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What Hacker News says
- I'm sure the OP has already read his Skolnik given his comment but for those following along that's usually the best place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Radar-Handbook-Third-Merrill-Skolnik/...
- The Radar Handbook by Merrill Skolnik often comes up as a basic reference covering some of these topics, radar and radio being intimately related. Plus the pdf is usually around: http://airspot.ru/book/file/961/radar_handbook.pdf
- It's not circular reasoning: it's a conclusion based on observation. Several groups tried to solve each problem. All of the groups that tried to solve problem A have thus far failed (although some have made measurable progress) while some of the groups that tried to solve problem B succeeded despite having considerably less resources at their disposal. "Hard to solve" can be a somewhat difficult label to define, but those results are a strong indicator that problem A is harder to solve.
By your logic, every "impossible" problem could be solved easily if just DARPA would offer a small prize to whoever solves it. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work that way. There's a reason why DARPA chooses the tasks they do for their challenges: they spend a lot of time and effort identifying tasks that are highly likely to be amenable to novel solutions.
>Airplanes can change speed drastically, which is at high speeds about as effective as stopping.
Incorrect, on two counts. First, not all airplanes can change speed "drastically." Second, it is not as effective at preventing a collision as stopping. If both cars in an impending collision stop (and in many cases, even if only one of them stops), a collision becomes impossible. On the other hand, there are a lot of situations where deceleration merely delays, but does not prevent collision. That has value, but it's not as good.
>And no, you don't get to say collisions are hard to avoid because 3 dimensions are hard to calculate, making that not a solution.
I never said it was "not a solution," but I definitely do get to say that it's a much harder problem to solve. Here's the steps you have to perform to avoid a collision:
1: Detect an object.
2: Track the object to determine it's course and speed.
3: Compare the object's course and speed to yours to determine how likely a collision is.
4: If the probability of a collision is unacceptably high, determine a change of course and/or speed which will reduce the probability of collision to an acceptable level. If the probability of collision is already acceptably low, return to step 2.
5: Maneuver to change course and speed accordingly, then return to step 2.
If you are moving in three dimensions and the objects with which you might collide are moving in three dimensions, step 2 is hard to do accurately. (Unless you've studied radar tracking, you probably don't appreciate exactly how hard, but if you're genuinely interested, Skolnik's Radar Handbook is a good place to start.) The less accurate you are at step 2, the harder steps 3, 4, and 5 become, because you have to deal with more uncertainty. Is that really where the other object is? Is that really where it will be in twenty seconds? How certain are you of that? How certain are you that there really is something even there at all? If you're wrong in one direction, you'll have a midair; if you're wrong in the other direction, you'll perform some extreme maneuver for absolutely no good reason.
- OK. It's obvious but maybe only in hindsight...
I started programming computers when I was 10-11 yo. And that was with punch cards on a mainframe. How did I get access to that? Interest, good parents and luck.
Bill Gates was a lot like me in that sense - he'd been involved using a time-share computer system all through high school (just as I was also).
So he (like me) already had his first 10,000 hours of experience long before he got to Harvard (or I got to engineering school). It was already a 2nd nature skill. Ditto for me for electronics - started at the same age. Ditto for chemistry - started at the same age.
So that's how I was the 4.0 curve-breaking in engineering school - I'd already been exposed to all of it just without some of the math and corner-knowledge. I got jobs over summers doing engineering straight out of high school.
That included one summer job on a Naval Test Range operating and fixing radar systems - I'd already learned about similar systems through shortwave and amateur radio combined with my electronics building. I was already reading Skolnik's "Radar Handbook" book (and knew it existed) by sophomore year in high school. Note that I had ZERO romantic life and didn't lose my virginity until university plus I've been married and divorced twice - there's always a price - NOTHING is free.
In the case of Bill Gates, I'm guessing he realized at Harvard "I'm not learning anything here; I already know what I want to do and even how to do it". Because he indeed could. Plus his family had money so he had options most people never have.
That's not the only or even best path but it's a path.
I "did time" in government, military and Fortune 20 corporate with my experience (which was ALWAYS a major career advancing asset) so when I decided to move to entrepreneurship, I'd learned a ton about economics, organization behavior, social interactions in addition to how to do things like project management, finance, etc. on top of multiplying up my technical knowledge and skills. That's another path.
There is no "right path" BTW.
You can NOT become successful just by practicing Cargo Cult behaviors of other successful people (e.g. Elizabeth Holmes cargo-culting on Steve Jobs by wearing the same kind of black turtleneck sweaters apparently for karma). You have to commit to something and enjoy the ride with all gusto. That's the only thing that works (though you never get a guarantee on success either - just table stakes)
However, being conscientious and persistent are probably worth slavishly emulating. Those leverage well.
- Is there an equivalent to the Skolnik books[1] for LIDAR? I keep applying radar principles to LIDAR, but it seems like the function is significantly different if it includes things like a "pseudorandom code sequence".
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/Radar_Handbook.html?id=...
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