no, you are absolutely correct... it's true... but, the one really unhelpful person is the one you remember... there are a lot of *really* helpful people kicking it on IRC waiting for questions from people doing their first install, but they don't stick in one's memory quite the same way
The average person simply is not going to go looking for help on usenet or IRC (and my experience with posting on the Ubuntu forums has been that I don't get any useful replies, either).
And how many times on IRC did you get responses along the lines of "sort it out for yourself, n00b, the rest of us googled our way through..."
My biggest complaint about linux is the community. I've got a happy fedora install at home that does everything i need it to, but when it comes to the nitty gritty of the trackpad or the sound card, it's not only *really* hard to get good information, but you have to fight your way through attitude to find it.
I have a suspicion that a lot of the people giving first-timers a hard go of it on IRC are the same people screaming about how their grandmothers could install Linux so what the hell is wrong with everybody else.
it's not too hard to imagine kids getting REALLY bored with making meaningless code that doesn't look like the apps they are accustomed to running
imagine any other skill that takes *lots* of time and effort to develop... it's all about maintaining the sense of awe that got the kid interested in the first place
when you learn wood working, you don't start out making beautiful, functional art like cabinets, you make a duck, from a pattern, out of a sing block. a good teacher makes sure the student is impressed with his abilities to make something out of nothing, and as the kid gets better, his work eventualy trends closer to the masterpieces that inspired him in the first place...
it's really the same with coding... the first time i had text interface that said one thing if given x, and another if given y, (i was 7, i think), i was thriled. when i was 14 and using menu bars to change the color of rectangles on the screen, i was still happy...
i think kids will remain interested if they are given tasks that make them feel like they are learning... no one really approaches learning expecting to be a rock star on the first go
I tried to turn him on to coding, but he went out and got Visual Studio, and went off on his own. He came back and proudly demonstrated his various creations.
Well come on. When I was a kid my down sat my down in front of Apple BASIC on our IIgs. When I was little older we got THINK C. Whoever started this kid off in Visual Studio has some 'splainin to do.
There's a reason we start with printf("Hello World."); and not with dragging a text box into a big white rectangle.
Space flight is hard. Landing on another planet is hard. Driving around on another planet by remote control is hard. The redundancy and robustness is built in to these systems because we know there are about 10,000 things that could go wrong, and we want to protect against these things.
I'm seeing a t-shirt:
Space Flight: hard. Landing on another planet: hard. Driving around on another planet by remote control: hard. Redundancy and robustness: priceless.
always thought of coding in terms of recipes especially back in the days of C. You list all of your ingredients (variables) first and then write instuctions on how to mix them together to get the result you want
ha! we have totally different approaches to both coding and cooking! i get all my ingredients lined up, and then keep hacking away at them until i get the result i want:)
It's like asking, why do football players attend keg parties? Coding and roleplaying are part of geek culture
i thought kegs were part of geek culture too?
beer is pretty universally cultural... football players, geeks, coder, gamers, accountants, scientists... granted, the people i know who've worked for nasa and the hard-core gamers seem to be more likely to order fruity drinks in huge vases with multiple straws when out for an evening... but *everybody* likes a keg
interesting, and true... would you classify those in the same set as "rigid rule structure where creative manipulation of those rules = success" the way one could for coding or gaming?
well, it says it remembers historical data about each cow: average milk time, average yield, etc.... if *i* had cows going into that thing, and if *i* was trusting it to use that data to give me heads ups about potential problems, i'd want a *long* history for each animal, and i'd want that data backed up... it a couple years, that drive could easily start looking full
I have to get ready for work, so I'm too lazy right now to see if other commenters have said the same thing, but here's my $0.02- don't underestimate that "history of engineering"... don't worry about getting a "general education"... one of the biggest problems with college graduates these days is *too much* specialization... people are bloody useless at anything except their specialty... you'll find in 10, 15 years that having a solid background is imensely usefull...
to wit: i work in IT; my college background is in art... I love it... I've got a mac SE 30 sitting in the hallway, and while my first thought was to put linux on it, i'm now leaning toward converting it into a planter box... any skills you can get a shot at: gobble them up... the broader and more diverse your general background, the more long term benefits you'll feel
I'm sure someone applied the same argument to guns when they were first invented (well actually, people STILL do). Its a tool and it can be used for good or bad purposes. The good almost always outweighs the bad.
