Did Python create MuskTwitter?
Are employers exploiting open-source software?
I remember I took this one month course on computational physics. I don’t what got into me. I was a physics major, I had JUST repeated intro physics and I somehow got the thought in my head that I was gonna take a one-month course taught by a rocket scientist. I had like one C++ class two years before (decades in undergrad time).
I spent 12 hours a day in that lab trying to make that damn code work.
If I had Python, if I had the open source software, I could have done that all in my room. Free of distractions, free of stress, learning everything at my own pace. I might have even not been stupid enough to come up with a model of the entire solar system (harder than you think).
Python’s a miracle to us, but we’re not in a vaccuum.
I took a microeconomics course recently and I came upon this lecture, the Truth about what Motivates Us.
I was supposed to ignore the fact that this man mused on how all the open source code we use, all the projects we do, are just free. We don’t get paid for it.
Realistically, the man himself isn’t an issue, he’s making a necessary argument for remote work and we NEED that, on both sides. You can create if you’re given wriggle room because you have comfort but you never really have to leave your workspace either.
But also…how does this look to people?
I can’t help thinking this is how we got the situation with Elon Musk. Where he thinks its all just so simple and just a matter of tweaking basic structure, breaking everything down to see where the real stress points are.
We make it look so easy to them.
And that’s not our fault. We all NEED open-source software, we need that convenience. We need hobbyists. We need mathematicians and physicists bringing in abstract mathematical relations like how image filters use convolution kernels, applied linear algebra.
A perfect merging of at least two fields, math and programming.
And it takes no new equipment, no unique software, you could do it in linux, mac, pc, maybe even Google Chrome computers.
Then someone else comes in and just sees profit. Sees the ease with which this was done, then thinks the whole thing can be broken done to its basest parts and made more efficient.
We deserve better.