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spycethra · 6 years ago

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Title: Love Hack (Part 1)

Pairing: Gavin Reed x RK-900

Relationship Level: Dating for over a year / A bit rocky

Rating: Fluff

Story Summary: RK-900 gets hacked and loses his normal inhibitions. In turn, he’s become far more jealous and lovey dovey than ever and ironically more humanlike. But with only a few hours to experience this unbelievable version of the investigator, what’s Gavin to do after RK-900 resets back to his normal composed self?

Chapter Summary: Mission -> Survive the Coffeeshop Date

Gavin Reed did not know what to do.

He sat at a table of a local corner coffee shop with a scowling RK-900 seated just across from him. He’d been that way for nearly twenty minutes now. Normally the comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee beans was enough to keep anyone upbeat.

But it was damn a shame that same effect didn’t manage to roll over to androids.

Richard tapped indignantly at the table’s slightly sticky surface with his index finger, appearing absolutely incensed.

“You know why we can’t go back to the office today.”

“No. Quite frankly, I don’t.”

Gavin stared at his partner in exasperation to which the android gave a conceding growl before resting his chin in his palm, still on the lookout for god knows what. It was like having a snarling pure breed that was utterly nettled by anyone (and anything) that wasn’t the man sitting across from him.

“Fine. By your horribly flawed human logic,” Richard began, sounding more vexed than ever as he proceeded to recollect the details for disaster of that very morning, “the department assumed that some amateur coder managed to successfully compromise the integrity of my programming.”

RK-900 placed his hand over his own chest with great emphasis for his state of the art configuration - still years ahead of all the rest.

“I am the RK-900, Reed. Top of the line of my series, equipped with enough security measures that with the very power to topple even the most ardent of minds. Through utilizing the Cephilax Firewall 22-78-3SR...”

And then the act of tuning out all the techno babble began…

Gavin did well not to roll his eyes as he instead just pursed his lips into a thin line, trying hard not to fall for old habits by needling the android. RK-900 just left himself so wide open that it was hard to resist teasing him. Instead, he nodded at all the right moments, allowing the android his moment to rant away his problems and boast of his higher tier qualities all at the same time.

It was what a good boyfriend would do, right?

But as far as the detective was concerned, the RK unit could keep defending himself until he was blue in the face, they still weren’t going back to the office.

“Does this crude summary seem accurate, detective? I have far more advanced capabilities to speak of but after analyzing the amount of time it would take to verbalize each and every one to you, it would appear the work day would be over,” Richard concluded with a little less edge in his voice than before.

Gavin mentally winced at the mention of work. RK-900 was still under the impression that they’d be going back.

“Richard, there’s no way I’m taking you back today.”

The android visibly stiffened, sitting straighter than before with his arms crossed in front of him as though he were suddenly on trial.

“Do I have to repeat myself, Reed? I already gave you conclusive evidence that I am operating at optimal capacity.”

This isn’t getting us anywhere. I have to be direct with him… Gavin thought, trying to keep things as cool as they could be.

He’d already witnessed what happened if RK-900’s stress levels increased a little over half.

And it wasn’t pretty. Hell, it got them kicked out of the station for the remainder of the day.

Fowler’s orders.

But Gavin wasn’t so much of a jerk as to torture his partner with that information. Richard was staunchly dedicated to maintaining an unblemished record.

Taking a breath, Gavin’s stone grey eyes flew up to meet with the sharpness of arctic blue. He tried staring back about understandingly as an asshole like him could for someone he actually gave a damn about. Not that he could hold the stare for very long.

It was terrifying how well Richard’s eyes seemed to dig into him so well. Averting his gaze, Gavin nervously interlaced his fingers together, a cheap attempt at buying time, while leaning forward with a small rise in heartbeat. It wasn’t even that warm in the cafe and yet beads of perspiration were already beginning to form along the contour of his neck.

Relax. This’ll either go really well… or with Richard throwing me through this very nice display window. He carefully eyed the android with a weak smile… who provided none in return.

Well, if I’m lucky and he hurls me far enough, a speeding driver might end all of my troubles for me right then and there. ...Considering that the RK-900 series doesn’t have the capacity to resuscitate the dead.

Gavin slowly raised his head again to his now glaring partner, whose neck and shoulders had tightened with considerable impatience.

“Reed.”

Fuck. Moment of truth.

“Rich... You, uh, you do remember putting Connor’s chair through the wall, right?” He reminded the android carefully, while making note of RK-900’s every move.

Fortunately, the RK unit merely narrowed his eyes as though insulted by the memory.

