How the Turn Tables

Mini life update: I’m almost done with the fall semester of my junior year; I’m still searching for internships; I’m beginning to do research with the SEMERU group this spring! According to its lead and my academic advisor, Professor Poshyvanyk, SEMERU is the first group to apply deep neural models in code generation tasks. So, exciting things ahead!

Now, my team and I built an incomplete yet functioning call graph generator, and I’m thinking about how to best visualize it. Obviously, d3.js is my go-to choice, after all, I used to make youtube videos on them. But, I needed a little refresher, so I surfed the web and found this:

How the tables have turned!

Here’s a forced, independent takeaway: The essence of studying smart in higher education begins with recognizing that not all knowledge are worth the same. First, abstract and intuitive knowledge are more valuable, which we should focus on absorbing. Second, a general, breadth-first mindset pays the dividends long-term. Additionally, knowing just the existence and bare minimum of a wide range of concepts can do you a lot of good.

Just as weightlifters prioritize multi-joined, compound movements (deadlift, squat, benchpress), we too shall focus on the multi-faceted CS areas in our studies (algorithms, programming language theory and features, OS principles, etc). Things like specific visualization library, though addicting to experiment with, might deviate us from learning essential CS knowledge.

P.S., “How the turn tables” is a memorable saying from the American show, The Office.