Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only care 
> about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)

What's interesting? Compiler optimization? Mathematics?

> I don't think anybody is "working" with Haskell. (As in, getting paid 
> money to use it.) I could be wrong, but it seems pretty rare.

The guy writing GHC is getting paid for it, isn't he?

In any case, by the time I graduated, I was pretty sick of the field I was 
studying. I went to interview at Bellcore, and they talked to me about it, 
and I said "I'm pretty sick of it, really."  And they asked "What would be 
more interesting?"  I said "Dunno. Multimedia?"  And that's where I got a job.

It's not like you're stuck in that field forever.

> Several thousand pounds in debts?

Get someone else to pay for it.

> Several years of my life? 

You don't lose years of life getting a PhD. You spend them. (It's not like 
you can save them up.)

> Possibly my sanity? :-} (Did you *see* the links I posted?)

Yes. And you know what? Those are people who picked a bad advisor. Pick an 
advisor who is motivated to get you to graduate, and he'll help you do so.

> Meh. I tried making a list of cool things, and it ended up having 
> entries like "complex numbers. Because you can calculate stuff with 
> them!" Pretty retarded, eh?

Not really. Keep going, is all. Spend some time thinking about it. You're 
not going to come up with the cool stuff yourself in a couple hours.

Now when you read stuff for fun, think about "why is this fun? What's cool 
about it?"  Give it a couple of weeks of gathering cool stuff.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> You think you're failing at what you're doing now anyway, yes? So fail 
>> at something bigger.
> 
> LOL. Riiiight...

I'm serious. You're way too worried about this stuff.

Don't spend much money. Just get funding and go. You have no obligations 
right now. It's the best time in your life to start something questionable 
like this.

>> Plus, you'll meet girls. :-)
> 
> Oh. My. GOD! >_<
> 
> You cannot *possibly* expect me to take anything else you say seriously 
> now, can you? :-P

Know what? My wife has a PhD too. Know where I met her?

> Heh. Actually, a few weeks back I did look at MSRC. But I couldn't 
> figure out what they were talking about. I surmised this probably means 
> I'm too stupid to be there. :-}

No. It means you haven't done any sort of PhD work.

It's like saying "I don't want to go to school to study mathematics, because 
every time I read a math paper I don't already understand it."

> Much as it would be fun to meet the legendary Simon PJ, I rather doubt 
> they have any PhD openings to do with Haskell right about now. Sure, 
> lots of people are working hard on GHC, but most of it is not "new" in 
> any way, it's just getting around to applying techniques known from 
> other compilers. It takes a while to alter a codebase that huge.

You never know. That was just one example, since you seemed to like Haskell.

>> All but one job I had since I got my PhD was through knowing people I 
>> met while I got my PhD. I had a couple of job offers guaranteed by the 
>> time I finished, because I was doing just what they wanted and they 
>> knew I could do it.
> 
> That's pretty impressive, right there.

But that's how it works. By the time I started actually writing the thesis, 
I'd already published papers in three or four journals, been to two 
countries on the school's money presenting the papers, and peer-reviewed 
other papers about vaguely similar topics. You meet people at these things, 
and they're expensive, so you get the school to pay for it.

> Other than my lecturers, I didn't meet *anybody* during my degree.

Wrong degree! That's why it's "A Doctorate of Philosophy, oh by the way it 
had to do with computers."

> Hmm, time to track down all those Haskell papers which I carefully 
> linked from our Haskell group for safe keeping. 8^D

Exactly.

>> 4) Profit!
> 
> Anybody know the origins of this curios meme?

Late-night three-easy-steps guides to getting wealthy?

I'm sure South Park was mocking reality in that bit.

> Taking a PhD for no apparent reason is slightly crazy, but I'm gradually 
> coming around to the idea. Leaving the UK is an absurd idea. :-P

It's not "no apparently reason."  Think of it like taking a job doing 
something fun, for not quite as much money as you might like, but probably 
still more than you're making now. :-)

Why is leaving the UK for a few years absurd?  Not that I'm necessarily 
recommending the USA, mind. We've kind of got our heads up our asses here 
the last few years.  But I'd guess most anywhere in the EU would have decent 
schools.

As far as doing a full-time job while getting your PhD, consider doing that 
if the company you're working for will pay for the PhD.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:51:57 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 
>>>> ...and now I'm thinking about the "Ode to a lump of putty I found in
>>>> my left armpit". :-S
>>> A most excellent poem. :-)
>> It excells - but at *what*??
> 
> Being a piece of Vogon poetry, of course. :-)

I thought that was one from the pen of Grunthos the Flatulent?