“...It wasn’t even a very good chair anyway. It made all sorts of infernal noises when I was used it,” he argued flippantly.

“...Before or after you broke it clean in half?”

Gavin quickly raised his hands in deference after practically feeling the slicing movement of RK-900’s frozen stare. The robotic investigator’s hands were balling in fists just between them atop the flimsy wooden tabletop. One strike from the overpowered cop and it would no doubt become kindling.

“J-Just getting the details, Nines. It was actually pretty impressive that you did that with just your bare hands. You know, if you ask me,” the detective added anxiously while keeping a very close eye on his partner’s hands.

The remark seemed to settle the matter for the moment, but android was still shifting awkwardly on the ridiculously uncomfortable stool. Why did coffee joints insist on keeping these terrible things? Gavin almost wondered if he might toss it through a wall too...

“It doesn’t matter. I said it was in poor condition. I merely… emphasized its natural state.”

“Of... being trash?” Gavin offered perplexedly, not entirely following if RK-900 was making a joke or just acting childish.

“Why are you on his side?” came the cryptic question that sent a fresh bead of sweat gliding down the detective’s throat.

“Ah… I don’t really know what you’re referring to-”

“Oh hey fellas!” The peppy barista had suddenly arrived in her green apron and cherry lipsticked smile, both highly unwelcome considering RK-900’s frightfully intolerable mood.

His sharp cold gaze flicked to her, seeming to size her up, before returning back to Gavin with an inscrutable countenance that left his partner uneasy.

Please don’t hit this girl, Nines… Gavin pleaded the android mentally despite knowing the other couldn’t hear him.

Somehow she failed to notice the thick tension entirely as she removed a coffee cup labeled ‘Gavin’ from the tray she was carrying, handing it personally to the detective. He struggled to provide a friendly smile back but upon feeling the death glare directed straight for him, he immediately gave up .

“Here you goooo, Gavin! I hope you enjoy it, sweetie!” she chirped cheerily while purposefully brushing their fingers together with a final decisive wink that he prayed didn’t just put him in his grave.

“A-Ah, yeah. Thanks.”

The girl was barely gone when Gavin felt a bone crushing grip atop his hand, squeezing ever so slowly like an anaconda with a cold vendetta. He could almost swear he could hear violins trilling his never ending misery in the background.

“Nnnnrggh… N-Nine… What-” He started to yell but quickly bit his tongue.

Gavin could barely say anything without instinctively screaming at the insane android to get the fuck off him. But he knew that this wasn’t RK-900’s fault. Yelling wasn’t going to fix anything. This just wasn’t Richard’s doing.

He wasn’t in control.

His mind flicked back to roboticist tech’s debriefing just before Fowler gave the order.

“Detective Reed, please bear in mind that though Richard may mostly act normal, his inhibitor locks have been… Well, to make it easy to understand, he’s going to be irrational and far more sensitive than you are accustomed to. Situations normally addressed with calm reason will instead be handled haphazardly on the first whim. ...Please be careful.”

They explained that the hacking was committed by a disgruntled employee; and even those idiots at Cyberlife were still debugging the RK mainframe, they had said it might take till long into the evening before effects could be taken care of.

...But a whole nine hours of this felt like it was going to be a very, very long time.

“R-Rich… Pain. Lots. Of pain,” Gavin ground out as tolerantly as he possibly could through the amount of duress his android was hurling at him in broad fucking daylight.

Long story short.

“Who is she to you?”

Oh my god. Gavin’s mind groaned as he tried not to make any further eye contact. If he did, he knew that he was done for.

The hacker somehow made his partner into an obsessively jealous highschooler.

And he found this notion to both as equally terrifying as he found absolutely hilarious.

And his sick sense of humor was probably going to get him killed as he kept his lips tightly pursed as humanly possible to keep from laughing.

“Reed, don’t you dare lie to me. I saw your fingers touch. Did you enjoy that? Were they soft and filled with tender memories of your boyhood?” RK-900 accused bitingly.

Gavin bit his lip so hard that it nearly bled as he vigorously shook his head from side to side.

Don’t feed into it. Doooon’t do it. He warned himself, wanting nothing more than his asshole side to be let loose.

There were so many ways to bother his partner and get a rise out of him that it felt almost impossible to resist.

You’re gonna die. Make a crackshot at any of this, and make no mistake, RK-900 will kill you.

“I don’t. Know. Her,” Gavin barely managed to squeeze out, still containing his need to make light of a terrible situation while his hand was still very much prisoner to the android’s steel grip.

