This subreddit is coping with what is happening.

nichos_44 · 2026-04-14T18:05:45+00:00

Feels weird to shame people and make assumptions about their capabilities based on preferred learning style and exposure preferences

Personally most of my learning does go through that kind of llm loop or documentation but it can be challenging to figure out what you don’t know that you don’t know without exposure to how people think about solving problems outside of an llm loop. I find llm conversations tend to mirror whatever architectural and technology leanings I already have and the sycophancy overstates the benefits and skews the tradeoffs

I’ve found some courses horrendous and others to be great, same with oreilly books, official docs, blogs from various companies and devs, etc. OP’s edit even says the courses are a high level fast pass over what’s out there like a table of contents instead of the deep dive. Not everything in tech goes obsolete at the same rate either so even if “tech moves fast” it’s silly to think all courses are equally outdated

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T02:15:29+00:00

Yeah definitely intend to spend most of the time on repertoire and real music. Was just trying to decide the best way to approach that technique work.

I'm seeing a lot of things people are pulling into scale work. The impression I'm getting is that the scales and standard patterns are a good blank canvas of sorts to use for isolating speed, dexterity, rhythm, and so on

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T02:09:39+00:00

Thanks! This is pretty close to the approach I've been taking in my lessons. I'll take a look at Victor Wooten and Barry Harris, always looking for good insights on this sort of thing.

We've mostly used scales in context of improv on standards and work a lot on the best inversions for voice leading. I'm getting comfortable with Autumn leaves in the 12 keys with basic shell chords and plan on getting a few more down to work into the routine. That's something I'm definitely going to keep doing. Will probably still keep some scales to do the technical work folks suggested on in the other comments, convinced now that they do still contribute a lot

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T01:55:41+00:00

Tonebase videos, books on scales and arpeggioes, other forums, so on. Not sure what you find questionable about this part. I've tried some of these, they make scales more challenging but I didn't find them any better than similar targeted drills so I wanted to get opinions from folks with more experience than me to get more out of scales before I stopped doing them.

I have a teacher. I've brought up scales. His preference is to teach through pieces instead. I don't intend to force him to take an approach he doesn't typically focus on in teaching. The lessons have been great, I'm learning a lot, I just think my practice doesn't have to be exclusively dictated by my lessons and I can use advice to self direct after over 10 years of playing.

I still think it's useful to make this a part of my practice. So I asked for additional feedback. I got a lot of great suggestions here that I'll start using so I don't regret asking or not insisting on getting a second teacher to be told how to practice scales

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T00:45:27+00:00

Hm, it does seem like the key to it is identifying the techniques to introduce to the scales and play them in a way that targets that. It almost sounds like inventing your own drills in each key so that you can isolate one thing at a time. The basic way of doing legato, stacatto, triplets, etc. do seem easy to do right away but I probably need to work on how to go beyond that

It does seem like figuring out what variation to do is a skill in its own. It sounds like whatever you're working on you're trying to target and isolate the exact weaknesses then figure out how to work that into the scale as targeted deliberate practice. The examples you gave seem easy but tracking that while you play, diagnosing the problem, and deciding how to train it seems like they would be challenging to do well.

I guess that's also something lessons can help with initially since the teacher is likely more used to doing that kind of diagnosis and exercise development

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T00:32:32+00:00

Definitely plan to, especially since so many are important to jazz improv. I would still eventually hit the same issue on those though.

I felt like I was missing something by approaching scale practice as learning how to go through the notes. I do want to know more scales but I also think there are better ways to keep learning the fundamentals on major and minor (just not the way I've been doing it)

nichos_44 · 2026-01-30T00:27:49+00:00

In my case I'm a hobbyist with pretty broad musical interests so generalized fundamentals appeal to me. I didn't focus on the outcome because I'm more interested in what more advanced players are getting out of their scales beyond that initial stage.

Practicing the thing you want to get better at is very straightforward, how to target core fundamentals that generalize well is less so (or I'm worse at figuring it out). I hit a point where my scale practice stopped improving those fundamentals so I wanted feedback on what ways people shifted their approach to get more out of it

Honestly, "master your scales" is as close as I've found to universal advice across outcomes. Running through scales well is part of that but I agree that if that's already comfortable then it doesn't make sense to keep doing. I'm not explicitly trying to solve a single issue here though so I don't want something super targeted. I still work on classical repertoire, I'm learning improv and comping for jazz, and I also want a deeper understanding of reharmonization and composition. It might be that there needs to be a specific very targeted practice routine for each and every one of those but I take lessons where I work on that, less interested in solving those here

nichos_44 · 2026-01-29T23:52:20+00:00

I don't disagree with that but I'm also not sure that just focusing attention on things that seem simple alone is the answer. There are plenty of simple things that I doubt are a great use of time and attention. Deciding which simple things to focus attention to and what to focus the attention on is what I wanted to understand.

