GTY - Great Teacher Yin
This is a story about me and Yin Wang. I just checked my Twitter account.
“@yinwang0 Oh, this is similar to Lisp. However, I don’t quite understand how useful this feature is. I know its introduction helps functional programming by returning multiple values, allowing a single function call to return a lot of data, like how
get-decoded-timereturns the year, month, day, etc. Indeed, the convenience in this regard is already quite powerful.”
I replied to this in Chinese on Yin Wang’s English account. The date was 2013/08/19.
I started sharing his blog with some friends on 2019/01/31 and continued sharing it with new acquaintances.
On June 11, 2023, I sent him an email titled “Sharing my experiment report with the teacher, ‘How I Wear Glasses with 150 Degrees Less Than the Actual Prescription to Reduce Myopia.’” He replied, and we discussed Astigmatism When the Eyeballs Reverse to the Normal Shape.
I reflected a lot on what he said.
Actually, on February 11, 2022, I was kicked out of the discussion group on Telegram by him. I sent the following message to him through another Telegram account:
“Hi, Teacher Yin Wang, sorry. I was mistakenly thought to be advertising in the group earlier. I was quite surprised, as I had just registered a new account and joined the group. I saw the chat history, and it’s true that there are still people seeking the cheapest glasses these days. Here is my purchase record. I really think it’s good and convenient online, which is why I recommended it. I’ve been following you for ten years and also recommend your blog and Weibo to everyone I know. Over the past two years, I have frequently followed your updates. Thank you, and I hope my ban can be lifted. I’ll just quietly observe in the group. It’s inconvenient to use my secondary account. Thanks!”
He responded:
“Whether others want to pursue cheaper glasses is their own business, you don’t need to worry about it. Our group is for studying myopia, not for discussing how to save money.”
He has shared almost everything he has learned. He truly is my best teacher. His best teacher is his professor, Daniel P. Friedman, who was born in 1944. He is a professor of Computer Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and has dedicated his life to learning.
Yin Wang wrote an article about his story with Daniel P. Friedman, allowing more people to learn about him. He now has 140k followers on Weibo. The title of his article is “GTF - Great Teacher Friedman”. So today, I am writing “GTY - Great Teacher Yin” to share a bit of our story. In today’s internet age, he is probably the best teacher for 50k people. I guess one-third of them will pay a lot of attention to him.
I have subscribed to his Substack for \$5 a month for the past two years. I feel deeply indebted to him, and the best way I can repay him is by sharing everything I learn through this blog to help others.
I regret that I didn’t listen to him more carefully. It wasn’t until 2024, when I realized that the house my wife and I bought in Guangzhou in 2022 had lost about 1 million in value, that I truly understood the impact. During my lowest moment, I happened to come across his Weibo one day and saw something like: “A bubble is a cancer to the socio-economy; once it bursts, it will spread and worsen throughout, harming everyone.” It struck me like lightning and explained why I had been hurt recently.
He had also pointed out countless times that China’s economy depends too much on real estate and large infrastructure projects. He often mentioned how the so-called expensive houses or residential communities in major Chinese cities have such poor quality compared to those built in foreign countries. I regretted not listening more carefully to what he was saying.
Despite this, I continued to fight by learning from him. I passed more courses in my associate degree and faced confidently tougher interviews during a difficult economic period.
He not only taught me knowledge, but also truly showed me how to think. He passed on the technique of catching fish from Daniel P. Friedman to me. Yin, thank you.