“Really? And how did she know your name?”

What the fuck kind of hacker shit is this!? Holy shit... This isn’t fair. Gavin felt his mouth fall open, absolutely stunned by the insane question. If only I could pull out my phone right now. Richard isn’t gonna believe any of this shit when I tell him.

The employees of Cyberlife may have also mentioned that the RK unit was going to have a soft reset which would return him back to yesterday’s state, but it would also erringly erase the dozen hours of pure gold from his memory.

“Rich,” Gavin started, trying so very hard not to say anything stupid, “Rich, you were standing right next to me when she asked me for it. You know, when she needed a name for when I ordered this coffee?”

“A likely story.”

No fucking way.

Obviously, Richard wasn’t convinced and his hand squeezed even tighter, causing Gavin to cry out but immediately muffle the sound into his arm. Okay, this wasn’t as funny as he’d thought. His squeezing was threatening to crush the detective’s knuckles into dust.

“Tell me why she’s so familiar with you. Tell me or you can consider learning how to live the rest of your life left handed.”

“H-Hey, better idea! H-how about we do that thing I said we shouldn’t do because I am an idiot and you are obviously the smarter one,” Gavin offered desperately while trying to sound as normal as possible amidst contorting from the immense pain.

In an instant, the hold loosened. As if having never happened in the first place, the android’s once ruthless touch suddenly became more gentle and affectionate as he caressed the back of Gavin’s poor hand with a tenderness only a shy girlfriend would do.

He looked up to find RK-900 smiling bright and the image nearly gave him a heart attack.

“Do you mean it, Reed? You’ll hold hands with me as we walk home together?”

Home was over a two hour walk away.

But considering how uncharacteristically docile and adorable RK-900 had become on account of the hack… how could he possibly say no?

AN: So it became longer than expected? Sorry, @frog-batter ! But hopefully you enjoy this segment. I like the next bit more though since they’ll both be out and about. So much to interact with! Especially with a jelly robo bf. I hope everyone else enjoyed it too! Let me know if there’s maybe something in particular you’d like to see lovedrunk-RK-900 do and I might incorporate it!

Also, there’s a Connor mention in part 2 (since he is also hacked.) Stay tuned, lovelies! <3

#detroit: become human #detroit become human #dbh rk900 #dbh gavin #gavin reed #rk-900 #reed900 #gavin900 #gavin x rk900 #frog-batter

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cadyrocks · 3 years ago

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Fun fact: decently emulating the style of a genius is hard! Which means that while the Kim side of the Kim-Harry dynamic can still very much be mined for comedy, it would probably be best to emulate the specific dynamic while keeping the style more fluid. After all, is it any wonder that Kim's view of Revachol would be very different than Harry's? They conceptualize the world in very different ways. It would have a very different tone and feel to be living in Kim's head; he would focus on the world in different ways.

I think there's a lot of value in exploring the significant differences in how he would approach the world, in particular in seeing the way the two's styles compliment each other. What problems are completely obvious to Kim but nigh-impossible for Harry? Are there blind spots that keep Kim from putting together the moon logic on display? Is Harry magic? Insane? Neither? Both?

...Somehow this already feels like asking the wrong questions. Kim Kitsuragi doesn't actually seem to care that much if Harry is insane, or impersonating a police officer, and he certainly isn't interested in Harry being magic. I have to think about him as a person in his own right, and not merely a member of Harry's cast, then seeing the world through the eyes of that character, unbiased by Harry's perspective.

I definitely think the single strongest thread to hang anything on here is this: take a mad genius character like Harry du Bois, then play as their more normal foil, having them find the adventure game moon logic solutions no-one would ever ever think of. That gets things in my brain tingling, if for no other reason than that it's an incredibly fucking funny concept.

...That mad genius character could be Agatha Heterodyne and their normal foil could be Moloch von Zinzer. Oh my.

My mouth writes a lot of checks my ass can't cash, but I kinda need a new project. My next month at work is entirely "look for jobs and do the bare minimum", which equals a lot of free time. If there's interest in a fan project, I am an amateur coder and writer, and can offer both those skills.

I wanna make a satirical point and click game where you play as Kim Kitsuragi. The solution to some puzzles is obvious. Find a key, smash a window, interview a suspect. But the solution to more confusing puzzles is to find a certain combination of objects, and Harrier du Bois, and bring him to the right part of the game, and watch going "wait what?" as HE does the adventure games moon logic solution no-one would ever ever think of.