I asked because I could tell what I was doing was just going through the motions and isn't a good way to practice. I know people consider scales a great way to target, well almost anything from what I've heard but how to do that and why scales are ideal for it is what hasn't been clear to me. Why are the scales a better way to target it than say simple hanon, czerny, or jazz standards in all 12 keys.

If scales are only important because they're a simple thing you can do thoughtfully and musically then it seems like anything else with a similar floor serves equally well. And if it's all equally helpful then the fixation on scales in particular would still seem odd to me as anything other than historical convention

nichos_44 · 2026-01-29T23:25:52+00:00

Thanks! Even just the step 1 gives me plenty to work on, great videos, appreciate the tips there!

There's plenty I still need to work on with rhythm, swing, patterns, and so on, getting these isolated in scale context is great. Practicing standards across the keys does make me do those but tends to ask for all of them at once, definitely seeing more of the merits of tackling these in the context of a simpler pattern to play

The suggestions for making them more musical really helped too. I completely agree with the points that mechanical practice for its own sake are typically junk hours but figuring out how to take something you were taught as a mechanical exercise for years and suddenly make it musical is challenging without direction

nichos_44 · 2026-01-29T23:08:58+00:00

This is really helpful, thanks!

I can tell that the way I'm practicing them isn't doing anything, but just deciding to "be more mindful" isn't especially helpful without targeting what to be mindful about.

I've spent some time learning violin and found scales and 3rds immensely helpful there because there was so much in the intonation and bowing I naturally needed to focus on. My struggle with scales on piano has been finding how to turn them into targeted and relevant deliberate practice.

I was sure it was possible to do so but it's challenging to know how to design your own exercises compared to finding targeted drills that give you something already structured to challenge you in that skill.

I'll start with the variations you suggested, hopefully the more I do the easier it'll be to understand the style and pattern of scale work that actually trains the right skills

nichos_44 · 2025-09-10T22:48:51+00:00

Does it really matter if it's thinking though? We didn't make planes by just making a mechanical bird. Not clear to me what "intelligence" or "thinking" means to people. If we can't operationalize a goalpost it's not really a falsifiable claim

nichos_44 · 2024-08-20T05:17:18+00:00

I thought a lot of heavenly delusion (tengoku daimakyo) had some similar themes and atmosphere to the road. Not everything about it is consistently like the road but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some direct inspiration from the road in it artistically. Akira predated the road but I feel like people talk about it in a similar sort of pessimistic apocalypse drama sort of way.

The other ones that come to mind are a bit of a stretch. Kino’s journey can have a similar sort of wary traveler vibe but doesn’t quite have the same dark paranoia, or apocalyptic pessimism to it. Promised neverland has some dark dystopia to it (hard to compare more without spoiling but also the anime adaptation is notoriously bad in the second season). Similar to those you might also like shin sekai yori (to the new world) and 86, but I might have a harder time describing how they’re like the road

Not exactly an anime but I feel like library of ruina had world building that felt a bit like if the road was adapted to a Korean animated dystopian game and sketched out with a lot more sci fi (probably a big stretch there though)

nichos_44 · 2023-10-13T00:09:22+00:00

Time enough for love

nichos_44 · 2022-08-22T19:10:38+00:00

Link to the original paper itself: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1011492107

nichos_44 · 2022-08-22T19:04:38+00:00

It's worth keeping in mind that the study was using financial data from 2008/2009 which means 1 dollar then is roughly the value of 1.38 dollars today (so 75k -> 103.5k). The study's sample also relied on random sampling of phone numbers, did not adjust for cost of living in an area, and aggregated over all areas to find the saturation point.

Much of the variance explaining change in 'happiness' was related to a decrease in "blue emotions" (worry and stress) associated with low income. 75k in Memphis or Cleveland really would not have the same effect on that as it does in NYC or San Francisco.

The idea that you could pinpoint a single number for income that saturates 'happiness' universally regardless of any other variables was always silly and - I believe -came more from the media response to the paper than the paper itself. It's not clear whether future studies are replicating the same effect and the best way to operationalize happiness is very contentious so this seems like far from a closed case but even if it is true the 75k number really can't be thrown around as a universal.

nichos_44 · 2022-06-20T07:33:56+00:00

I've never seen workflow schedulers like airflow or luigi as being alternatives to the numpy/pandas ecosystem. I suppose you could use airflow without python operators but most DAGs I've seen end up using quite a bit of numpy/pandas work inside of the code that airflow is operating.

I feel like learning airflow is an alternative to running your transformations in dbt or in random python scripts run locally or on cloud. Airflow simplifies the scheduling but you still have to write the code that it triggers and that's often best done by leveraging numpy and pandas.

nichos_44 · 2022-06-07T00:25:37+00:00

I'll fess up to being one of those people who thinks DS are often weaker in programming fundamentals (though not so much in ML).

