> If you constantly unpacked everything for deeper understanding, you're never going to get anything done. If you don't unpack understanding when you need to, you'll do the wrong thing.
I really liked that quote. It's a great talk indeed.
I wish that the interviewer had more background in computer architecture. A lot of these questions wouldn't be asked if he took an architecture class in school.
Keller says a lot of interesting things in this interview that aren't followed up on. He calls for more substantial changes and architectural changes, I wonder what he thinks of spatial architectures.
I think the interviewer 'acts' dumb, because then the resulting video requires less pre-knowledge to understand.
The video goes from something that 100,000 people with a computer architecture background might watch to something that 10,000,000 people with a tech background might watch.
Selfishly, though, as someone who doesn't work at Intel/nvidia/AMD but is interested in architecture and digital design, it's frustrating how hard it is to find candid opinions from industry experts in comparison to software. Computer architecture just isn't the same in terms of attitude.
One of my favorite things about the computer architecture courses I took was to sit after class and ask my professors about something I'd read about, and more often than not they'd tell me that what I read was bullshit and nobody seriously considered it in the industry, or they'd tell me about something they were excited about that I hadn't heard of. It's hard to get a handle on where the industry is heading and what important people see as the next steps to iterate on.
A general conversation is probably more useful to most people, but there are a lot of times in this conversation where you get the feeling that Keller is right on the precipice of giving an insider prediction of the future, and the topic shifts instead. It's frustrating because those types of conversations are just straight-up difficult to find elsewhere.
It's has more depth than Friedman's podcast, I listen to it mainly for the computing history because they interview people about their careers. I hope they do another season soon
This podcast has a similar problem too. Right when you think the guest is into something, Cantrill rants about a tangential thing and the topic chances afterwards.
I normally enjoy Cantrill's rants, I watch his talks on YouTube solely for listening him rant, but it gets annoying when interviewing a guest.
Sorry about that -- still learning how to effectively interview! (If there are specific examples you can cite, that would actually be helpful; I am trying to get better at this.)
He asked plasma physicist Alexander Fridman (his father) to clarify what plasma is.
I love it.
Hearing Knuth, Penrose, Fridman's own definition of concepts of things I thought I knew is illuminating. Like allowing us norms to get a peek into their genius.
I really liked that quote. It's a great talk indeed.