I could come with some answer after thinking for a while, but very probably will have some mistakes (after 24 hours flying). So, the best option could be to invent some language and to code that using your own rules based on theoretical libraries (who could argue that this is not a right answer?).
But the real problem here is that the US is imposing so many incoherent restrictions that soon or later it will stop being the main planet plane hub, hurting the own US economy and forcing to find a more open place welcoming people from other countries to share ideas and to contribute to the improvement of modern society.
If the US government is not welcoming visitors, then won't have them. Is this the right way to improve internal economy?
Even with slavery there was some type of internal freedom, because "the owner" only was owning the physical part and capacity, never what was inside the person mind... until now.
The collective behavior indicates what I am trying to accomplish, what are my feelings, my thoughts. The data is there, the only needed thing is to dig enough.
For some time I have been trying to discover what it is exactly the "666" written on the Bible. Initially my thoughts were related with the DNA, as it is a number. It is simple, if you can code something inside it, then it is possible to locate you, as if this is a mark on your hand or your forehead. But really, there is a more simpler way to do this.
You don't need to change what the other person is... what you need to do is to classify it, externally, and you will be able to control the person environment.. Do the person like red cars? Then flood the market with red cars and make them cheap enough or offer special credit facilities, everything designed around "statistics".
And if the person belongs to a "class" that you really don't like, then eliminate it from the market spectrum, send the person to an unknown corner. This is really scary.
For musicians (yes, an orchestra is an office), the electronic version is extremely primitive. Basically you need 25-30 inches foldable tablets with extremely high resolution (Full HDMI is not enough to display the pentagram correctly). And very high quality electronic pencils to take notes.
Also, it is not the same to draw on the screen that to do it on paper... although this is improving constantly, we are not yet in the place we could say paper is over for artists.
And even for engineers. The napkin is the best tool to create innovative stuff... ok, seriously talking, there are many drawings that can't be efficiently made without a piece of paper.
I hope that this will improve in the future, but only if the ones making the technology focus themselves in the hard issues and try to make the result affordable enough for children to use at school or for a 7 years old violin player to study his/her Suzuki Motto-Perpetuo.
I had huge problems implementing white lists in a previous work (software development company).
However it is real that this is the only solution. It is "very" painful, but what medicine is not painful to take or have bad said effects?" The huge mistake was to think on general purpose computers where you can mix the highly sensitive stuff with reading newspapers or Facebook profiles and visiting dangerous places; this is the same as to say that you can walk without care through a hall full of mosquitoes with Zika. You need to do something, to cover yourself, to put a lot of poison around you (that also can kill you), or just not to go there.
But today we have extremely powerful single board computers and mobiles with technology that could be reused to define different types of devices having multiple running environments. Then, you can have more than one computer or more than one computer module devoted to the risky stuff and other modules working the sensitive things, together with a well designed protocol defined to use the best (and safe) parts on every side. In general... something must change, we can't continue walking the same path, this will go nowhere.
Anyone could make an sketch in ancient times... however, the average person "quality" for that sketch was not good enough to preserve it. And the same is happening with digital media because any person can write a comment on Slashdot but not all the comments will even be read.
So, somebody will add some "points" and could be possible that some of these comments be good enough to be cited by somebody else. Previously, if we wanted to have something for a longer time, was necessary to pay a professional artist to paint the event; and if that painter was somebody as Da Vinci, we would be marvel today about the final piece of art.
I think that our current HUGE problem is that we are not aware about where is the good quality preservation mechanisms. They are not Facebook, in fact even the Internet Archive has a lot of holes (I made an important web page a lot of years ago and even when was stored 15 years ago, now it is gone). And if we create a DVD... I have a bunch of DVDs that I never will check because it is a lot of data, and the file formats are impossible to check right now with our current software.
Could be possible that the real solution is for some organisation to define standard storage formats for long term storage? Text files are good examples.
I always will prefer a person with individual tastes and natural opinions to help my children to learn music that a machine. Then I would be paying this person to teach the "art", and when my children play music in their school orchestra I will be the first one to hear how they create their "imperfect" but beautiful music.
