I am sorry to say that, but your question sounds like a (unsuccessful) attempt to justify a behavior that you _know_ is wrong. So just put the phone down, forget about Facebook, and enjoy your solitude while you can. If you are lucky, you will get married, have kids, and forget the meaning of the word "boredom" for the next 20 years.
In other words: I fail to see the problem. Do your homeworks, do some sports, then go home and take a book. What exactly is it that stops you from doing this?
Or get a hobby... something creative that excites you. Maybe you like to draw or paint? Play an instrument? Those things take so much time (years) to master to an acceptable level. Start today, and in 10 years you might be a decent painter or trumpet player (as far as technique is concerned).
Is it possible to grab a window with the left/right mouse button to move/resize by using a modifier key on the keyboard? I have been moving/resizing windows like this for as long as I remember (on the window manager of my choice).
As for scrolling, yes, making scrollbars thinner is really just silly.
You are seemingly missing the context here. There is an expectation in todays world that our technology and sciences will continue to grow in leaps, consistently providing us with novel solutions to the problems we are consistently creating. But this progress must come from somewhere, right? Instead, things are only going backwards, if anything. There is already a war on higher education, and even high-school education. It is becoming more expensive, and it is becoming less geared towards science and more towards "doing something useful" (for some arbitrary value of useful that is decided by whoever has most money and political influence at the moment).
And then, instead of trying to shift priorities so that we can sustain more scientists and researchers, we should rather make sure we create more of the problems we expect science and technology to solve for us?
He's good enough until you turn about 10. Then it's a real pain to read the shit, as it is almost impossible to make a coherent mental picture of events or people. He is just very bad at telling credible stories, and I don't know why would anyone want to "cut him some slack".
As much as I've liked both, I am not sure about their importance. Especially GEB.... I actually read it twice. Once a few years back, when I was still studying, once just recently, as I thought I must have missed something. The book itself is full of very interesting insight, but it is a very difficult read. It is difficult to read not because of the subject matter, but because Douglas Hofstadter is simply not very good at writing. There, I said it.
I start with the worst: the dialogues. The dialogues are really, _really_ forced. If you don't know what he's talking about without them, you won't get it. I _think_ I understood what he's talking about, and my thought was, "alright, I get it, but what's the point?" It's unnecessary either way, it's preaching to the choir, it's intellectual mastrubation which many clever people can't seem to avoid. Despite the fact that it seems that he is trying to educate.
Then the actual content. As I said, a lot of insight, but too much handwaiving. Especially when it comes to the really important things. Let's say that the topics he is trying to write about are such that they require a certain amount of vagueness (which is a matter of opinion); still, the text gives off the feeling that it is avoiding going into the detail that will make it really useful as an educating text _or_ as a formal treatment. At the end, it fails at being good fictions, and avoid being truly useful non-fiction.
So yes, GEB is a book everyone should read, but not only because of what it says, but also because so many others have read it, and they will look down on you if you haven't.
Contributing to an open-source project takes more than just being a good programmer. Especially in projects like VIM, with one person clearly "owner" of the project. So if you want to work towards something, you really need to have a good explanation why _and_, more importnantly, a roadmap that clearly shows how you can get there from the current state by *small, incremental changes that obviously don't break anything*.
So that's that. This is a lesson everyone learns, eventually, but it seems that tarruda has not lived long enough to appreciate how difficult it is to refactor, how important it is that you don't break anything working, and how long everything takes.
As for the mantra of "healthy scepticism" and "employing people to execute the plan", if it actually worked, you wouldn't be seeing crimes committed by soldiers, and soldiers being sent to prison for the orders (or lack of orders) that they got from their officers. At the end, it is not that important who gets the blame. You can't undo the damage by blaming or sentencing someone.
