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Leonardo da Vinci's application letter

167 点作者 xvirk超过 9 年前

23 条评论

makmanalp超过 9 年前
Okay look, I see a lot of snarky posts here about Leonardo doing Fizzbuzz and Leonardo being in a daylong interview session.<p>Guess what - Leonardo wasn&#x27;t a superstar back then but he&#x27;d worked in Verrocchio&#x27;s workshop, a workshop that was one of the best in Florence. He learned an immense level of technical skills there. Then he also was a master in the Guild of Saint Luke in Florence. Then he painted the Adoration of the Magi (which was never finished, but whatever). Then he made a silver lyre, which the medici family sent to the Sforzas for a peace accord.<p>So the modern equivalent of this is something like (and I&#x27;m making this up clearly) someone who started at a regionally famous company at a young age, worked there for years to cut their teeth, meanwhile was a regular presence at conferences or Meetup groups in the area, who then worked on a company that generated some buzz but didn&#x27;t succeed ultimately, and then one of their VCs introduced him to another company.<p>So, not the same as a person with no experience to show for getting a daylong interview with fizzbuzz and a take home project. In fact the &quot;interview&quot; probably took days to weeks in that case!<p>edit: And yes, of course I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s a good way to conduct interviews. But it sure as hell wasn&#x27;t a better or more efficient or more equal opportunity system back then. Progress has happened since then. It just should be happening at a much faster rate now and it&#x27;s not.
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noam87超过 9 年前
Is this Hacker News or &#x2F;r&#x2F;programming?<p>Was hoping for a more informative discussion on one of my intellectual heroes. To me, Da Vinci is up there in the &quot;alien&quot; category along with Von Neumann... there is no field in which he not only excelled, but formed theories that were centuries ahead of their time.<p>Not only in art and engineering, but in medicine and biology. In his notebooks you can find rudimentary ideas about evolution (in his study of fossils, he notes that different layers have different kinds, and that those at the bottom appear to be the oldest; he then notes that the Earth must be much older than his peers seem to think!). In medicine he noted that the arteries of people who suffer from heart attacks are hardened and thickly coated (another discovery that was not made until the 20th century).<p>There is also misconceptions about whether some of his designs worked. It was common back then (before IP laws) for inventors to insert crucial flaws into the schemes, with codified solutions that only they know, so that only they could build the product.<p>For example, his gliding machine, lacking a tail, will bomb. Unless you are astute enough to notice the pages where he writes down his theories about how birds use their tail to stabilize their flight!<p>Lo and behold, after adding a tail, the glider works: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bl.uk&#x2F;onlinegallery&#x2F;features&#x2F;leonardo&#x2F;glider.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bl.uk&#x2F;onlinegallery&#x2F;features&#x2F;leonardo&#x2F;glider.html</a><p>The list goes on. If you haven&#x27;t, I thoroughly recommend reading more about this man. He was not just a great painter and engineer, e was truly a once in a generation mind; and all without formal training -- just his imagination and thought experiments. Perhaps too far ahead of his time... imagine how far we&#x27;d be had further pursued his wild ideas!<p>His facsimiles are also available in print, and offer a fascinating insight into a one of a kind mind.
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notahacker超过 9 年前
This application letter in the style of Leonardo from a few years back is pretty special too: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1086527" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1086527</a>
wolfhumble超过 9 年前
&quot;Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.&quot;<p>El Greco (1541-1614) didn&#x27;t agree with him on that: When he was later asked what he thought about Michelangelo, El Greco replied that &quot;he was a good man, but he did not know how to paint&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;El_Greco#cite_note-Plaka47-49-24" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;El_Greco#cite_note-Plaka47-49-...</a><p>Not much of a reverence there! :-)<p>[Edit: Sorry for the mixup Leonardo! :-( Choose to let it stay so your comments don&#x27;t become orphaned]
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gwern超过 9 年前
I know it&#x27;s easy to joke about a SV twist, but there&#x27;s actually a novel, _Radiance_ by Carter Scholz ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2002-radiance" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2002-radiance</a> ), where da Vinci&#x27;s letter to Sforz is a big theme, as it encapsulates the troubled relationship of science to the military, which repeats throughout history and especially in Silicon Valley and the national nuclear labs descending from the Manhattan Project. It&#x27;s bleak, but it&#x27;s one of my favorite novels.
rodionos超过 9 年前
<p><pre><code> Also, I will make covered vehicles, safe and unassailable, which will penetrate the enemy and their artillery, and there is no host of armed men so great that they would not break through it. And behind these the infantry will be able to follow, quite uninjured and unimpeded. </code></pre> I assume this covers tanks?
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cvubrugier超过 9 年前
For those living in or visiting Paris, you can see this application letter (or a replica?) at the Pinacothèque de Paris until the end of the month.
neves超过 9 年前
The funniest thing was that he got the job... to be a lyre player for Scorza: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com.br&#x2F;books?id=_WyYeJOelPMC&amp;lpg=PT106&amp;ots=Funs0hRxvu&amp;dq=Ludovico%20Sforza%20leonardo%20da%20vinci%20lyre%20player&amp;pg=PT106#v=onepage&amp;q=Ludovico%20Sforza%20leonardo%20da%20vinci%20lyre%20player&amp;f=false" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com.br&#x2F;books?id=_WyYeJOelPMC&amp;lpg=PT106&amp;...</a><p>His engineering talents were ignored!
hathym超过 9 年前
This one is a real 10x engineer
stared超过 9 年前