And all this is ok; however, who will give me the money to pay that music teacher if what I do for living can be better done by a machine?
Another option is that if a company produces a lot of money with just machines, then the government need to tax heavily that company for one of two things: to decide to hire some people, or to collect the money for them to pay the people with intellectual or artistic based professions. And, to make a cultural revolution increasing the quantity of people on that area instead of promoting jobs that could be easily improved with machines.
Of course, and in particular in the capitalist world where we live, this is an utopia.
Maybe "real" autopilot software needs more context information to be accurate. Humans have a very complex capacity to "guess" extra situations that could be dangerous and this help us to avoid several accidents, and to expect that a car computer will do exactly the same is not a realistic situation.
There are options for this. For example, to have long range sensors measuring everything is happening around the cars each several kilometers, or a small drone flying with the car to produce a 3D perspective of the road. Even, some cars could "cooperate" with their neighbor cars, following the Waze example, or to mark some areas as "extra careful" areas where the speed needs to be reduced no matter what is happening around.
Is this a piece of cake? Not, but it is not impossible to do, and deserve to be taken into consideration as much as the places to recharge the cars.
You can do most things in any language, so it's most important to select whatever your team is most comfortable with.
This is really important when working on groups. Even more important that the company decisions, because the good art produces good results (when forced to do complex things on not well known platforms, these things become real nightmares).
But returning to the original question, I think that depends on what you do. For me, it is usual to switch between Bash, C++, Javascript, PHP or even my own configuration languages in an hour when working with multi-tier products. To pretend that everything can or that even "must" be done with only one language is not real.
When you read that the fastest machine is the Sunway based on chinese made CPUs (because of US restrictions), and that Fujitsu (Japanese) is working on so powerful machine based on ARM (England) designed architecture Fujitsu improved, it feels as an indicator that US is not leading the technology anymore.
I will put this in different words: no one country can lead the future of any other country just because of past achievements. Now, there are several options and all them are valid.
Also, following the Russia attempt to have backdoors on the encryption algorithms for messaging, it is clear that nobody is accepting any restriction from anybody else and that technology alone can't be a deterrent.
As a side note: Could be possible that, because of political reasons, we are arriving to the end of technology advancement?
Let me see... the US wants backdoors (in fact, the NSA approved stuff is designed to be weak in one or another way). Then, Russia wants backdoors. China works with service providers to have some sort of backdoor. I am sure that UK and Australia are looking for backdoors.
So, any country has the right to have backdoors in the security artifacts and what was supposed to be secure now will have more holes than doors have a hotel, in the name of counter-terrorism, making these artifacts completely useless. Because if one country has the right, then all them have the right. Could be possible to control more than 200 backdoors in any secured communication?
This is very similar to say that as the terrorists breath, then we need to control the air because they could be breathing.
As we know nothing about how this work inside, there are two big possibilities: (1) There is only one key for every Intel chip or (2) Intel stores private keys for every chip they produce. And both are equally fragile.
In the first place, that key must be in the hands of somebody in some moment in the CPU life cycle, or the key must be stored someplace and somebody must has a key to access the key, or any other combination of facts involving a human. As the weakest link, that human is the one must be protected.
In the second place, if there is only one key to have access to the most of Intel based computers around, then it deserves to invest in a methodology to break "that" key. The payment always will be higher than the money used to break it.
Also, when we talk about hundreds of years to break a key, that is a commercial buzzword referring to a "maximum" in the statistical world. There is a chance that the key be found in just five minutes so, to declare the type of key is not a good idea because they already gave enough information for somebody to try to break it.
But there is a particularly troublesome word has been used here. It is the "VERY" in "very secure". For me, something is or not secure and when very is used, it means that they don't trust 100% on what they do. There is a manageable risk that they decide to put into their shoulders in the name of all their users without having any idea what their users would be controlling with their CPUs. And this is a "very" risky bid.
I have been reading many different types of justifications on the security of the CPU makers (whatever be the brand). However we can't overestimate the fact that we are humans and that anybody can make mistakes, in particular with so complex artifacts as CPUs. These hidden parts and their security mechanisms can have bugs (yesterday, today or tomorrow). And also, they are not designed only to work with previous and current scenarios, but with the unknown future ones that are completely unexpected.