#Disco Elysium #girl genius #character dynamics

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kissingwithcannibals · 6 years ago

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I like to listen to podcasts while I sketch, and the other day, I put on an episode of Hidden Brain. If you haven’t check this show out, I recommend it. “Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, and the biases that shape our choices.” Basically, the show packages psychology and sociology through stories and interviews, making it much more accessible for plebs like me. The episode was “Close Enough: The Lure of Living Through Others.” I thought: hey, that sounds cool! Until it started to describe my life.

The show opens up with an interview of guy who enjoys doing woodworking projects in his free time. A good deal of what this guy knows about carpentry he’s learned from tutorials on Youtube. He’s a teacher during the day, and when he comes home, he’s confronted with several ongoing projects in his home wood shop. Unfortunately, he’s so drained by the time he comes home from work that, instead of working on, say, building a cabinet, he watches Youtube. Hours of it. He goes down a wormhole of videos, watching other people demonstrate how to, say, clean a car engine, or build a deck, or how to renovate your kitchen. Some of it relevant to him, some not.

Part of the show is devoted to understanding why people spend hours every day watching experts do expert things. I can happily unpack some of this for you, because, first of all, this guy’s story is my story, too. (Except nobody should trust me to handle a bandsaw, or to, like, educate their children.) I can tell you, unequivocally, that the whole act of passively grazing Youtube absolutely sucks. It’s addicting, but it suuuuucks. The first five minutes are great. I’ve got my bowl of frosted mini wheats and a video of, say, the 2018 Starcraft 2 WCS Global Tournament Grand Finale Match queued up. But I wolf down the mini wheats in, you know, sixty seconds flat, and then I’m facing an hour and forty-five minutes of a professional e-sport player from Finland try to take down another top player from South Korea in the game of Starcraft.

Seeing that my attention span these days is about the length in time it takes me to eat a bowl of mini wheats, I hop to one of the many videos that Youtube’s almighty algorithm has recommended I watch. Maybe another professional Starcraft match, or a watercolor painting tutorial, or a Vox video about Why Safe Playgrounds Aren’t Great for Kids. Each video provides a progressively diminishing feeling of satisfaction, until, eventually, I feel like a pig at a trough, and it’s no longer about eating because I’m hungry, but because the food is in front of my face.

I don’t know why I do this to myself. It’s no longer fun. The dull, flat “enjoyment” of Youtube is somehow more comforting than the real world. The world beyond my computer monitor is a place of sensation, and action, and deliberate thought. Youtube is passive, it’s voyeurism, and it’s artifice. I can’t even tell you why I’ve been watching so many professional Starcraft matches lately. When I was younger, holy hell did I put hours into that game (and I was always terrible), but I haven’t played it in years. I’m not a member of the community, and it’s meaningless to me which South Korean player takes the top prize this year. (Because, like, 95% of the world’s best Starcraft players are South Korean.)

I think part of my attachment to Youtube is that I do find it compelling to watch a person do something so well. As a horrendous Starcraft player, it’s kind of amazing to see what these professional e-sport players can do. They’re basically playing an entirely different game than the one I played. Or take programming: I’m new to coding, and very awful at it, so to watch some of these coders absolutely rip through crazy code and produce amazing results with it is, for me, almost entrancing. Honestly, anything that I’m amateur or mediocre at, I want to see how the pros are doing it.

And, to be fair, Youtube can be a great resource. I have learned a lot by way of guitar, coding, juggling, drawing, to name a few, from tutorials. But most of the content that I’m glued to is mindless, and the the time I spend watching these videos is time I’m not spending practicing guitar or trying to learn how to code.

I’ll paraphrase a point made in the podcast: These videos are an escape into another person’s life. This passive voyeurism is simpler, cheaper, and the emotional results are “close enough”. You get a taste of what your life could be while eating ice cream on the couch. It’s a substitute for a lacking in your own life.

I was in a real Youtube spiral yesterday. By the end of the day, my brain was fried. I couldn’t find the excitement to do anything, and when I tried to sit down to read or blog, I couldn’t keep my concentration. It was completely demoralizing. Today was similar. I tried to do some coding this morning, but I kept messing up and getting confused, which only compounded my doldrums.

As a side note, learning to code has been a struggle this past week. I find myself jumping from lesson to lessons, topic to topic, not entirely sure what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it. Over the past few days, I’ve been trying to understand web applications, and how to construct and launch web pages using Python, Flask, and Bootstrap. But after hours of watching lessons, and writing code, and screwing up my code, I close my laptop and think to myself, Wait, when have I ever wanted to make a website? Was this even any fun? Why am I doing this?

