Liveblogging the Last Lecture

The class is full, and there are extra people attending the last lecture. Lots of people milling about, joking, doing very 3216-community things.

We start off with a short pitch by the guy behind Mobiwerkz. If you want to join, and you're interested, go email him.

7:00 Watched a video

7:05 Everyone jolly well go and write blog entry, to tell what the heck you learnt. Crowd sourced to score people our blogs. Clever bastard.

7:07 "So it's all your fault!" Big grin.

7:08 To Shannon's suggestion that everyone puts a 10 for everything: "But that won't work! Why? ... Exactly! Prisoners dilemma!"

7:12 (Blogger's note): Oh great. I have a word limit.

7:13 Remember "Wong Lim Soon!" And, yes, he's the prof that determines everything.

7:14 Sales matters

7:15 People matters. Whoever you actually work with matters. (Oh yes, definitely.)

7:16 Execution really matters. The execution has not been fantastic this semester. And there's a picture of a bunch of kids climbing a tree. So there's two things about execution: 1) try random stuff 2) keep trying. And then there's working on the problem, and listen to people. Listen to prof. Which is a balance between being stubborn and sticking to your principles, and listening to people giving advice.

7:17 So there are many paths to success.

7:20 Anybody want to go back? Got a hot date to go home? (A couple seconds later) No? So I shall now indulge in my favourite past-time: preaching to students.

7:23 I'm not a psychologist, period, but I try to observe things, and derive conclusions, and what I've seen is that nature sets the limit on what you can achieve. This is what ... I've seen.

The nurture part determines whether you can achieve it.

7:24 So the truth of the matter is none of you can be a Tiger Woods. The golf arr, not the sex! /uproarious laughter.

7:25 There are two things. There's nature, and there's nurture. And sometimes life's not fair.

Some people complain too much. The good news is that most people's capacities to achieve is much much higher than what they actually achieve.

So that gives me a job.

7:28 Attitude. Ultimately, what I hope to do in this class is to fix mindsets. (Insert section about Jolly Good Fellow engineer in Google, and talking to them, and finding out how to think.)

7:32 A lot of people are poor because their minds can only handle so much money. They are programmed to be poor. Quote from Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. You agree, don't agree?

7:34 Yanjie disagrees. Toms says that it's not particularly concrete. Prof steps in: "Nature nurture rubbish again."

7:36 Generally, however, Prof thinks this is true.

7:37 "Give a poor guy 100k, and at the end of 10 months he was a lot worse than when he started off."

7:39 How you perceive the world really matters. Research has shown that optimists are more likely to succeed than pessimists by a long shot.

7:41 I believe education has three things. 1. Find direction, 2. Fulfill their potential 3. Become good people

This whole thing, however, has this big 'It Depends'.

7:45 Confucius says: self, family, country, world. There are these things that he says. Then he says, you figure out how to govern yourself, then you figure out how to help your family, then you figure out how to serve your country, then you 'attempt to bring peace to the world.' To change the world.

Self
7:47 Learn to like yourself. To be at peace at yourself. To be okay with the way you're born. There are people with some deep-seated insecurities. Know what you're capable of, what you're good at, focus your strengths, and outsource your weaknesses.

4:58 Delegate - you can delegate responsibility, but you can never delegate accountability.

4:49 Deal with fatal flaws. And the worst fatal flaw is laziness.

[Though there's this military quote: "I divide officers into four classes -- the clever, the lazy, the stupid and the industrious. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the high staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy is fit for the very highest commands. He has the temperament and the requisite nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be removed immediately." - Attributed, circa 1933; General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (1878-1943); German Chief of Army Command (1930-33)]

7:50 Take personal responsibility (or - jokingly - find a religion and blame God).

Failures come from two sources. One is it's your own fault. And the second one is ... act of God. That's life. Bo pien.

7:52 Stay teachable. Try to keep learning. And try to learn new things. Prof praises Reuben and Ryan, for posting new things, because they keep reading new things. They read, he reads.

7:54 You're less important than you think. Do not to be too concerned about how you look. People won't remember you.

7:56 Actually I have a problem now. Now I've taught for four years, and I can still remember all of you. But in one or two years, I will have to start to garbage collect.

7:57 10,000 hours - it turns out that I've done 10,000 hours of teaching. But I don't want to. 20,000 hours.

7:58 The char kuay tiaw experiment: go out one day and cook, without my skills, to see if it's possible to make a living without an education. And I think I can make more money than as a prof.

7:59 I am better than I was yesterday. Quoted for truth, hopefully dy/dx > 0; but nature limits you. But remember that the limit is an asymptote. You can't reach it - so as long as you keep getting better, it will be okay.

8:00 There is no substitute for hard work.

"So part of the thing to do as a lecturer is to make sure nobody dare to sleep"

Hehehe.

