I'm sorry - am I missing a huge demographic of people who have never touched a computer, but still want to learn how to program? If you seriously think that learning how to use a keyboard and mouse, open and close windows, download programs, and type, is "too complex", then I pity the incredibly low bar that you have set for yourself in life.
You need to expect more out of people. It took me 4 days to learn how to program in BASIC on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1985. That was the first computer that I touched. If there's anything standing in the way of people devoting the time and energy, it's people like you who continually reassure them that it's way too difficult to do.
1. Take a 101 class to learn how to use a computer and the web. 2. Download a beginner's guide on how to program in Python.
That's it. I started programming with Pascal and C in the 80's. We didn't spend 90% of our time worshipping the goddess of great readable self-maintaining agile code, we just wrote code. I used C++ in the 90's. Nowadays I use Python for scripting, and program in Haskell for fun. On a complexity scale, if understanding the Hodge Conjecture is a 10/10, Haskell might be a 2/10, and every other language is a 1/10. We literally have a class for 12 year olds to show them how to build Android apps.
Now, programmers are about the most predictable people on the planet, so your next step will be to claim that my list is not sufficient to be a GREAT programmer. But I'd like to remind you about your phrase "at its core". Resist the temptation to move the goalposts.
My two year requirement would be for someone who is intending to become a professional programmer. That mirrors other trade skills such as plumbing and carpentry. It is simply unnecessary for a computer programmer to have a 4 year degree like a computer scientist has. As far as amateurs, the barrier to entry for programming is far less than for working with electricity. Which requires more training - writing an Apple Store app, or safely changing out the breaker box in your basement?
Programmers point to a handful of elite systems programmers to aggrandize their field. Programming is a trade skill, it is not engineering. And we don't need everyone on the planet to be able to write code, any more than we need everyone to be able to replace the toilet in their bathroom.
Those are jobs that involve a vanishingly small percentage of the general population. Programming is not. I couldn't stop laughing after reading this gem - "programming has become an elite: a vocation requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication."
Does this egotistical idiot actually believe that?
Programming is not something that requires grueling training or rare talents. Algebraic topology, cardiothoracic surgery, and competitive chess require those. If you're writing code that requires elite skills, you're doing it wrong - no one is going to be able to understand it, and you will never be able to troubleshoot it. Someone with an IQ of 100 can become a perfectly competent Java or C++ programmer with two years of intensive training. Programming is more akin to a trade skill like plumbing or electrical work, than it is to engineering. And before everyone gets on my case that being a top 1% programmer is incredibly difficult, the same holds for a top 1% electrician.
Says someone who has actually been doing this for a living, and doesn't subscribe to the naïve twenty-something techie view that the world can be fixed through software.
You are conflating management with leadership. Expert systems can handle a lot of the logistics, but they can't determine that Billy Bob had a rough 4th of July weekend, and it would be best to have him do his paperwork today instead of working on the electrical junction box that has water damage.
... congratulations on opening it without any further ado...
Is it really skills and training? Or is it something more innate like IQ or visualization ability, especially for the technical jobs? Do we really want to find out?
Apples and oranges. Silicon is cheap, so there's no incentive to switch. If rare earth elements become a problem, and solar is well developed at that point, other technologies will come in to take their place. Rare earth elements are not theoretically necessary to generate adequate power. If Germany can generate this much power from solar, it's pants-on-head stupid for people in Arizona to say that nuclear is better.
Oxford has already managed to get zinc working in place of indium, and there's a lot of research on technologies that don't use rare earth. Progress on solar is coming at a much greater rate than in fission.
It makes more sense to bet on breakthroughs in solar than in nuclear. Any startup can get into solar energy relatively easily. Nuclear on the other hand has a high barrier to entry. And you always have the Fukushima factor - do you really want a 20TWh reactor in the middle of Africa?
Climate change has a simple solution - reduce the number of people on the planet by 50%. This is something that we can do in two generations if we wanted. The "lot of people" you mention are very careful to avoid any mention of population control, which is why I tend to not take them very seriously.
Yes, but those "great leaps" have always been on the horizon - since I was in in high school and Reagan was president, and much earlier. If we get cold fusion, everything will change. If we get the next generation of batteries, everything will change. If we get motors that use 80% less energy, everything will change. If we can use nanotechnology to build better fuel cells, everything will change.