Eventually, I felt so frazzled that I thought to myself: I literally need to just lie down for an hour and close my eyes. I put in my earbuds and played an episode of This American Life, knowing that I wanted to just invest in one single story for an extended time. Well, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, the episode had finished and the next TAL episode in the queue was playing. Still only half-awake, I really had no idea what was going on, but the episode was about, like, this library that had a really unusual collection, in part because the library would accept books from authors who had been rejected by publishers everywhere else. Or something like that. Don’t quote me.

In my haze, it hit me like a bolt of lightning: libraries? Libraries! In my slog of coding tutorials this week, I completely forgot that one of my original programming goals was to replicate a working library check-out system. Among other things, it would have databases for storing books and patron information, as well as a search tool that patrons could use to find books. And, of course, I would want to incorporate those little scanner guns. When I first started learning to code, my friend Gus recommended that I have a project in mind, as a means of giving myself something to work toward. I completely forgot about my model library idea, but this is the kind of goal I need to rekindle my motivation.

So today ended better than it started. And some days, that’s the best you can ask for!

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anthonyfjgarner · 7 years ago

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Lex:

I think there are alot of people on the QC forums like myself that are lurking but there hasn’t been anything engaging enough to jump aboard yet. I’m a big fan of the slack channel though, very helpful. The thing I miss most about Quantopian is the QS500 & QS1500 universes (a real shame you can use them in live trading anymore) as well as their research environment for testing factors & portfolio construction. Ideally QC would manage the live trading component but leverage the open source tools that Quantopian provides.

I haven’t managed (or perhaps bothered) to work out slack: you seem to have to have a paid subscription? Also I am very puzzled by “Broadcast”. Only one system there? For python at least? Had not realised there is no S&P 500 universe.

It all seems very inactive and Jared and his mates seem pretty slow to answer questions. Probably setting up Lean or Zipline in the cloud is the best alternative and buying your own data? But is it worth it? Last time I tried with Zipline I gave up in frustration – perhaps it’s now improved and uses docker or at least some better method of deployment.

Frankly, looking at all the track records of all the hedge funds and CTAs out there over the years I wonder whether the whole enterprise is worth it anyway. It is well worth it if you are a manager of course – your big profits come through management fees.

But as an individual trader? Well there you either have to shoot the lights out on a small amount of capital and take the risk of blow up or deploy a large amount of capital and settle for lower vol, lower returns.

And let’s face it, given the huge, overwhelming number of professional and amateur quants and coders out there these days, is much left to be discovered? I think not.

I’m a strong believer in AI in the long term

https://anthonyfjgarner.net/2017/12/12/can-artificial-intelligence-dream-of-electric-sheepdaviddeutschoxf/

But even then, even if we had general AI, would it necessarily have any better method of prediction? I don’t know.

For me it all boils down to one simple observation: outperformance / performance is highly probably mean reverting. Here today gone tomorrow. And I do not believe any amount of clever maths or statistics will change that.

Hence in my view one probably wants to stick to a simple carry trade and hedge it to the best of one’s ability with non correlated (ha ha) assets. Anything else is probably great for marketing but probably not much better over the very long term than a traditional 60/40 or simple risk parity approach.

Which is why I have re-named myself the financial grynch.

Call me a spoilsport but I have seen too much hype over the years and been in and out of too many hedge fund investments and strategies to believe otherwise.

Nothing wrong with Quant, nothing wrong with analysis. But if I was younger and keener and enjoyed people contact I would concentrate on building AUM in a low vol, relatively simple, unexciting fund and make my money that way. Now that IS a carry trade.

And good luck to Q and QC: I wish I had the energy and people skills to tag along.

Thoughts on Quantopian, Quantconnect and mean reversion in fund performance Lex: I think there are alot of people on the QC forums like myself that are lurking but there hasn't been anything engaging enough to jump aboard yet.

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zipgrowth · 7 years ago

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An Assembly Line of Coding Students? Tough Questions for the Computer Science Movement

What does it really mean to prepare students for a future in coding careers? Clive Thompson, a freelance writer for Wired and The New York Times magazine, thinks the reality is not as rosy as many people think.

In a popular Wired article titled, The Next Big Blue-Collar Job is Coding, Thompson criticizes pop culture and some writers, like himself, for overly romanticizing the notion of the ‘lone genius coder’—the Mark Zuckerbergs and Mr. Robots of the world—saying that’s not what every coder looks like and that's not what many coders will be.

