Ding ding ding! We have a winner! The problem I have with most Java-bashing is that it seems so utterly disconnected with the real world and the marketplace.
I read comments in this thread, and they sound like, "Last night I was analyzing differences between Erlang and Smalltalk, and while pondering the merits of Lua vs. Forth I realized that Java doesn't support true closures...". Hey, do you even work as a programmer? I mean, programming professionally... do you get PAID to write code? Enough to support a mortgage and retirement savings and all that livelihood stuff? Have you ever kissed a girl?
I enjoy tinkering with scripting languages and "new" (or at least repackaged from Lisp) programming concepts myself. But when I need drivers to connect to a database (other than MySQL!!!), or to an inventory system on an old IBM midrange box, or just about anything else used in the business world, I need Java. When I need mature toolsets and continuous integration systems, such that I can work in a team of two dozen or more programmers and keep everything straight, I need Java. When I need my credibility with management tied to figures who don't go by names like "Why The Lucky Stiff" and who don't make a childish ass of themselves every time they open their mouths, then I need something like Java. When I need to post my resume on the major job hunting sites, have recruiters call ME, and have my next gig nailed down within two weeks... I need Java.
With Java, I'm even able to "sneak in" some things like Jython or JRuby here and there... so that if indeed the "paradigm shift" occurs during my career, I'll be able to hype those experiences in my resume and have a foot in that door. However, I'm not holding my breath. There are so many factors which come into the picture when doing large-scale enterprise development, and such a different skillset and mindset required. Where a project uses one of these scripting languages, it would wind up LOOKING LIKE Java development anyway. It takes years to get used to that mindset, whereas it took me about an hour and a half to get the hang of closures... so I feel pretty comfortable no matter which way the industry goes.
Couldn't Warden have sent requests to the EFF to provide lawyers so he could fight an evil corporation to use freely publicly available information?
About once a month or so, somebody comments about a landlord doing something abusive to a tenant, or a school district violating its student's rights, or citizens being wronged by the police or Feds. Somebody else always responds, "Why don't they just get the ACLU to step in?"
True, the ACLU has over a half-million members. Between it's political advocacy and charitable foundation arms, it has over $120 million per year of revenue. Yet STILL, it can only be bothered to get involved with a tiny subset of possible cases. It is ultimately a political and public policy organization, and has to pick and choose the battles that will give it the biggest strategic impact with the smallest possible commitment of resources.
There's a reason why the EFF isn't lead counsel on any multi-million dollar pro bono lawsuits, and it's not because they "didn't get the memo". Rather, it's because that's like asking your local Boy Scout troop to fly down and singlehandedly fix Haiti. It bugs me when people assume that lawyers magically grow on trees to fight your political crusades for free. There is a very low ratio of real support for things like the EFF... compared to Slashdot babble about software patents, stealing MP3's, cracking video game DRM, and all of the other things people do to make-believe that they are "heroes of the revolution" or some such laughable bullshit. More people should put at least a few bucks where their mouths are and lend some support.
Not only is this story preceded by Apple product rumors, it's followed by a "government's coming to getcha!" piece. I'm amazed that even this LOOSELY science-related story was given that space on today's Slashdot... rather than a software patent or copyright issue that would draw more clicks and babble.
People are saying two things here, and thinking that they're mutually-exclusive. Some point to areas of commercial programming beyond basic CRUD operations, saying that math would be a big help there. Others point out that for standard CRUD and gluing together pre-written software libraries, math skill doesn't much matter either way.
Hey, they're BOTH right. However, the trend is moving toward the latter type of programming job. Forget high-level math... I seldom use my COMPUTER SCIENCE skills on the job. I vividly remember participating in a code review session around 5 or 6 years ago. I started to point out why a particular function was inefficient, and wrote some O notation on the whiteboard. There were 8 Indian developers in the room, and they had no idea what O notation even was. There were three other Americans, and they had only vague memories of having seen it at one point back when they were in school.
