Slashdot Mirror
Michael Bloomberg: You Can't Teach a Coal Miner To Code
theodp (442580) writes "Gigaom reports that while speaking at the Bloomberg Energy Summit on Wednesday, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he gives 'a lot of money to the Sierra Club' to help close dirty coal plants, but added that as a society we have to 'have some compassion to do it gently.' Subsidies to help displaced workers are one option, said Bloomberg, while retraining is another option. But, in a slight to the tech industry's sometimes out-of-touch nature with workers outside of Silicon Valley, he said retraining needs to be realistic, 'You're not going to teach a coal miner to code,' argued Bloomberg. 'Mark Zuckerberg says you teach them to code and everything will be great. I don't know how to break it to you... but no.'"
Coding is not for everyone, and simply putting everyone into tech-training is not the answer (it will just create another problem).
...requires foundations laid down in the 5th and 6th grade of school, mostly math, but also the interest and desire to learn. Some people get it, some don't get it. So it's more accurate to say that some coal miners may be able to learn to code: Watch out for those blanket generalizations, they bite back.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
You can't teach an old dog new tricks
Yes, they're not going to be designing algorithms, but there is plenty of grunt work to do too. There is a reason the term 'computer janitor' exists.
Not only is it hard for people to learn new skills later in life, but coding is something that requires a certain aptitude. Sure, some coal miners might be able to learn how to code, but I would think very few of them could. If they could, they wouldn't be working in a coal mine. There's plenty of people who chose programming as a career and yet still can't program their way out of a paper bag (fizz buzz), I don't think the chances of most people from non-technical fields are good at all.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Does Michael Bloomberg know how to code? In fact, does he actually know how to do anything, or does he have people for that?
cause we all know there aren't enough project managers who could coal mine
The point I take from it is it's silly to think that all you do to fix the skills/jobs gap it so send people to school. Some people will have the ability to make huge transitions in careers, but most will be looking for equivalent work. It's how sociology works. You have to look at demographics and odds, not best wishes and theories.
That being said, I hope this is a lesson to communities, cities, and states that throw all their economic eggs into one industrial basket. No matter how good the gettin' is, you're screwed if that industry takes a big hit.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hmmm, isn't this the same argument that Southern plantation owners used to rationalize keeping slaves? Basically that there are certain groups of people who are not intelligent enough to better themselves. The only demographic that seems to have proven they are incapable of comprehending modern technology is politicians.
How is this shocking? People have different temperaments, skills and interests.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Can you teach a politician to produce something of value?
We should consider clean coal plants and dump Bloomberg not so gently. CAGW is a scam....
No. You won't be able to teach every coal miner to code. Just like you won't be able to teach every coder to mine. Everyone has different skills and aptitudes, and what they can be trained to do is according to that. Some will be able to transfer, just not everyone. Nor do you want to - we still need coal.
You can't teach a coal miner how to code?
That's stupid, of course you can. Lots of people can and do change careers towards programming later in life. My friend's mother dropped out of accounting and picked up web application design in her late fifties, and developed a small but successful consultancy. Unless you're writing code for the space station or physics analysis or something similar that requires years of domain experience, I still sometimes can't get over how easy some of this stuff is. As a programming latecomer your main problem is ageist stereotyping by jerks like Bloomf*cker and Zuckerf*ck, not learning the material.
Bloomberg as always is full of it. Coal miners aren't dumb people, they are far from it. I suggest you try and find the Spike TV mini-series entitled "Coal." You will learn quite a bit about mining coal from it.
sudo mod me up
Enough said. As more and more people become familiar with it, people would realize how easy it is to code. The standard canard has been women don't code, or they don't code well. We have hired women coders and they do as good a job as men.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'd like to interpret Bloomberg's statement to mean that it isn't realistic (or even desirable) to expect every blue-collar worker to be able to retrain in a highly technical field. Sure, some would be able to make that transition, but it's like asking programmers if they would have the desire to become physicians. It's not that people aren't smart or dedicated enough to do it, so much as it is the idea that a career in the tech sector is not some universal solution to everyone's job woes.
I also think that people who advocate such statements (very often, they are CEOs of tech companies) tend to have ulterior motives: they want to be able to pay their workers less money for more (and higher quality) output. While you might not blame them for having such a goal, I find it disingenuous how they wrap this desire up in some feel-good, altruistic sounding wish for more coders, more people to learn programming and computer skills, as if this is something that will create jobs. It doesn't work that way. Instead, it increases competition for existing jobs. These companies keep complaining about how there aren't enough skilled workers to fill the positions they have, but what they really mean is that there aren't enough *CHEAP* skilled workers. That's why they push this propaganda about H1B, teaching programming to kids, and fantasies about coal miners taking off their hardhats and learning Python and C#.
if you are transitioning from one skill/job to, say, software, you'll probably be over 30, and maybe over 40.
just tell me this: who would hire an aging programmer, just starting out, when you can more easily abuse immigrants and h1b's who are young and will work overtime for free and deny the value of a personal life?
we have a major problem with companies not being socially responsible. they don't care that an aging population is being wholesale REJECTED by corporate america and worse than that, local US born and raised citizens are second class, now; with imported labor or outsourced labor being first class.
an idea: give tax incentives or other incentives for companies that go out of their way to hire locals/americans and even bigger bonuses to companies that go out of their way to hire older (over 35, cough) people. not saying you punish those companies who don't; but you give them extra benefits so as to motivate them.
companies only look out for their bottom line. they would sell their mother into slavery for a higher share price. the only way to keep a balance of social responsibility and prosperity is to give incentives, to guide better behavior.
(I'm over 50, have been looking for work for a while now, and I'm getting nothing; no interviews and certainly no offers. I have a lot of experience and a good work ethic, but it does no one any good if the companies routinely dismiss anyone with more than 2 pages of resume experience, since they are seen as 'too expensive' to hire).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It also requires a stronger government than a low tech world - you don't need an airforce if you don't know how to fly. You don't need a navy if you don't know how to build ocean going ships. Technology is the real reason why government spending has been going up. The new sciences need government spending, not private spending.
As for the idea that coal miners can't learn to code, there is some truth to that. Technology requires people that can THINK, not just move. It requires a certain kind of thought as well. But people retire. And there are lots of people on the edge - that is not all coal miners lift a pick axe. Some of them run huge dump trucks and huge shovels. Some coal miners are safety wardens, looking for methane.
I guarantee you someone that knows how to drive the huge, dangerous mining equipment can also learn how to code. Safety wardens as well.
