updated sporadically at best

A wise professor once told me to take advice with a grain of salt, as it is mostly highlights and wishful thinking. Structured procrastinat...

I've been at Carnegie Mellon University as an Assistant Professor for a little over a month now, and the students tell me we're ap...

I recently talked to an early PhD student trying to decide between two projects: one they were in love with, and one with a much longer lis...

It's my first semester being on the other side! Giving advice is so fun because it validates all of my life choices! I put together a l...

I recently had the following chat conversation with a Former Student about the possibility of doing a PhD in Computer Science*. FS: What...

Recently I attended the Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop , a program to introduce advanced undergraduates and early-stage PhD stude...

This post was a collaboration with Nadia Polikarpova and Shachar Itzhaky , done while we were supposed to be collaborating on other things...

This post was an experiment in simultaneous co-writing with Claire Le Goues , fellow CMU Computer Science professor, fellow undergraduate a...

Here you are, PhD admissions letters in hand, trying to decide how best to spend the next n years of your life. Congratulations! The part o...

I have been talking to many people recently about choosing schools, both for undergraduate and graduate education. Here is a compilation an...

When I first started graduate school, an older student told me about the importance of maintaining a feeling of incremental progress. Even ...

A couple years ago, I discovered what I thought was the shortcut to building research systems.  Forget good software engineering practice! ...

I was recently invited to be on a panel about being productive in graduate school.  This invitation surprised and flattered me.  I do not ...

As a result of hijacking a few recitations in MIT's 6.005: Software Construction course to evangelize Scala, I have come into contact ...

I fall asleep during lectures. I have even fallen asleep during one-on-one meetings. While I am not proud of my poor attention span, it h...

Over the years, I have gotten various e-mails asking me about what it is like to be a graduate student at MIT and how to apply.  I have com...

Several months ago, I spoke with a former schoolmate who is considering whether to leave Google to pursue a Ph.D. Since I like to believe ...