We can't count on the future.
We need to work with what we have right now, and yes, it will be painful. Germany is dipping a foot into that very uncomfortable swimming pool, and yes, it will mean higher prices, worse service, and so on. But it is unlikely that technology will allow us to indefinitely continue the lifestyle we have right now. Consider that at this instant, I can walk away from this computer, go to the gas station, buy a few 10 gallon jugs, fill them with gasoline, and drive across the country without depending on any refueling stops. It will be a long time before there is ANY green technology that can give me that level of speed and independence.
We have more than enough people telling us how difficult things are and how we shouldn't try - yours is just another voice in that cacophony.
What we need are people who tell us how to make it work. Nuclear plants might be necessary for a very long time, but they should be secondary to renewable sources.
The idea is to separate the five, so that it would be impractical for all five to know each other or to break your trust. So for example, your dentist that you've gone to for 20 years, your lawyer, a trusted coworker, your wife, and your brother in China.
Of course, the 3 and 5 are not magic numbers. You could make it 12 out of 13 if you're really paranoid. You could make it 5 out of 25 if you want very low possibility of your data being lost (for example a large earthquake).
You're reinventing the wheel. Public key cryptography allows a key to be split up, so that you need a minimum of X out of Y pieces to recover the key. Split the key into 5 pieces where 3 are enough to unlock it, and hand it out to lawyer, friends, co-workers, etc.
Have you worked with service providers? From the time you've dialed their number, what is your estimate of how long it takes to get someone on the line who can lock down an entire corporate account? Remember that there's a big authentication issue there - how do they know it's not a prank call?
By comparison, I can get to our server center and completely isolate us and all our data from the Internet in under 10 minutes.
Our offsite backups are put in a metal box and taken offsite. Unless you plan on hijacking a truck, it's a lot harder deleting our data than using a nice control panel on the web.
I think you're severely underestimating the numbers who can set up Roku or DVR on their own. Last year was the worst stretch for pay-TV ever. Apparently, a lot of people are figuring it out, because 8% of US households got rid of cable last year, and the trend has not peaked yet.
But there's a larger issue, because we're talking about two paths in the US. One is more mindless consumption, more cheap Chinese electronics that have to be replaced every two years, more useless channels, more keeping up with the Jones. The other is being mindful about consumption, simplifying life, and reevaluating what's really necessary. Everyone assumes the first path is inevitable, hence all the power saving talk.
Of course most people use electricity. My point is that you can reduce the amount of gadgets in your house, which is a better idea than accumulating even more materialistic crap and trying to save the planet my making it "green". Amazingly, a large percentage of the world's population survives just fine without a rotating antenna on their roof.
Uhh... if you don't have cable boxes, they don't use power? Sorry I didn't explain the logic at a 5th grade level. My antenna sits in the window and connects to the DVR, which is unplugged except for the rare occasion there's something on broadcast TV I want to record. The whole mess is on a power strip that I turn off when I'm not watching TV. I use a $35 Killawatt to see how much each device uses, so there are no surprises.
Yes, I have a device to turn my antenna for better reception. It's called "my hand".
Americans are always looking for the technological fix. Does anyone really need TV's in every room including the guest bathroom? Just reduce your consumption and try living a little simpler.
If you look directly overhead, you'll see my point sailing past your head. Obviously no one has run a sub-2 marathon, which is why the statement is true, yet useless.
Everyone knows that poor people don't eat well. But there's a complex nexus of factors involved - upbringing, inability to delay gratification, food deserts, unavailability of transport for large items, no cooking facilities, etc. So when some suburban guy with a car says "well, the poor should just eat more fruit and vegetables", it's not so simple.
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I'm sorry - am I missing a huge demographic of people who have never touched a computer, but still want to learn how to program? If you seriously think that learning how to use a keyboard and mouse, open and close windows, download programs, and type, is "too complex", then I pity the incredibly low bar that you have set for yourself in life.
You need to expect more out of people. It took me 4 days to learn how to program in BASIC on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1985. That was the first computer that I touched. If there's anything standing in the way of people devoting the time and energy, it's people like you who continually reassure them that it's way too difficult to do.
