> I do not know the specific background of Mr Lee

As an undergraduate, he studied maths at Trinity College Cambridge. Béla Bollobás said [1]:

> I certainly taught him more than anybody else in Cambridge. I can truthfully say that he was an exceptionally good student. I’m not sure that this is really known in Singapore. “Because he’s now the Prime Minister,” people may say, “oh, you would say he was good.” No, he was truly outstanding: he was head and shoulders above the rest of the students. He was not only the first, but the gap between him and the man who came second was huge.

> I think that he did computer science (after mathematics) mostly because his father didn’t want him to stay in pure mathematics. Loong was not only hardworking, conscientious and professional, but he was also very inventive. All the signs indicated that he would have been a world-class research mathematician. I’m sure his father never realized how exceptional Loong was. He thought Loong was very good. No, Loong was much better than that. When I tried to tell Lee Kuan Yew, “Look, your son is phenomenally good: you should encourage him to do mathematics,” then he implied that that was impossible, since as a top-flight professional mathematician Loong would leave Singapore for Princeton, Harvard or Cambridge, and that would send the wrong signal to the people in Singapore. And I have to agree that this was a very good point indeed. Now I am even more impressed by Lee Hsien Loong than I was all those years ago, and I am very proud that I taught him; he seems to be doing very well. I have come round to thinking that it was indeed good for him to go into politics; he can certainly make an awful lot of difference.

He then did the (now-discontinued) Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180722130213/https://www2.ims....

Quite sad he didn't pursue science career, it might have brought a few amazing discoveries to the world.

Instead he rotted as an actor of change, represented his citizens, protected his country and solved sudokus.

I dont know if he's good for Singapore but I mean, he did one of the most noble thing a human can do so I wouldnt blame him. I hope to do 1% of what this politician tried to do in my lifetime.

> he did one of the most noble thing a human can do

Solve sudokus?

Maybe you missed the first half of the article title.

Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong…

I read the parent comment as a joke

Even if Singapore is the best of all the authoritarian governments out there, it is still kinda fucked up. Even with its nature put aside, Singapore still engages in all sorts of regressive, backwards policies, up to a point where it's difficult to claim that any high govt official from Singapore holds any sort of sense of nobility within them. If this person is the prime minister, he is actively choosing to ignore, detach himself from, or even to support and continue those policies.

Singapore is a successful example of how to intergrate multiple ethnicity groups. Many liberal and progressive countries have tried their way and didn't get a good result.

Are both things linked? Even if they were, it's difficult to see how, say, caning as an accepted punishment, or gay rights suppression, can make an effect in ethnicity issues, unless we take this in the context of co-opting the cultural values of the less progressive culture present in the country. And in any case, stomping on some human rights for the greater benefit of the rest of society is kind of a gray area. The least we can do is recognize that grayness. Even if there existed a tangible payoff in acting and governing in that way, everyone should be aware of its price.

Is he also pursuing covid-zero at all costs? death penalty for drug dealer? embracing canning? Kim jung um studied at a top school too

I vouched for this comment because it was worth addressing.

You can go online and ask Singaporeans all day about their opinion of Lee Hsien Loong, depending on how old they are they've voted for or against him and the PAP several times.

Singapore is a de facto one-party state, but it stays that way by (sometimes narrowly) keeping the ruling party in power by voting for it periodically.

The comparison to Kim Jun "um" is inept and insulting.

Quite the opposite - I'm not sure how many eminent mathematicians have the background to have gone far in politics.

The early pandemic outlined how many politicians lacked even the ability to reason about exponentials (let alone scientific thinking!) I am very glad that there is at least SOME representation of great thinkers amongst our leader-class

I mean, he might yet? What someone does now is not their permanent lot in life.

The specific background of Mr Lee is that he was the Senior Wrangler at Cambridge University (essentially, the top mathematics student in the UK), and was a very promising mathematician who instead chose the family business of running Singapore.

It's not a bad business. Senior ministers in Singapore are paid multi-million dollar salaries. According to Transparency International, Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries. I'd guess that's because there's no need for side hustles because the job pays so well.

> According to Transparency International, Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries.

This is not a pervasive opinion. The prime minister has directly sued personally anyone who attempts to investigate the state wealth fund and there is a lot of questioning about the motives and conflicts of interest among Singapore's ministers and their families.

The lack of free press, and that it is illegal to investigate these government activities, is worth noting as well.

> According to Transparency International, Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries.