Thinking on this issue I checked quickly what CPUs have the Cisco Firewalls (just to check a famous brand), and notice that they have different ones depending on the appliance model, from the AMD Geode to some Intel Xeon variants, so there are possibilities even on security appliances for this to be exploited.
The problem with this hidden CPU approach is that they can bypass the computer built security without the operating system noticing it, with potentially dangerous consequences. And we are updating our software regularly but the most of the people is not aware of the updating on the underlying things (if they can be updated). The lack of knowledge in this respect is a dangerous thing.
But what can be done?
A very few are careful enough on checking the internal hardware specifications on the networking devices, the ones could protect any not so well controlled hidden device inside our network. So, it is really important to learn more about what we really have and if it is possible to combine "different" layers of appliances. For example, not to rely only on Intel or only on AMD for both servers and security appliances, or even to combine x64 and x32 with ARM, MIPS or other type of CPUs. This way, if there is a breach because some architectural failure, the next layer won't suffer the same fate because it is different (not necessarily because it is better). This combination of suppliers is something it is already being recommended for antivirus on enterprise environments (don't trust only in one supplier).
On the other case, when knowing extra ports and other elements that nobody is actively controlling within our network, will be possible to understand better that maybe that "extra" traffic has a hardware and not a software origin.
Our modern environments are rich and powerful, but this richness doesn't come for free. We need to understand it and control it correctly.
First, I was formally trained on music (+14 years). This opened my mind to abstraction, not only because you need to figure how to translate the figures to sounds, but also because it is not the same to play baroque than romantic music. All this have a big context around that prepared me to work with today's complex scenarios. Also, I learned two years how to use mechanical typewriters without letters on the keys; this, together with complementary piano lessons helped me very much to make a healthy usage of the computer keyboard (very fast typing and zero carpal tunnel syndrome).
Then, in Costa Rica we didn't have all the facilities other countries have when I was a child. For me, a computer was a big refrigerator full of bright lights and some big round tape circles dancing and making bip bip bip. Was when I had an old second hand 1960s book describing how these machines really work that started to catch my attention.
After that, my brother began studying Electronic Engineering on the University while I was still in High School, and a Tandy 1000 EX computer arrived home. There I was playing with an Epson Printer on Basic and made my first music paper calculating how to use the individual pins in the printer. After that, everything was obvious (of course I was very good at math on my early days). In fact, today I see that the students are lost on extremely abstract concepts without digging enough on the basements... it is important, at least once in our life, to create our own graphical interface using our own rules and designs, and not to depend so much on Windows, OSX or X APis, or to think that everything in this life is pure HTML.
Well... with more research could be possible to simulate sweet things?... or maybe particular flavors.
Then we arrive to the sci-fi concept of universal healthy food and/or replicators, where you can carry only one type of food in your space shuttle but to choose what you really want to eat (or to feel you are eating).
In fact, could be better to work in this direction than to add potentially carcinogen components to the food to improve and/or modulate the flavour.
When I know how to drive a car I can be very dangerous to other people if I do things wrong. This is not an exclusive for computing devices, this is a natural characteristic in every type of technology we can use.
Well, yes. A program doesn't need to have 1000 lines, it can be made with only one. And, there are a myriad of languages, some textual, other graphical, so in general, to code is to provide instructions, and a button is a perfect input device.
Although the rat IS a coder, we will be more useful if we have more knowledge about how to control our XXI century devices than a rat:-)
Well... it depends on what "coding" is and what is to be "successful".
To code doesn't mean to write C or Javascript. On the beginning, the computing machines were "coded" by wiring them in one or another way. Maybe this is a mistake when we talk about "coding".
You can be productive just by knowing how to use the devices you have at your hand, but if these devices lack of some form of automation, then what you can do is limited to your own individual efforts. When you are a manager, you even need to control information, and with better tools you can make the information to be more productive and, as a consequence, more successful. And, what are you doing when working with all these information gathering tools if not to program them by introducing and/or changing parameters?