Here's your thorough list:
1. Take a 101 class to learn how to use a computer and the web.
2. Download a beginner's guide on how to program in Python.
That's it. I started programming with Pascal and C in the 80's. We didn't spend 90% of our time worshipping the goddess of great readable self-maintaining agile code, we just wrote code. I used C++ in the 90's. Nowadays I use Python for scripting, and program in Haskell for fun. On a complexity scale, if understanding the Hodge Conjecture is a 10/10, Haskell might be a 2/10, and every other language is a 1/10. We literally have a class for 12 year olds to show them how to build Android apps.
Now, programmers are about the most predictable people on the planet, so your next step will be to claim that my list is not sufficient to be a GREAT programmer. But I'd like to remind you about your phrase "at its core". Resist the temptation to move the goalposts.
My two year requirement would be for someone who is intending to become a professional programmer. That mirrors other trade skills such as plumbing and carpentry. It is simply unnecessary for a computer programmer to have a 4 year degree like a computer scientist has. As far as amateurs, the barrier to entry for programming is far less than for working with electricity. Which requires more training - writing an Apple Store app, or safely changing out the breaker box in your basement?
Programmers point to a handful of elite systems programmers to aggrandize their field. Programming is a trade skill, it is not engineering. And we don't need everyone on the planet to be able to write code, any more than we need everyone to be able to replace the toilet in their bathroom.
Those are jobs that involve a vanishingly small percentage of the general population. Programming is not. I couldn't stop laughing after reading this gem - "programming has become an elite: a vocation requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication."
Does this egotistical idiot actually believe that?
Programming is not something that requires grueling training or rare talents. Algebraic topology, cardiothoracic surgery, and competitive chess require those. If you're writing code that requires elite skills, you're doing it wrong - no one is going to be able to understand it, and you will never be able to troubleshoot it. Someone with an IQ of 100 can become a perfectly competent Java or C++ programmer with two years of intensive training. Programming is more akin to a trade skill like plumbing or electrical work, than it is to engineering. And before everyone gets on my case that being a top 1% programmer is incredibly difficult, the same holds for a top 1% electrician.
Says someone who has actually been doing this for a living, and doesn't subscribe to the naïve twenty-something techie view that the world can be fixed through software.
You are conflating management with leadership. Expert systems can handle a lot of the logistics, but they can't determine that Billy Bob had a rough 4th of July weekend, and it would be best to have him do his paperwork today instead of working on the electrical junction box that has water damage.
Not in America. Here, corporations are good people, and people people are bad people.
What do you want, step by step instructions with screenshots and Youtube tutorials for the hard parts?
Throw some junk together. Try different hardware configurations. Dabble with the source code. Amaze us and everyone else.
... congratulations on opening it without any further ado...
Is it really skills and training? Or is it something more innate like IQ or visualization ability, especially for the technical jobs? Do we really want to find out?
Apples and oranges. Silicon is cheap, so there's no incentive to switch. If rare earth elements become a problem, and solar is well developed at that point, other technologies will come in to take their place. Rare earth elements are not theoretically necessary to generate adequate power. If Germany can generate this much power from solar, it's pants-on-head stupid for people in Arizona to say that nuclear is better.
Oxford has already managed to get zinc working in place of indium, and there's a lot of research on technologies that don't use rare earth. Progress on solar is coming at a much greater rate than in fission.
It makes more sense to bet on breakthroughs in solar than in nuclear. Any startup can get into solar energy relatively easily. Nuclear on the other hand has a high barrier to entry. And you always have the Fukushima factor - do you really want a 20TWh reactor in the middle of Africa?
Climate change has a simple solution - reduce the number of people on the planet by 50%. This is something that we can do in two generations if we wanted. The "lot of people" you mention are very careful to avoid any mention of population control, which is why I tend to not take them very seriously.
Yes, but those "great leaps" have always been on the horizon - since I was in in high school and Reagan was president, and much earlier. If we get cold fusion, everything will change. If we get the next generation of batteries, everything will change. If we get motors that use 80% less energy, everything will change. If we can use nanotechnology to build better fuel cells, everything will change.
