAD/Blender/Poser/HDL/etc./etc. than Minecraft.

Programmers debate the expressivity of programming languages all the time. We're impressed when some genius kid re-implements Doom in TI-BASIC, but at the same time, I want to see that genius applied with the full leverage of the most expressive tools available.

Minecraft doesn't quite pass the Arc challenge. :)

> What do you want this person to do instead?

I get that Minecraft is fun, but wouldn't it have been more practical, in the long run, to have built something equally cool in a real CAD/HDL/etc. software?

It'd be really cool if someone could build a CAD/HDL/programming "IDE" that was as "fun" to "play" as Minecraft, but still as "useful" as something used in "the real world." But I suppose this is the same desire that drives all of those "programming language for kids" projects that never really seem to catch on.