They don’t let just self-trained amateurs show up at Boeing and start building planes alongside the pros. That happens all the time in software.

Clive Thompson

Thompson recently talked with EdSurge about the future of programming work in the United States and the realities students will face in their future job searches. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to a complete version of the interviews below, or on your favorite podcast app (like iTunes or Stitcher).

EdSurge: Refresh us on why you think coding will be the blue-collar work of the future?

Thompson: It’s partly because it’s growing so widely, rapidly and broadly. If you look at all the different categories of work and you look at the labor-force projections, programming jobs are set to grow pretty well. In fact, the whole thing is set to expand by 12 percent by 2024. That's a lot faster than most other occupations.

I'm teaching them how to press a button and watch something jump. I can name that a coding academy. But in reality, you're not treating them or teaching them to engage fully in STEM or the world of computer science. You're teaching and treating them as though they are part of a lower totem pole in that new economy.

Christopher Emdin

The second thing is that the jobs are very diverse and all over the place. When we hear of coding we think of the person that goes to Silicon Valley. He’ll make some app and the app maybe blows up or doesn’t blow up. It’s that idea, ‘I'm going to make a piece of software that everyone’s going to use.’ The truth is that's a very, very small chunk of the coding universe. In fact, only on the order of only but 8 percent of all the programmers in the United States work in Silicon Valley. The rest are everywhere else.

Whatever town you're in, they need coders. Whatever state you're in, they need coders. Those jobs are often about things that are more like maintenance, right? For example, there’s a bank. The bank has what they call a frontend. It has the design that you see when you log in. That's all JavaScript. Every once in awhile, every few months, browsers change and someone has to be there to maintain and make sure all the JavaScript is compliant with the latest form of the browser—to make sure things don’t break and make sure any security bugs are fixed. So that type of work is really steady. It’s going to be necessary for decades and decades. It’s skilled work, and it pays really well.

When you look at any state, particularly outside the coastal states, they have trouble recruiting because when people think of programming they tend to head off to one of those big hubs. There are all these coding jobs. They're necessary. They're well paid. They don’t necessarily require the super hot-shot coder. It could be someone who retrains in the middle of their career because they don’t like what they're doing. They study some coding and they learn it and it becomes a really steady job. This is what I'm actually picking up on when I call it blue collar work.

When we think of blue-collar work we think of people working making houses, building cars and things like that. Those jobs have been going away, right? There are these jobs that are very much like blue-collar jobs, and they're programming jobs.

What else can you tell us about the future economy? Based on your past research, what would be the best-paying computer science work versus other blue-collar things?

I couldn’t necessarily tell you a blow-by-blow comparison with other industries because I specialize mostly in technology. I can tell you, there are different categories of work in technology. The lower-paying ones would be the ones that are like phone-banking work. You're trained in a corporate product and people are calling when they have trouble, and you have to try and help them out. That's often an entry-level job that you can get without a degree or anything like that, but it doesn’t pay very well.

Next up the chain would be things like a web developer. Someone comes to you and says, “Hey, we need these websites built for our company, or We've got a website and we need it fixed.” That's a big jump up in pay. It’s often very independent, too. Those are types of jobs that you can train yourself on by experimenting and learning stuff online. They bill by the hour and they pay pretty well.

The highest level in coding work is when you're like a software developer. That's where someone’s coming to you and saying, ‘There's an entire application that we need made. Maybe we’re a company and let’s say we have people putting in orders for our service. We need an application that takes those orders via the web and sends them out automatically to all of our contractors and drivers via text messaging.’ At that level, you're making extremely good upper-middle-class money. So, those are some of the categories that you get into.

When you stop thinking about this like, ‘make your billions by being Mark Zuckerberg in San Francisco,’ then you start thinking of it like, ‘make your steady middle-class living that lets you actually have a family and an affordable house and a retirement in Ohio,’ then you start to think that the way we educate people needs to change.

If you wanted to formally study computer science, you would go and get a four-year degree in computer science. The upside of that is that those people if you have the money to pay for that, you will get a job. There is a much larger demand than the supply for four-year college degrees.

The problem is those are expensive. Secondarily, it’s a hard thing to retrain at in the middle of your career. Maybe you’ve got a couple of kids, and your company is at shutdown. You are not going to be able to pay to send yourself to get a four-year degree.

The other thing is the types of jobs we’re talking about here, you don’t need that four years of study of computer science. They're going to teach you all these complicated stuff about sorting algorithms and how to make something run unbelievably quickly and efficiently. Those are just not the things you're going to need to know to be able to fix someone’s website or to be able to make someone a website. To be able to make someone a simple database where they can store information and bring it back, you could learn that really well in a two-year part-time degree at a community college.