It has been recognized long ago: it is the removal of an officer from the immediate effects that creates the "problem". It is painful (physically and psychologically) to hurt another human being, and I cannot imagine what it would be to kill another human being. It gets easier if you have a gun, and even easier if you don't even have to watch it happen. It is highly uncomfortable to listen to a private conversation of someone you know, but it becomes easier if you don't know who it is or even what they are talking about. So there you have it, people who readily do horrible things to other humans, partly because they don't have to actually do it themselves, partly because they don't have to fear their consciousness, because, after all, they are serving something bigger.
By saying, "can't make friends with them", I mean exactly that. Their views on too many things are too different from mine. This does not prevent me from spending time with them, and surely won't prevent me from working with them if I had to, but it has prevented me from relaxing enough to actually trust them.
Working together really has nothing to do with this. There are many other situations in life where you have to trust others, sometimes even with your life. You don't need a gun or the ability to listen to strangers when they think they are alone. Your last sentence, however, is exactly "on the money": "what it means to serve something bigger than yourself". This, my friend, is the very definition of everything that is wrong with the military, and, to be honest, with most religious fanatics.
The "culture gap" goes deeper than this. There are people in this world who do not want to be put in a situation in which they have to follow orders without being able to judge the situation for themselves. I am such a person. Yes, I understand that some people don't see it like this. I know personally two army officers. They are nice enough people in a private environment, even though I know I would not be able to make "friends" with either of them. I accept their choice.
However, I cannot find a rational excuse for _why on earth_ would one put themselves in such a situation. I don't buy the "calling of national service" argument, really. To someone who can't imagine why would you want to take *orders* from others, it sounds simply as if people in the military and national security have at least a perverse relationship with power and authority, no matter which end of it they are.
You should be re-writing old code if you want to keep it conceptually clean, using the latest C++ standard.
What? No. One reason the C++ committee takes so bloody long is they put in astonishing effort to avoid breaking, or worse silently changing the meaning of, old code. In this regard, C++ is very, very stable.
You misunderstood me. The fact is, code is read by humans. Say I am a young programmer that starts working on a C++ project that has been growing for 15 years. How many different styles am I going to encounter? Do I need to understand them all to read the code? How long until I have seen it all and can call myself proficient? At what point do I re-write old code that I have to modify? How do I decide the re-write is necessary? (I know the same is true for C, but to a much lesser extent.)
2. For some problems, I prefer to have the complexity right in front of my eyes. In C, the code does all the talking
No you don't and no it doesn't. C abstracts plenty of stuff. Either through outright abstractions, such as implementing division and floating point for you on many platforms, dealing with stacks and function calls etc or via functions. Do you really know the inner workings of every function call?
If you really practiced what you preach, you'd write in ASM with on reference to external functions.
:) Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. There is a balance between "explicit" and "abstract", of course. It just happens that C strikes the right balance for a job like systems programming, in my opinion.
I still think that C++ cannot be fully appreciated or used by people who would not be able to solve the same problems in C.
Well, that's quite possibly true. I was a long time C hacker before moving to C++. I generally understand C++ in terms of what it's doing under the hood. There are few mysteries. Much of what it does is the same sort of algorithmic code as C except it's vastly easier to write because it automates away the tedium.
Which is why I also think that C++ hate is generally misguided, and a knee-jerk reaction of die-hards.
And Ubuntu has commited to the path of irrelevancy. There is some momentum behind Ubuntu use, but so little, compared to Windows or Apple products, that it's not worth talking about. Other distributions will take its place. Again, hurray for freedom.
1. Why isn't FORTH used more widely? Why is it better than C? Why don't you write an OS kernel in FORTH?
2. GNOME is losing ground, for good reasons. There are other mature DEs, luckily. Hurray for freedom! Poettering is a raging lunatic. Hurray for diversity!
3. How is your attitude at the end of your post different from an ivory tower elitist?
While I agree with your arguments, I guess the real question is: where do you prefer your complexity to be? With C, the complexity is in the code, and very obvious. With C++, complexity can be "conceptualized", and delegated to the compiler. After using (and abusing) both C and C++ (a turbulent relationship with a lot of love and hate), my gut feeling is that C is probably better for system programming than C++.