The best part about technology is that no matter how 'quick' the change appears, it actually takes decades. There are first implementers and holdouts. Combine that with some retirements and a transition can be accomplished smoothly - as long as idiots don't try to hold everything back until it is too late and change hits you like a tidal wave, instead of a slow tide coming in.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Can you teach them to code? Yes.
Will they likely ever be suitably proficient at it? No
It takes years to code proficiently. Take a coal miner at age 30. He's already on the wrong side of the coding/tech worker age bell-curve. Give him five years to suitably master coding to where a company could really use his ability. That puts him at 35. Now he's -really- on the wrong side of the curve.
Not only will he have his age working against him, but he'll also have the problem of his resume. How does digging dead and partially burned plants out of the ground qualify him to work at a tech company as a decently paid programmer?
I'm sorry, but I think he's correct this time.
-A.C.
The headline misquotes Bloomberg. He didn't say you *can't* teach a coal miner to code, he said you won't. And he's right. While it's certainly *possible* for some older adults to radically change their career paths into tech jobs, the majority of us lack the motivation and mental flexibility, and society doesn't want to spend the money to help us make the switch. It's just not going to happen. Bloomberg's overall point is dead on: we need to come up with ways to allow people to gently move into new careers that make the most of their talents, rather than just firing them, throwing a Javascript for Dummies book at them, and expecting them to become the next Zuckerberg.
That said, Bloomberg's got a pretty 19th century view of what coal mining is. Since it's all done with heavy machinery and robots these days, it's a pretty technically demanding job.
I don't know about Bloomberg in particular, but it now seems almost common wisdom among the elite that college isn't for everyone and now skills like programming aren't either.
While those words are true, what they mean in practice is that 'not for everyone' means 'not for the poor and working class' (poverty is a strong predictor of college eduction). I bet Bloomberg's kids go to college and he wouldn't doubt his non-technical buddies' ability to learn to code based on their job descriptions
What happened to the American Dream? Where is the land of opportunity, where anyone can succeed if they work hard enough? Apparently, Bloomberg et al believe that only the elite live in that land and that we should abandon that dream for the working class and poor. Why don't they just accept their places?
My boss (IT Manager) has a masters in Coal Mining engineering from Colorado School of Mines. He switched over to IT at the mine back in the early 80's to code an application that maximized the amount of coal loaded into a train car to increase profit margins. The money spent on the application development payed for itself within a month due to the increased efficiency of loading the train cars.
...hope that I never have to learn how to mine coal. Despite what Heinlein said about specialization, I'm much better at writing code than at mining. (And yes, I did a little recreational mining a couple of decades ago when I was into mineral collecting as a hobby.)
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16440126
Possible . With a lot of effort a team of bright minds could teach hulk hogan to do some java . But then , who's gonna fight the undertaker??
Any coal miner could put out code of the same quality as Mark Zuckerberg. (No, I have no source to reference. This fact is self evident!)
There isn't that much coding work in the world. High demand is not infinite demand.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
There's no reason to train every worker to "code", we don't suffer from a lack of coders, we suffer from a lack of "developers", and no 6 week software bootcamp is going to turn someone with no programming experience into a developer. Besides, the average coal miner is probably not going to want to sit in front of a computer all day (many in my family work in the heavy construction industry, and I am 100% certain that although you could probably teach my brother to code, you're not going to be able to teach him to sit behind a desk all day).
But there are plenty of other jobs that you *could* teach a former coal miner to do -- not everyone in the economy needs to be a coder any more than everyone needs to be an auto mechanic just because we all (well, mostly) drive cars.
Bloomberg has a valid point. It's also the reason most people can't be fashion models ("he's so hot right now").. There is also something to be said for nerdly predispositions and interests, which goes a long way in determining whether someone can become a successful coder.
On a more general note, Bloomberg has struggled far more to "earn" his billions and has seen far more of the world than Zuckerberg, who in turn strikes me as an incredibly naiive, deer-in-the-headlights, I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-here, I-just-won-the-nerd-lottery sort of person: his proclamations simply don't carry that much weight.
I'd rather write
Host files at midnight
Than pass my days
Hacking at lignite
BURMA SHAVE
cat
You think this could have been said some thirty years ago?
Actually, I do remember on a Charlie ROse show, Charles Murray said something like: "Not very many people with 80 IQs can be successful mathematicians." [1]. He then went on to say, "Fortunately most people with 80 IQs don't want to be mathematicians."
Of course everyone was trashing Murray at the time.
[1] Not to conflate coal miners with people with 80 IQs.
So retrain them to mine tantalum and rare earth elements. I'm sure we can get "Mined in the USA" and "Conflict-free certified electronics" going, amirite?
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
For once, I agree with Bloomberg. It's unreasonable to expect everyone to reup their skills and become a programmer. That's not realistic and it only adds more problems. If 'custodial engineers' were to drop everything and become programmers, who'd do the dirty work that they do?
I'm at a loss here, I can't paint worth a damn. It would be pointless for me to give up my day job to become an artist.
Not everyone needs to understand how to program a computer. Not everyone needs to know how to build a house. Not everyone needs to know how to pilot a plane. They are all great skills to know, but there's only so much mastery a person can obtain.
Let's try to evaluate this in a non-partisan grown up way. By coding, Bloomberg is referring to America's move to eliminate all blue collar work by sending it abroad to China and Brazil, and to create great opportunities for academic pursuits, financial services and intellectual property. If there was a strong manufacturing sector, miners could be retrained to work in factories, with all the health benefits over mining, but those jobs got exported to make the multi-national companies richer and more powerful. Since large companies now own the American political process, all political efforts are concentrated on making the rich more rich at the expense of the working people.This doesn't end well.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
I think Bloomie meant than any one job category isnt going to a panecea for unemployement. That is you cant teach and motivate everyone to be coders or health workers or roustabouts. However, its dumb to say that any one particular profession cant learn another. A given miner may could become a great programmer. But not all of them.
Closing coal-fueled power plants doesn't just impact the folks who dig the coal out of the ground. What about the economic impact the closed mines have on the truck and rail industries? Or the towns and counties? How about the neighboring but unrelated industries who, because King Coal is now dead, find their rail connection being abandoned because without the mines the branchline serving their factory isn't sustainable? How about the mining supply companies, the local diners and stores?
Nothing exists in a vacuum. Close a single mine - or an entire class of mines - and a whole web of interconnected businesses and people are impacted. Just look at what happened when propane and fuel oil eclipsed the anthracite coal industry.
Zuckerberg says you can teach anyone to code.
Mayor of NYC says you can't.
News at 11.