Note this ranking is based on "perception of corruption". Given that Singapore is a one-party state with extremely little press independence (https://theindependent.sg/singapore-in-bottom-20-countries-i...), citizens would be less likely to hear of any major corruption that occurred as the media wouldn't report it.

As an example, PM Lee's wife was CEO of Temasek, the national investment company, for many years. Consider, of all the five million plus people in Singapore, what is the probability that the prime minister's wife just happens to be the most qualified of anybody in the country to manage the country's money?

> Consider, of all the five million plus people in Singapore, what is the probability that the prime minister's wife just happens to be the most qualified of anybody in the country to manage the country's money?

She somehow also finds the time to make hundreds of Facebook posts a day: https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/g33rvv/how_is_ho...

Yup.

I spent some time there and I honestly believe that corruption is probably on par or better than other developed countries. They take it very seriously.

However, as you mentioned, if there was corruption, you’d probably never know. With the libel laws and control of the media, I doubt many would be willing to speak out.

Singapore’s system has worked so far, but all it takes is some corruption within for the whole system to rot to its core. It’s not setup to self-correct. It seems like a well oiled machine on the surface but that’s just because you’re not allowed to see all the warts.

He probably married within his social circle of the Singapore intellectual elite whose members certainly have a much higher chance to reach such a position than the average joe in the country. I don't know anything about this gentleman but I don't think it's enough of an argument to accuse him of corruption.

> He probably married within his social circle of the Singapore intellectual elite whose members certainly have a much higher chance to reach such a position than the average joe in the country.

Probably irrelevant, but I wanted to add that Ho Ching is his second wife. The first Mrs Lee died three weeks after giving birth to his first son [1].

[1] https://wiki.sg/index.php?title=Death_of_Wong_Ming_Yang_(198...

For all of its many other issues, one thing clear is that Singapore is one of the few countries where being a public servant is a reputable and highly regarded career. It was described to me that Singapore inherited both from both the British public service and the imperial Chinese civil service systems - which have diminished or fallen apart in both of those countries and others which inherited them.

> For all of its many other issues, one thing clear is that Singapore is one of the few countries where being a public servant is a reputable and highly regarded career.

Singaporean here. It's mostly "reputable and highly regarded" if one gets a top-tier government scholarship [1], since that leads to civil service postings with more exposure and chances to take credit.

Everyone else is just a "farmer" [2][3]. :)

[1] https://www.quora.com/Are-scholarship-holders-more-likely-to...

[2] https://www.mycarforum.com/forums/topic/2675951-lousy-schola...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/7p5unh/degree_ho...

What other countries inherited the Chinese civil service system?

Does Taiwan count? I would hardly say it has diminished or fallen apart. Of course, that is only my humble opinion.

Taiwan is an interesting case!

It's known that the ruling power in Taiwan is descended from the Nationalist government, it's perhaps less well-known that Sun Yat-Sen was a serious political thinker who designed that government, effectively singlehandedly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

There's a visible mix of Western (by way of America and Britain) and Chinese thought in how the Yuans are structured.

Taiwan also inherited a large and functional civil service from the Japanese occupation, this is less immediately obvious in the structure of Taiwanese government, but you can find small traces everywhere if you know what to look for.

UK civil service was actually modelled after Chinese one after missionaries brought news of how powerful, and well oiled Chinese bureaucratic machine was in comparison to contemporary British one.

That doesn’t stop many western CEOs from being corrupt.

From what I’ve experienced, the lack of corruption in Singapore is partly cultural and partly due to their heavy penalties for crime.

I'm gobsmacked that Senior Wrangler is an actual thing. I thought Terry Pratchett made it up!

Part of his great talent was that of weaving together factual minutiae with fictional minutiae such that the boundaries are impossible to spot without prior knowledge!

Even if you know you have to keep your eye open for it. E.g. my personal favourite is that I 100% did not spot until it was pointed out to me that the printing dwarfs in The Truth are all named after fonts...

The Annotated Pratchett File lists many similar references Pratchett included in his novels. In this case, it's marked as p35 of Reaper Man:

https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/reaper-man.html

He also did a diploma in CS, which is now regarded as a masters degree (when he did it, there was no taught masters in CS offered by Cambridge).

His youngest son is a programmer and prominent member of the Scala community.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/haoyi-li-3b3291182?originalSubdo...