The reasons have been discussed so many times by people far more qualified than me. My personal reasons:
1. The C++ language is still a moving target. You should be re-writing old code if you want to keep it conceptually clean, using the latest C++ standard. 2. For some problems, I prefer to have the complexity right in front of my eyes. In C, the code does all the talking (although it does speak a horrendous dialect). While shifting the complexity to the language is very useful, it can create subtle problems with interpretation by the human reader. I still think that C++ cannot be fully appreciated or used by people who would not be able to solve the same problems in C.
Well, good then. If your feelings are more important to you than programming then this might be a good choice for you.
Programming is hard, and kernel programming is hard and a very responsible job. No matter the field, at such places the air is thin and people are allowed more personality than a common drone. You can even deal with it or not, it's no one's loss either way.
No, it is not a step up by any means. Iraq was once in a very similar position to Azerbaijan, and you see what that can lead to.
And anyway what you are saying is that as long as they help the US terrorize a third party (ok, fight for freedom), then it's fine if they also terrorize their own citizens (ok, suppress opposition).
This attitude to international politics always pays back with dividents in the long run. The USSR called it "exporting communism"; the US now exports freedom; at the end, it is just military and political oppression of other countries. It can be rationalized, but the long-term effects of any kind of oppression are always negative.
The USA is the biggest and best friend of the same authoritarian, non-democratic regime. Just because Azerbaijan helps out in the "war on terror". It is not news that this is basically a dictatorship that violently suppresses opposition, but somethow it never comes up when Americans talk about the country.
This is so weird to most Europeans and Americans.... A common question by American teachers in my high-school in Bulgaria was, "does it make sense", usually followed by about half the people shaking their heads and half the people nodding, to the obvious (yet silent) horror of the teacher. They got used to it eventually.
What is best however is the never-ending rotational head movement that some people from the Indian subcontinent use.
Something doesn't make sense in the whole situation here. I do have a windows phone (Nokia, Windows Phone 7). I can't access YouTube videos from the browser. I also can't install any other browser on that phone, but that's a bit beside the point. I searched briefly in the app store, and there was a free YouTube app that I installed and I can now search and watch videos on my phone. What is this article talking about?....
Backpacks fill a slightly different need than a bag (yes, calling it a purse was actually not a good idea, but I am not a native speaker so sometimes I can't find the right words). Anyway, a backpack can be a bit too big, often. And it is on your back, so it is not as convenient for keeping things you might need more often (a wallet, a phone, keys, tablet, etc.). A small messenger bag for example is something you can actually carry around with you without looking like a cross-dresser and it can fit almost anything smaller than a full-sized laptop. And you don't have to fill all your pockets with stuff.
If you need to carry around stuff that does not fit nicely in a pocket, get a purse. I understand the attraction of slinging out your tablet with lightning speed. But really, despite our male need to have tools right where and when need them (it is both genetic and cultural, I guess), unless you need your other hand to hang on to your other tools (or a branch), a purse is really way more convenient for carrying around bulkier stuff.
From one WP user to another, why WP is really not that nice:
- Can't type in my own language (a language of the European Union: present on the new banknotes, too). There are however multiple Chinese, Japanese, Korean keyboards available. No work-around. - Can't connect it to a Linux machine. No work-around. - Can't change the calendar alarm sound. Can't use it for reminders because of this. No work-around. - Can't change text sizes. Text often too small. No work-around. - Can't use any other browser but the built-in. No work-around.
The list goes on but those are the biggest deficiencies, in order of annoyance factor. I got the phone for free and this is the only reason I am still using it. So no, it doesn't rock. It is yet another "we tell you what is good for you" device. Despite all M$ hate, I have always maintained that they don't lock your computer functionality, and more has been possible on a Windows PC than on any other PC. Windows phone: the absolute opposite.