I think we really need to get Morgan Freeman's take on this issue.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I spent a decade as a coal miner in my youth. I even earned a license as a blasting supervisor. And I can code. I don't code for a living, but yeah, I can code. I find the implication that coal miners are somehow too dumb to learn anything else mildly offensive. Many coal miners are the product of a family that has done the same work for generations, and just kind of inherited the job. Same with farmers. But that doesn't mean they are incapable of doing anything else.
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
I can code in multiple languages on multiple systems and have been doing it for a shit load of years .. and right now I am sitting in front of OSX, Windows 7 and Debian systems.
But suppose my choice of career was suddenly cut short for some reason (the singularity?) what would it take for me to learn a bunch of manual skills in order to become a productive member of society? And to learn them to the same skill level I have now?
Basically I would be fucked as I have spent all these years adapting to intellectual challenges that rely on understanding arcane facts about specific systems, and then shuffling that knowledge around to find oval solutions to problems. I chose this career path because I was not enamored with the idea of manual labor. Actually I take that back .. I chose this career because I was enamored with the intellectual challenges. So I know I would suck at being a coal miner or a machinist or a welder or barrista compared to people who willingly have taken on those career paths.
The mythical coal miner to coder transition would suck for the same reasons that me being a coal miner would suck
So in general I agree with Bloomberg
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I bet you could re-train them to assemble routers, servers, and other infrastructure necessary to support the Internet economy.
Mr. Bloomberg: Instead of blowing money on the Sierra Club, how about investing in this country to bring back our manufacturing base? You know, the foundation that drives our economy but folks like you aggressively sought to outsource to "lower costs"?
Thanks
Is there a segment of the population that these people don't feel the need to belittle and crap on if they're not one of them?
Oh, and you cheerleaders that they call the "grass roots", don't fool yourself, they see you as fodder for their own selfish ends too.
The only people worth heeding are those who want to make you independent. Bloomberg wants to break your legs so he can sell you a government crutch.
But he did own a tech company (Bloomberg L.P.) and that's how me made his millions. He was savvy businessman.
If you retrain coal miners to code, all you're doing is increasing the already-superabundant supply of coders, reducing their value on the jobs market.
Train coal minors to become data minors! Lots of jobs in that field looking through cell phone metadata, etc.
Job security!
I'm sure Mr. Bloomberg is an expert on coding and on teaching people to code.
The average coal miner makes $81,000 a year: www.nma.org/pdf/c_wages_state_industries.pdf
Something tells me that a lot of modern coal miners are intelligent enough to learn how to code. I wonder through... can you teach a coder how to mine?
It seems like an attempt to paint coal miners as dumb or dim witted. Couldn't be further from the truth. Actually few coal miners can afford to be dumb if they want to see a few more birthdays.
So I'd wager it would be quite possible to teach coal miners to code, I've never tried. What I do know, from experience, is that it's impossible to teach managers to produce any useful code.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seriously, GPE can convert the coal to methane at a costs of around 6-7/MMBTU. That can be sold to Europe and Asia. And yes, Europe will buy it since Russia is now holding them hostage. And in Asia, it will sell for 3-4x what it costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Bloomberg is just as wrong as Zuckerberg. Coal along with other fossil fuels will be with us for a while because they produce energy more cheaply and practically for many American's who also cannot afford to invest in new energy alternatives. Not only can America not afford to displace more workers, but those workers make good money and right now contribute to paying taxes. You displace them, and they become a liability in unemployment benefits, retraining costs and potentially affecting other workers in their local area who may lose jobs because of the coal jobs not being replaced by other work. I don't see coder's working in West Virginia? These people have worked with their hands through generations of families. You don't just take that away. Zuckerberg is another Liberal who has a agenda to look like he is saving the World. Yet, he knows nothing about how to do it.
That being said, I hope this is a lesson to communities, cities, and states that throw all their economic eggs into one industrial basket.
That one basket represents a complex historical mix of geography, manpower, markets and resources. If you have mineral resources you mine and process metals. If you have coal, oil or natural gas, you process coal. oil or natural gas. There is no easy transition to a mixed economy.
Do you notice how the people trying to teach everybody to code are business schmucks who just want more cheap labor? Yes, please, everybody, learn to code so you, too can be replaced by H1-B visa workers because you won't work in San Fran on $40k/year.
They are not trying to help us by teaching everyone to code. They're trying to depress our wages even more.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I have watched a lot of David Attenborough but that doesn't make me a zoologist or archeologist. A well-informed-by-pop-media layperson is not the same as someone who does a thing.
And no, Dwarfputing does not mean you have mastered both worlds.
Which is why communities lock in. My point is you still need to invest in a mixed economy while you can and NOT when you have to.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I find the implication that coal miners are somehow too dumb to learn anything else mildly offensive.
Where, exactly, was that implied, outside of a few AC d-bags that you're not posting a reply to? The point is that Zuck's a dipshit, and his Patrick Starr "problem solving"("Take all the miners, and teach them to code") is imbecilic.
You just need to give the teacher a $100 gift card for each coal miner they "re-train".
My brother-in-law drove truck and had never used email without assistance, and he had not former technical education or experience. He went back to school for a year and I spent a good amount of time training him over a couple years. He's been working successfully as an IT Administrator for several years now, making more money than anytime before and he still has room to grow. He's an adult with a teenage child. Yes he's ambitious and not everybody will succeed in such a way. It's worth putting out there because people in this industry seem to believe that this scenario isn't likely or possible. I accept that some people don't have the aptitude or attitude for it, but I think they're underestimating the percentage that can achieve something similar. If the intellectual/education gap is too much of a divide for coal workers, then shouldn't we consider training for their children as a mitigation? I'll accept that it's expensive, but I have to disagree about it being out of reach. Of course (going off-topic, but it has an impact), this is far more difficult when we're filling the entry level jobs with imported labor, as I see abundantly in my segment of the industry...
It seems like some of the less deep thinkers these days get confused by our societal value of equality.
When the founding fathers said said "all men are created equal", they meant that the government should treat everybody the same out of general fairness.
They didn't mean that Dr J and Albert Einstein have the same attributes.
Anyhow, you most likely won't be successful retraining most coal miners to write code.
But it's not much of a stretch for most coders, particularly brogrammers like Marky Z, to learn to shovel shit.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
we should start to teach codes to code - or at least give it a try!
I wish people would stop talking about job training as the elixir for displaced workers. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of supply and demand should understand that if you train a million displaced coal workers to do something else, the value of that skill is going to be decreased significantly by the newfound supply. Of course, Silicon Valley understands which is why they're such vociferous advocates.