That was the day when I finally just "gave up". I now approach my professional life as the job that it is. I integrate Spring and Hibernate with your legacy system. I don't get too excited or worked up about it. I leave promptly at 5:00 each day. I'm well-paid for doing what feels like very little work. Most of all, I look for my intellectual stimulation outside of work (mostly on the clock... typical jobs let me spend half the day goofing off online). My point is that I have to disassociate modern programming from real intellectual pursuits, or else I'll get depressed over how trivial and boring this line of work is. If I DID know PhD levels of number theory, it would just be something else going to waste and I'd have to avoid being depressed about that too.
Having a lot of math knowledge in most programming environments today would be like an experienced patent attorney posting on Slashdot. You'd be surrounded by people who LOVE to talk about your field, yet generally don't have a clue what they're talking about. They misstate basic ideas and rules constantly, and it irritates the hell out of you. However, they all THINK they're experts... and in fact know more about the field than you do.
Netscape Communicator died for a reason. It was a slow, bloated...
Ironically, this is exactly why I recently dropped Firefox and went BACK. While Seamonkey has a larger memory footprint than Firefox on initial load, it doesn't leak memory like a sieve... after a hour's use on my machine, it's still under 100MB whereas Firefox takes up 300+MB (both using essentially the same list of plugins). Also, Seamonkey's start-up time is a FRACTION of either Firefox's or Thunderbird's.
Firefox has completely forgotten it's original mission statement, and fallen victim to scope creep and just all-around code bloat. If these are reasons that had you switching 5 years ago, it might be worth taking another look and running another side-by-side comparison of the two browsers and the paths they've taken. In addition to the regular install, you could play with a clean portable version as well.
I could care less about the default color scheme for Ubuntu. I spend 99% of my time looking at a maximized application window, so the only part of the theme I stare at much is the window's title bar anyway. Besides, if I didn't like the color theme I could just right-click on the desktop, and switch to some other theme with a single click. Ubuntu comes with more than a half-dozen themes out of the box.
However, what I DO care about are the window control buttons being converted from Windows-style (top right corner) to OS X-style (top left corner). I HAVEN'T seen any easy one-click config option for controlling THAT in Ubuntu. People can debate back-and-forth which which style is superior. Some say the Mac style is more ergonomic, because the mouse cursor spends more time on the left where the menus are. I say that Windows style is superior, because I'm less likely to close the window by accident every time I go for the "Edit" menu (grr!). However, all that debate would miss a key point... which is that OS X users are the wrong target audience to woo.
Linux desktop environments have long been approximating Windows for two main reasons:
That's the interface most familiar to 95+ percent of users. People coming to your environment for the first time will be instantly familiar with the core basics.
Linux can outperform that interface and make users say "Oh wow, this is actually cooler!".
Trying instead to approximate the OS X style is a mistake because:
While trendy these days, it's still only familiar to a single-digit percentage of people. You're reducing that instant familiarity for the overwhelming majority of first-time users.
Mac users are NOT going to say that Linux has a better interface. You are absolutely wasting your time trying to woo them or snipe them away from Apple.
Basically, I see all downside and zero upside in tampering with the window control buttons to be more Mac-ish. This really is a much bigger change than just the color scheme, and I'm a bit puzzled why it's mostly flying below the radar while everyone argues purple vs. brown.
The issue with using a print driver based PDF solution such as PDF Creater is that all the text information gets lost, the output is a PDF which is essentially just a series of rendered images. With the Export to PDF feature in OO.o, however, the PDF is generated with its text information intact. This means that users can search, cut-n-pase, and perform other text operations with the PDF.
Uh, maybe I'm missing something here. What's to stop the millions of looney-left immigration protesters from flooding this toll-free hotline with prank calls and false reports, reducing the worth of the $5+ million investment to zero?
Good grief. This being Slashdot, with all the socialists on one hand and Ayn Rand-quoting twerps on the other, it's astounding that practically NOBODY really knows what they're talking about when it comes to government and taxation.
