Life Beyond Fife

Engineering from the glorious Kingdom

Essays

Explore articles about essays on Life Beyond Fife

Page 2 of 4

essays•

Are you happy?

A thought experiment occurred to me which looks to answer the question, "Are you happy?" In a science fiction film I saw recently there was a fantastical machine that copies (clones) whatever thing or person is placed inside it. Without ever explicitly going through the detail of the pros and cons of the situation, the people who use the machine to clone themselves do so at great risk to their very being. Because the ability to make another person, exactly the same as an existing one, has such devastating consequences its users preemptively setup a murder. And these consequences though...

4 min readRead more →
essays•

Death By A Million Cuts

Individuals within the software development community are in one of two states. One believes that there is a deep rooted problem of sexism that constructs multiple barriers against females joining, and thus deprives this community of the majority of a talent pool that makes up half the population. The other, simply hasn't realised it yet. I used to think there was no problem. Most people in a position of power use deliberate, analytical thinking to evaluate people honestly and fairly regardless of any stereotypes that may exist. Job vacancies and course placements go to the most able worker or student,...

12 min readRead more →
The Future of Education
essays•

The Future of Education

Education is changing in a big way. Whether you're still in the education system or someday going to have children who will, it's of prime importance you learn just how it's going to change. Pass rates are going up in the most important school exams, namely, the ones that determine whether a student qualifies for university or not. It's at this point where education stops being in a sense "free" and has to be evaluated as a value proposition - does the benefit of going to university outweigh the financial cost? Despite this being a Scottish blog, I'm going to...

15 min readRead more →
essays•

Expert or Generalist?

"My Name is Karl, Ich Bin Expert" I don't quote Karl Hungus lightly. When I began this blog back in the summer of 2011 it was because I thought I'd let my programming skills go rusty. I wasn't starting projects and I hadn't learned any significantly different technology or tools for a few years. Life Beyond Fife existed as a dumping ground for random ideas, quick trials and elaborate "Hello world!" examples. But I'm not a twenty-three year old entrepreneur living in The Bay trying to get a startup off the ground. However cool it is to launch a micro...

5 min readRead more →
essays•

Curiosity Killed The Productivity

"Where is that drip coming from?" Recently while in the staff kitchen, waiting a few minutes for my mug of tea to properly infuse - yes, I am that British - my absent minded thoughts were distracted by a repeating sound. \drip\ ...pause... \drip\ ...pause... I looked over at the sink. \drip\ Nothing fell from the tap faucet (Ok, I'm British but most of my readers are American). So where is it coming from, I thought? I turned around and moved within the space of the kitchen trying to get a more localised area of where the source sound originated....

3 min readRead more →
essays•

Becoming a Web Developer

"[Stanford's] students come out, and they believe that C and C++ are the fabric with which God wove the Universe. OK? And they truly [think]: what is it with all these other languages?" Dynamic Languages Strike Back – Steve Yegge A blaze of nepotism from my sister saw me land my first paid contracting gig back in 1998. The company was technologically naïve and it was pure HTML/CSS. The start to a potentially exciting story perhaps, but alas, the summer ended and I went back to finish the last two years of my undergraduate degree in computer science and –...

5 min readRead more →