It's clear that not every job lost can be replaced with a programming job. To imagine a single rather small profession as the profession into which coal miners, plant engineers that become redundant due to equipment that breaks less often and so on isn't sensible.
I don't feel that the matter is that coal miners aren't intellectual enough, but that the need for software isn't infinite. Finding productive work for people is going to require finding completely new ways for humans to contribute and to do so is going to be very difficult. Trying to let people who have been laid off study and learn something new is a good path for a society, but I don't believe that there is enough programming to be done for programming to be sufficient.
During the so called New Economy bubble I worked at an ISP and development shop. We tried to get more developers, but this was harder than expected. While the average CS student was more or less able to code, retrained ex-lorry drivers and bricklayers sent to us by the employment center where all unable to conceptualize problems maybe they would have been able to type in things we specified, but creative thinking was not their string side. Like, not everyone can run like Usian Bolt. Therefore, we need jobs for everyone suitable for their abilities.
You also can't teach some Kewl White Boys how to code, either - over the decades, I've had to deal with utter *crap*, with inconsistancies, lack or piss-poor error handling, and on and on.
Current pet peeve: a few months ago, I had to build BioPerl as an rpm at work. It took, on and off, about a month - some modules had hard-coded /usr/perl, /usr/bin/perl/ /usr/local/bin/perl into them; then there were the documented circular dependencies....
Oh, and if you want to teach everyone to code, and give them a job (yours?), then who are you going to get to fix your car, or your plumbing?
mark
First, let's see if we can teach those who call themselves developers to code. Based on some of the source code I have seen, we have a problem.
It's the TOTAL number of high-paying jobs that's important, and people tend to gravitate to what they like.
You seem to overlook the fact that if there are high paying jobs there must, by definition, be low paying jobs as well. Not everyone can have high paying jobs simultaneously anymore than everyone can have an above average IQ. In the long run economic growth can benefit everyone, rich and poor alike. In the short run however it is something close to a zero sum game. If you make one person wealthier you are making another poorer at least temporarily. If you have a larger pool of high paying jobs, in the short run you necessary are making the pot of money available to lower wages workers smaller.
You might be able to implement policies that benefit most/all people in the long run but there will be some short term pain in the process.
I could never imagine working nine to five on an auto assembly line, but that's what people did 50 years ago at GM, for $20 an hour before the cheap labor conservatives came along and crapped in the punch bowl.
People get paid that much TODAY to work on some lines at GM. $20/hour is roughly $40K/year. Not exactly a huge salary in the US these days. There are plenty of assembly workers that get paid well in excess of $20/hour.
Furthermore it isn't "cheap labor conservatives" that limit pay at the automakers. You could have had to most generous liberal management you could envision in charge of GM and Chrysler and they still would have gone bankrupt. What primarily limits direct labor pay is competition. Labor is a huge percentage of the cost of building vehicles. That means that production will gravitate towards locations with cheaper labor costs. Ford, GM and Chrysler in years past agreed to labor contracts that were simply not economically sustainable in the long run. When new competitors with lower labor costs entered the market, the Big Three were unable to adjust their cost structure to match. (Note, this isn't an anti-labor screed. Management shoulders a huge portion of the blame here) Labor costs had to come down and that ultimately meant some combination of lost jobs and lower pay rates. It was simply economic "physics" at work - a reversion to the mean.
Maybe only 50,000 out of population of 1.2 billion can create anything resembling a computer program.
I am so sorry I maligned you and villified you for taking a third term when we had term limits. I'll even burn my Big Gulp jug. I see the error of my ways and that error has a name; Bill de Blasio. I know you left us, just to remind us how truly awful government can be. Now that we've learned our lesson, please come back!
I don't care for Bloomberg but he is correct, I asked a question here a while back and no one answered, most likely because it sounded absurd.
"Have you ever seen anyone start coding successfully at 40 or at 50?"
No one answered that question, which is an answer in its self.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Okay. So, honestly, look at the people who work the mines. Not the engineers or supervisors, but the bulk of the 9-5 guys. What percentage of them, in less than a year's worth of school/retraining, would be really good coders - the kind you could put on a project in an office in SF and expect to get a similar result to someone who's first chosen profession from their teens was coding and spent 4-6 years in post-secondary school learning the art, science, and math of coding?
I say this because Bloomberg is probably right. I'll bet at least 80% of them can't make up for lost time in a year or less (which, if you want to completely fund their retraining, including costs and living expenses is going to run towards $100k each). I'd bet more than 50% couldn't do it in 4 years. I say that because more than 50% of the general population wouldn't make it, and coal miners are no different.
As you said, coal miners are the product of their families, and often families where higher education is neither valued nor rewarded. It's not about better or worse, smart or stupid, it's about expectations and preparation. Take a 35 year old who hasn't done more than 3rd grade math in the last 20 years and put them into a math-intensive program. Most will fail miserably. Doesn't matter if they're a farmer, a coal miner, an automotive assembler, a construction worker, a retail cashier, or a salesman.
Bloomberg's words may feel like a put-down, but they're about as straight forward realistic as it gets. It's hard for "smart" people to understand that mere's applying yourself to a higher field of study often isn't enough to master it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I bet it would smooth a lot the learning curve if we started them first coding in GoldMine.
Anyone can be a code monkey. Being a miner requires a hell of a lot of physical strength and mental fortitude.
My smartest and most inspiring primary school teacher was a Cambridge grad yet once a coal miner (in the '60s in north England, so don't think high tech). He taught because he felt it was important to educate, but he mined because that was what the community he came from did.
Most people employed as coders are provably untrainable as coders.
Everyone knows the best coders are waitresses.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They may not learn how to code, but there are lots of other jobs they can take. Even someone who is only good with manual labor can do carpentry, landscaping, construction, plumbing, agriculture, welding, and tons of other jobs; and there are plenty of job openings in those areas.
You cant take anyone and just say "thou shall now code". Doesn't work like that. But coal mining is not about swinging the pickaxe these days, coal miner will have lots of useful skills that can be utilized in variety of industries. People lose jobs, change jobs and careers all the time. People are great at learning new skill sets and updating their old ones when they put their mind to it. So if you find your job gone - adapt.
Our society's problems aren't going to be corrected by listening to disconnected billionaires.
Speaking as a former gold miner and now a programmer, I call bullshit.
captcha: hapless
I am sure if VB6 is still around instead of the VB.net. Most of the unemployed coal miners will be employ by companies that required quick and dirty solutions that just works. My company still have a VB6 program written by a guy with little education and very little programming experiences. He learnt VB6 in a week and create that simple program in 4 weeks. That simple program have been running for more than 10 years. The OOP have created unnecessary complexity and increase the learning curve. Many real world situation just need a simple approach to solve very simple problem.
