Can I , Should I..board the FIRE train

LV_426

Bravepants said:

k6chris said:

LV_426 said:

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

1k space invaders on the ZX80, where the 1k included the screen memory.  Happy days!

And, towards the end of its life, the programmers really got to grips with the Commodore 64. Some excellent games that I still play in emulation.

I'm still playing Galaxians and Defender on RetroArch.

Bravepants

LV_426 said:

Bravepants said:

k6chris said:

LV_426 said:

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

1k space invaders on the ZX80, where the 1k included the screen memory.  Happy days!

And, towards the end of its life, the programmers really got to grips with the Commodore 64. Some excellent games that I still play in emulation.

I'm still playing Galaxians and Defender on RetroArch.

RetroPie is very good on the Raspberry Pi 4 these days. Playing Amiga games too; Alien Breed, Turrican (1 and 2), Chaos Engine. Paradroid and Delta Armalyte on C64. Darius 3 (triple screen) with Mame on a big TV is amazing.

cfw1994

LV_426 said:

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

Oh, I don’t disagree that early coders were, by necessity far more elegant in their programming…a good pal of mine is behind Carmageddon: the stuff they bring out now is literally streets ahead of the early incarnations!
I grew up using ZX80, playing Space Invaders & Lemmings: great for the time!

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ shows a bit more on how realistic images have become….AI is, of course, much more than that: https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw is mildly horrifying if you want signs of “progress” 😉

Bravepants

cfw1994 said:

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ shows a bit more on how realistic images have become….AI is, of course, much more than that: https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw is mildly horrifying if you want signs of “progress” 😉

The person to the left of her looks like the stuff of nightmares! LOL