Software related posts from my other blog

Here are the software related posts from my other blog, Şamil's Corner.

Bonus:

• Java
• Career advice
• Management
• Book reviews
• Favourite movies

How to fill a letter of intent/reference

Letters of intent or reference sometimes have a minimum word requirement. The best way to hit the word count is to give examples of which courses and projects you liked and why.

AI explanation problem

AI / machine learning is quite useful but not being able to see the justification of a particular classification outcome is quite annoying for me. As Mr. Tizhoosh puts it in Introduction to Digital Pathology:

After weeks of training of some sort of agent I can just tell you "yes" but I cannot tell you "why"... The pathologist writes a full scale report and he/she has to justify it.

See Explainable artificial intelligence.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)

I recently bought and watched Udemy's Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). It is a good beginner course to get an overview of concepts and challenges/steps to reach the goal of full self driving cars. It is especially useful if you plan on working in the smart/self-driving automotive industry.

Another good idea is to check out openpilot, which powers comma.ai. Here is a video of George Hotz showcasing openpilot.

Companies in Türkiye working on ADAS / autonomous driving:

• TOGG
• Ford Otosan

Touch typing

Touch typing (typing without looking at the keyboard) is an essential skill. Here is an intro video. Placement test. My current stats: 50 words per minute at 90% accuracy. Diary of a person learning to touch type.

As with any skill in life, the key is regular daily practice. "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" 

Hierarchy of expertise

1. Know fundamental concepts.
2. Solve well formulated problems using existing methods/libraries.
3. Increase your knowledge of methods/libraries and be more proficient in choosing the best solution method for a given problem.
4. From ambiguous statements and missing information, create well formulated problems by making reasonable assumptions/approximations and solve them.
5. Develop novel/more efficient solutions to existing problems.
6. Discover new problems.
7. Solve new problems.

Industrial Engineering vs Computer Engineering

For an industrial engineer to be useful, the company employing her must have sufficient size to make use of statistical optimization. A common misconception among freshman ind. eng. students is that they will quickly become managers, even CEOs. In reality management requires 5+ years of experience and becoming a CEO requires a strong network.

While most managers think they are competent, even if they are not industrial engineers, no manager thinks they are good computer engineers if they have not graduated from computer engineering. This bias is against industrial engineers who compete for management jobs. 

If your undergraduate is in computer engineering you can get quickly through the door and start contributing to the bottom line. If you have management inclination, opportunities will come up. But for you to take advantage of those opportunities, you first have to be let in. As a computer engineer your chance is much higher than an industrial engineer.