Out of my mind. Back in 5 mins.
you can't teach a nigger to think, this many is a fucktard. He needs to be in prison rather than instead attacking Democcrats. He hates the people in WV that usually vote Democrat. As he said, he wants them to lose their jobs and starve to death. His CONservative kind is disgusting. Obama needs to do something about him.
Mining has problems; no doubt better technology can lessen the impact of those problems. Surely there is a ton of opportunity there. We need the raw materials for energy and we need more efficient ways to get them out of the ground. There is plenty to do, people at all ends of the scale of intelligence, physical strength, emotional depth, personal charm etc. etc. etc. can be gainfully employed doing what needs to be done for their own region of the country.
There is absolutely no need for a one-sized fits all "just teach them to code" statement from anyone, ever.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
It is even harder to tech politican to code.
Agreed. Jobs are driven by demand, not by desire. There is huge demand for coal mining in West Virginia. There are very few other jobs. So it is mine coal or starve. Or move to another state, which is easy for some and hard for others. Family bonds and a claim to one's "home" can be very strong for many people. Some parts of WV still don't have indoor plumbing; I imagine those same locales don't have high-speed broadband either. If they retrain to be programmers, are they going to find a work-from-home job without any prior experience and a whole lot of coal mining activity on their resume? A resume showing years in an unrelated field is already a road block for many career changers. Trying to do work where there is no demand for it doesn't seem possible without a "big government" jobs program. Maybe they can relocate the Obamacare IT offices to WV and see how that works out.
But instead of an enlightened, Roddenberry-esque future with time freed up by automation to pursue creativity, the politics of the evergreen American Puritans will ensure those without a job will still be perceived and treated like sub-human trash, harassed and killed by corporate Pinkertons called 'the cops'..
This makes me thinkof the old saying about "when you assume..."
What makes Bloomberg think coal miner's can't learn to code?
Would he say the same thing about other professions? Which ones?
It may be that many coal miners are such because they happen to live in coal mining country, and that is the opportunity open to them.
He should read Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc) and meditate on it a bit.
Personally, I was classified as a displaced worker in 1993 when the gold mine in which I worked was shut down, and was retrained in "Applied Computer Studies." I've been a technical writer (for a short time) and a programmer ever since (Delphi, C#, and Java, primarily, along with the "web" skills of HTML, CSS, and jQuery; various databases, too, such as SQL Server, Oracle, Firebird, SQLite, etc.)
could move to Minecraft?
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I'm pretty sure that your average coder would quickly meet their end if they were to find themselves in a working coal mine.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
IT needs trades schools like how it is for stuff like miners and others.
It's right there are people who do really good in tech / trade school setting but don't learn good in a old fashioned college system. Also they may need to put in a full 2-4 years just to get the degree out then say just take 0.5-2 years in class. Why make some with 20+ years working take 1-2 years of filler / fluff / general classes just to learn a new skill?
The energy industry is moving away from coal because it's a dirty source of power and for now natural gas is cheap and plentiful. Coal power plants are being converted to burn natural gas instead.
This isn't just an issue with coal. All kinds of well paying jobs for unskilled labor are disappearing. Technology is actually part of the problem.
That's what nanny-state pricks like Bloomberg have for the public, and why they believe they're entitled to tell us all what to do. I'd like to see Bloomberg try to operate a continuous mining machine without dropping a thousand tons of rock on his conceited head.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
we have many millions of people with NO useful skills. They are also mostly untrainable, or they wouldn't have ended up skillless in the first place. In the past, our economy had a place for these people. The future is likely to be different.
Fact: There are more unskilled humans employed today than at any other time in history.
Why? Because, as you pointed out, everyone has benefited from productivity improvements; those improvements increase the demand for all types of labor, even unskilled labor.
Fortunately, the vast majority of jobs do not require coding ability. So, while it may be true that you can't teach 'X' to code, there's really no need to teach 'X' to code.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Learning how to write a perl script or a bit of php is not going to get someone a job.
You were lucky.
Regards
Bloomberg would really have a point if everybody at a tech company wrote code. But the bigger the company gets, the lower the % of engineers and the higher the % of non-engineering staff. Can you teach a coal miner to work in a shipping warehouse or to handle support calls? Maybe Bloomberg doesn't think so, looking down upon working drones as one trick ponies, but that's not my experience.
Local US born and raised citizens are eligible. Others, not so much. Given your age, I'm going to guess you might have done some assembly language. Yes? Could you write a boot loader or a compiler? Also you have to be OK with hacking those who are not US citizens. IMHO it's a fun sort of mischief and even patriotic, but not everyone agrees.
Work hours are extremely flexible at most sites. Overtime is seldom expected or denied, and always paid. You might need to move. We're mostly in FL, TX, MD, and VA. Possibly we could accommodate AL, UT, or WA.
See raytheon.si website for more.
I would rather teach a coal minor to code than try to educate one of today's self entitled kids. He (and occasionally she) will have discipline, hard work culture and some guts. Bloomberg is continuing elitism of his soft drink ban episode.
But in general we should move to guaranteed wage model to avoid a good thing (getting off dirty coal) being also a bad thing for thousands of workers. People who are up for retraining will want to make more money, while others can at least tide to retirement after being in one occupation for 30 years.
The FL site has amazing cost of living. It's across from the beach, but you can still get a place close to work. Within a mile there are 3-bedroom places for around $120,000 to $200,000. Smaller places are even cheaper. There is no state income tax.
You get to control your desktop computers. Most of us run Ubuntu, but you can have Windows or something weirder if you prefer.
The best coder I know used to be a coal miner.
But could we teach them to Bitcoin mine?
New York mayors say: "Code? Yes we can!"
Michael Bloomberg: You Can't Teach a Coal Miner To Code
That's exactly like saying you're not going to teach a mayor to code.
Not just a $20/hour job, if you want reality; Then the wage went up from there. So take back your comment about conservatives.
Perhaps you're rich enough to pay someone with, maybe, a high school degree $27/hour to start but for the rest of us in the 99%...
While some people may think that any monkey can code, most such simian code is fraught with rotting banana peels. And most great apes who make such statements often have long since left their brown, oozing mass to some underling who had to rewrite it to make it work right.
Grumbling about the 1% aside, the real issues of drastic career (or life) changes in middle age are:
By middle age, you have a family to support - and your parents probably can't put you up anymore. (Mine were deceased.) There might be other prospects where more of your skills transition than going from a labor intensive, physically focused occupations to intellectual, mind-games focused careers.