A state refund is taxable ONLY IF you received a tax benefit from it in the previous year... in other words, only if you itemize. If you itemize deductions, then you get to deduct your state taxes from your taxable income. However, if you later get back some of that money from the state, that makes the amount you deducted on your federal return was too high. Therefore, the feds expect you to reconcile things in the following year.
Far be it from me to defend the IRS, but in this example it's THEY who are giving YOU an interest-free loan for a year. You paid lower federal taxes than you should have due to over-deductions, and get to pay back "last-year-dollars" with "this-year-dollars" that have been weakened by inflation. Besides, everybody who uses the standard deduction isn't affected by any of this at all.
Oh well. I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam. It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all. Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem.
Some "theory" you have there... you're either completely talking out of your ass or you attend the most crappy CS program in all of academia. You "instinctively attacked" a discrete mathematics exam without having cracked a book? Knowlege of how to express an algorithm using O-notation just "came to you" on test day?
Give me a freakin break, cowboy... if colleges really HAVE dumbed down the curriculum that much over the past decade, then maybe the WSJ shortage-shouters DO have some merit to their arguments!
even if Apple pushes its annual unit sales to 12 million or more by 2010, its share of the overall market will still account for about 4%, leaving Windows the far more tasty target
If I had the time, energy, moral flexability (and okay, talent) to write a decent virus... the Apple crowd would be the most "tasty" target I could choose. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in annoying attitude.
Man, the standards for Slashdot articles seem to be slipping by the day. Now all it takes to get people talking is speculation about PAST events that didn't even happen?
Back in 1985, rock guitarist Slash (of later Guns 'n Roses fame) almost joined Poison, to take the spot which eventually went to C.C. Deville. There, babble about the relevance of that for awhile.
I used Freenet for a couple of weeks, and ditched it specifically because of the pedophile issue. I am 100% on board with the theoretical arguments behind Freenet, and am willing to accept that the price of freedom may be existance of materials I find horrible. HOWEVER, the mere existance of kiddie porn on Freenot is not what I have a problem with. My problem is that the owners of the largest Freenet directory sites go out of their way to link to and promote kiddie porn freesites.
They seem to view this as being their "duty" to freedom... but I have yet to hear a REMOTELY credible argument for why acceptance of a negative thing requires you voluntarily going out of your way to promote that thing. The thought of data packets that I wouldn't like running through my computer? I can live with that. The thought of having my application direct you by default to sites which deliberately link to the stuff and make it easy to find? You're nuts.
Mark makes frequent appearances at the Atlanta Java User's Group, where I attend from time to time. He's definately a contraversial figure, but I don't think it has so much to do with him trying to (gasp!) make money in the software business. I think it's more about personality and how he carries himself, which is a "retro" style harkening back to dot-com days most would prefer to forget.
At the last user group meeting where I remember Mark speaking, he managed to drop at least a half-dozen F-bombs in addition to various fecal-related 4-letter words (this was in a BUSINESS setting). He also spent half the time pointing out how cosmopolitian he is due to years in California and Paris, and hammered home the point that anyone who questions him simply "lacks vision". In short, he comes across as EVERY obnoxious, phony, three-card-shuffle, smoke-and-mirrors aspect of the entire dot-com era... ALL distilled down into one annoying and pretentious walking sterotype.
The problem with Mark is that he makes open-source SOUND like the dot-com era redux... another batch of vaguely-qualified fruity visionaries with their half-baked business plans. The focus on Mark in the money-making open source market creates the same problems as the focus on Richard Stallman's personality over on the Gnu side. It's the messenger getting in the way of the message.
One thing that should be said: Encyclopaedia Britannica has sold its print version by sending extremely high-pressure salesmen into poor neighborhoods to imply that if poor families didn't buy Britannica their children would always be ignorant. Parents were often extremely intimidated.
I am one of the children from the neighborhoods of which you speak. I'm the son of a 3rd-generation railroad worker, and I grew up in a rural south Georgia farming town where the local high school dropout rate seldom dips below 50%. My parents hoped for something better for me... and when I was in middle school they saved up what for us was a lot of money, and bought a copy of the World Book encyclopedia for the house.