I totally agree with you on how many useful things one can achieve by just using sed and awk. But there are problems: first, those are very Unix/Linux-centric programs, and not at all a default on the majority of personal computers (sadly). Second, from TFA it is clear that this guy's understanding of programming doesn't go much further than writing a formula for Excel or *using* AutoCad.... I even have a feeling he wouldn't know how to write a regular expression, or would have the patience to read through the awk manual (and yes, you need to know what an array is to use it properly). And no, average Joe doesn't really want to accomplish anything that could be accomplished with sed. Average Joe will do his work using Excel and Word, browse Facebook until it's time to go home, and if he then uses a "computer" at home, the chances are it's an Xbox.
Slow down a bit. C is a language that was designed to make system programming easier. As in programming the Unix operating system. You don't introduce to C anyone who is not deeply interested in how computers work on a level _below_ the operating system. It is also a bit unnecessary to use a compiled language, or care about installing a program (makefiles etc), unless you are writing tools that are then going to be used by others to do their work. On the other hand, Java's strengths are in server-side programming of big projects with many developers.
Just as an example, take Python. Standard on Linux, *very* easy to setup on MacOS or Windows. Code runs everywhere. Can interact with the operating system quite nicely. Better that Basic in every sense. Waaay better. And ask yourself, if you are taught programming with Visual Basic, what will you know by the time you are done with the course?
It is not really about implementing a solution. The first step is recognizing that you have a problem that can be made easier by using a computer program. Anyone with a basic knowledge of computers (how they work; what they are good at; what they are not so good at) could make that first step.
The next step however is not trivial (for a non-trivial problem): formally defining your problem. Once you have a proper formal definition of a problem, "programming" the solution can be straight-forward, given the correct tools. Many people just don't have the patience to think slowly and carefully enough so that they are able to translate a fuzzy understanding of a problem (which anyone with common sense sort of has) into a formal definition. This doesn't really have anything to do with the tool, although a solid knowledge of a variety of tools can help with thinking within a certain framework.
And yes, hiding complexity... good for trivial problems, but always a hindrance if the problem you are trying to solve does not translate perfectly into a ready-made recipe.
Slashdot Mirror
I am sorry to say that, but your question sounds like a (unsuccessful) attempt to justify a behavior that you _know_ is wrong. So just put the phone down, forget about Facebook, and enjoy your solitude while you can. If you are lucky, you will get married, have kids, and forget the meaning of the word "boredom" for the next 20 years.
In other words: I fail to see the problem. Do your homeworks, do some sports, then go home and take a book. What exactly is it that stops you from doing this?
Or get a hobby... something creative that excites you. Maybe you like to draw or paint? Play an instrument? Those things take so much time (years) to master to an acceptable level. Start today, and in 10 years you might be a decent painter or trumpet player (as far as technique is concerned).
Is it possible to grab a window with the left/right mouse button to move/resize by using a modifier key on the keyboard? I have been moving/resizing windows like this for as long as I remember (on the window manager of my choice).
As for scrolling, yes, making scrollbars thinner is really just silly.
You are seemingly missing the context here. There is an expectation in todays world that our technology and sciences will continue to grow in leaps, consistently providing us with novel solutions to the problems we are consistently creating. But this progress must come from somewhere, right? Instead, things are only going backwards, if anything. There is already a war on higher education, and even high-school education. It is becoming more expensive, and it is becoming less geared towards science and more towards "doing something useful" (for some arbitrary value of useful that is decided by whoever has most money and political influence at the moment).
And then, instead of trying to shift priorities so that we can sustain more scientists and researchers, we should rather make sure we create more of the problems we expect science and technology to solve for us?
He's good enough until you turn about 10. Then it's a real pain to read the shit, as it is almost impossible to make a coherent mental picture of events or people. He is just very bad at telling credible stories, and I don't know why would anyone want to "cut him some slack".
As much as I've liked both, I am not sure about their importance. Especially GEB.... I actually read it twice. Once a few years back, when I was still studying, once just recently, as I thought I must have missed something. The book itself is full of very interesting insight, but it is a very difficult read. It is difficult to read not because of the subject matter, but because Douglas Hofstadter is simply not very good at writing. There, I said it.