And I just don't see a coal-miner going to work riding a skate-board and wearing a backwards turned baseball cap.
i code, i network, i admin, i do graphics, i am a ham "general" tech, a former Crypto Tech for the U.S. Navy, an electronics tech, an electrician.... Bloomberg is the moron, not a coal miner.
Coding is outsourced to India these days. Would be better to say "you can't teach a coal miner to say 'would you like fries with that'". Except... you can.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I moved to a 3rd world country a year ago to look for ways to motivate people to learn to code. I thought it would be easier in a place where the benefits and needs are the greatest. It is much harder than I thought... I used to think the people just needed the funds to go to school, a patient personal tutor and/or extremely simple lessons (think computer game).
One person (~12 years old, on school vacation) simply would not learn code. I mean, the person would not consider it for any reason. I noticed that the person can play flappy bird with a high score of 71. I justed wanted to see if a very well done game environment might motivate them. Out of curious, I asked the person to play the Ouya game, Clark, that involves solving puzzles. The person gave up after hitting a puzzle in which you have to position two blocks to prevent the robot from being killed by 2 lasers.
In another case, I was able to convince the person (~27 year-old, college graduate) to take the javascript class at code academy but it didn't sink in. This person works at a restaurant where they make $10/day working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. I've explained to them that as software developer they can make in a year roughly what they would currently make in 30 years. I agreed to pay them to take a leave from work to learn javascript. After getting about a third of the way through the course, they still made mistakes that they should have learned in the first 5 lessons. (They couldn't remember where to put {}, (), commas, semicolons, function arguments, variable names, etc.) After 3 weeks, I decide to try a different approach. I showed them simple functions like max(number1,number2) or indexOf(array, value), etc. They could look at the solution as long as they liked. I explained it to them. The functions were only a few lines long. Then I hid the function and asked them to write it from scratch using a syntax aware IDE. If they got stuck they could look at the answer and I would explain where they were going wrong. It still took several attempts for them to write the function even when shown the answer. After that first day of the new approach, I thought I found a way get them to remember the syntax but the next day the person quit and returned to work at the restaurant.
I worked with several other people and the results are consistent. Coding is a kind of puzzle solving problem that people dislike intensely.
Out the 10 or so people, I tried to help only one has gotten very far. She is 51 year-old mother of 3, and I was surprised by that. I was actually trying to convince her kids (27, 18 and 14) to learn.
It is an interesting problem. I think there is a path to get people over their resistance but it is not obvious to me so far.
Michael Bloomberg: BSc., Electrical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University; MBA, Harvard Business School
Mark Zuckerberg: n/a
Since we already do, in India by the zillion.
If you pay politicians mediocre salaries (which we do) don't act all surprised when we end up with a bunch of incompetents. Any truly good manager/politician would make 10-100x more in the private sector than as a politician.
"Well, the world needs ditch diggers too!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I've written down the date. Michel Bloomberg said something that made sense today!
They *could* be trained to program. If they wanted to. Shit, I started coding C in fourth grade, and I mean I'm smart, but I ain't THAT smart. What, is Bloomberg saying these guys are dumber than a fourth grader? I feel like coal miners should be pretty offended by the implication here...
Sure, they won't be GREAT programmers, but they could certainly be web developers or something... ;)
... the coal miner's daughter?
I would call it more of a slight against coal miners...
A politician/businessman with a modicum of realistic expectations of who is inclined to be a developer! IBM already tried the same thing in the 80's when, instead of laying off various non-technical employees it tried to re-assign them to tech roles, particularly developers. The effects were disastrous (O/S2 anyone?)!
I answer E) None of the above.
I don't want them to shut down the coal mines nor the coal-burning industries.
Let the jobs go away by attrition, not because someone talks a bank into buying the stock and forcing them closed.
When they become non-profitable, then the industries will go away on their own and gradually.
Right now, that's not happening.
First off coal miners are not stupid or ignorant. Most of these workers have simply been raised into a very different way of life where efforts are applied in entirely different directions. Young folks usually have chores around the home and may be involved in hunting or gathering for the family meals as well as cooking from scratch. The type of intelligence it takes to work and stay alive while working in a mine is hard to compare to office jobs but I suspect these folks might be smarter than most city types.
Secondly we are about to displace almost all human workers. Machines and computers simply are superior to humans in the work place. We now must have an economic system in which all people are paid whether they work or not. Failure to do this will result in rebellion and social chaos. People under pressure do not do well over time. We see it in students shooting classmates in schools, in acts of terror, and by displays of alcoholism and drug use. There is a tipping point at which the bad behavior of people under stress will bring down a nation. How many more people can we afford to keep in prisons?
I learned to code while I was working as a car detailer.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You never log in
So that's hardly fair
Perhaps you should think
Of growing a pair
BURMA SHAVE
cat
to be human. Fuck him.
Is there at least one Coal miner coder out there that would negate his supposition. What is the cross section of non-professional people who contribute to Open Source. What's their day job?
This issue isn't just about coal miners. This issue should be solved at the societal level. Introduce a maximum income and a minimum income. Capitalism directly causes inequality and is incompatible with democracy. Absolute limits must be placed.
Never before have I found a more appropriate use for this:
Some people say a man is made outta mud
A code monkey's got Mountain Dew for his blood
Dew in the blood and Cheeto bones
One bad back n' carpal tunnel syndrome
Ya code 16 lines and whaddya get
Another bug report and technical debt
PM just told me vacations a no
We got no life till we're shipping code
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my laptop and I coded a line
I coded PHP and some Javascript
And off to Menlo Park then I was shipped
Ya code 16 lines and whaddya get
Another bug report and technical debt
PM just told me vacations a no
We got no life till we're shipping code
If you see me comin', better step aside
The Dew and Cheetos made-me a little too wide
A little too wide and a little too old
But for Facebook's perks my soul I've sold
Ya code 16 lines and whaddya get
Another bug report and technical debt
PM just told me vacations a no
We got no life till we're shipping code
Tweaks by by cold fjord (826450) (yeah, something useful came outta the NSA sock puppet, go figure)
Original parody by cervesaebraciator (2352888)
Original lyrics by Merle Travis, maybe.
I couldn't even teach science postdocs to code.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
NHS England had a program (I believe it still has a green light) to train around 50000 healthcare workers to code their own solutions, not to send them on a new career path, but so they can set them developing software at the same time that they are performing their healthcare duties for the population - Code4Health
So how hard could it possibly be?