And his middle one is ex-Google, and is now in the Singapore equivalent of US Digital Service/Government Digital Service:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hongyi-li-16183230

Wel gee, sorry that I was hired by a molecular neurobiology research group where all my colleages were at least PhD level biologists and that I didn't manage to catch up to their level in the two years that my contract lasted, dad. At least they appreciated me enough to give me sixth co-authorship on a paper published in Cell, even though I don't understand three-quarters of it. You want to complain that I'm not an Olympiad heart surgeon too?

/s, obviously, my dad is actually very proud of me.

edit: this attempt at a sarcastic jab pissed some people off I guess. My point was that sure, the critique that issue of "people who understand one thing think they understand everything" applies disproportionately to programmers (and STEM people in general), but trying to defend against that by acting smugly superior about your own domain of expertise isn't going to fix that, that just makes you a problem on the other side of the coin.

You probably know where this is headed, but, still: https://xkcd.com/435/

I did but the link is still very welcome :). While we're here we might as well add this complementary SMBC classic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2556

> I do not know the specific background of Mr Lee, but the thing I always tell myself is that you can teach programming to a microbiologist, but not microbiology to a programmer.

I don't know if microbiology is special in some sense, but I have witnessed several times during my career cases of programmers turned into domain experts(in Logistics for example).

Obviously you don't became an MD that way, if that was your point.

Yes, Wall Street (high finance) also has many people (traders & quants & risk controllers) who do not have financial engineering degrees, yet deeply understand the field as practitioners. Some common "alternative" degrees: economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, microbiology, computer science/engineering. The previous generation was even less specialised -- many had liberal arts degrees!

When I was young, I thought that anybody could learn programming. I was horribly, horribly wrong.

I thought this when I was younger too. Now I hate seeing the meme "code is the easy part". There are, of course, other hard parts too but to trivialize coding is silly.

For the most part, code is, indeed, easy. For you or for me. But some people just can't. I've stopped trying to understand, and just accept is as a fact.

For me, it was “money for nothing”, best job in the world because it was also my hobby. Not everyone is that way. Easy as breathing for some, completely incomprehensible alternate dimension of reality for others.

Code is easy, the math is hard.

For many mathematicians code is hard, math is easy.

How do you distinguish between "can be taught" and "cares to be taught"?

Plenty of people still live in a world where coding is low prestige.

People who have very low paying jobs and very unhappy about it, they know programmers earn well ("high prestige", in your words), and they try. But for some reason, they just fail and they can't to anything about it. I've seen it many times, when diligent dedicated people just can't.

A major hurdle I found as a beginner in programming was the lack of immediate reward. I was studying Automate the Boring Stuff as my first text, and it took around six months of slow but steady studying to understand and retain the first of two parts of the book.

The material was about the fundamentals of programming (loops, lists, dictionaries). I found it hard to stay focused because the applications and usefulness of the concepts weren’t immediately obvious (any problem I could solve at that point could easily be solved better with a ‘no-code’ solution). Some of the concepts also took a few days to understand, while I was struggling with maintaining motivation.

I’ve since used other learning materials, and now I better understand why new programming courses nowadays (like Harvard’s CS50) like to start their courses with the Scratch language. It communicates earlier the usefulness of the fundamentals (e.g. using if and while statements to animate a cartoon character).

This lack of immediate useful application (until months of study later) might not be the only reason, but it may well be a major one. It can cause people to give up even if they are diligent and dedicated in other fields (where the rewards arrive earlier).

> I found it hard to stay focused because the applications and usefulness of the concepts weren’t immediately obvious

Yep, I had that experience with electronics, but I applied the lesson you’re pointing to - you need to have practical projects that are relevant to you (that you care about), and then learn by working through problems and concepts as they present themselves on the road to solutions. I guess that makes me a hands-on learner, though I appreciate the conceptual once I have enough practical exposure to provide context.

I concur. I tried to learn language like C, python... but could never make any progress. However, ironically I made serveral scripts for botting in MMORPG that I played. I could spend days perfecting and running them. It was the shorterm reward for botting in games that kept me going. Meanwhile learning to code is like walking to a destination that you don't know when you are going to reach. It feel like a chore and mentally challenging.

Maybe they are not diligent or dedicated enough? Have you really met anyone who wanted to actually put effort into something, had no barriers (lack of money / family support / etc) and didn't manage to do it?

For me the answer is I've only seen it where there is an absurdly narrow selection process: professional sports (all of them), admission to certain universities (Ivy League/Oxbridge), certain specific jobs (SEAL team, investment banks, etc).