I think that it is very alike current CVs&#x2F;motivation letters. I mean, instead of praising his fine arts accomplishments, he focused on mundane and practical skills (even if dirty), but which are directly useful for his prospective employer.<p>So, more in line of &quot;I am good at Angular, but if there is a need, I can use React&quot;, &quot;I have experience in ad optimization and SEO&quot;, &quot;I can optimize predictive algorithms for stock prices, so they can have an edge over competitors&quot;.
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talmand超过 9 年前
I&#x27;d like an explanation of how he could demonstrate #5, silent construction of tunnels, in the guy&#x27;s park or area of choice in a reasonable fashion.<p>I would think a good challenge on that is to ask he demonstrate by constructing a tunnel in secret that opens up in my current enemy&#x27;s fortification.<p>Of course, Leonardo could respond with &quot;I don&#x27;t tunnel for free!&quot;
j45超过 9 年前
Interesting that Leonardo, had to freelance and consult and invented and innovated on the side just fine.<p>Sure, Leonardo Da Vinci syndrome can come to mind, maybe he was trying to get the innovation out of him as quick as his teeming brain demanded.
peterjmag超过 9 年前
Cracks me up that he mentions painting as little more than a side note. &quot;Oh yeah and I paint sometimes too.&quot; This from the guy who went on to create what is arguably the most famous painting in the history of art.
edw519超过 9 年前
Aaah, feels like a good time for me to recycle an oldie but goodie from #245 here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;v25media.s3.amazonaws.com&#x2F;edw519_mod.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;v25media.s3.amazonaws.com&#x2F;edw519_mod.pdf</a><p>If it worked for Leonardo da Vinci, maybe it could work for me. The next time I’m looking for a job, I’ll try this:<p>“Most Illustrious Proprietor, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled developers of applications of business, and that the invention and operation of the said programs are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Company, showing your Management my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.<p>1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong functions and modules, adapted to be most easily ftp’d, and with them you may pursue, and at any time combine them with others, secure and indestructible by standard mean time to failure of hardware and denial of service, easy and convenient to compile and catalog. Also methods of unzipping and storing the data of the customers.<p>2. I know how, when a website is besieged, to shard data onto the cloud, and make endless variety of mirrors, and fault tolerant disks and RAIDs, and other machines pertaining to such concerns.<p>3. If, by reason of the volume of the data, or the structure of the btrees and its indexes, it is impossible, when conducting a search, to avail oneself of sub-second response time, I have methods for benchmarking every process or other function, even if it were interpreted, etc.<p>4. Again, I have kinds of functions; most convenient and easy to ftp; and with these I can spawn lots of data almost resembling a torrent; and with the download of these cause great terror to the competitor, to his great detriment and confusion.<p>5. And if the processing should be on the desktop I have apps of many machines most efficient for data entry and reporting; and utilities which will satisfy the needs of the most demanding customers and users and consumers.<p>6. I have means by secret and tortuous scripts and modules, made without leaving tracks, to generate source code, even if it were needed to run on a client or a server.<p>7. I will make secure firewalls, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the hackers with their utilities, there is no body of crackers so great but they would break them. And behind these, software could run quite unhurt and without any hindrance.<p>8. In case of need I will make big properties, methods, and collections and useful forms, out of the common type.<p>9. Where the operation of compiling might fail, I would contrive scripts, functions, routines, and other parameter driven processes of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of data entry, reporting, and storage.<p>10. In times of low revenue I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in maintenance and the refactoring of code public and private; and in guiding data from one warehouse to another.<p>11. I can carry out code in Javascript, PHP, or C, and also I can do in network administration whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may. Again, the intranet app may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of all your customers of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Google. And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your data center, or in whatever place may please your Businessperson - to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.”
kelvin0超过 9 年前
So Leonardo, could you please: &quot;Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.&quot;
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taytus超过 9 年前
&quot;I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.&quot; I love this line.
MarvinYork超过 9 年前
You need to specialize, Leo. Otherwise you&#x27;ll never be good at something.
kolbe超过 9 年前
Dear Leo: have you considered attending Stanford or MIT? You seem like an intelligent candidate, but your lack of academic pedigree would be a real turn off to our VC investors.
eternalban超过 9 年前
Sure, come over Leo and we&#x27;ll have a day long interview session. Btw, you will be required to carve a statue over the weekend [without pay].<p>[edit]
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JoeAltmaier超过 9 年前
Sounds like a geek who sketches wild ideas; then in his cover letter he fantasizes that he actually knows how to do those things. I hope they took those claims with a grain of salt!
jld89超过 9 年前
It seems to me Leonardo that you don&#x27;t have at least 15 years in any given field. I&#x27;m sorry but I&#x27;m looking for a <i>senior</i> engineer.
Mahn超过 9 年前
Turn back now. There&#x27;s no sensible discussion in this thread.
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scandox超过 9 年前
&quot;...shall please Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.&quot;<p>This is humility? Cool.
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