Normal math kid pov of waterloo cs:
I came into this program likely never previously implementing nested for loop correctly–
(It doesn’t take any thinking to follow yt build tutorials). As a matter of fact, I probably thought any algo was too complicated in hs, which is kinda hilarious if you think about it—when your parents are in the same WeChat Group Chat as USACO Platinum, IOI, CCO Putnam IMO finalist, etc.
I literally knew geometry, how to use libraries in python, and probability in highschool. And when your parents ask you why ur not a medalist, I was kinda confused—ma..I literally JUST came out of the womb...wdym? they didn’t understand they were comparing a fetus to the michael jordan of computation.
In another thousand years, I still won’t be a medalist or plan to be. But this field has given me great appreciation for those bright homosapiens who devote their lives towards the field. I re-read my apps from hs—I wanted to build stuff for users and talk to customers(more or less, which hasn’t changed).
Turns out cs and math is about using your brain and NOT at all about selling ai slop to people who can’t smell its bullshit, surprise–surprise. So I never previously knew math could get so elegant or ugly, but thanks to university, I can now recognize if algebra is sexy or not. How exciting and hot.
Actually having a brain and using it when needed is useful(according to my prof.), allowing ape-like homosapien creatures to make conscious decisions! (thank you compilers prof.) If life is a never ending list of problems, your familiarity with painful problems is like medication for life, the tldr on ‘rigour’ — hiphip hooray! Livelovelaughcry computation.
To answer some questions on what waterloo cs is like(if you don’t go here), yes the stereotypes hold[as desired], DC => Downtown China, MC => Mainland China. That does mean we have decent asian restaurants around here(fallacy #22: appeal to crowd) which is a massive plus IMO. Diversity? Occasionally you’ll visit the health building and it's like the first time you’ll see a blonde girl since stepping foot on Laurier—it's there but you don’t really know.
I don’t know what MIT is like, but since even some of my profs still call this place “mit of the north”, we will just go with that. At least in competitive scores and faculty contribution to the field, there's quite a bit of parallelism–but not sure about student body(I will guess mit is slightly more diverse)
So yeah, what is it like for the norm? well you’re a fish basically. Stepped foot into program first year—all of a sudden I was demoted from fish in pond to “undiciplined trash scum”,... hilarious. I was a “well-rounded” college app profile, not a specialist. Needless to say, society doesn’t give a shit about jack of all traits–master of none, it yearns for giga homosapien nerd.
There’s this weird fetish with some “elite-startups” and only hiring “the best”, but like outside of those, if society only cared to hire for geniuses, we won’t have much of society left—idealistically there will still be productivity for “sub-computational-humans” or else the employment distribution would skew till the economy corrects. If big tech still needs to blind-hire blunt rotation thousands of engineers, only hiring for the best is wasting too much time.
One concern for society is that ai progression, seeing exponential growth from 23-25, even if it flattens to linear or stagnant growth, the upcoming decades should theoretically widen the skill gap for the norm. If not skill, knowledge gap, etc (With some high probability AGI stays a myth within our lifespan).
Regardless of how gimmick tools progresses, what should not change amongst homosapiens is the ability to think, reason, argue, verify, rationalize, speak/talk, communicate, deliver, motivate, lead, organize, plan/roadmap, etc. The vast majority of human relationships you cannot replace with a tool(sorry sf startups, you are not convincing in making dating easier with ai, just be a human being).
So in many different senses, humans are still useful(the competent hard-working ones), and tools only go so far in productivity optimization. Well that’s a relief.
Brief takeaway at this point: being capable of generating your own thoughts(that don’t belong to others, society, peers, etc) is important to have. Also using your brain for the sake of using it, via any method, is also good for you. Kinda like uhh, cardio.
Challenging but not impossible, smh cardio.
[Unfinished]