> A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial.
Something that I think most novice programmers should take to heart, and something I wish I had known earlier...when you start out, you want to build something big and new, like a video game, or hell, a Rails site that you think will be the next Facebook clone. Not only is it beyond your ability as a novice, it may not even be a "problem" worth solving, because you don't yet know what's worth solving until you become a bit better at programming. I stopped programming after awhile when I couldn't come close to seeing what I thought were my goals...it's been much easier to do it day-to-day by focusing on the small steps...and after awhile, the big task doesn't seem hard after all.
Meanwhile, programming has a pretty distinct advantage...even if you spend your time mastering seemingly benign and trivial things, such as being better at parsing, function design, or just automation of what you've done before, you're not only learning, but making yourself more productive at the same time...something that's not nothing as you actually begin your grand plan.
Speaking of Feynman and computing and seemingly banal tasks...I've seen only scarce detail of his supervising the "computers" at Los Alamos:
> Richard's interest in computing went back to his days at Los Alamos, where he supervised the "computers," that is, the people who operated the mechanical calculators. There he was instrumental in setting up some of the first plug-programmable tabulating machines for physical simulation. His interest in the field was heightened in the late 1970's when his son, Carl, began studying computers at MIT.
It's not something he's famous for, but I wouldn't be surprised if such a task was critical to the success of the researchers...I've gone through both his memoirs and hadn't seen much mention of it though. Anyone else have more details?
Feynman did some interesting work on computers - he used his fine physics-trained calculus skills to analyze a chip and message passing - a discrete system:
> By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to our surprise and amusement, he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman's router equations were in terms of variables representing continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the derivative of "the number of 1's" with respect to time. Our discrete analysis said we needed seven buffers per chip; Feynman's equations suggested that we only needed five. We decided to play it safe and ignore Feynman.
> The decision to ignore Feynman's analysis was made in September, but by next spring we were up against a wall. The chips that we had designed were slightly too big to manufacture and the only way to solve the problem was to cut the number of buffers per chip back to five. Since Feynman's equations claimed we could do this safely, his unconventional methods of analysis started looking better and better to us. We decided to go ahead and make the chips with the smaller number of buffers.
> Fortunately, he was right. When we put together the chips the machine worked. The first program run on the machine in April of 1985 was Conway's game of Life.
He goes into detail about the topic in the chapter "Los Alamos from Below" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! The rest of the book is a fantastic read as well. He talks about many interesting experiments he did (even ones involving ants), pranks he's done with safes, how to pick up women, etc.
Something that I think most novice programmers should take to heart, and something I wish I had known earlier...when you start out, you want to build something big and new, like a video game, or hell, a Rails site that you think will be the next Facebook clone. Not only is it beyond your ability as a novice, it may not even be a "problem" worth solving, because you don't yet know what's worth solving until you become a bit better at programming. I stopped programming after awhile when I couldn't come close to seeing what I thought were my goals...it's been much easier to do it day-to-day by focusing on the small steps...and after awhile, the big task doesn't seem hard after all.
Meanwhile, programming has a pretty distinct advantage...even if you spend your time mastering seemingly benign and trivial things, such as being better at parsing, function design, or just automation of what you've done before, you're not only learning, but making yourself more productive at the same time...something that's not nothing as you actually begin your grand plan.
Speaking of Feynman and computing and seemingly banal tasks...I've seen only scarce detail of his supervising the "computers" at Los Alamos:
http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...
> Richard's interest in computing went back to his days at Los Alamos, where he supervised the "computers," that is, the people who operated the mechanical calculators. There he was instrumental in setting up some of the first plug-programmable tabulating machines for physical simulation. His interest in the field was heightened in the late 1970's when his son, Carl, began studying computers at MIT.
It's not something he's famous for, but I wouldn't be surprised if such a task was critical to the success of the researchers...I've gone through both his memoirs and hadn't seen much mention of it though. Anyone else have more details?