I got hooked on reading that thing, and in the summer of 1987 I read the entire encyclopedia from A to Z over a few months (not bad for a pre-teen). I can't begin to describe what a profound effect that experience had on me and my development. Had I been born 10 or 20 years later, the Internet could have (MAYBE) fed the same growth and opened the same doors in my mind. However, prior to the 90's all we had were books, and encyclopedias in particular were ideally suited for youthful curiosity.
Today I'm a first-generation college graduate, who's starting salary on his first day in the workforce was greater than my father's after working 30+ years. I'm now an evening student in law school, and plan to move beyond I.T. within the next couple years. It is no exaggeration to say that none of this would have happened had it not been for my parents purchasing that encyclopedia when I was a kid.
I didn't plan to jump into this thread, because I recognize the change of direction that technology introduces and don't cling too hard to the past. However, some douche taking shots at encyclopedia companies for "preying upon" poor people is just too smug and condescending to let slide. Of all the things on which working-class people waste disposable income, it's ridiculous to question educational expenditures... even if the products may not be used to their full potential. Parents who are "intimidated" to spend money on education feel that way out of desire for their children to have a better life. Given that I have worked with so many successful programmers who lack 4-year degrees, what is college if not an expense paid in the face of intimidation?
Don't concern yourself with the plight of people from poor neighborhoods, believe me when I say that we are better off without your help.
Slashdot Mirror
[Jobs is] probably one of two or three [CEO's] that are actually worth their compensation
A dollar per year?
Ding ding ding! We have a winner! The problem I have with most Java-bashing is that it seems so utterly disconnected with the real world and the marketplace.
I read comments in this thread, and they sound like, "Last night I was analyzing differences between Erlang and Smalltalk, and while pondering the merits of Lua vs. Forth I realized that Java doesn't support true closures...". Hey, do you even work as a programmer? I mean, programming professionally... do you get PAID to write code? Enough to support a mortgage and retirement savings and all that livelihood stuff? Have you ever kissed a girl?
I enjoy tinkering with scripting languages and "new" (or at least repackaged from Lisp) programming concepts myself. But when I need drivers to connect to a database (other than MySQL!!!), or to an inventory system on an old IBM midrange box, or just about anything else used in the business world, I need Java. When I need mature toolsets and continuous integration systems, such that I can work in a team of two dozen or more programmers and keep everything straight, I need Java. When I need my credibility with management tied to figures who don't go by names like "Why The Lucky Stiff" and who don't make a childish ass of themselves every time they open their mouths, then I need something like Java. When I need to post my resume on the major job hunting sites, have recruiters call ME, and have my next gig nailed down within two weeks... I need Java.
With Java, I'm even able to "sneak in" some things like Jython or JRuby here and there... so that if indeed the "paradigm shift" occurs during my career, I'll be able to hype those experiences in my resume and have a foot in that door. However, I'm not holding my breath. There are so many factors which come into the picture when doing large-scale enterprise development, and such a different skillset and mindset required. Where a project uses one of these scripting languages, it would wind up LOOKING LIKE Java development anyway. It takes years to get used to that mindset, whereas it took me about an hour and a half to get the hang of closures... so I feel pretty comfortable no matter which way the industry goes.
Couldn't Warden have sent requests to the EFF to provide lawyers so he could fight an evil corporation to use freely publicly available information?
About once a month or so, somebody comments about a landlord doing something abusive to a tenant, or a school district violating its student's rights, or citizens being wronged by the police or Feds. Somebody else always responds, "Why don't they just get the ACLU to step in?"
True, the ACLU has over a half-million members. Between it's political advocacy and charitable foundation arms, it has over $120 million per year of revenue. Yet STILL, it can only be bothered to get involved with a tiny subset of possible cases. It is ultimately a political and public policy organization, and has to pick and choose the battles that will give it the biggest strategic impact with the smallest possible commitment of resources.