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Setting coal-miners aside for the greater set of unskilled workers who's jobs are disappearing, who stops to think that maybe the robots are part of the problem.
Robots put people out of work and also make it easier to move production out of the country because a robot works just as well in China or Mexico as it does anywhere else. This applies to any kind of automation, self-service, and even software. What once took 5, 10, 20 people to do at scale now takes 1 person monitoring the situation from a control panel, and few human-years' salary worth of equipment and software. I'm not saying that this is bad per se, but how is it that the outcome is any wonder to anyone? Take a look around, notice that the 8-16 self-check lanes at your local grocer are manned by one person rushing about carding alcohol and fixing problems with the machine. Who does this actually help? Line lengths at peak hours will reach a similar equilibrium as before, I don't feel like I'm getting out any more quickly than in grocers that don't have them (and so are appropriately staffed) -- especially when you consider that the actual act of shopping takes the same amount of time, and that one person is now rushing around and never has a real interaction with anyone all day, so I doubt they're happy for the change. The only ones it helps are the people paying the bills or holding stock; they promise that cost-cutting is what will stop prices from rising, but prices keep going up regardless, while fewer people have money to afford such luxuries as chicken not reconstituted from mechanically-separated carcasses.
I'm far from being a socialist, but at some point people need to wake the fuck up and realize that the view of capitalism that the bankers, corporations, and big-wigs sell to the little guy is complete bullshit. They convince you that what's good for them is what's good for you and yours when finally you'll be able to crack that entrepreneurial American Dream, and at the very same time make backroom deals among themselves and with government to make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for you to ever achieve that. Capitalism as practiced today is not what you were taught it was in your high-school classes--its the pile of hay at the back of the cattle-car.
I'm not saying don't try, don't build from grassroots, don't take any success you can wrest in their system -- I'm saying stop letting them take the future for themselves. Grab what you can, hold onto it, and make sure the little guys like you and yours get their share, and when the future cartel comes calling on you for support, view everything they say with suspicion, and consider carefully just which eye of theirs to spit in.
I find as my memory degrades simplifying code by compartmentalizing interests that OOP promotes makes it so I don't have to "visualize a flow of data through complex control structures".
F.O. Stanley: "Any idiot can make something complicated; It takes a genius to make something simple"
Einstein: “Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.”
Charles Mingus: “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.”
Who do you think coded MineCraft? Clearly, people experienced in mining!
I'd like to see somebody teach Bloomberg to mine coal. My guess is that he couldn't learn it if his life depended on it. He hasn't learned yet that if he closes every coal mine, he's going to be living in a cold, dark house.
Um, hate to tell you this buddy, but the post you're replying to wasn't posted AC.
So how's the weather in Syracuse?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
My theory is that every Slashdot account is really just a Zontar sockpuppet. :D
How'd "eating your words" taste + your foot in your mouth & washed down w/ "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" too? Here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
* :)
(Ahem: Zontar - Libeling me's OR me via attempting to LIE about apps I wrote above's one thing, however also being caught in it & being uanble to backup your OTHER lies too -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ) - Take your meds for THAT one: You're HALLUCINATING again, Zontar!
Please...
APK
P.S.=> Now, you just KNOW I've just GOTTA say it, now don't you? Ah, but of COURSE you do:
THIS? This was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" & it always is, especially vs. LYING libelous done ZERO losers & admitted loonybirds like Zontar ( multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
... apk
First, if you're going to play this game, you can start by getting your terminology straight.
Second, the TrollingForHostsFiles account was apparently inspired *by you and your ridiculous attacks and accusations*.
How does feel to look in the mirror, troll boy?
they full well understand. They're counterbalancing the well being of that 50 year old coal miner against the enormous wealth they consider their birthright. For the nicer ones if they can keep the enormous wealth and let the coal miner do ok so much the better, and for a few of the nasty ones they're looking forward to the cheaper labor that coal miner and his peers entering the workforce will create...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
(Thus "the beatings will continue" until you leave... I've done it before).
Yes, this. This is what you do. You attack people for no good reason and try to drive them away. Me, Barb, Tom, and now geminidomino.
You *choose* to try to inflict harm on others for no other reason than your own gratification. Most people would consider this evil.
I'm with most people on this one.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I assumed it would be something scary, yet the description and the rest of the page suggest it really is as simple as it looks... How could anyone capable of allegedly earning a degree in CS not be able to do this?
Can you teach a billionaire humanity?
And I don't mean that bullshit slick willie is spewing either because i think he's still managing to be an asshole.
Nice way to try to change the subject.
But--since you bring it up--globaljustin and I don't agree about a few things. Big fucking deal. He's entitled to his opinion, and I'm entitled to mine. He's going to go on with his life, and I'm going to go on with mine. I'm not following him around flinging shit in his face every time he posts, and he's not following me around flinging shit in my face every time I post. We don't constantly scan each other's posting history and troll every one of each other's posts. That's *your* trademark, not his or mine.
I just friended someone here today with whom I strongly disagree on most things. I still think he's wrong, but he also seems to have some character, and I respect that.
Whereas you are a stalker and a bully, you add nothing of any worth to any of the discussions you barge your way into, you're not even a very good troll, and therefore I have nothing but contempt for you. There is nothing at all admirable or useful about anything you've ever posted on this site, Ars, Wikipedia, or anywhere else that I've seen. You either have mental issues or are pretending to be someone who has them, but even if you do, I still have a very difficult time feeling sorry for you because you *choose* to inflict yourself on others rather than to admit that you need help and to get yourself some.
You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense, then you hound anyone who objects. Then you try to claim that they started it. In particular, you make a *point* of attacking anyone who says anything that might make them appear to be vulnerable. You did that to tomhudson/Barb over her sex change, you've done it to me because I mentioned that I've had issues with depression, and I've seen you do it many, many times to others, simply for admitting that they had experienced challenges or troubles in their lives.
That's just plain evil. If you want to pull that sort of shit, you should be on 4chan, not Slashdot. Why don't you go over there and see how long you last?
If you weren't such a fucking stupid, chicken-shit coward, you'd be a monster. For people who are easily intimated, maybe you do look like a monster.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I don't know about coal miners, but I work for a health care facility and if our society ever has a surplus of former nurses who need to be taught how to code, we're in serious trouble.
Just a FYI, although elitist billionaires may disagree, there is very much a science and an art to coal mining. Underground coal miners especially are standing under territory that has never been witnessed by mankind. Every day advancing, supporting the top, etc. in areas where there may be unseen faults. Listening to the movement of the earth, listening as you drill through layers of strata to determine the thickness of certain types of rock, properly supporting different types of defects encountered and so on are all acquired skills that takes a while to pick up.