Even the microwave need to be "coded" when defining what type of "program" they need to use to perform a better task... to cook well an egg instead of chicken. And the new washing machines have complex behavior that depend on how you will take the decisions when using them.
Returning to the driver analogy, if I can drive a bicycle I won't be able to drive a plane, but what about the future planes that will automate everything? That automation always will require some knowledge to be used appropriately, some sort of "coding" that can improve very much the plane schedule and the final benefit of using it. Because it is right to say that we don't need to code, but it is important to understand that we can be many times more productive if we know how to code our environment for it to perform better and to have much better results.
But those who can learn to code effectively enough to improve or change their career? That's a whole different kettle of fish. Like the guy who progresses from occasionally topping up the oil to someone who can strip down the whole engine to diagnosis the fault and make the car safer or faster or more efficient on the way.
No one skill is a panacea. But another skill never hurts.
pr0nbot (313417) includes something interesting also:
... how to identify opportunities...
We, as humans, need to adapt to survive. Before was important, when trying to catch a deer or to escape from a tigger, to learn how to use an arrow or to locate the wind direction, skills that could make a life/death difference; but now one of the basic skills is to "control" a computerised device (more than to learn now to code), because these computers became ubiquitous.
To code is like to know how to drive. It is important as a basic requirement in the digital era, but that's all.
Because there are many different types of drivers, the ones can control a bicycle, a motorcycle, a small economic car, a big family car, a construction truck, a tractor, a small ship, a big petroleum container, a plane, a space shuttle, etc.
So, it is right to know how to drive "well", but it is what happens after this basic knowledge what could or not to help you to have and to keep a job.
I have been working on enterprise-grade applications running on Raspberry-Pi type of computers. In this case, less is more (less trashing resources produce better usage). And it is possible to execute transactional monitors with a mere 6 megabyte of RAM, so the overall 1 gigabyte of memory on those machines is good enough for complex tasks when it is wisely used.
And now we have more than 15 terabyte SSDs that it is like to lost a needle not on a haystack but on the milky way.
Of course, it is possible to use that space on gaming or raw video storage, even on hungry relational database storage, but what could be done when working with care? There are applications only the imagination can figure about this type of fast, power saving and huge storage. And there are other consequences also: better and cheaper low level SSDs ( ) for general usage, that could really break the hard-disk kingdom.
You have the "factory", as the huge ones in China, where a total population lives around their working place. So big level doesn't exist in any other place.
Here, in Costa Rica, we have the "artificial" tendency where some industrial areas are being devoted more and more to the services instead of the direct construction of physical goods. And as the people has terrible problems to arrive to the office because an almost collapsed infrastructure, some decide to move to neighborhoods located around these industrial zones (in enclosed environments with similar houses, a pool and some social infrastructure).
However, the living environment is better far from those zones, with better access to water, clean air and nature, and a healthier place for children to grow. And for "services", that are replacing the other richness production sources, to have a remote job using the Internet is making a very important impact in the living distribution of the people breaking that "some cities" tendency. Then, better communication produces better virtual relationships and a ticket for you to live wherever it is better for you.
You can create a dedicated network for emergency messaging with particular registered smartphones and WIFI repeaters (if this needs to work "in" the hospital premises). And even to go to the Internet with a careful design.
I am an entrepreneur with engineering and music background.
Of course that I want my business to flourish, who not? However I am clever enough to understand that without a continuous development in basic science we won't have future enterprises.
The sad on this is that it is not the first time in modern history that this type of decisions destroy innovative companies (worst in government area). It is simple, you can't create richness from the air, it is important to create the basement for that.
Could be possible that all politicians and government officials around the world need to have some history courses? At least for not to repeat the obvious mistakes.
Slashdot Mirror
I could come with some answer after thinking for a while, but very probably will have some mistakes (after 24 hours flying). So, the best option could be to invent some language and to code that using your own rules based on theoretical libraries (who could argue that this is not a right answer?).
