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From my experiences as an intern I can say that it has been quite the opposite. You get to mingle with all the unassuming icons of CS and Machine Learning. In fact the problem for me was not that it was intimidating, but that it was too easy to put your foot in your mouth.

If you aren't paying attention to the name tags, you could well be explaining some C curiosity to Kerninghan, explaining longest common subsequence to someone who wrote the diff for unix. They would listen to you patiently and thank you. May be also subtly point out an error in your argument, while you never realize whom you were talking to, until much later.

The Kerninghan incident did not happen, but several similar incidents did.

Down voter: I assume you disagreed with my opinion and not that there is anything unsavory about the comment.

1 comments

That's one hell of a way to remember when to ask rather than tell though :)

What I thought was the most interesting bit about your comment is the 'unassuming icons of CS and Machine Learning', as a rule I've found that the real experts in a field are usually humble to a fault and approachable (with some exceptions), it's the people with a little bit of knowledge that will do whatever the can to make it seem like they're the experts, as though they've just read one of those 'how to bluff your way in to computers' books.

I don't think that Mr. Kerninghan runs around shouting "I made C! Bow to me, worms!". It's rather that other people make him the icon he is.

Yeah Mr Kernighan is quite an extreme case of being the opposite of "Bow to me, worms". It felt like he would be more comfortable being invisible. He had his (open) cube diagonally behind mine and I did not know who he was. To add to my embarrassment I mispelled his name. Now its too late to edit.

A conversation with a co-intern over lunch during the first week:

Friend:"Hey, do you know who he is ?"

Me (busy gorging awesome food): "No. But he got himself locked out and I had to let him in a few days ago. He was so profusely apologetic and thankful... I probably wouldn't have remembered otherwise. Checkout these steaks"

Friend: "Take a look at his name tag on his cube sometime."

And yes, more often than not humility co-habits with expertise.

I have a moderate hearing impairment, so nothing was as inspiring and humility instilling as seeing T.V. Raman work. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/business/04blind.html

Well, part of the reason that he doesn't do that is that he _didn't_ make C - not that he's that sort of person who would behave like that even if he had.