I start with the worst: the dialogues. The dialogues are really, _really_ forced. If you don't know what he's talking about without them, you won't get it. I _think_ I understood what he's talking about, and my thought was, "alright, I get it, but what's the point?" It's unnecessary either way, it's preaching to the choir, it's intellectual mastrubation which many clever people can't seem to avoid. Despite the fact that it seems that he is trying to educate.
Then the actual content. As I said, a lot of insight, but too much handwaiving. Especially when it comes to the really important things. Let's say that the topics he is trying to write about are such that they require a certain amount of vagueness (which is a matter of opinion); still, the text gives off the feeling that it is avoiding going into the detail that will make it really useful as an educating text _or_ as a formal treatment. At the end, it fails at being good fictions, and avoid being truly useful non-fiction.
So yes, GEB is a book everyone should read, but not only because of what it says, but also because so many others have read it, and they will look down on you if you haven't.
Contributing to an open-source project takes more than just being a good programmer. Especially in projects like VIM, with one person clearly "owner" of the project. So if you want to work towards something, you really need to have a good explanation why _and_, more importnantly, a roadmap that clearly shows how you can get there from the current state by *small, incremental changes that obviously don't break anything*.
So that's that. This is a lesson everyone learns, eventually, but it seems that tarruda has not lived long enough to appreciate how difficult it is to refactor, how important it is that you don't break anything working, and how long everything takes.
As for the mantra of "healthy scepticism" and "employing people to execute the plan", if it actually worked, you wouldn't be seeing crimes committed by soldiers, and soldiers being sent to prison for the orders (or lack of orders) that they got from their officers. At the end, it is not that important who gets the blame. You can't undo the damage by blaming or sentencing someone.
It has been recognized long ago: it is the removal of an officer from the immediate effects that creates the "problem". It is painful (physically and psychologically) to hurt another human being, and I cannot imagine what it would be to kill another human being. It gets easier if you have a gun, and even easier if you don't even have to watch it happen. It is highly uncomfortable to listen to a private conversation of someone you know, but it becomes easier if you don't know who it is or even what they are talking about. So there you have it, people who readily do horrible things to other humans, partly because they don't have to actually do it themselves, partly because they don't have to fear their consciousness, because, after all, they are serving something bigger.
This attitude saddens me greatly.
By saying, "can't make friends with them", I mean exactly that. Their views on too many things are too different from mine. This does not prevent me from spending time with them, and surely won't prevent me from working with them if I had to, but it has prevented me from relaxing enough to actually trust them.
Working together really has nothing to do with this. There are many other situations in life where you have to trust others, sometimes even with your life. You don't need a gun or the ability to listen to strangers when they think they are alone. Your last sentence, however, is exactly "on the money": "what it means to serve something bigger than yourself". This, my friend, is the very definition of everything that is wrong with the military, and, to be honest, with most religious fanatics.
The "culture gap" goes deeper than this. There are people in this world who do not want to be put in a situation in which they have to follow orders without being able to judge the situation for themselves. I am such a person. Yes, I understand that some people don't see it like this. I know personally two army officers. They are nice enough people in a private environment, even though I know I would not be able to make "friends" with either of them. I accept their choice.
However, I cannot find a rational excuse for _why on earth_ would one put themselves in such a situation. I don't buy the "calling of national service" argument, really. To someone who can't imagine why would you want to take *orders* from others, it sounds simply as if people in the military and national security have at least a perverse relationship with power and authority, no matter which end of it they are.
You should be re-writing old code if you want to keep it conceptually clean, using the latest C++ standard.
What? No. One reason the C++ committee takes so bloody long is they put in astonishing effort to avoid breaking, or worse silently changing the meaning of, old code. In this regard, C++ is very, very stable.
You misunderstood me. The fact is, code is read by humans. Say I am a young programmer that starts working on a C++ project that has been growing for 15 years. How many different styles am I going to encounter? Do I need to understand them all to read the code? How long until I have seen it all and can call myself proficient? At what point do I re-write old code that I have to modify? How do I decide the re-write is necessary? (I know the same is true for C, but to a much lesser extent.)
