Xingxin on Bug Mentality
I joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology(HKUST) as a PhD student this week. After spending 5 months as an indie hacker building apps, I have returned to academia. It feels so different from my last time on campus at Politecnico di Milano. I graduated with my master degree 5 years ago and have been working full-time as software engineers for the past 4 years. The experience in the industry has instilled in me a practical, pragmatic mindset. I am not sure if this is the correct or somewhat sad attitude to have.
My gut feeling tells me it’s correct. Although feeling unsure is normal these days, my best practice for me is to pick up a book. It was also a great opportunity to visit the soul of a campus - the library. So on the Saturday morning, I grabbed a book by one of my favorite author, Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder from the HKUST library.
I am now back in the academia which, from Nassim’s perspective, is fragile.
| FRAGILE | ROBUST | ANTIFRAGILE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Science | Theory | Phenomenology | Heuristics, practical tricks |
| Learning | Classroom | Real life, pathemata mathemata | Real life and library |
| Reputation(profession) | Academic, corporate executive, pope, bishop, politician | Postal employee, truck driver, train conductor | Artist, writer |
Glad that I refreshed my memory of a few chapters of this book at the beginning of my PhD journey. I hope I do not get lost in the upcoming years. I will keep oath to be brave and to build something good for the world - and not to be an IYI(intellectual yet idiot).
Life
I was initially shocked by the size of my 10m dormitory with a 890mm x 2000m bed. The climate here is also very humid. But after a few days, I’ve started to like it. Sitting by the sea coast endows the campus with a terrific, majestic atmosphere.
I also notice there are crafts for windsurfing! This is so great!
Engineering
The majority of my time this week was setting up frameworks related to robotics. As a software engineer, I really appreciate a mature tech stack. Therefore, I aim to adopt NVIDIA Isaac Sim for my future research. Let’s see how it goes.