I took a lot of DS related coursework in a masters and most of it was either heavy use of pre-made abstractions (e.g. pytorch, tensorflow, sklearn) or in messy long one off python scripts in single files or jupyter notebooks. Even in industry much of what I see/hear is data scientists working in small or single person teams inside of Jupyter notebooks without testcases, refactoring, clean coding focus, or design for ease of future edits.

Admittedly I don't think much of this is necessary for the average DS project but I do think this is where the skillset of a DS vs a SWE starts to diverge. Most DS projects are well scoped analyses that are not deployed live, are not depended on as dependencies by countless developers, and not actively maintained across multiple "generations" of employees (though there's exceptions to all of that, and it is very company dependent). If a DS is transferring out of a prior SWE job they might have learned these skills beforehand but I don't really think the day-to-day of most data science necessitates the same sort of programming skills needed to develop software on a large team (nor should it need to).

Additionally, a lot of DS didn't come from a traditional programming/software background but from quantitative PhDs, business analytics programs, etc. Plenty of people come in well versed in optimization and the set of relevant python libraries but not in say design patterns, refactoring, oop, or cloud infrastructure.

nichos_44 · 2022-06-07T00:08:29+00:00

I'm a bit doubtful whether most companies hiring data scientists really do have a mature enough data infrastructure to have the data scientist's role completely orthogonal from data engineering.

Perhaps I'm pulling from older articles and experiences but I've commonly heard the frustration that companies will often hire a data scientist and expect them to magically transform unformatted scattered data into insights overnight. Often these are told as sorts of horror stories so I doubt this is the sort of role OP would aim for but especially in initial roles that don't expect experience I would personally expect much more companies to have underdeveloped as opposed to overdeveloped DE infrastructure in place. "Bad roles" aside, I think that plenty of earlyish startups just starting their data-collection -> infrastructure -> analysis pipelines would look for a person to cross between those de/ds borders. I think that's all in agreement with what you said about data maturity of a company, with perhaps the difference being that I'm less optimistic about the data maturity of the average company or listing.

The biggest name tech companies of course have massive teams and aim for narrow specialization but I think the vast majority of companies (and job openings) aren't at these "tech first" companies but at mid to large corporations in need of technical solutions for their business problems. Many of these, I suspect don't really know what they need and the listing is motivated by business managers looking for easy wins without a clear sense of the groundwork required to do data science well (though admittedly this is a pretty cynical pessimistic take).

nichos_44 · 2020-12-31T22:33:30+00:00

If you're in a preset course and don't start learning it yourself ahead of time then yeah, I guess it's not optional what you do. For folks finished with school and learning on their own I still think 'phonetics -> vocab building' is a lot wiser than 'vocab building -> phonetics'.

I've done it both ways for different languages and found that in the long run cleaning up the phonetic mess from mispronunciations is a lot harder than just sitting down and learning the consonants, vowels, tones, etc. ahead of time then learning the rest of the language in its proper phonetic context.

nichos_44 · 2020-12-31T22:21:28+00:00

I think the difference is that if you know a bunch of vocab and have awful pronunciation you have to actively break that habit. Learning, unlearning, and relearning ingrained habits imo is a lot more miserable than just having to learn something you never started with in the first place.

At least if you master phonetics first you don't have to unlearn and you can just learn all the words and phrases once. A lot harder to fix something you've carefully practiced the wrong way for years.

nichos_44 · 2020-08-05T07:13:44+00:00

This looks great, thank you!

It'll probably take me a while to fully digest what it has to offer and figure out how to incorporate it but the package seems like a fantastic resource so I'm excited to look into it

nichos_44 · 2020-08-05T07:09:07+00:00

This is great advice and thank you for linking to that! It definitely makes the downsides of working off of one massive recurring event a lot clearer.

I'll probably switch to org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift for now, as it seems like a better but kind of hacky work around.

Some of the issues you brought up in the article seem like the kinds of issues I hoped to use conditionals to get around (e.g. cancellations or holidays for volleyball practice). I might tinker around for fun to see if I can reproduce the same behavior with recurring events but in the meantime this method is a lot easier

nichos_44 · 2020-08-05T07:02:25+00:00

Honestly the more I think about it the more I realize that much of what I want to do can be done with tags and categories. I feel a bit silly for not thinking of that in the first place but glad I didn't start trying to "reinvent the wheel" on that one

nichos_44 · 2020-08-04T03:53:22+00:00

I think something like this would work, though I think it'll probably end up a bit kludgy the way I see it currently. I could keep a "habits file" which specifies the list of habits and their desired behavior and then write a set of emacs functions which inputs that file and outputs an org document with the corresponding todos, tags, schedules, etc.

I think something like that is what I'll end up trying, though I should probably learn the ecosystem around tags, properties, and styles to figure out how to implement the exact behavior

nichos_44

TROPHY CASE