For everything where there's no gatekeeper, I'd only count out very few people from the start.

I also thought anyone could learn to code at at least a basic level, until I worked for a year as a computer science instructor, including for the big intro class for freshmen. Some people's brains just aren't wired for it. (And this was a self-selected group in a positive sense; I would expect a random set of the population to do worse.)

Aren't students the ultimate "I'll do it if it's easy" group of people? They have to balance their learning with their new found freedom to socialize.

You asked for anecdotal evidence against this belief of yours and you got it. What do you want now?

It's not anecdotal that it's hard to be a professional sportsperson, or get into an Ivy League college. You want links?

I don't think we're communicating. You asked: Have you really met anyone who wanted to actually put effort into something, had no barriers (lack of money / family support / etc) and didn't manage to do it?

And got in reply: I also thought anyone could learn to code at at least a basic level, until I worked for a year as a computer science instructor...

You then produced a no-true-Scotsman argument to the effect that students don't qualify as a counterexample.

All I'm asking for is for some kind of confirmation that he thought the kids were actually trying hard, which we all know (without documentation, yes) isn't universally true of students.

It's also often true that instructors don't know what's going on in all the students' personal lives. People who are pressed in other ways don't always make it known, so you could easily see how you might mistake someone who didn't learn it with someone who couldn't learn it.

I have and i have spent a lot of time trying to help people understand it with no luck. I wouldn't count them out from the start but eventually it seems they will be happier not trying to write programs

I'm glad this realization exists. When I was in school, I quickly realized that most of my peers - the ones that came with me from an associate's degree course in IT, more sysadmin stuff - just couldn't keep up with software development, they didn't have the knack for it.

Why can't you teach microbiology to a programmer?

You absolutely can (an example includes programmers who decide to work in computational biology and learn more biology from textbooks to better understand the job).

However, there is a substantial barrier for a programmer to switch careers and become a microbiologist: access to lab equipment. Part of the job of a microbiologist is to work with (usually expensive) scientific equipment to carry out and design procedures for experiments, and it’s hard to study independently without owning a lab space or the equipment. I’ve also found less educational material for self-study online.

Contrast this with self-study in programming. The required equipment is also just a low-end computer, and you don’t need a laboratory environment to develop your skillset. Educational resources (e.g. Automate the Boring Stuff With Python) are also not only widely accessible, but often free.

What I have heard from them is that it requires "wet lab experience" to really learn it. Not sure how true it is.

If you were to ask me, programmers can't learn it because what they are learning is based on complete misunderstanding of organic chemistry (which has not been updated with the modern understanding of physics)... so it is bound to drive anyone who tries to make sense of it crazy. The only way to learn it is to accept all the rules and ALL the exceptions to the rules as the foundation and go from there, which not a lot of people are willing to do.

> what they are learning is based on complete misunderstanding of organic chemistry (which has not been updated with the modern understanding of physics)... so it is bound to drive anyone who tries to make sense of it crazy

This sounds like an extraordinary claim, especially since organic chemists work along physical chemists and chemical physicists who presumably have a strong modern understanding of physics. It would be better for an expert to chime in, but I don’t see the incentive where organic chemists would be content to let their field stay out-of-date.

If you think those who study microbiology study it with quantum chemistry of organic compounds as a foundation, you would be very wrong. I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm just saying it is way more uncommon than you'd think. Ask around your network and find out for yourself.

It looks like I may have parsed your comment in an unintended way. I read it as, roughly: 'To learn microbiology, a programmer must learn organic chemistry as a prerequisite [true for the university I attended]. However, the concepts to study organic chemistry are based on an outdated view of physics, which is why they have so many rules and exceptions.'

I believe that any good organic chemist must have strength in physical chemistry (both to excel in the field, plus it's typically a degree requirement), and physical chemists are well-informed of quantum mechanics (also typically a degree requirement, with at least an introduction to QM in most introductory chemistry courses in the unit about atomic bonding).

However, it's more plausible to believe the claim (re-interpreted) that many microbiologists don't have a strong foundation in organic chemistry or modern physics. Still, I'm skeptical that those who make it to a tenured professorship can still have these weaknesses, as I'm under the impression that the field is cross-disciplinary with collaborations with biochemists, who can then bring in their stronger background in chemistry (and thus organic chemistry, physical chemistry, and physics). Leading microbiologists (e.g. those tenured at MIT and other top institutions) who influence the field should also have familiarity with these subjects.

