Software I Use Daily: Evernote

Few tools have proven more useful in my day-to-day life than Evernote has. Evernote’s design is pretty simple; you can make notes that can include pictures, sound or documents as attachments, search through your notes, bundle them up into folders or tag them with tags. Notes get synchronized between any device that runs an Evernote client. Any image that gets included in a note also gets passed through OCR so that any words that appear in the image are indexed and searchable as well.

I probably refer to or write a note in Evernote at least half a dozen times per day. Every time I feel like I’m going to need to look up a piece of information more than once, it goes into Evernote. If I’m trying to figure something out, any information I find on that topic goes into Evernote.  As I refine my understanding about something, I’ll turn that raw info dump into something more compact and digestible. The ability to jump back to previous versions of notes is really helpful for this refining phase.

What I use Evernote for most is daily research logs. I really wish that I had started writing daily research logs years ago. They’ve been immensely helpful for organizing my thoughts and preventing me from doing redundant work. They also provide an easy-to-read archive of the work I’ve been doing, which makes preparing for status report meetings a lot easier.

I’ve been really pleased with Evernote overall, especially since they gave their mobile app a much-needed UI redesign. If you’re looking for a place to dump all the stuff that won’t fit in your brain, Evernote is definitely worth a look.

Computer Science Goes to Hollywood

Update: Looks like Matt Welsh posted on the same topic while I was writing this. Check out his perspective, it’s a good read.

I just read an article in the New York Times titled, “Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus” talking about the recent upswing in enrollment in computer science that, the article claims, is due in part to Hollywood’s favorable portrayal of the tech world in films like The Social Network. They also say that computer science programs are shifting away from a curriculum focused on theory toward one that integrates more applications and implementation in an effort to boost the major’s appeal and keep enrollment trending upward.

The fact that computer science enrollment is on the upswing is good; the US (and the world in general) needs more computer scientists. One missing piece of the puzzle that isn’t explored in great detail in the article, however, is these new students’ motivations for pursuing a degree in computer science. One thing that makes me anxious is the segment of new students who are becoming computer scientists to “become the next Mark Zuckerberg”. Spun one way, this means “create something that millions of people use every day”, which is great. Computer science is most exciting, in my opinion, because it enables you to create great things out of virtually nothing. Spun another way, this means “make billions of dollars and have a movie made about you that’s scored by that guy from Nine Inch Nails”. This is disconcerting. Becoming a computer scientist to become the next Mark Zuckerberg is like playing basketball to become the next Michael Jordan. It will happen to a handful of people, and takes a lot of hard work, dedication and luck, but the vast majority won’t even come close. If you’re not playing basketball mostly for the love of the game, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of frustration and disappointment. Same thing goes for CS.

I’m also not convinced that “banishing the perception of the computer scientist as a geek typing code in a basement” is entirely a good idea. I hate to break it to you, but most of computer science is geeks typing code in basements. Well, not necessarily in basements. Facebook was created and continues to be created by geeks typing code in office buildings. Apple was created by geeks typing code (and soldering stuff together) in a garage. Name a technology company whose products you use every day, and it started with a bunch of hackers cranking out code in a dumpy little room somewhere. This is like trying to banish the perception of the blacksmith as a big sweaty guy who spends most of his time in front of a furnace making things out of hot iron – sorry folks, but that’s just the way it is. Blacksmiths don’t just wave their arms and cause awesome swords to appear all day.

That’s not to say that our public image could use a bit of improvement. In the past, computer scientists were portrayed in film and television as a bunchy of pale, asocial man-children with an over-fondness for Mountain Dew and Cheetos. If we’re getting away from that stereotype, then that’s fantastic, but by and large I don’t think we are. I withhold judgment on The Social Network (I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s in my Netflix queue), but most of what I’ve seen has just shifted to portraying us as a bunch of ludicrously wealthy, pale, asocial man-children.

It’s true that the theoretical fundamentals of computer science are hard to make exciting without applications. However, if we swing in the other direction, over-emphasizing application at the expense of fundamentals just to enhance our appeal, we run the risk of over-narrowing the major’s focus and making it less useful and less educational. If that happens, I’m worried about the quality and quantity of computer scientists (who actually like what they do) that we’ll produce. I don’t think it will be a problem at places like UW, USC and Stanford, but the reality is that most people don’t go to those places.

I originally pursued computer science because I liked messing around with computers and I thought I wanted to make video games. If I had taken a major in game design in college, I might be working on the next Madden at Electronic Arts and hating my life. The breadth of my undergraduate education exposed me to areas of the field that I didn’t know existed. Now I sort things really fast every day, and I’m really enjoying myself. And I spend most of my time writing code, although I don’t do it in a basement.