But the real problem here is that the US is imposing so many incoherent restrictions that soon or later it will stop being the main planet plane hub, hurting the own US economy and forcing to find a more open place welcoming people from other countries to share ideas and to contribute to the improvement of modern society.
If the US government is not welcoming visitors, then won't have them. Is this the right way to improve internal economy?
Even with slavery there was some type of internal freedom, because "the owner" only was owning the physical part and capacity, never what was inside the person mind ... until now.
The collective behavior indicates what I am trying to accomplish, what are my feelings, my thoughts. The data is there, the only needed thing is to dig enough.
For some time I have been trying to discover what it is exactly the "666" written on the Bible. Initially my thoughts were related with the DNA, as it is a number. It is simple, if you can code something inside it, then it is possible to locate you, as if this is a mark on your hand or your forehead. But really, there is a more simpler way to do this.
You don't need to change what the other person is ... what you need to do is to classify it, externally, and you will be able to control the person environment.. Do the person like red cars? Then flood the market with red cars and make them cheap enough or offer special credit facilities, everything designed around "statistics".
And if the person belongs to a "class" that you really don't like, then eliminate it from the market spectrum, send the person to an unknown corner. This is really scary.
For musicians (yes, an orchestra is an office), the electronic version is extremely primitive. Basically you need 25-30 inches foldable tablets with extremely high resolution (Full HDMI is not enough to display the pentagram correctly). And very high quality electronic pencils to take notes.
Also, it is not the same to draw on the screen that to do it on paper ... although this is improving constantly, we are not yet in the place we could say paper is over for artists.
And even for engineers. The napkin is the best tool to create innovative stuff ... ok, seriously talking, there are many drawings that can't be efficiently made without a piece of paper.
I hope that this will improve in the future, but only if the ones making the technology focus themselves in the hard issues and try to make the result affordable enough for children to use at school or for a 7 years old violin player to study his/her Suzuki Motto-Perpetuo.
I had huge problems implementing white lists in a previous work (software development company).
However it is real that this is the only solution. It is "very" painful, but what medicine is not painful to take or have bad said effects?" The huge mistake was to think on general purpose computers where you can mix the highly sensitive stuff with reading newspapers or Facebook profiles and visiting dangerous places; this is the same as to say that you can walk without care through a hall full of mosquitoes with Zika. You need to do something, to cover yourself, to put a lot of poison around you (that also can kill you), or just not to go there.
But today we have extremely powerful single board computers and mobiles with technology that could be reused to define different types of devices having multiple running environments. Then, you can have more than one computer or more than one computer module devoted to the risky stuff and other modules working the sensitive things, together with a well designed protocol defined to use the best (and safe) parts on every side. In general ... something must change, we can't continue walking the same path, this will go nowhere.
Anyone could make an sketch in ancient times ... however, the average person "quality" for that sketch was not good enough to preserve it. And the same is happening with digital media because any person can write a comment on Slashdot but not all the comments will even be read.
So, somebody will add some "points" and could be possible that some of these comments be good enough to be cited by somebody else. Previously, if we wanted to have something for a longer time, was necessary to pay a professional artist to paint the event; and if that painter was somebody as Da Vinci, we would be marvel today about the final piece of art.
I think that our current HUGE problem is that we are not aware about where is the good quality preservation mechanisms. They are not Facebook, in fact even the Internet Archive has a lot of holes (I made an important web page a lot of years ago and even when was stored 15 years ago, now it is gone). And if we create a DVD ... I have a bunch of DVDs that I never will check because it is a lot of data, and the file formats are impossible to check right now with our current software.
Could be possible that the real solution is for some organisation to define standard storage formats for long term storage? Text files are good examples.
The problem is the source of wealth.
I always will prefer a person with individual tastes and natural opinions to help my children to learn music that a machine. Then I would be paying this person to teach the "art", and when my children play music in their school orchestra I will be the first one to hear how they create their "imperfect" but beautiful music.
And all this is ok; however, who will give me the money to pay that music teacher if what I do for living can be better done by a machine?