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Others have replied comprehensively, but I do have a few thoughts:

Invisible wrote:
> 2. I have insufficient money. (I'm still paying for my BSc. Very slowly.)

I think most science/engineering PhDs in the UK are grant-funded, which 
means you'll get paid upwards of 16k to do it (tax-free). There are 
often conditions on the funding, but if you've got a 2.1 you may well 
qualify.

> 3. I don't think I can spare the time. (I have a job to do, sucky as it 
> is.)

If you do one, it will have to be full-time. As others have said, as 
long as you're funded it's like having a new job.

> 4. It is *highly* unlikely that having a PhD will make any kind of 
> positive change to my employment situation. Nobody is impressed by a 
> BSc, and I doubt a PhD will be any different. Everybody wants 
> "experience" and/or "people skills".

Not true. If you're going for a technical position, even if it's 
unrelated to your field of study, the fact that you are capable of 
completing a PhD says a lot. It says you stick with the job, have a 
capacity and interest for learning, have experience in 
communication/dissemination, etc... and that's ignoring the 
field-specific skills.

> 5. Presumably a PhD is a serious amount of hard work. It's not exactly a 
> pleasure cruise. So I'd need a good reason to do one.

Yep. Be interested in the project. That simple.

> 6. I rather doubt that you can get a PhD in "doing cool stuff". 
> Presumably it must be something rather more specific than that.

This is the interesting part. Certainly, make inquiries into fields that 
are particularly fascinating to you, but as at least one other person 
has mentioned (Andrel?), don't rule out subjects that are new to you. An 
applied computing project could get you into almost any technical 
subject imaginable, and it's surprising what you might find interesting. 
I know this from my own experiences!

> 7. Where the hell am I going to do a PhD anyway?

Wherever. Go where the funded coolness lies!

>  8. Are you mental?

I've got the wrong doctorate to answer that question impartially. :-)


Speculative queries to research groups in fields that sound interesting 
are well worth it. You don't need to follow the impersonal rules of 
regular employment - if you find some prof with research interests that 
look your kind of thing, just email and ask for more information, and 
say what you're interested in. Worst case is they simply don't reply.

Bill

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andrel wrote:

> John had some problems with below average IQ and EQ people when he was 
> teaching, that is why he isn't anymore.

I couldn't decide which was the worst, either the handful of troublesome 
students, or the handful of troublesome parents, or the lack of 
badly-needed support I got from the administration.

Regards,
John

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>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro%27s_number
> 
> There are 6.03 x 10^23 atoms in 12 grans of Carbon-12.

6.02, not 6.03!

-- 
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> It's as relevant as anything else. Computer science (such as it is)
>> doesn't solve any problems on its own. :-)
> 
> See, I don't give a **** about solving real-world problems. I only care
> about solving "interesting" problems. ;-)

	You have PhD written all over you.

	(And no, I don't mean it sarcastically - most PhD work has no use
whatsoever, but is done because someone found it interesting).

-- 
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Invisible wrote:
>>     For many companies, just that you have experience talking in
>> public is
>> a _huge_ plus.
> 
> Heh. Last time I had to stand up and give a talk (to 3 people, mind you)
> I almost threw up over the projector! o_O And only one of the people in
> the room actually knew WTF I was actually talking about anyway. And he
> already knew what I was going to say!

	You get over it after a few times. Grab some fellow students in your
research area once a month, bribe them with pizza, and present to them.
Get their feedback. You don't have to worry about screwing things up
because no one cares.


-- 
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well sure. But it seems it would take little old me a *long* time to
> travel all the way to the frontiers of knowledge to do genuinely new stuff.

	Nah. Getting a PhD, in a sense, is supposed to be the beginning. You
learn enough to do something useful, and if you go into academia, spend
the rest of your life simultaneously getting to the frontiers and adding
stuff to it (they're codependencies, not strict dependencies).***

> OTOH, presumably that's what your supervisor is for? ;-)

	Good ones, yes,


*** Giving idealized case. Most people in academia spend more time doing
administrative work + grant writing than actually doing research. They
just guide grad students to do it for them.

-- 
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."-Asimov


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:49:19 +0000, Bill Pragnell wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:51:57 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>> 
>>>>> ...and now I'm thinking about the "Ode to a lump of putty I found in
>>>>> my left armpit". :-S
>>>> A most excellent poem. :-)
>>> It excells - but at *what*??
>> 
>> Being a piece of Vogon poetry, of course. :-)
> 
> I thought that was one from the pen of Grunthos the Flatulent?

D'oh!  I must now go and hang my head in shame for goofing that up.

Of course, you are correct.  Grunthos' poetry was deemed the second worst 
in the history of the universe.

Who can name the first?  (Vogons were third)

Jim

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