Family
8:01 If you marry the wrong person, you. Are. Screwed. Photo of Ris Low appears on screen. /laughter

8:03 "So what qualities are there for a spouse?" Pause. "From experience?" *Laughter*

Prof looks at us. "It depends."

8:04 The girl that's right for him (points to Reuben) is probably not the girl who's right for him (points to Adhiraj). Sorry I sounded like a scientist, because I am.

8:05 For the first few months of being in love, there's a chemical in your brain called PEA that makes you high - typically lasts six months to a year. Then it wears out. So the moral of the story is: don't marry someone in six months. There are people who marry and get it right ... but who feels lucky today?

8:06 Right time to marry is when she 'feels like family'. So there's a probability that she won't be sexy forever. One kid still okay, two kids a bit cannot make. /uproar and then pause. Oh you mean you recorded me ahh? Die lorr.

8:07 Be careful about these things, because it's not so simple. For Christians, look for the Proverbs 31 girl. And, err, girls don't look for the Proverbs 31 guy. Because otherwise he doesn't do anything.

8:10 So there's this story about a guy walking through a field, and he was asked to pick the tallest head of corn. And he came out empty-handed. Then he was brought to a forest, and told to chop down a tree and bring it our (that is smallest and can be brought out) and he came out with this puny little thing. And that is love.

8:11 Not easy wan la. If you can find an algorithm to solve this, you'll be very rich (Shannon behind me says: there's this episode of How I Met Your Mother ...)

8:12 Don't do a Jack Neo. (Class laughs). So that brings me back to Character vs Reputations. Typically character implies reputation. But reputation is not if and only if. So people with good reputation may not mean good character.

Country
8:14 Skip the government bit. Because it's Singapore.

The World
8:14 Think. Now here are a couple of articles that I've taken from the Strait Times.

/shows an article from ST about this guy who is a top chef. So this guy is a gifted chef. And he probably makes money than you do. The thing is, do what you're good at. If this guy tries to be a prof, he will sure die.

8:17 Shows a picture of Thailand. They're a failed state now. A bit sad. But why are they fighting? Class says it's red shirts vs yellow shirts. So Singapore doesn't allow protests. And it's complicated. They're arguing about human rights, but they may not know what they're talking about. So they have to think. Think. Things are not so simple.

8:18 Shows a picture of this 50 year old guy, who's unemployed, headlines: where are the missing fifties? And the times are changing - during your grandfathers time, when you have a degree it's a big thing, you're set for life. And when you get hired. you'll be taken care of by the company.

So what has changed?

8:20 Too many people have degrees. So what has changed hasn't been about the degree. If you're useful, you'll get hired. If not, you have pretty degrees, but you'll 'die die never get hired'.

8:24 In order not to loose your job at 60, just be damn useful. That is the best thing you can do.

8:25 A few words on the stock market. So the stock market has been rising. And this has been happening since the industrial revolution because the people have been putting their retirement money into the stock market.

So are stock markets going to be rising all the time?

Not sure. You can't base it on past performance. But there's going to be huge demographic changes. Where the bottom constricts. And the top (old people)expands.

8:27 If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Small smiley face with a label: "Ponzi Schemes."

8:28 You cannot achieve superior outcomes in education without the teachers. So I realize something that I haven't done so in the past, and that is to encourage my students to become a teacher.

The thing about teaching is that it doesn't play very well. But it does pay okay in Singapore. So consider it.

8:29 I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future. With 3216, that is. So there's going to be two courses. And semester 1 will be 3215. Which is SoC only, basically to train up the software engineering part. And for semester 2, we'll absorb all the non technical people. So most of the technical learning would be done. If any of you have good ideas on how this is to be done, please contact me.

8:31 Long term goal is to produce 60 students of this calibre. And ... I don't really know how it'll be.

8:32 So if you can't remember a thing from this lecture, take this: figure out what you like, AND you are good at ... and just f*cking do it. Because there has to be a balance between liking it and being good at it.

8:34 Do the right thing. I think in life, there will come a point in time where there are two options. One option is to do the more profitable thing, and the other option is to do the right thing. Sometimes you don't know. And if you don't know, and you just do, it's okay. But if you know there is a choice ... then I want to encourage you to do the right thing.

And doing the right thing usually has a cost. And sometimes you don't even feel shiok. Most times, in fact, you will pay. But ... doing the right thing typically, as Randy Pausch says: the 'karma will take care of itself.' And while that's a very buddhist thing, it's the truth.

8:36 I'd like to thank my teaching staff. /applause

8:37 ... and this is for you. *shows slide with image of book titled 'Common Sense'* There are many problems in the world, and a lot of people don't have common sense. And I think a lot of it has to do with ... being curious about the world. To gain common sense, that is.

8:38 And so, with that, I wish you all the very best for Wednesday. And this is the end ... but it's also the beginning. Thank you very much.