Another option is that if a company produces a lot of money with just machines, then the government need to tax heavily that company for one of two things: to decide to hire some people, or to collect the money for them to pay the people with intellectual or artistic based professions. And, to make a cultural revolution increasing the quantity of people on that area instead of promoting jobs that could be easily improved with machines.
Of course, and in particular in the capitalist world where we live, this is an utopia.
Maybe "real" autopilot software needs more context information to be accurate. Humans have a very complex capacity to "guess" extra situations that could be dangerous and this help us to avoid several accidents, and to expect that a car computer will do exactly the same is not a realistic situation.
There are options for this. For example, to have long range sensors measuring everything is happening around the cars each several kilometers, or a small drone flying with the car to produce a 3D perspective of the road. Even, some cars could "cooperate" with their neighbor cars, following the Waze example, or to mark some areas as "extra careful" areas where the speed needs to be reduced no matter what is happening around.
Is this a piece of cake? Not, but it is not impossible to do, and deserve to be taken into consideration as much as the places to recharge the cars.
You can do most things in any language, so it's most important to select whatever your team is most comfortable with.
This is really important when working on groups. Even more important that the company decisions, because the good art produces good results (when forced to do complex things on not well known platforms, these things become real nightmares).
But returning to the original question, I think that depends on what you do. For me, it is usual to switch between Bash, C++, Javascript, PHP or even my own configuration languages in an hour when working with multi-tier products. To pretend that everything can or that even "must" be done with only one language is not real.
When you read that the fastest machine is the Sunway based on chinese made CPUs (because of US restrictions), and that Fujitsu (Japanese) is working on so powerful machine based on ARM (England) designed architecture Fujitsu improved, it feels as an indicator that US is not leading the technology anymore.
I will put this in different words: no one country can lead the future of any other country just because of past achievements. Now, there are several options and all them are valid.
Also, following the Russia attempt to have backdoors on the encryption algorithms for messaging, it is clear that nobody is accepting any restriction from anybody else and that technology alone can't be a deterrent.
As a side note: Could be possible that, because of political reasons, we are arriving to the end of technology advancement?
Let me see ... the US wants backdoors (in fact, the NSA approved stuff is designed to be weak in one or another way). Then, Russia wants backdoors. China works with service providers to have some sort of backdoor. I am sure that UK and Australia are looking for backdoors.
So, any country has the right to have backdoors in the security artifacts and what was supposed to be secure now will have more holes than doors have a hotel, in the name of counter-terrorism, making these artifacts completely useless. Because if one country has the right, then all them have the right. Could be possible to control more than 200 backdoors in any secured communication?
This is very similar to say that as the terrorists breath, then we need to control the air because they could be breathing.
I could call this the "God's key".
As we know nothing about how this work inside, there are two big possibilities: (1) There is only one key for every Intel chip or (2) Intel stores private keys for every chip they produce. And both are equally fragile.
In the first place, that key must be in the hands of somebody in some moment in the CPU life cycle, or the key must be stored someplace and somebody must has a key to access the key, or any other combination of facts involving a human. As the weakest link, that human is the one must be protected.
In the second place, if there is only one key to have access to the most of Intel based computers around, then it deserves to invest in a methodology to break "that" key. The payment always will be higher than the money used to break it.
Also, when we talk about hundreds of years to break a key, that is a commercial buzzword referring to a "maximum" in the statistical world. There is a chance that the key be found in just five minutes so, to declare the type of key is not a good idea because they already gave enough information for somebody to try to break it.
But there is a particularly troublesome word has been used here. It is the "VERY" in "very secure". For me, something is or not secure and when very is used, it means that they don't trust 100% on what they do. There is a manageable risk that they decide to put into their shoulders in the name of all their users without having any idea what their users would be controlling with their CPUs. And this is a "very" risky bid.
I have been reading many different types of justifications on the security of the CPU makers (whatever be the brand). However we can't overestimate the fact that we are humans and that anybody can make mistakes, in particular with so complex artifacts as CPUs. These hidden parts and their security mechanisms can have bugs (yesterday, today or tomorrow). And also, they are not designed only to work with previous and current scenarios, but with the unknown future ones that are completely unexpected.
