mebassett (u/mebassett)

mebassett commented on Git Diagramming "The Weave" daverupert.com/2025/08/gi... · Posted by u/tobr

I had a professor in a math heavy subject that just started throwing out maths on the blackboard to derrive formula after formula.

It could take 20 minutes until we reach the conclusion, at which point he finally explains what the purpose of the final formula is and why we want it.

I got the habit of reading his book in reverse before the lectures; reading section by section in reverse order from the end. This way the mathematical calculations had a clear goal and were faar easier to follow.

... brilliant maths, but he was fully and utterly incompetent at teaching it. And he had a bit of an ego about how many students fail each year because "they're lazy".

Me and a few friends did deep recaps to de-tangle the explanations using his book, rephrasing it in a easier and shorter format; and he accused us of cheating because our scores deviated from the normal distribution.

All this to say; sometimes clever doesn't correlate well to great with words.... though dont take that as a endorsement of trump.

mebassett · 4 days ago

"As with many books, this one is best read piecewise backwards. In describing the contents, I accordingly begin with Part III."

Intro to one of the maths books I had to reference to do my masters thesis. :)

mebassett commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025) · Posted by u/whoishiring

mebassett · 4 months ago

Would you like to help tackle one of the most important sectors for the global economy - maritime shipping? We're hiring for multiple roles: software engineers, data analysts, UI/UX designers, implementation managers.

Nearly every person is affected by stuff shipping on the seas - whether its energy, ore, or wind turbines, but the industry itself is antiquated and archaic, and hampered by paperwork and bureaucracy. Our customers are crying out for better solutions. We're looking for people to help us build those solutions.

If you're the sort of person who is: - intellectually curious about new industries - wanting talking to and getting close to end users - keen to use LLMs and other AI tools

Then please get in touch.

--

For our SWE roles we have budgeted ~ 90k USD.

Our tech stack for new projects is largely typescript/vue/mysql (we have several fans of fp-ts and EffectT with us and are investing in using more functional programming). But like the industry at large we also have significant legacy code in javascript. If you're the sort of person who likes refactoring complex projects to make them more workable, then we also want to hear from you.

--

For our Data Analyst or Implementation Manager roles:

You'll be helping our customers in maritime shipping get the most from our software. Initially, a lot of that work will be in helping our customers get their data in and out of it. Lot's of MySQL, Metabase, AWS Glue, DBT, or other ETL pipelines.

--

For our UI/UX designer roles we have budgeted ~ 40k USD.

You'll be helping us on three different axes: (1) designing the user interface for new features, (2) fleshing out the user journeys and mockups for our roadmap, and (3) helping us craft a consistent and learnable user experience across all our software.

--

We hire remotely and globally with offices in Houston, London, Singapore, and Joinville (Brasil). You should be fluent in English. The current team is >20 people. You should be in a timezone within 3 hours of one of those offices.

Interested? You can contact me directly from my profile. I'm the CTO.

Please, no recruiters or agencies.

mebassett commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2025) · Posted by u/whoishiring

mebassett · 6 months ago

Maritime shipping software | Multiple roles | Global REMOTE | UCT-8 to UCT+4

Would you like to help tackle one of the most important sectors for the global economy - maritime shipping? We're hiring for multiple roles: software engineers, data analysts, UI/UX designers, implementation managers.

Nearly every person is affected by stuff shipping on the seas - whether its energy, ore, or wind turbines, but the industry itself is antiquated and archaic, and hampered by paperwork and bureaucracy. Our customers are crying out for better solutions. We're looking for people to help us build those solutions.

If you're the sort of person who is: - intellectually curious about new industries - wanting talking to and getting close to end users - keen to use LLMs and other AI tools

Then please get in touch.

For our SWE roles we have budgeted ~ 90k USD.

Our tech stack for new projects is largely typescript/vue/mysql (we have several fans of fp-ts and EffectT with us and would like some more). But like the industry at large we also have significant legacy code in javascript. If you're the sort of person who likes refactoring complex projects to make them more workable, then we also want to hear from you.

