Too much of a good thing

I love coding. It is an incredibly rewarding experience, financially as well as personally. I program for work, school, and leisure. Sometimes, I code too much. I’ve stayed up all night coding before, skipping meals, showers, and even quality time with my wife. When taken to the extreme like this, even a good thing can turn into a negative. To make sure that the good things in our lives don’t become the bad things, balance and moderation are key. Sometimes I just need to turn off my computer and enjoy real life.

CS 404 Position Vlog

Title IX: Equality in Athletics and...Computer Science?

I am a firm believer that women can do anything they want.  I am also a firm believer that the government creates more problems than it solves, as Title IX demonstrates. This well-known law seeks to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex in athletics and academics.  While this is a noble goal, in practice, the theory doesn’t hold water. Already there have been athletics cases where men wish to participate in an activity but cannot because doing so would mean more money spent on men’s athletics than women’s.  Think of the infamous Cal Berkley men’s gymnastics debacle, when the year after the team won a national title, the program had to be cut to make the school Title IX compliant. In academics, I believe government should wait to act until there is more evidence that the lower enrollment rates for women is a problem that can be fixed by government. Otherwise, problems similar to the athletics biases might arise in academics.  Lower enrollment rates for women in technical programs might be caused by something completely natural like a lack of interest, and government intervention could mean pushing people into a major or career that they don’t like.  

Magnifying our calling as programmers

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints judiciously uses the varied talents of its members to further its work.  This practice is evidenced by many of the smart phone Church apps. These apps aren’t created by paid developers but instead are community developed.  Members of the Church who have programming talents volunteer their time and work together to create apps for the Church, which in turn saves the Church money.  As an LDS programmer, I would like to start contributing to these community developed projects for the Church so that I can grow my talents while helping the work of the Church, just as in the Biblical parable of the talents, which teaches that people should use their talents instead of hiding them away.

Open-source learning

Google groups are amazing; they are also the perfect metaphor for why the open-source software development model is so successful. Most upper division CS classes utilize a Google group so students can collaborate. Students receive answers to their questions much faster than waiting for specific times to ask the teacher or TA because the nature of Google groups allows collaboration and learning 24/7. Letting anyone, even the dumbest person in class, answer your question seems counterintuitive to learning. The beauty of the open-source model, though, is that if a question gets answered wrong, others will inevitably answer it right. The power of anytime, any-person collaboration drives open-source projects, like Linux, and fuels a competitive model for software development.

The lifecycle of Hackers

Hackers don't emerge from the womb exploiting emacs's backdoors. The road from law-abiding citizen to fugitive hacker is one that takes years of honing a very specific skill set. These skills are the very same ones that many legitimate IT professionals need to do their jobs. Because every IT professional is not a hacker, having the skills to hack does not entail that you are a hacker. The difference between your company's honest help desk guy and the fellow stealing your credit card information boils down to certain traits, curiosity, intelligence, and a lack of regard for authority, that make specific people more suited for hacking.

The pull of hacking can be overpowering. There is money to be made and a sense of power and accomplishment that accompanies a successful hack. For this reason, hackers, like Kevin Mitnick, describe themselves as being addicted to hacking and the almost narcotic rush it can create.  As with drugs, continued hacking can impair judgment and blur the lines of the law. This leads to more boldness on the part of the hacker until they find themselves in jail.
Some lucky hackers are able to turn their skills into legitimate careers. Sometimes, after getting caught, companies and corporations will hire “white hat” hackers to test their security. Giving a former hacker permission to break into your systems seems like a bad idea, but it is akin to a former counterfeiter helping the FBI to catch other counterfeiters. The potential implications and risks of such trust in a felon should be considered carefully. Even those hackers that have always been “white hat” still possess a dangerous skill set and often a matching personality type that can lead to serious temptation.

To tweet and preach and work as missionaries do

Most of “Generation Y” are naturals when it comes to computers.  They tweet, Facebook “stalk,” and check-in on Foursquare.  This might mean that they are excellent time wasters, but it also means that they have certain skills that older generations may lack.  Elder David Bednar said of the skills of Generation Y-ers, “Your fingers have been trained to text and tweet to accelerate and advance the work of the Lord.”  This means that acquired technological skills can be more than self-serving--they can be used to serve the Lord.