Haha, if that's the one I remember you could completely trivialize that lab by fiddling with the program counter in gdb (skipping the line that sets off the bomb). Don't know if they were able to fix that in later versions of the lab. Good times, thanks for reminding me.
When I did that, it seemed like it was intentional. You could only get to the portions that signal success to the server by cracking parts of the bomb which was what we were graded on. The "don't let it explode" part was really the hey here's how you can use gdb to stop your program before it does anything serious.
Yeah, I thought that's how everybody did it; when my class was assigned the project, we lost half a percentage point off our final grade for each time the bomb exploded. We very quickly learned to do things like "b explode_bomb".
So if I recall, you were supposed to have to do a lot of investigative work to bypass stuff. There were several different "levels" that got progressively harder to crack. But there was nothing that stopped you from moving the program counter directly to the code that signals success. Which is what we did. Every level, exactly the same: fire it up, move program counter, send the success notice, finished!
That was the point. When I did them, the TA encouraged us to do that. I'm pretty sure they had other measures in place that would have made it hard to fake an authentic success signal to the server. Furthermore, if you sent a corrupted one, you'd lose all credit for the assignment.
In mathematics, my experience falls emphatically on this explanation: "Hard texts are that much better than anything else." Books like Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis are mathematics; their more accessible counterparts are more "about mathematics." As to why successful people don't read more difficult books, well, being a great mathematician just isn't that important to success. Reading Rudin sets you on the path to being very good at mathematics, but that isn't most people's goal. If your goal is material success then yes, hard books are probably overrated.
The programmers here may appreciate this analogy: reading Rudin is like reading the source code, whereas more gentle texts read more like documentation or UML. That's not to say good doc can't be enlightening, but in the end only the source code matters. The doc can be wrong, or misleading, or incomplete. If you want to really understand what's going on, you need to read the source. It's the same way in mathematics.
PoMA presents a mathematical approach that's done in countless other analysis textbooks. What people (students) hate is that the author makes leaps in his proofs. But that's not something unique to Rudin's style. And who says these students wouldn't be capable of making these leaps later on? Please explain to me how "Rudin sets you on the path to being very good at mathematics" (more so than any of the "easier" books), if you agree with my claim that there is in fact nothing unique about his book. If you don't agree, please tell me what is unique.
"As to why successful people don't read more difficult books, well, being a great mathematician just isn't that important to success."
???
"Rudin is like reading the source code"
Rudin's book is incomplete to a beginner. The analogy doesn't work at all.
Ah, I think we are responding to two separate issues. I was referring to Rudin as a mathematical treatment of calculus, in the definition-theorem-proof style, to be contrasted with the more popular and easy heuristic approach. I contend that the Rudin style is a qualitatively better way to learn mathematics. It is also undoubtedly harder to read--but that is because it treats the material in a rigorous, correct way, which is inherently more difficult than heuristics.
Your argument is that Rudin is hard for incidental reasons: he skips steps in his proofs. I personally did not feel this way when I read the book. But I am open to the idea that Rudin is imperfect. I personally admire Rudin's concision, but that may just be my personal aesthetic preference.
My point, and perhaps I did not convey it well, is simply that some subjects (in particular mathematics!) are inherently difficult. And if you want to learn them well, you have to face that difficult head on: you have to read hard books. Euclid's old saying comes to mind: "there is no royal road to mathematics!"
I just told you: most analysis textbooks treat the topic in a nearly identical manner (maybe not in full generality). Do you want to dispute this? Why are you pretending like we're arguing separate issues?
"Your argument is that Rudin is hard for incidental reasons: he skips steps in his proofs. I personally did not feel this way when I read the book. But I am open to the idea that Rudin is imperfect. I personally admire Rudin's concision, but that may just be my personal aesthetic preference."
Financial economics literature is quite heavy on stochastic processes. This requires a sophisticated treatment of probability, which in turn necessitates familiarity with measure theory. Throw some stochastic differential equations into the mix and you're probably also going to need some background in functional analysis. Not so familiar with the rest of the econ literature, but even basic econometrics requires familiarity with point set topology.
I used to think this. And then I went to work in an open plan office... and discovered I love it! The office is surprisingly quiet, considering there's about 50 people in the open plan. When conversation does spring up, it's often really interesting and worth listening in on. When it's not, I find I have no trouble tuning it out. Other people seem to more trouble, and they bring noise-canceling headphones.
Not saying that this can work for everyone at every organization. But I for one was pleasantly surprised. Fwiw I'm a pretty introverted guy who deeply values his privacy.
This really is organization dependent. Do your managers look over your shoulder and micromanage you? Would they get upset if they see HN in your web browser more than once or twice a day? Do you worry about them 'catching' you? Are you surrounded by 4 dozen people with multiple loud passionate discussions guaranteed to happen per day? Possibly in a language you don't understand most of the time? And whenever they do this making it very difficult to concentrate? Do they ignore your social requests to move it to a conference room, since they only last a few minutes and they're hunched over someones desk looking at something?
Do you know some people get a minor feeling of background anxiety when their back is to an open space with people talking and walking around? Their peripheral vision and senses conflict with the deep concentration required for software work.
Those noise cancelling headphones are meant to take out droning noises, such as AC system fans or jet engines in airplanes. Conversations with their lack of repetitiveness and human vocal ranges are not filtered out well, if at all. The music they will have to listen to filter you out is distracting in its own right.
Open Offices also decrease the barriers for interruption. Managers like it because they make their jobs a lot easier, because they get to hear what is happening and get status on their workers progress passively.
Agreed it's totally organization dependent. Basically fishtoaster said what I wanted to say more clearly than I did. It requires thoughtful management to get right. But I think the same is true of any office environment, open plan or no. I think the article is a bit unfair and essentially saying "badly managed open plan offices are bad."
It's like the Java argument. It's less likely for founders and managers setting the culture to screw up private offices or small group offices than open offices.
There are also personal factors at play. Different people thrive under different combinations of stimuli. I'm not a psychologist but I think it'd be related to the intraversion-extroversion axis of personality.
I was working at a place that switched to an open office plan with desks in groups of three or four. I was looking forward to it thinking that would foster much needed communication between two teams that shared the space. Instead, I found that I hated it and quit the job based largely on the open office plan.