go ahead. mod me troll or flamebait... i'm still not convinced there's a "good purpose" for guns, and i have no idea how they are a "tool" that can be used for good
in the case of shooting the guy who's trying to break into my house, i'll give you a bit, but i'd rather call that "necessary, but still bad" rather than "good"
While you've got a point, and I agree 99%, here's the other 1%- when a story is posted "in the mysterious future", there is a link "See any problems with this story? Email the on-duty editor." Well. If we identify something as a dupe, email the editor, and it isn't pulled, that seems like a shirking of editorial responsibilities.
I had a revelation last night about Microsoft's inovation. I've been as down on M$ as the next guy. At home I run Fedora and a few flavors of MacOS. My bedroom is Microsoft-free.
Last night, I was helping a friend make a flier for a class she's teaching. She kept wanting to do all this stuff with the text and the images that's *really easy* in word. We were using Apple's answer to Word, and the UI just wasn't there. Most of the features seemed like they were, but finding them was rediculous. I have to give M$ credit for intuitive UI design for a goodly number of the features in the Office suite.
why stop there? once the guest has made a few purchases this way, you then know the *kinds* of things he's likely to buy, and for large-dollar customers, you could then rotate likely purchases into the projected path of travel, which you've gleaned from tracking his mouse ears
for the next version they'll include rfid as well as sensors in your head, so all you have to do is look at something long enough, and zap! it's purchased and turns up in your hotel room, nicely wrapped, just after dinner.
Am I less smart because I can no longer do 14-digit long division in my head, like I did when I was young? No.
Am I smarter because I approximate it and don't waste my time figuring it out? Maybe.
Am I smarter because I use the calculator because there is less risk of error? Almost definitely.
i really like this approach- a kind of societal or community intelligence, where if the individuals can not achieve the desire result because they don't know how, BUT, can use technology to get the answer, then we don't say we're less smart.
if we use results-oriented criteria as our measure of intelligence, then it doesn't matter if we use technology to get to that point or not. the fact is that at the end of the day, as a society we are demonstrating superior intelligence
Lots of high schools have really bad teachers who basically teach their algebra classes as if they were a "learn to punch things into a calculator but not understand what happens" class. Students don't really have an option as to who their teacher is and even then, some school systems make this type of thing go on uniformly. When people try to go up in higher level college math, they're fucked.
i don't know... i've had bad teachers, and i've had good teachers. I think if a student is really interested in a subject, he or she will find a way to learn it.
algebra is a funny example, becuase the number of people who would put in the effort to learn algebra despite a bad teacher is a small group of people. that's us, the geeks. we like algebra, we think it's pretty. we're a minority.
i think that with the kinds of people we (geeky slashdot people) like to hang out with, and with the kinds of jobs we get, it's easy to get a skewed perspective of how people really think and what they are in to. it's like in college. i went to a small liberal arts college, and i would meet kids all the time who would say stuff like "how do these conservatives get elected? *i* don't know anyone who would vote for them"... well... there's a big america out there that i just don't like to be in touch with...
the same is true for technology... when we invented calculators, people who would never have leared math in the first place could now do it... that didn't stop anybody who would have learned it anyway from still learning how it's done
this may be urban myth, but i've *heard* that (in California at least) the homeless can get IDs by roping a friendly peace officer into signing an affidavit that certifies that the individual "habitualy resides at"... shelter/intersection/bridge/what have you
Both points make sense, but I don't think either one is really news to anyone here
exactly... it seemed like it was written because some editor really needed a technology article, fast, and just pulled first thing he could find out of his butt... it didn't really offer anything at all, and when it did, it was all obvious
anyone who grew up in the last 30 years probably remembers wanting to use a calculator in school, and being told we couldn't because we had to learn how to do it first. that's basically still the case, isn't it? technology isn't going to make anyone dumber, unless we opt not to learn things any more.
but really, those people have always been around, and there have always been geeks who want to learn everything anyway. i don't think anything is going to change, except there will be more toys to play with.