Meanwhile, the entire EFF staff could comfortably hang out at my house and watch a football game. Their annual revenue of $3.4 million is less than the average cost of ONE patent infringement lawsuit... and moreover, they're running a $400k annual deficit over there right now.
There's a reason why the EFF isn't lead counsel on any multi-million dollar pro bono lawsuits, and it's not because they "didn't get the memo". Rather, it's because that's like asking your local Boy Scout troop to fly down and singlehandedly fix Haiti. It bugs me when people assume that lawyers magically grow on trees to fight your political crusades for free. There is a very low ratio of real support for things like the EFF... compared to Slashdot babble about software patents, stealing MP3's, cracking video game DRM, and all of the other things people do to make-believe that they are "heroes of the revolution" or some such laughable bullshit. More people should put at least a few bucks where their mouths are and lend some support.
Sigh... where are mod points when you need them?
Not only is this story preceded by Apple product rumors, it's followed by a "government's coming to getcha!" piece. I'm amazed that even this LOOSELY science-related story was given that space on today's Slashdot... rather than a software patent or copyright issue that would draw more clicks and babble.
People are saying two things here, and thinking that they're mutually-exclusive. Some point to areas of commercial programming beyond basic CRUD operations, saying that math would be a big help there. Others point out that for standard CRUD and gluing together pre-written software libraries, math skill doesn't much matter either way.
Hey, they're BOTH right. However, the trend is moving toward the latter type of programming job. Forget high-level math... I seldom use my COMPUTER SCIENCE skills on the job. I vividly remember participating in a code review session around 5 or 6 years ago. I started to point out why a particular function was inefficient, and wrote some O notation on the whiteboard. There were 8 Indian developers in the room, and they had no idea what O notation even was. There were three other Americans, and they had only vague memories of having seen it at one point back when they were in school.
That was the day when I finally just "gave up". I now approach my professional life as the job that it is. I integrate Spring and Hibernate with your legacy system. I don't get too excited or worked up about it. I leave promptly at 5:00 each day. I'm well-paid for doing what feels like very little work. Most of all, I look for my intellectual stimulation outside of work (mostly on the clock... typical jobs let me spend half the day goofing off online). My point is that I have to disassociate modern programming from real intellectual pursuits, or else I'll get depressed over how trivial and boring this line of work is. If I DID know PhD levels of number theory, it would just be something else going to waste and I'd have to avoid being depressed about that too.
Having a lot of math knowledge in most programming environments today would be like an experienced patent attorney posting on Slashdot. You'd be surrounded by people who LOVE to talk about your field, yet generally don't have a clue what they're talking about. They misstate basic ideas and rules constantly, and it irritates the hell out of you. However, they all THINK they're experts... and in fact know more about the field than you do.
No thanks... I would pass.
First spam!!!
Buy some Viagra from my online pharmacy site, you insensitive clod!
Netscape Communicator died for a reason. It was a slow, bloated...
Ironically, this is exactly why I recently dropped Firefox and went BACK. While Seamonkey has a larger memory footprint than Firefox on initial load, it doesn't leak memory like a sieve... after a hour's use on my machine, it's still under 100MB whereas Firefox takes up 300+MB (both using essentially the same list of plugins). Also, Seamonkey's start-up time is a FRACTION of either Firefox's or Thunderbird's.
Firefox has completely forgotten it's original mission statement, and fallen victim to scope creep and just all-around code bloat. If these are reasons that had you switching 5 years ago, it might be worth taking another look and running another side-by-side comparison of the two browsers and the paths they've taken. In addition to the regular install, you could play with a clean portable version as well.
ooh ooh! I just came up with an awesome idea
Err... you just came up with the 1993 "Thomas Riker" storyline from Star Trek.
I could care less about the default color scheme for Ubuntu. I spend 99% of my time looking at a maximized application window, so the only part of the theme I stare at much is the window's title bar anyway. Besides, if I didn't like the color theme I could just right-click on the desktop, and switch to some other theme with a single click. Ubuntu comes with more than a half-dozen themes out of the box.
