Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Unlocking our Future
summary
A live card trick mostly fails until an omitted flip flick step—found later on Stack Overflow and reinforced by ChatGPT—illustrates that recipes alone break under real conditions. The talk argues agents/IDL demos rehash REST/JSON‑WSDL patterns and lack semantics, warns against a reflex to throw away relational databases to meet 100x reads without query‑plan tuning, and traces how prime‑number facts (Fermat’s little theorem) underpin public‑key cryptography; mastery requires deeper foundational knowledge, historical context, and continuous, contextual learning.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction and magic metaphor
- 8:22Mastery beyond imitation
- 19:06Standing on giants' shoulders
- 33:17Problem vs solution space
- 47:04Foundations and continuous learning
- 56:17Call to action and conclusion
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