This is why skilled coal miners with supervisory capabilities often make $100k+ in some of the cheapest areas in the country to live. Not every Joe Blow has the aptitude or the nuts to handle the profession.
By the way, the coal company I work for would have made money HAND OVER FIST for what New Yorkers paid for energy during many of the "polar vortexes". The rates paid for electricity were close to 30X what it costs us to produce our product and make a healthy profit margin. Just imagine what it'll be the next time this happens when we're more dependent on natural gas for domestic power generation and we've opened even more export facilities.
Who's a bully Zontar? You gang up on apk with fake accounts http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and call him a bully you sock puppet using scumbag? Get real, or get sane: You're only bullshitting yourself, not anyone else.
Were you that badly abused as a child, that you can't relate to anyone or anything except in terms of "beating"?
That's sad. It's not too late for you to get some help, though.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Ashes to ashes
Station to station
Don't you get it? This account
Is basically your own creation.
Not a blessed thing hidden
Not otherwise pretended
You've simply taken the bait
Just as I had intended
BURMA SHAVE, motherfucker
cat
You're the one who chooses not to have an account.
We've already seen at least 2 vulnerabilities that arise from this:
1. You've no posting history; all you can do is follow those of your targets. Sure, you can link to your own posts but you cannot prove that you *didn't* say something that's been attributed to you.
2. You can be impersonated. And, again, you've no way to disprove it.
Looks to me like it sucks to be you.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
They manipulate their parents (crying) - that's intelligent? Not.
Looks to me more like somebody's finally decided to fight fire with fire. How does it feel to be on the receiving end (for real, this time)?
(Posting anon so you won't start following me around like you are following them.)
So much of the discussion on this topic ignores that some people like working around plants in agriculture, or like building things with machine tools, or like working with heavy equipment, and so on. Granted, they may not like their boss, or may not like being overworked, or may not like low pay. To suggest such people become programmers (or nail salon workers or whatever) ignores that a lot of a person's life satisfaction may come from doing work they love. I love programming and think it is a useful thing for many people to know, but I accept most people may not like to do a lot of programming, say if they like working outdoors or like working with people or plants or visibly moving machines. It is a deep flaw in our current discussions to ignore the potential positive value of meaningful work in someone's life and just focus on getting people to do work they may not like 40 hours a week so they can get a paycheck to buy stuff, raise a family, and maybe have a hobby they enjoy in their remaining time. "Work" can be better than that.
Two essays on that, one by EF Schumacher:
http://www.centerforneweconomi...
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."
And one by Bob Black:
http://www.whywork.org/rethink...
"What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their air-conditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them."
Still, with more and more AI and robotics, there will be less and less jobs where it makes sense to pay a human to do them. So, we need a mix of a "basic income" for the exchange economy, an expanded volunteer/gift economy, improved local subsistence via 3D printing, solar panels, cold fusion, and agricultural robotics, and improved democratic participatory planning at all levels of government. Then at least parents will be able to spend more time raising their kids well, a job that can take about as much time and energy as most people can put into it, especially if you forgo institutionalizing kids from an early age in prison-like compulsory schools. More ideas on this:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"The world needs ditch diggers too!"
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Some miners can learn to code. But the ones who could learn to code AND who are willing to relocate out of mining country probably left a long time ago. There isn't a lot of call for coders in a typical mining town.
as teaching bloomberg to be rich.
I can provide all sorts of apps and programs which were apparently coded by coal miners. Although, I must admit, they do appear to have been coded by coal miners who could not be taught to code.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
- ANYONE CAN BE A JACKWAGON MEGALOMANIAC.......Ive heard horror stories about working for Doomberg. Btw - he can not code either.
(Same AC as the GP.) *I'm* touched in the head? You don't even know me. I don't even have an account here. You think every AC in the world is Zontar, or what? That's some fucked-up shit, man.
Zontar, did you give up on your sockpuppet account TrollingForHostsFiles already? http://slashdot.org/comments.p... Hahahaha
In 2012 Bloomberg was urging everyone to join him at Code Academy. Glad to see he has a more realistic take on this now.
Foreach, while, for, until, etc. I love these snobby folk who are jealous of a program with class sizes of 6 and professors who actually have doctorate's and not having to deal with TA's who don't speak english and can't teach at all.
you do realize that lesson is ridiculous on a small community scale right? It's unlikely any of these coal mining towns put their eggs in the mining basket. Most of the time a mine or some other industrial complex opens up, and a large community is built around it.
I doubt these were thriving communities that then said "hey, let's stop doing all this other stuff and just mine". More likely, it was, "before the mine, this was nothing other than a collection of a few family farms."
Sure, you can argue about diversity, but decisions are made by individuals and if the mine is large and growing, it can usually soak up most youth that stay around (and the rest go into jobs which provide services and goods to support the miners).
Now a state will all its eggs in one basket is in for a world of pain. But I can't think of a state like that (except maybe Alaska, which nicely diversifies from oil with government military money)..
MASSIVELY BUSTED -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & Funny (not) HOW "TrollingForHostsFiles" sockpuppet suddenly appears to "support you" (transparently obvious, Zontar) & Zontar likes BURMA SHAVE as you do too -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
LMAO - you're not only nuts, but you're STUPID... and I have to ask you a question: IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR "Transparent"? Must be - I see RIGHT thru you.
APK
P.S.=> Just "man up" & answer this question Zontar, quit doing your standard "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" from it (what's the matter? Cat got your tongue?? You ordinarily shoot your mouth off ALL THE TIME but that silenced you, now didn't it? Yes) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why, Lastly?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
..the next Marvel film is "The AGE OF ULTRON" & those quotes of his (one of my FAV 'villains' of all time no less) fit what I think of, and I am doing, to you trolls... apk
Are you really likening yourself to a cartoon character? Do you really think of yourself as such?
This would go a long way to explaining your sad way of life. A grown man comparing himself to an animated character? Give me a break, you silly little boy.
Yeah, coz APK has supporters prepared to step in to back him up.
No, actually, it's APK, pretending he's someone else and pretending we're all too dumb to notice.
We post anoncoward. Nobody wants you trolling them with sock puppets zontar and i have an account here telling you that so we post ac
My policy on sockpuppeteers & libelous liars like Zontar here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... is all... it fits very well, and is a sound and logical policy.
Plus, imo @ least - it's a hell of a quote...
APK
P.S.=> I read those tales that are now becoming hit movies nowadays though (biggest box office records ever iirc) so,"5 billion Chinese can't be wrong..."
... apk