Slashdot Mirror
no, you are absolutely correct... it's true... but, the one really unhelpful person is the one you remember... there are a lot of *really* helpful people kicking it on IRC waiting for questions from people doing their first install, but they don't stick in one's memory quite the same way
The average person simply is not going to go looking for help on usenet or IRC (and my experience with posting on the Ubuntu forums has been that I don't get any useful replies, either).
And how many times on IRC did you get responses along the lines of "sort it out for yourself, n00b, the rest of us googled our way through..."
My biggest complaint about linux is the community. I've got a happy fedora install at home that does everything i need it to, but when it comes to the nitty gritty of the trackpad or the sound card, it's not only *really* hard to get good information, but you have to fight your way through attitude to find it.
I have a suspicion that a lot of the people giving first-timers a hard go of it on IRC are the same people screaming about how their grandmothers could install Linux so what the hell is wrong with everybody else.
it's not too hard to imagine kids getting REALLY bored with making meaningless code that doesn't look like the apps they are accustomed to running
imagine any other skill that takes *lots* of time and effort to develop... it's all about maintaining the sense of awe that got the kid interested in the first place
when you learn wood working, you don't start out making beautiful, functional art like cabinets, you make a duck, from a pattern, out of a sing block. a good teacher makes sure the student is impressed with his abilities to make something out of nothing, and as the kid gets better, his work eventualy trends closer to the masterpieces that inspired him in the first place...
it's really the same with coding... the first time i had text interface that said one thing if given x, and another if given y, (i was 7, i think), i was thriled. when i was 14 and using menu bars to change the color of rectangles on the screen, i was still happy...
i think kids will remain interested if they are given tasks that make them feel like they are learning... no one really approaches learning expecting to be a rock star on the first go
There's a reason we start with printf("Hello World."); and not with dragging a text box into a big white rectangle.
Heh heh. I'm the dumb-ass. I see brightly colored shit and my first thought is "advertisement" and I stop looking.
Cheer, danke, etc. for the tip.
Is it just me, or was the target of the link devoid of anything except ads?
I thought I'd found the path to the rest of the story when I got to this sentance:
And take a minute this week to unpack your dusty NES from its storage closet and go for a run-and-jump trip down memory lane.
there was link on "memory" (which has since disappeared) that went to dell.com's RAM catalog. Ugh.
I'm seeing a t-shirt:
Space Flight: hard. Landing on another planet: hard. Driving around on another planet by remote control: hard. Redundancy and robustness: priceless.
always thought of coding in terms of recipes especially back in the days of C. You list all of your ingredients (variables) first and then write instuctions on how to mix them together to get the result you want
:)
ha! we have totally different approaches to both coding and cooking! i get all my ingredients lined up, and then keep hacking away at them until i get the result i want
Well, it looks like yesterday's zombie lurch accomplished something for the city!
It's like asking, why do football players attend keg parties? Coding and roleplaying are part of geek culture
i thought kegs were part of geek culture too?
beer is pretty universally cultural... football players, geeks, coder, gamers, accountants, scientists... granted, the people i know who've worked for nasa and the hard-core gamers seem to be more likely to order fruity drinks in huge vases with multiple straws when out for an evening... but *everybody* likes a keg
interesting, and true... would you classify those in the same set as "rigid rule structure where creative manipulation of those rules = success" the way one could for coding or gaming?
well, it says it remembers historical data about each cow: average milk time, average yield, etc.... if *i* had cows going into that thing, and if *i* was trusting it to use that data to give me heads ups about potential problems, i'd want a *long* history for each animal, and i'd want that data backed up... it a couple years, that drive could easily start looking full
whoops! i think you accidentally included the letter 'r' in the last word!
I have to get ready for work, so I'm too lazy right now to see if other commenters have said the same thing, but here's my $0.02- don't underestimate that "history of engineering"... don't worry about getting a "general education"... one of the biggest problems with college graduates these days is *too much* specialization... people are bloody useless at anything except their specialty... you'll find in 10, 15 years that having a solid background is imensely usefull...
to wit: i work in IT; my college background is in art... I love it... I've got a mac SE 30 sitting in the hallway, and while my first thought was to put linux on it, i'm now leaning toward converting it into a planter box... any skills you can get a shot at: gobble them up... the broader and more diverse your general background, the more long term benefits you'll feel
trust me
...I for one welcome our new bullshit-lawsuit-quashing overlords.
