Dr. Samadzadeh is a computer science professor at Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. The following is an interview with her.
Maggie: What’s your favorite video game?
“It’s still Mario. I’ve played a lot of video games, but Mario is still my favorite video game. I played it with my children a lot, which makes it special.”
Akansha: What would you consider a computer scientist’s starter pack--necessary items that define a computer scientist?
“Well, not a flow chart or template. It used to be that when you wrote a program, you had a template. Oh, and of course, pen and paper.”
Maggie: Your starter pack would include your mug, you know. Characteristic items that define a student’s perception of you.
“Oh, you mean idiosyncratic items? I would say this mug is something I carry to scare beginners, to kind of give an aura of importance to what I’m doing. I’m joking, of course.”
John: What does the mug say?
“It says, “Are you crying? There’s no crying. There’s no crying in computer science.” From the baseball movie A League of Their Own.”
“Are you crying? There’s no crying. There’s no crying in computer science.”
“For me, not a pocket protector, and not the template. You could say I’m a pretty ordinary, I don’t want to say vanilla, but a pretty ordinary type of computer scientist. The way I present myself is my starter pack. This is me—and you can know who I am in five seconds when I walk to the classroom. You can know that I’m a computer scientist. With some people, their starter pack is their appearance. They want to look disheveled, to a certain extent. Some people want to be kind of quirky, but I don’t look quirky, though I may be quirky.”
“This is me—and you can know who I am in five seconds when I walk to the classroom. You can know that I’m a computer scientist.”
A: Could you take us through an average day in your life?
“I’m not a morning person. I can go to bed at four o’clock or six o’clock in the morning, but I can’t wake up at six o’clock in the morning. Which is a requirement, by the way, for a computer scientist. I usually wake up at, maybe, seven-thirty, eight o’clock if I have to be here by nine. I get here (OSSM) usually at nine, or ten. To be productive, I can’t just sit at my desk all the time and produce, so if I find that I can’t really accomplish a lot by sitting in my office, I’ll just pack up and go home. As soon as I go home, I just change and sit at my computer. That’s my typical day, which means I do the rest of my work at home, and I just sit and do work--prepare homework, write a program, do whatever it is I have to do, until ten. I have dinner at ten o’clock. And then I go to bed at two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning. Typical day.”
“I can be seated in front of my computer for four hours, five hours, and not even feel the passage of time.”
“When I’m working on a program, I have a really deep attention to detail and attention span. I can be seated in front of my computer for four hours, five hours, and not even feel the passage of time. So, sometimes my husband goes to work, comes back home, sees me at the computer, and says, “Have you moved?” and I say, “No.” and he says, “How can you do that?” and I say, “I’m deep into this program!” So, you could say it’s pretty boring, but I enjoy what I do.”
M: Do you ever write programs just for fun?
“Yes. Occasionally, I can have a program that I know from experience that writing it in a certain way is not going to yield much better results, but I do it for the heck of it anyway. And prove something that’s already proven, because it’s fun for me to prove it to myself.”
“You will know change becomes necessary when you become dissatisfied with the status quo.”
A: What kind of programs do you program outside of those that are just for fun?
“So for example, the scheduling program. You know that I do the scheduling for the school. It’s a program that I have written and rewritten and designed and redesigned for numerous times in the past 22 years. My intent is to seek perfection. Every few years, I get an itch that a program is not good, so I have to do something about it, which is a good habit to have. You will know change becomes necessary when you become dissatisfied with the status quo. You become dissatisfied with what it is you have accomplished and you may become irritated and not even know why you are irritated, until it becomes clear to you. This program that I originally wrote in 1994, was good enough--somebody could have said, “this is fine, leave it alone.” But I couldn’t leave it alone, because after a few years, I thought I could do better. So I rewrote it. And after a few more years, I knew could do better than that.”
“In a way, I’m an impulsive person--no, I am an impulsive person. When I get an impulse to change something, I have to change it. If I don’t change it, everything stops functioning. Whenever I get an impulse to change something, I say, “It’s time.” I sit down, and do it.”
M: Where do you think this impulsive need to change and revise, not just in rewriting your old programs, but as an attitude towards computer science--where did that come from for you? Was there ever a formative moment that made you take on that trait or was it always ingrained in you?”
“I always had it. I can come up with ten ideas a minute, I know none of the ten are good. The next minute, twenty ideas, and none are good. But when a good idea comes along, I know that it’s a good idea, and I have to impulsively act on it.”
“Have I ever had any unfinished code? No, never.”
A: Do you ever leave code unfinished? Or do you always see it through to the end?
“Unfinished code? Have I ever had any unfinished code? No, never. Because if it’s worth doing, I’ve done it. That’s the impulsive part of it, impulsive people--if you have something, you have to finish it. If you don’t, then something doesn’t feel right. Which means, no lunch, no dinner, no sleep. I have to get to a point--even when I’m driving, I’m writing code in my head. I’ve had some of my best ideas while driving.”
M: Uh oh.
J: Multitasking in the car.
“Multitasking is not a good idea! It’s been proven for a while that humans cannot multitask--I never believed my children when they said “I have to have my headphones on when I’m studying”--I knew it was never the case. There was a study done a few years ago by a cognitive scientist, that proved humans are not capable of multitasking, they are capable of multiplexing. The difference between multitasking and multiplexing from a computer point of view: if you are multitasking, it means you have to have multiple dedicated channels for processing information, which we do not have. We have one pipeline for processing information, but you can code switch between each task. So for example, whenever you are listening to music, you will notice that you had no recollection of hearing the music, because you were doing something else. When you are listening to music, you are not doing the studying. I’m not a multitasking person at all. I do one thing at a time.”
M: When did you first consider computer science as a career? Did you have any other career paths?
“I had other careers. I’ve always liked the humanities, culture, language, writing. There was a point in my life where I decided to give the humanities a try. I pursued a masters in Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication and I taught speech communication for two years after I got my masters. After that, I decided I liked the humanities, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to pursue. While I pursued my masters in communications, I was also doing my masters in computer science, and subsequently, my PhD in computer science. I taught English as a second language while I was in college. Which was a pretty lucrative career for a college student. I taught computer science at university for five years, and then I found OSSM.”
For the rest of this interview and a look into Dr. Samadzadeh’s career at OSSM and teaching philosophy, check out our sciences column.