Thinking on this issue I checked quickly what CPUs have the Cisco Firewalls (just to check a famous brand), and notice that they have different ones depending on the appliance model, from the AMD Geode to some Intel Xeon variants, so there are possibilities even on security appliances for this to be exploited.
The problem with this hidden CPU approach is that they can bypass the computer built security without the operating system noticing it, with potentially dangerous consequences. And we are updating our software regularly but the most of the people is not aware of the updating on the underlying things (if they can be updated). The lack of knowledge in this respect is a dangerous thing.
But what can be done?
A very few are careful enough on checking the internal hardware specifications on the networking devices, the ones could protect any not so well controlled hidden device inside our network. So, it is really important to learn more about what we really have and if it is possible to combine "different" layers of appliances. For example, not to rely only on Intel or only on AMD for both servers and security appliances, or even to combine x64 and x32 with ARM, MIPS or other type of CPUs. This way, if there is a breach because some architectural failure, the next layer won't suffer the same fate because it is different (not necessarily because it is better). This combination of suppliers is something it is already being recommended for antivirus on enterprise environments (don't trust only in one supplier).
On the other case, when knowing extra ports and other elements that nobody is actively controlling within our network, will be possible to understand better that maybe that "extra" traffic has a hardware and not a software origin.
Our modern environments are rich and powerful, but this richness doesn't come for free. We need to understand it and control it correctly.
https://communities.cisco.com/...
First, I was formally trained on music (+14 years). This opened my mind to abstraction, not only because you need to figure how to translate the figures to sounds, but also because it is not the same to play baroque than romantic music. All this have a big context around that prepared me to work with today's complex scenarios. Also, I learned two years how to use mechanical typewriters without letters on the keys; this, together with complementary piano lessons helped me very much to make a healthy usage of the computer keyboard (very fast typing and zero carpal tunnel syndrome).
Then, in Costa Rica we didn't have all the facilities other countries have when I was a child. For me, a computer was a big refrigerator full of bright lights and some big round tape circles dancing and making bip bip bip. Was when I had an old second hand 1960s book describing how these machines really work that started to catch my attention.
After that, my brother began studying Electronic Engineering on the University while I was still in High School, and a Tandy 1000 EX computer arrived home. There I was playing with an Epson Printer on Basic and made my first music paper calculating how to use the individual pins in the printer. After that, everything was obvious (of course I was very good at math on my early days). In fact, today I see that the students are lost on extremely abstract concepts without digging enough on the basements ... it is important, at least once in our life, to create our own graphical interface using our own rules and designs, and not to depend so much on Windows, OSX or X APis, or to think that everything in this life is pure HTML.
I think we are in the Newton's Apple PDA time on smartwatches. It is very early and they do almost nothing.
In fact, the watch can't be the complement but the replacement for the mobile phone, no less than that (no screen? .. we still lack imagination).
Any attempt for just to make so expensive "remote control" will fail.
Well ... with more research could be possible to simulate sweet things? ... or maybe particular flavors.
Then we arrive to the sci-fi concept of universal healthy food and/or replicators, where you can carry only one type of food in your space shuttle but to choose what you really want to eat (or to feel you are eating).
In fact, could be better to work in this direction than to add potentially carcinogen components to the food to improve and/or modulate the flavour.
Anyway ... what is reality if not a definition by consensus?
That's true. But think about it.
When I know how to drive a car I can be very dangerous to other people if I do things wrong. This is not an exclusive for computing devices, this is a natural characteristic in every type of technology we can use.
Well, yes. A program doesn't need to have 1000 lines, it can be made with only one. And, there are a myriad of languages, some textual, other graphical, so in general, to code is to provide instructions, and a button is a perfect input device.
Although the rat IS a coder, we will be more useful if we have more knowledge about how to control our XXI century devices than a rat :-)
Well ... it depends on what "coding" is and what is to be "successful".
To code doesn't mean to write C or Javascript. On the beginning, the computing machines were "coded" by wiring them in one or another way. Maybe this is a mistake when we talk about "coding".
