Ask HN: Anyone interested in a systems programming/math knowledge exchange?

3 points by bear_child ↗ HN
hi HN,

over the past few years, I have developed an interest in the technical details of how modern computer systems actually work. I mostly satisfy my curiosity by reading about computer security, reverse engineering, systems programming, embedded programming and stuff like that. Over the past few months, some of the basic skills have really started clicking for me^^ and to go further, I would really like to find a mentor to guide me and maybe work on some larger projects, preferably someone who has a background in computer security/systems programming.

In return, I would love to teach you some mathematics! I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics if you care about that kind of thing. I would be happy to try and teach you about any subject at any pace. I have a deep working knowledge of linear algebra, abstract algebra and calculus because I have been using these tools daily for the past 10 years. I also have a good understanding of more advanced subjects like representation theory and differential geometry if you are interested in that kind of thing.

Here is what I am envisioning: We can have 2, 1 hour sessions a week, one for mathematics and one for computers. Obviously, we will keep things casual, but hopefully we can dream up some small homework exercises based on what we discuss during the sessions.

My email is on my website, which you can find in my profile. hit me up if you are interested!

^^ For example, I am now somewhere between a beginner and an intermediate C programmer. Given a C procedure, I can translate it to assembly by hand, and given an assembly procedure which follows standard calling conventions and isn't too heavily optimized, I can figure out what it does.

3 comments

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I’m not quite what you are looking for, but I might ping you at some point looking to trade questions for questions :)

In the meantime, I thought you might appreciate this guy’s recent vids: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcRaa0AcYX32c0m8wJJHNWg/vid...

I’m definitely a fan of his blog https://fgiesen.wordpress.com