rgw@icdattcwsm:~/Blog$ cat 2024-11-13-Propositional-Logic.md

My first lesson in computer science was LOGIC GATES. This is probably true for most students of the Indian schooling system.

AND, OR, XOR, and weird operations with 1s and 0s, where 1 plus 1 is not 2, and 1 plus 0 is not.

A terrible idea. And probably why India rarely produces 'first-principles' driven engineers.

Ten years ago, when I decided to double down on learning to code, I started by spending 6 months undoing the damage the CBSE high school curriculum had done to my understanding of science. I was surprised to learn that, far from the CBSE curriculum's obsession with cramming thousands of patterns, the foundations of modern mathematics are not numbers, but propositional logic.

Before we can agree on whether 4 and 5 should follow 2 and 3, and in that order, it is essential to agree that propositions exist and are defined as statements that can either evaluate to TRUE or FALSE. It is also important to agree that TRUE and FALSE are the ONLY two mutually exclusive states in the context of a given proposition and that no third state exists. 

The lack of time the Indian education system dedicates to propositional logic is appalling. It was only by chance, through my decision to pursue law instead of engineering after high school, that I learned the art of propositional logic from early classical philosophers.

One way engineering colleges can redeem India's dismal schooling curriculum is by spending at least the first full year to 'un-screw' the damage done to mathematical foundations over the last 6 years.

In Silicon Valley, it is not uncommon for product-side folk to actively contribute to the code base. This is quite commonly the expectation, rather than the exception. On the other hand, in India, product-side people are often tasked with 'higher-level thinking', whereas engineers are seldom burdened with that expectation. 

This is inherently absurd, creates dependency issues (as well as unnecessary specialized hiring requirements), taking the organization's focus away from the only thing that matters - OWNERSHIP.

rgw@icdattcwsm:~/Blog$ cd ..