alt Hacker NewsAs an unfamiliar, I find it interesting how you specifically called out physics grads in the pre-LLM era. Is that just snark or is there some widespread truth / stereotype of that behavior?
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If you are very smart, and/or have an incredibly high tolerance for pain/repetition, you can solve amazingly complex issues, with awful code.
Both of these statements are true for physicists
Not the parent, but it's half joke half truth. Anyone who's done a lot of "first principles" work falls into this trap a bit, it's an issue across stem fields. Most grow out of it, or at least learn to qualify their statements for the audience.
I suspect the person you replied to only happened to see that from physics grads. I have seen it in all sorts of people and I sometimes did it myself when I was young (I am not a physics grad).
Its snark/stereotype, but there is some truth. But my take, is physics sort of took over a lot of chemistry, biology.. and to them its the answer to all questions, because in the end it just molecules. There is some truth to that but..
It's a widespread stereotype at least: https://xkcd.com/793/
It’s a very common experience that people in the physics-adjacent sciences have.
It’s so common that there’s an xkcd about it:
It's common enough to have an xkcd for it at least (then again, what doesn't?) https://xkcd.com/793/
Physics, and to a large degree pure mathematics, has attracted a critical mass of the personality type that needs to feel like the smartest person in the room in any given situation. It has given them a slightly notorious reputation in academia.