2. For some problems, I prefer to have the complexity right in front of my eyes. In C, the code does all the talking
No you don't and no it doesn't. C abstracts plenty of stuff. Either through outright abstractions, such as implementing division and floating point for you on many platforms, dealing with stacks and function calls etc or via functions. Do you really know the inner workings of every function call?
If you really practiced what you preach, you'd write in ASM with on reference to external functions.
:) Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. There is a balance between "explicit" and "abstract", of course. It just happens that C strikes the right balance for a job like systems programming, in my opinion.
I still think that C++ cannot be fully appreciated or used by people who would not be able to solve the same problems in C.
Well, that's quite possibly true. I was a long time C hacker before moving to C++. I generally understand C++ in terms of what it's doing under the hood. There are few mysteries. Much of what it does is the same sort of algorithmic code as C except it's vastly easier to write because it automates away the tedium.
Which is why I also think that C++ hate is generally misguided, and a knee-jerk reaction of die-hards.
And Ubuntu has commited to the path of irrelevancy. There is some momentum behind Ubuntu use, but so little, compared to Windows or Apple products, that it's not worth talking about. Other distributions will take its place. Again, hurray for freedom.
Ha, great post. However:
1. Why isn't FORTH used more widely? Why is it better than C? Why don't you write an OS kernel in FORTH?
2. GNOME is losing ground, for good reasons. There are other mature DEs, luckily. Hurray for freedom! Poettering is a raging lunatic. Hurray for diversity!
3. How is your attitude at the end of your post different from an ivory tower elitist?
While I agree with your arguments, I guess the real question is: where do you prefer your complexity to be? With C, the complexity is in the code, and very obvious. With C++, complexity can be "conceptualized", and delegated to the compiler. After using (and abusing) both C and C++ (a turbulent relationship with a lot of love and hate), my gut feeling is that C is probably better for system programming than C++.
The reasons have been discussed so many times by people far more qualified than me. My personal reasons:
1. The C++ language is still a moving target. You should be re-writing old code if you want to keep it conceptually clean, using the latest C++ standard.
2. For some problems, I prefer to have the complexity right in front of my eyes. In C, the code does all the talking (although it does speak a horrendous dialect). While shifting the complexity to the language is very useful, it can create subtle problems with interpretation by the human reader. I still think that C++ cannot be fully appreciated or used by people who would not be able to solve the same problems in C.
Well, good then. If your feelings are more important to you than programming then this might be a good choice for you.
Programming is hard, and kernel programming is hard and a very responsible job. No matter the field, at such places the air is thin and people are allowed more personality than a common drone. You can even deal with it or not, it's no one's loss either way.
No, it is not a step up by any means. Iraq was once in a very similar position to Azerbaijan, and you see what that can lead to.
And anyway what you are saying is that as long as they help the US terrorize a third party (ok, fight for freedom), then it's fine if they also terrorize their own citizens (ok, suppress opposition).
This attitude to international politics always pays back with dividents in the long run. The USSR called it "exporting communism"; the US now exports freedom; at the end, it is just military and political oppression of other countries. It can be rationalized, but the long-term effects of any kind of oppression are always negative.
The USA is the biggest and best friend of the same authoritarian, non-democratic regime. Just because Azerbaijan helps out in the "war on terror". It is not news that this is basically a dictatorship that violently suppresses opposition, but somethow it never comes up when Americans talk about the country.
This is so weird to most Europeans and Americans.... A common question by American teachers in my high-school in Bulgaria was, "does it make sense", usually followed by about half the people shaking their heads and half the people nodding, to the obvious (yet silent) horror of the teacher. They got used to it eventually.
What is best however is the never-ending rotational head movement that some people from the Indian subcontinent use.
Not a good one, no. What I am missing the most is Opera (Mini), which is available for non-windows Nokia phones.