We can't count on the future.
We need to work with what we have right now, and yes, it will be painful. Germany is dipping a foot into that very uncomfortable swimming pool, and yes, it will mean higher prices, worse service, and so on. But it is unlikely that technology will allow us to indefinitely continue the lifestyle we have right now. Consider that at this instant, I can walk away from this computer, go to the gas station, buy a few 10 gallon jugs, fill them with gasoline, and drive across the country without depending on any refueling stops. It will be a long time before there is ANY green technology that can give me that level of speed and independence.
We have more than enough people telling us how difficult things are and how we shouldn't try - yours is just another voice in that cacophony.
What we need are people who tell us how to make it work. Nuclear plants might be necessary for a very long time, but they should be secondary to renewable sources.
... and us Americans won! I'll never doubt a cheap labor conservative again.
The idea is to separate the five, so that it would be impractical for all five to know each other or to break your trust. So for example, your dentist that you've gone to for 20 years, your lawyer, a trusted coworker, your wife, and your brother in China.
Of course, the 3 and 5 are not magic numbers. You could make it 12 out of 13 if you're really paranoid. You could make it 5 out of 25 if you want very low possibility of your data being lost (for example a large earthquake).
You're reinventing the wheel. Public key cryptography allows a key to be split up, so that you need a minimum of X out of Y pieces to recover the key. Split the key into 5 pieces where 3 are enough to unlock it, and hand it out to lawyer, friends, co-workers, etc.
Have you worked with service providers? From the time you've dialed their number, what is your estimate of how long it takes to get someone on the line who can lock down an entire corporate account? Remember that there's a big authentication issue there - how do they know it's not a prank call?
By comparison, I can get to our server center and completely isolate us and all our data from the Internet in under 10 minutes.
Our offsite backups are put in a metal box and taken offsite. Unless you plan on hijacking a truck, it's a lot harder deleting our data than using a nice control panel on the web.
I think you're severely underestimating the numbers who can set up Roku or DVR on their own. Last year was the worst stretch for pay-TV ever. Apparently, a lot of people are figuring it out, because 8% of US households got rid of cable last year, and the trend has not peaked yet.
But there's a larger issue, because we're talking about two paths in the US. One is more mindless consumption, more cheap Chinese electronics that have to be replaced every two years, more useless channels, more keeping up with the Jones. The other is being mindful about consumption, simplifying life, and reevaluating what's really necessary. Everyone assumes the first path is inevitable, hence all the power saving talk.
Stop being a pedantic asshole.
Of course most people use electricity. My point is that you can reduce the amount of gadgets in your house, which is a better idea than accumulating even more materialistic crap and trying to save the planet my making it "green". Amazingly, a large percentage of the world's population survives just fine without a rotating antenna on their roof.
Uhh... if you don't have cable boxes, they don't use power? Sorry I didn't explain the logic at a 5th grade level. My antenna sits in the window and connects to the DVR, which is unplugged except for the rare occasion there's something on broadcast TV I want to record. The whole mess is on a power strip that I turn off when I'm not watching TV. I use a $35 Killawatt to see how much each device uses, so there are no surprises.
Yes, I have a device to turn my antenna for better reception. It's called "my hand".
Americans are always looking for the technological fix. Does anyone really need TV's in every room including the guest bathroom? Just reduce your consumption and try living a little simpler.
Maybe if you have three cable boxes and a monthly cable bill, you can save a lot MORE money by just canceling cable.
Got rid of Charter two years ago - now I have a ChannelMaster for OTA, and a couple of Roku boxes. Feels nice not spending that $90 a month.
If you look directly overhead, you'll see my point sailing past your head. Obviously no one has run a sub-2 marathon, which is why the statement is true, yet useless.
Everyone knows that poor people don't eat well. But there's a complex nexus of factors involved - upbringing, inability to delay gratification, food deserts, unavailability of transport for large items, no cooking facilities, etc. So when some suburban guy with a car says "well, the poor should just eat more fruit and vegetables", it's not so simple.
If you move your legs fast enough and take long enough strides, you'll be able to run a marathon in under 2 hours.
My statement is just as epistemologically correct as yours, and every bit as useless...