Or you could learn it in one of these boot camps. They have a mixed record of getting people hired. There could definitely be some appropriate regulation of that industry. I think it has great promise.

Speaking of those academies and coding boot camps, before we go to our next question I want to play a little clip for you. This clip is from a speech at SXSWedu, a large education technology conference. The person speaking in the clip is Christopher Emdin, an associate professor at Columbia University Teachers College.

I'm playing this clip by Dr. Emdin because it hints a little bit at his theory about coding work. It’s similar to what you said, but I think he has a harsher critic.

Emdin: There is a perception amongst young people that the whole world is setting up for a different economy while they're being left in the places that they're in.

This idea of preparing people to move amongst the stars is a reality in the contemporary STEM-focused era—where everybody wants to be so ‘STEM’ nobody’s actually doing science, technology, engineering or mathematics. This phrase that's taken on a meaning that is so different from what its intentions were. It’s completely separated from the idea that you want folks to engage in STEM so they can be part of the STEM economy.

People have coding academies popping up [everywhere]. This is not anti-coding academy. It’s anti- the perverse notion that I can go into a community, frame the charity I am giving them as opening new possibilities for students when in reality I still have low expectations of them. I'm teaching them how to press a button and watch something jump. I can name that a coding academy. But in reality, you're not treating them or teaching them to engage fully in STEM or the world of computer science. You're teaching and treating them as though they are part of a lower totem pole in that new economy. You could ‘coding academy’ your way into creating a new populous that's a worker in the STEM workforce. How is that any different than creating somebody who is just a worker in the existing workforce?

Emdin’s critiques of the emerging workforce is a bit harsher than what you described. He does note some interesting points about teaching coding in the low-income communities and preparing students to be part of what he calls “the lowest totem pole in the new economy.” I understand that's not what you're saying, but it shares a similar thread.

I want to know your thoughts on this drive to push coding into low-income communities. What do you think people are doing right? What do you think could use some improvement?

He’s absolutely right about one thing which is this. Historically whenever any field has just white guys doing it, it pays really well. That's just the way that privilege works out. In fact, what happened with coding was it started off as a thing that just women did in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, the highly-paid stuff was making the machines. No one knew how to even physically make a computer. So that was where the heroic work was, the men did that, and they were like, “Well, issuing the instructions, that seems secretarial. Let’s let women do that.”

All the pioneering programmers of the ‘40s and ‘50s were literally all women. Of course what happened is that as programming became more valuable, it became where the glory was, all the white dudes moved in and took over. This is the story of the ’60s, ’70s, ‘80s and up to the ‘90s.

Now what's happening, and I think what the gentleman is speaking to, is that coding is now so broad a discipline. There's so much need for it. That there is like the super-elite stuff where you become a millionaire. Then there's the stuff that doesn’t pay as well that it’s almost like an equivalent of maybe like a pink-collar ghetto. Yes, it’s a white-collar job, you're in an office, but you're just a secretary. So he is correct I think that is emerging.

Already you can see, for example, that a lot of jobs that involve what they call front-end design, doing the JavaScript that displays the way a website’s going to work. Website’s code often needs to be rewritten very frequently because things change, and it’s seen as less heroic and more artistic. So, there's way more women and people from non-traditional backgrounds in that area, but the pay is lower and the prestige is lower.

So I don’t think he’s wrong at all. We've seen this pattern happen so many times in so many industries that it’s not surprising it’s happening in coding. That said, we’re still at a point now where for to the next 10 to 20 years I do think there is going to be a lot of good, pretty well-paying work in this area. Most of it is a lot better than what you get in really cruddy service-sector jobs.

This is a unique field, programming. Once you know a bit of it you can learn a lot more on your own, and you can grow into different areas. One of the big sexy areas for me right now is “machine learning” where you're training AI to be able to recognize things—do things on its own. It sounds like rocket science, but it’s really not. You just need to know enough of the coding to be able to go on and learn more about it. This in many ways is remarkable.

There's not a lot of other forms of engineering where you can self-train. If you want to build jets—aerospace engineering—they don’t let just self-trained amateurs show up at Boeing and start building planes alongside the pros. That happens all the time in software. I think this gentleman is [right to worry about] the low end. But if they have industry and ambition, it’s actually possible, even common, for people to move up. It’s definitely a lot harder for people that are not from Ivy League schools. All the inequities that you see in regular education are completely here, don’t get me wrong.