Something doesn't make sense in the whole situation here. I do have a windows phone (Nokia, Windows Phone 7). I can't access YouTube videos from the browser. I also can't install any other browser on that phone, but that's a bit beside the point. I searched briefly in the app store, and there was a free YouTube app that I installed and I can now search and watch videos on my phone. What is this article talking about?....
Backpacks fill a slightly different need than a bag (yes, calling it a purse was actually not a good idea, but I am not a native speaker so sometimes I can't find the right words). Anyway, a backpack can be a bit too big, often. And it is on your back, so it is not as convenient for keeping things you might need more often (a wallet, a phone, keys, tablet, etc.). A small messenger bag for example is something you can actually carry around with you without looking like a cross-dresser and it can fit almost anything smaller than a full-sized laptop. And you don't have to fill all your pockets with stuff.
If you need to carry around stuff that does not fit nicely in a pocket, get a purse. I understand the attraction of slinging out your tablet with lightning speed. But really, despite our male need to have tools right where and when need them (it is both genetic and cultural, I guess), unless you need your other hand to hang on to your other tools (or a branch), a purse is really way more convenient for carrying around bulkier stuff.
From one WP user to another, why WP is really not that nice:
- Can't type in my own language (a language of the European Union: present on the new banknotes, too). There are however multiple Chinese, Japanese, Korean keyboards available. No work-around.
- Can't connect it to a Linux machine. No work-around.
- Can't change the calendar alarm sound. Can't use it for reminders because of this. No work-around.
- Can't change text sizes. Text often too small. No work-around.
- Can't use any other browser but the built-in. No work-around.
The list goes on but those are the biggest deficiencies, in order of annoyance factor. I got the phone for free and this is the only reason I am still using it. So no, it doesn't rock. It is yet another "we tell you what is good for you" device. Despite all M$ hate, I have always maintained that they don't lock your computer functionality, and more has been possible on a Windows PC than on any other PC. Windows phone: the absolute opposite.
I totally agree with you on how many useful things one can achieve by just using sed and awk. But there are problems: first, those are very Unix/Linux-centric programs, and not at all a default on the majority of personal computers (sadly). Second, from TFA it is clear that this guy's understanding of programming doesn't go much further than writing a formula for Excel or *using* AutoCad.... I even have a feeling he wouldn't know how to write a regular expression, or would have the patience to read through the awk manual (and yes, you need to know what an array is to use it properly). And no, average Joe doesn't really want to accomplish anything that could be accomplished with sed. Average Joe will do his work using Excel and Word, browse Facebook until it's time to go home, and if he then uses a "computer" at home, the chances are it's an Xbox.
Slow down a bit. C is a language that was designed to make system programming easier. As in programming the Unix operating system. You don't introduce to C anyone who is not deeply interested in how computers work on a level _below_ the operating system. It is also a bit unnecessary to use a compiled language, or care about installing a program (makefiles etc), unless you are writing tools that are then going to be used by others to do their work. On the other hand, Java's strengths are in server-side programming of big projects with many developers. Just as an example, take Python. Standard on Linux, *very* easy to setup on MacOS or Windows. Code runs everywhere. Can interact with the operating system quite nicely. Better that Basic in every sense. Waaay better. And ask yourself, if you are taught programming with Visual Basic, what will you know by the time you are done with the course?
It is not really about implementing a solution. The first step is recognizing that you have a problem that can be made easier by using a computer program. Anyone with a basic knowledge of computers (how they work; what they are good at; what they are not so good at) could make that first step. The next step however is not trivial (for a non-trivial problem): formally defining your problem. Once you have a proper formal definition of a problem, "programming" the solution can be straight-forward, given the correct tools. Many people just don't have the patience to think slowly and carefully enough so that they are able to translate a fuzzy understanding of a problem (which anyone with common sense sort of has) into a formal definition. This doesn't really have anything to do with the tool, although a solid knowledge of a variety of tools can help with thinking within a certain framework. And yes, hiding complexity... good for trivial problems, but always a hindrance if the problem you are trying to solve does not translate perfectly into a ready-made recipe.