ferdterguson

4 ms·

1.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Python is my day job and I'm very fluent in the common data science tools like Pandas, but you'll hardly ever catch me using Pandas because Excel is just so much easier for 2d data. The thing is, I never use Excel because the data
2.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
> It still takes lot of expensive human work to select the good quality works and proofread /edit/ peer review them etc before it is fit for publishing in a decent journal Good thing that almost all of that expensive effort is
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
Pandoc?
4.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
In my field, if you get a TT position and play nice, you usually get tenure. But yeah - it's basically all about money. You can't do good research if you don't have solid funding, you don't get solid funding unless you h
5.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
One thing they mentioned in the 'left out' section is code review. I'm a researcher in a computation-heavy field and I think that anything I write that is intended to be used in our research group or used by other people shou
6.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
This is more likely to be applied to topology optimization imo
7.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Retain means pay monthly.
8.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
> Python in some cases can be 100x slower than C Yeah, the Python implemented version is. But people doing serious computing in Python that requires speed are doing it with NumPy or even Cython or just straight up calling C/Fortran
9.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Maybe that's just the language, not the support?
10.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
To me the Hardee's burgers are just like Burger King.
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
Not a field, but a person who everyone thought was Nobel prize bound and it turned out to be all BS. You may think that it's just one person, but the amount of research dollars that got allocated to try and prove or disprove all of thi
12.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
I would pay actual dollars for an org-mode spacemacs reference
13.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
I understand the GPL, but I personally prefer BSD/MIT and I am disappointed when I come across things I like in the GPL. IMO the GPL is not really 'free'. On the other hand, the GPL wouldn't make a difference here unless
14.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Just because the API is bad doesn't mean we should throw money at it. I agree that NumPy might not be the best recipient either. It's hard telling, really. Personally, I believe the biggest blocker for me is to have good visualiza
15.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Word has built in diff. Review -> Compare. It's kind of slow though in my experience. Diffing plain text is amazing. I recently used it to diff a research paper I was peer reviewing that the TeX source was provided for. I felt like
16.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
People are dogging on you for suggesting learning styles. Learning style aside, seeing something with your eyes helps you see it with your mind. I think very few people would find it easier to understand a paragraph or a few than a good ill
17.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Not sure if you are aware of detexify [0], but it recognizes my trackpad-scratch quite well. The backend and all of the training data are open source, so you could indeed implement this yourself if you wanted. I'd buy mobile app any La
18.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
I use Microsoft OneNote to take notes. The math notation is almost exactly the same as in LaTeX and you basically compile it on the fly with the spacebar. <ctrl>+'=' toggles math mode on and off from the Mac. There are some
19.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
Same in Python Juypter Notebooks. I wish I could use rst though. I have to google it every once in awhile to remind myself that they won't support it ( https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/888#issueco
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
You make some good points regarding LaTeX. In my opinion, anything that you can express in markdown is not that hard to read in TeX source. Most of md is centered around section headers, links, basic text formatting (bold/italic) and l
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
If you are more of a vim person and don't like emacs modifier keys, I suggest checking out spacemacs.
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
I like reStructuredText, but the format is grating compared to markdown. The two things I do the most are sectioning and links. Inline links are ok in rst, but I prefer markdown. Sectioning though is awful. I hate having to hold the damn ==
23.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
I haven't used the iOS version, but you should check out Affinity Designer. The Mac version is amazing (better than Illustrator IMO) and I'd have high expectations on iOS. The Mac version is well worth the $50 license.
24.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
I feel like we are inching closer to being able to write code on iOS. Swift storyboards on the iPad kind of opened the door and I hope we can keep chipping away at this. The day I can run and write Python natively on iOS is the day I buy an
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
> I do a deeper hour-long review of lower priority content at least once a week, but my email is an effectively infinite backlog of interesting-possibly-relevant information. As a zero-inbox kind of person this is terrifying. It's a
26.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
The one sentence answer from a FP perspective, imo, is that if you are passing the same data (e.g. a record) between functions, doing stuff with it, and returning a new record then that should be a class that hangs on to that data with the
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
I struggle with this as well. I wouldn't say I'm very experienced, but I've been around the block for awhile. I use TDD successfully, but I always have problems with edge cases. I think of and try to guard against edge cases,
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
I read it as function and probably wouldn't have noticed without this comment. Whimsical software names are the bane of my existence.
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by ferdterguson 9y ago
Having this be open on GitHub is really cool. People should be aware that the [Journal Open Research Software]( http://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com ) also exists, but it's not nearly as open or flashy.
30.
by ferdterguson 9y ago
If money is no problem for you, hell yeah, get a liberal arts education and pursue your passions. I totally agree that a degree in something you enjoy can be very personally rewarding. Most people don't give a shit about their jobs.

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