Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 35

This single experimental observation/idea is the basis for all of special relativity.

Special relativity is the direct result of people bending their backs to accommodate for this really weird fact.

Open source development model in which developers develop in private, and only release code to the public during releases.

Notable example project: Android Open Source Project.

This development model basically makes reporting bugs and sending patches a waste of time, because many of them will already have been solved, which is why this development model is evil.

Programming is hard. To Ciro Santilli, it's almost masochistic.

What makes Ciro especially mad when programming is not the hard things.

It is the things that should be easy, but aren't, and which take up a lot of your programming time.

Especially when you are already a few levels of "simple problems" down from your original goal, and another one of them shows up.

This is basically the cause of Hofstadter's law.

But of course, it is because it is hard that it feels amazing when you achieve your goal.

Putting a complex and useful program together is like composing a symphony, or reaching the summit of a hard rock climbing proble.

Programming can be an art form. There can be great beauty in code and what it does. It is a shame that this is hard to see from within the walls of most companies, where you are stuck doing a small specific task as fast as possible.

Well known popular science character. He just looks futuristic and wraps stuff in exciting empty words. When he shows up, you won't be learning much.

Ciro Santilli considered this as the basis for Ciro's 2D reinforcement learning games, but ultimately decided it was a bit too messy. Nice overall though.

One of Ciro Santilli's strongest feeling in education is that material often falls in either of the two categories:

Ciro believes that there is often an important missing link between them, e.g.:

If we as a society are unable to provide this sweet Middle Way sweet-spot, it is unreasonable to expect that learners will ever have the motivation to advance, because it is just too boring! They are just more likely to go play video games instead.

It is Ciro's hope that OurBigBook.com will help to fill exactly that gap.

In Ciro's view, as of the 2020's this critical gap generally lies somewhere between the end of undergraduate studies, and at the start of postgraduate studies.

What we have to do is make this knowledge more accessible all way down to high school and earlier.

Let's take the gloves off more often, and give the full thing to interested students! Let students learn what they want to learn, and do that as soon as possible! Life is too short!

This problem is basically the knowledge version of the last mile problem. When we reach the end of graduate, there are enough directions of knowledge to go off into, that the probability that a great free tutorial exists is relatively low. Of course, as one approaches the realm of novel research, the branching is so wide that having perfect tutorials becomes impossible. Ciro's goal in life go push the last mile marker a bit further out.

Related:

Bibliography:

Some blogs:

Also resonates with backward design.