Working full-time with brain damaged clients make you brain damaged.

Can confirm.

We can't be sure about your confirmation, though.

Alternative view:

A) any microbiologist may eventually need to learn very basic coding to do their job/tasks effectively;

B) a programmer likely won’t be interested in learning even basic microbiology unless hired by microbiologists.

I don’t think B) is necessarily true.

I’m a software engineer/programmer by profession and schooling, but I have a life-long fascination with little critters, especially insects, and especially Apocrita and Lepidoptera among insects. I’m an avid participant on iNaturalist and have almost as much reputation on Biology StackExchange as on StackOverflow. I also enjoyed proofreading oncology papers for my brother in law when he was doing his PhD because that stuff is fascinating when you have somebody who can explain it to you.

I’m not spending more effort in biology or entomology mainly for three reasons:

1. lack of time, especially since getting married and having kids;

2. lack of mental energy partly due to kids, partly because I’m tired enough fighting inane requirements or some stupid half-assed TypeScript “framework” du jour every day at work;

3. I’m not confident I can make as much money in entomology as in I.T.

Lack of interest has never been one of the reasons for me.

Well sure, there’s always a few whose random area of interest might land on microbiology. Most career developers I know are autodidactic obsessives who have no trouble finding fascinating rabbit holes to crawl down. Then life advances, gates close, time gets constrained and you have to pick your passions in life because you can’t do them all.

I tried to use the word “likely” to avoid these points being perceived as absolute laws. I think it’s simply less likely that any random programmer will have motivation to learn microbiology than it is for a microbiologist to learn some programming techniques.

The microbiologist may be compelled by functional requirements for their job to learn some coding while the programmer, unless working on business problems in that domain, would never be professionally compelled to learn microbiology to reinforce their profession aims.

Everyone says that about their field, though.

In the telco industry I've heard several people say "I think it's easier for someone used to circuit switched to learn packet switched than the other way around". Every single time I heard that was from someone who knew circuit switched, and did not have one single clue about how packet switching worked, but thought they did.

If it's your field it's very easy to see people come in and think they've learned it when they haven't.

I've seen it in mathematicians, too. They very often think they can program when they can't.

Or in other words: You can teach a programmer to be a microbiologist to the point where I will believe they're a microbiologist. But I am not one.

And same with programming, except you'll only convince the microbiologist that you succeeded.

On the other hand you can teach finance to a programmer but I had a really hard time teaching finance people to code.

How much of that is because programming is easier, and how much because for programming there are plenty of free resources (books, tutorials, documentation, etc.) while other disciplines are much more hermetic?

Uh, okay. People like John Carmack (programmer) have proven you wrong.

Interesting. Programming yes, Software Development no- imho there is a huge difference between writing compiling code and writing maintainable code and/or designing stable and resiliant systems.

Just as you can run any program on any machine given enough time and resources (memory), anyone not lacking intellectual ability can learn anything - some quicker, some slower.

While I agree that everyone CAN learn anything, it doesn't mean they want to. Motivation is a big factor.

And when it comes to software development, the actual writing code part of it, I'm confident you need to have a knack for it.

Mind you, there's plenty of jobs in software engineering that don't involve writing code. We're desperately looking for a manager for example, because our current "self-managing" team is far from effective.

The intellectual part maybe but not the praxis. Some confidence, some unwillingness to stop searching for causes, some taste foe elegance, some ability to simulate things in the abstract space of solutions. The combination is as elusive to some as perceiving the mood of a room is to others.

What makes you think that?

What makes you think otherwise? Some people's brains are wired differently?

Yes my understanding is that different people's brains can be wired very differently. Roughly speaking, many areas of the brain require specific stimulus during puberty in order to develop a particular way.

> I do not know the specific background of Mr Lee, but the thing I always tell myself is that you can teach programming to a microbiologist, but not microbiology to a programmer.

You can’t teach height.

Are you agreeing and saying that learning some skills, like your height, comes from innate genetic wiring

- or -

Are are you saying that height is something you can't teach and of course anyone can learn microbiology?

my university made other hard sciences a prerequisite to a computer science degree so I feel like I learned that topic well enough

I see utility in focusing on interdisciplinary skills

I think it's because programming is not that much of a stretch to the brain if you've done any mathematics and are literate. The brain is used to combining structures through words to create sentences and programming runs along that same path (just more strictly).

Where are the 6 test cases? I only see one on the leetcode page, but I might be missing something.