An Assembly Line of Coding Students? Tough Questions for the Computer Science Movement published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

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loverepresentstuff · 7 years ago

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25.10.17

Learn to Code Now

Increasingly the discipline of design must function across digital media, which means, just as designers were once required to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of print processes, paper stocks and binding techniques, it’s now necessary that they understand at least the fundamentals of web design. If they don’t they may fast find themselves becoming obsolete.

Sounds daunting, but it needn’t be. Rik Lomas, veteran coding tutor and alumnus of General Assembly, launched SuperHi in mid 2017 to provide a fun, engaging online learning environment for creative professionals looking to improve their digital literacy. Its courses range from basic front-end HTML and CSS to more complex development aimed at amateur coders looking to go pro. We caught up with Rik to find out exactly what SuperHi can offer and what that means for designers around the world.

Previously you taught at General Assembly, and then set up Steer, another coding school. What's different about SuperHi and what needs do you think it addresses?

One of the main reasons for setting up SuperHi, and previously Steer, was that I felt coding education, especially for creative people, was dangerously lacking in any fun or practical ways to learn. I know a tonne of people who've tried to learn to code in the past and given up, usually as they felt it wasn't for them. HTML and CSS are essentially design tools, except rather than drag and drop, they're written design tools instead. We think anyone who wants to learn should be able to without being bored.

The modern creative industries run on coding, but very few people can actually do it. Do you think that's going to become a problem in years to come, or are more and more people becoming literate in programming languages?

Well, you're starting to see the disparity in salaries and freelance rates already. Why are coders paid double what designers are worth? The demand is a lot higher for coders than designers, and the supply pool is small.

The best coders are multifaceted—one of the best coders I know is also a great designer. It's a killer combination for any company; they can run with a project from start to end and make it look shit hot without anyone else involved. I feel like the future will be combo-roles such as designer/developer rather than pigeon-holed ones.

Design for the web is starting to get so interlinked with the media of the web itself. Design tools don't cater for real web design problems like responsive design, hover states, Javascript and unending art-boards. Using Sketch or Photoshop will only get you 75% of the way of designing websites. That percentage will get lower and lower as web design gets more complicated and interactive.

You've geared SuperHi towards creative professionals. Why this demographic in particular?

I've been working within the creative industry for 12 years now, from full-time at large agencies in London to freelancing at small startups in New York, and I love working with people who are more talented than I am. A lot of our students’ work looks far better than anything I could produce. Our students are winning digital design awards after only a few months after taking the course for sites they made. For me, that's inspiring.

Recently you've also started offering live briefs for graduates of your courses to get their first taste of coding for cash. How do these projects work?

Yeah, it's been working well so far, our students have been coding up sites for various kinds of sites—from the usual agency style site to some crazy client work we can't talk about just yet! It's been a fun process though as our students have a tonne of suggestions about the design that push it to the next level too.

One of the things we learned is that we were teaching several techniques over and over but only one-to-one with the student building that project, so the reason we launched some brand new courses was to make that information more accessible to all our students.

How have you adjusted to teaching people online instead of in person?

There are some massive benefits to running online courses: firstly we can cater for students all over the world and in any timezone—we're currently teaching students in 38 countries worldwide which we definitely couldn't do with just a London or New York course. We can make the cost of the courses a lot more affordable too—we don't need to pay for a massive space in the Flatiron Building or the centre of an expensive city, unlike some other companies, which means we can pass those savings on to the students.

Also, the flexible learning style works so much better than in-person classes. The downside of being in a classroom is that we can only teach as quick as the slowest student. We get some students who binge-watch and others who do 20 minutes a day. We can accommodate for more learning styles doing online courses over in-person classes.

Would you say there were any drawbacks?

Totally. I mean it's always nice to be in the same room as people, right? I know coders have a reputation for being introverted nerds, but I actually like teaching this stuff. We're trying to replicate a lot of the off-topic discussions with our lively community Slack group and our public videos. It seems like people would rather pay a lot less for online courses than being stuck in a room with me though! Haha!

What kind of goals do you have for SuperHi moving forward? Will you not rest until the world can code?

Actually, we're pragmatic about this, we don't think everyone in the world needs to learn to code. Code is an incredibly useful tool but we're not being zealots and telling the milkman they should learn to code. If anything, the future for SuperHi will see us moving into professional development for the creative worker. We don't see us just being about coding in the long term—our students ask us all sorts of questions not related to code. We want our students to be more skilled, more knowledgeable and better paid.

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