You can be productive just by knowing how to use the devices you have at your hand, but if these devices lack of some form of automation, then what you can do is limited to your own individual efforts. When you are a manager, you even need to control information, and with better tools you can make the information to be more productive and, as a consequence, more successful. And, what are you doing when working with all these information gathering tools if not to program them by introducing and/or changing parameters?
Even the microwave need to be "coded" when defining what type of "program" they need to use to perform a better task ... to cook well an egg instead of chicken. And the new washing machines have complex behavior that depend on how you will take the decisions when using them.
Returning to the driver analogy, if I can drive a bicycle I won't be able to drive a plane, but what about the future planes that will automate everything? That automation always will require some knowledge to be used appropriately, some sort of "coding" that can improve very much the plane schedule and the final benefit of using it. Because it is right to say that we don't need to code, but it is important to understand that we can be many times more productive if we know how to code our environment for it to perform better and to have much better results.
But those who can learn to code effectively enough to improve or change their career? That's a whole different kettle of fish. Like the guy who progresses from occasionally topping up the oil to someone who can strip down the whole engine to diagnosis the fault and make the car safer or faster or more efficient on the way.
No one skill is a panacea. But another skill never hurts.
pr0nbot (313417) includes something interesting also:
... how to identify opportunities ...
We, as humans, need to adapt to survive. Before was important, when trying to catch a deer or to escape from a tigger, to learn how to use an arrow or to locate the wind direction, skills that could make a life/death difference; but now one of the basic skills is to "control" a computerised device (more than to learn now to code), because these computers became ubiquitous.
To code is like to know how to drive. It is important as a basic requirement in the digital era, but that's all.
Because there are many different types of drivers, the ones can control a bicycle, a motorcycle, a small economic car, a big family car, a construction truck, a tractor, a small ship, a big petroleum container, a plane, a space shuttle, etc.
So, it is right to know how to drive "well", but it is what happens after this basic knowledge what could or not to help you to have and to keep a job.
I have been working on enterprise-grade applications running on Raspberry-Pi type of computers. In this case, less is more (less trashing resources produce better usage). And it is possible to execute transactional monitors with a mere 6 megabyte of RAM, so the overall 1 gigabyte of memory on those machines is good enough for complex tasks when it is wisely used.
And now we have more than 15 terabyte SSDs that it is like to lost a needle not on a haystack but on the milky way.
Of course, it is possible to use that space on gaming or raw video storage, even on hungry relational database storage, but what could be done when working with care? There are applications only the imagination can figure about this type of fast, power saving and huge storage. And there are other consequences also: better and cheaper low level SSDs ( ) for general usage, that could really break the hard-disk kingdom.
You have the "factory", as the huge ones in China, where a total population lives around their working place. So big level doesn't exist in any other place.
Here, in Costa Rica, we have the "artificial" tendency where some industrial areas are being devoted more and more to the services instead of the direct construction of physical goods. And as the people has terrible problems to arrive to the office because an almost collapsed infrastructure, some decide to move to neighborhoods located around these industrial zones (in enclosed environments with similar houses, a pool and some social infrastructure).
However, the living environment is better far from those zones, with better access to water, clean air and nature, and a healthier place for children to grow. And for "services", that are replacing the other richness production sources, to have a remote job using the Internet is making a very important impact in the living distribution of the people breaking that "some cities" tendency. Then, better communication produces better virtual relationships and a ticket for you to live wherever it is better for you.
Why not to use WIFI?
You can create a dedicated network for emergency messaging with particular registered smartphones and WIFI repeaters (if this needs to work "in" the hospital premises). And even to go to the Internet with a careful design.
And googling around, it seems there is at least one company making pagers: http://criticalresponse.com/ho...
I am an entrepreneur with engineering and music background.
Of course that I want my business to flourish, who not? However I am clever enough to understand that without a continuous development in basic science we won't have future enterprises.
The sad on this is that it is not the first time in modern history that this type of decisions destroy innovative companies (worst in government area). It is simple, you can't create richness from the air, it is important to create the basement for that.
Could be possible that all politicians and government officials around the world need to have some history courses? At least for not to repeat the obvious mistakes.