For our Data Analyst or Implementation Manager roles... You'll be helping our customers in maritime shipping get the most from our software. Initially, a lot of that work will be in helping our customers get their data in and out of it. Lot's of MySQL, Metabase, AWS Glue, DBT, or other ETL pipelines.

For our UI/UX designer roles... You'll be helping us on three different axes: (1) designing the user interface for new features, (2) fleshing out the user journeys and mockups for our roadmap, and (3) helping us craft a consistent and learnable user experience across all our software.

We hire remotely and globally with offices in Houston, London, Singapore, and Joinville (Brasil). You should be fluent in English. The current team is >20 people. You should be in a timezone within 3 hours of one of those offices.

Interested? You can contact me directly from my profile. I'm the CTO.

Please, no recruiters or agencies.

mebassett commented on Getting Started with Category Theory ryanbrewer.dev/posts/gett... · Posted by u/hoping1

blenderob · 9 months ago

I'm not an expert so I write this comment to ask for help. Do you know if there is any relationship between category theory or set theory? I mean is it like category theory is a more general concept and set theory emerges as a specific case of the more general category theory.

I know sets well because well that's what I was taught in school. I'm just trying to understand where set theory fits in category theory or if they are two totally different things.

mebassett · 9 months ago

I would treat them as totally different things. There is a Category of Sets, but a Set of Categories would be a bit harder to define. So axomatic set theory could be a specific case of category theory, I suppose. But you can probably do a Class of all categories. (A Class is sort of a set-theoretic way to get around Russel's paradox, incidentally, you usually use a Class to define categories, so...) Though that's actually quite an irrelevant point. It's a completely different language for describing mathematics. I think describing category theory as an alternative foundation for mathematics (you really mean topos theory here) is a bit of an exaggeration. it's technically true, but most mathematicians I know are using it as a powerful device to prove things in algebraic topology or geometry, etc.

mebassett commented on Apple Smells Blood in the Water petapixel.com/2024/11/14/... · Posted by u/atombender

mebassett · 10 months ago

> In the case of GIMP, the very name itself means it cannot be used in commercial enterprises.

I have no idea where you got this info from but it is 100% wrong. Of course GIMP can be used for commercial purposes. Or any purposes you want, really. The GNU GPL does not prevent commercial use.

mebassett commented on Show HN: I wrote an autodiff in C++ and implemented LeNet with it gitlab.com/mebassett/quix... · Posted by u/mebassett

pjmlp · a year ago

First of all, it is C++ OOP style, Java cloned C++, not the other way around.

Secondly, all major surviving C++ GUI frameworks are still using the same style.

Best practice according to well known folks in the computing industry, with more impact than any of us will ever have on our lifetimes.

mebassett · a year ago

I think the main point here is that while this style might make sense for a GUI framework it's not so great for a numerical library like this.

For example: my library is really slow.

mebassett commented on Show HN: I wrote an autodiff in C++ and implemented LeNet with it gitlab.com/mebassett/quix... · Posted by u/mebassett

tightbookkeeper · a year ago

using new for each node and value, combined with virtual dispatch tends to be a c++ anti-pattern. It looks like you are writing other languages in C++ syntax, motivated by promises of speed.

The actual benefits of C++ come when you approach problems differently. This is a case where more exposure to C helps you avoid all the Java isms.

Things to consider:

- can you allocate memory for the whole system? - can you make types homogenous so they can fit in tight arrays (unions are common for nodes) - can you batch similar types - specially for auto diff/math can you represent operations as a stack instead of a tree?

I am only bringing this up because you said your goal was to learn C++.

mebassett · a year ago

> - can you allocate memory for the whole system? - can you make types homogenous so they can fit in tight arrays (unions are common for nodes) - can you batch similar types - specially for auto diff/math can you represent operations as a stack instead of a tree?

these are good questions, thank you! I'm "learning" c++ in a completely different way - looking at books rather than looking at existing code. Appreciate this comment!

Some of these questions I had thought about, but was learning more towards "describe the function in some higher level representation and then 'compile' it down to something computable and autodiff-able". This is exactly where my mind goes when I think about allocating memory for the whole system. that felt more like a racket/lisp way of looking at the problem.