I'm sure someone applied the same argument to guns when they were first invented (well actually, people STILL do). Its a tool and it can be used for good or bad purposes. The good almost always outweighs the bad.
go ahead. mod me troll or flamebait... i'm still not convinced there's a "good purpose" for guns, and i have no idea how they are a "tool" that can be used for good
in the case of shooting the guy who's trying to break into my house, i'll give you a bit, but i'd rather call that "necessary, but still bad" rather than "good"
While you've got a point, and I agree 99%, here's the other 1%- when a story is posted "in the mysterious future", there is a link "See any problems with this story? Email the on-duty editor." Well. If we identify something as a dupe, email the editor, and it isn't pulled, that seems like a shirking of editorial responsibilities.
On the Developers Page, this story and its twin from yesterday are only separated by one interloper.
I had a revelation last night about Microsoft's inovation. I've been as down on M$ as the next guy. At home I run Fedora and a few flavors of MacOS. My bedroom is Microsoft-free.
Last night, I was helping a friend make a flier for a class she's teaching. She kept wanting to do all this stuff with the text and the images that's *really easy* in word. We were using Apple's answer to Word, and the UI just wasn't there. Most of the features seemed like they were, but finding them was rediculous. I have to give M$ credit for intuitive UI design for a goodly number of the features in the Office suite.
why stop there? once the guest has made a few purchases this way, you then know the *kinds* of things he's likely to buy, and for large-dollar customers, you could then rotate likely purchases into the projected path of travel, which you've gleaned from tracking his mouse ears
i think i'm going to go shoot myself
for the next version they'll include rfid as well as sensors in your head, so all you have to do is look at something long enough, and zap! it's purchased and turns up in your hotel room, nicely wrapped, just after dinner.
Am I less smart because I can no longer do 14-digit long division in my head, like I did when I was young? No. Am I smarter because I approximate it and don't waste my time figuring it out? Maybe. Am I smarter because I use the calculator because there is less risk of error? Almost definitely.
i really like this approach- a kind of societal or community intelligence, where if the individuals can not achieve the desire result because they don't know how, BUT, can use technology to get the answer, then we don't say we're less smart.
if we use results-oriented criteria as our measure of intelligence, then it doesn't matter if we use technology to get to that point or not. the fact is that at the end of the day, as a society we are demonstrating superior intelligence
Lots of high schools have really bad teachers who basically teach their algebra classes as if they were a "learn to punch things into a calculator but not understand what happens" class. Students don't really have an option as to who their teacher is and even then, some school systems make this type of thing go on uniformly. When people try to go up in higher level college math, they're fucked.
i don't know... i've had bad teachers, and i've had good teachers. I think if a student is really interested in a subject, he or she will find a way to learn it.
algebra is a funny example, becuase the number of people who would put in the effort to learn algebra despite a bad teacher is a small group of people. that's us, the geeks. we like algebra, we think it's pretty. we're a minority.
i think that with the kinds of people we (geeky slashdot people) like to hang out with, and with the kinds of jobs we get, it's easy to get a skewed perspective of how people really think and what they are in to. it's like in college. i went to a small liberal arts college, and i would meet kids all the time who would say stuff like "how do these conservatives get elected? *i* don't know anyone who would vote for them"... well... there's a big america out there that i just don't like to be in touch with...
the same is true for technology... when we invented calculators, people who would never have leared math in the first place could now do it... that didn't stop anybody who would have learned it anyway from still learning how it's done
this may be urban myth, but i've *heard* that (in California at least) the homeless can get IDs by roping a friendly peace officer into signing an affidavit that certifies that the individual "habitualy resides at"... shelter/intersection/bridge/what have you
Both points make sense, but I don't think either one is really news to anyone here
exactly... it seemed like it was written because some editor really needed a technology article, fast, and just pulled first thing he could find out of his butt... it didn't really offer anything at all, and when it did, it was all obvious
anyone who grew up in the last 30 years probably remembers wanting to use a calculator in school, and being told we couldn't because we had to learn how to do it first. that's basically still the case, isn't it? technology isn't going to make anyone dumber, unless we opt not to learn things any more.
but really, those people have always been around, and there have always been geeks who want to learn everything anyway. i don't think anything is going to change, except there will be more toys to play with.