However, what I DO care about are the window control buttons being converted from Windows-style (top right corner) to OS X-style (top left corner). I HAVEN'T seen any easy one-click config option for controlling THAT in Ubuntu. People can debate back-and-forth which which style is superior. Some say the Mac style is more ergonomic, because the mouse cursor spends more time on the left where the menus are. I say that Windows style is superior, because I'm less likely to close the window by accident every time I go for the "Edit" menu (grr!). However, all that debate would miss a key point... which is that OS X users are the wrong target audience to woo.
Basically, I see all downside and zero upside in tampering with the window control buttons to be more Mac-ish. This really is a much bigger change than just the color scheme, and I'm a bit puzzled why it's mostly flying below the radar while everyone argues purple vs. brown.
The issue with using a print driver based PDF solution such as PDF Creater is that all the text information gets lost, the output is a PDF which is essentially just a series of rendered images. With the Export to PDF feature in OO.o, however, the PDF is generated with its text information intact. This means that users can search, cut-n-pase, and perform other text operations with the PDF.
Uh, maybe I'm missing something here. What's to stop the millions of looney-left immigration protesters from flooding this toll-free hotline with prank calls and false reports, reducing the worth of the $5+ million investment to zero?
Good grief. This being Slashdot, with all the socialists on one hand and Ayn Rand-quoting twerps on the other, it's astounding that practically NOBODY really knows what they're talking about when it comes to government and taxation.
A state refund is taxable ONLY IF you received a tax benefit from it in the previous year... in other words, only if you itemize. If you itemize deductions, then you get to deduct your state taxes from your taxable income. However, if you later get back some of that money from the state, that makes the amount you deducted on your federal return was too high. Therefore, the feds expect you to reconcile things in the following year.
Far be it from me to defend the IRS, but in this example it's THEY who are giving YOU an interest-free loan for a year. You paid lower federal taxes than you should have due to over-deductions, and get to pay back "last-year-dollars" with "this-year-dollars" that have been weakened by inflation. Besides, everybody who uses the standard deduction isn't affected by any of this at all.
Oh well. I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam. It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all. Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem.
Some "theory" you have there... you're either completely talking out of your ass or you attend the most crappy CS program in all of academia. You "instinctively attacked" a discrete mathematics exam without having cracked a book? Knowlege of how to express an algorithm using O-notation just "came to you" on test day?
Give me a freakin break, cowboy... if colleges really HAVE dumbed down the curriculum that much over the past decade, then maybe the WSJ shortage-shouters DO have some merit to their arguments!
even if Apple pushes its annual unit sales to 12 million or more by 2010, its share of the overall market will still account for about 4%, leaving Windows the far more tasty target
If I had the time, energy, moral flexability (and okay, talent) to write a decent virus... the Apple crowd would be the most "tasty" target I could choose. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in annoying attitude.
Man, the standards for Slashdot articles seem to be slipping by the day. Now all it takes to get people talking is speculation about PAST events that didn't even happen?
Back in 1985, rock guitarist Slash (of later Guns 'n Roses fame) almost joined Poison, to take the spot which eventually went to C.C. Deville. There, babble about the relevance of that for awhile.
I used Freenet for a couple of weeks, and ditched it specifically because of the pedophile issue. I am 100% on board with the theoretical arguments behind Freenet, and am willing to accept that the price of freedom may be existance of materials I find horrible. HOWEVER, the mere existance of kiddie porn on Freenot is not what I have a problem with. My problem is that the owners of the largest Freenet directory sites go out of their way to link to and promote kiddie porn freesites.
They seem to view this as being their "duty" to freedom... but I have yet to hear a REMOTELY credible argument for why acceptance of a negative thing requires you voluntarily going out of your way to promote that thing. The thought of data packets that I wouldn't like running through my computer? I can live with that. The thought of having my application direct you by default to sites which deliberately link to the stuff and make it easy to find? You're nuts.
Mark makes frequent appearances at the Atlanta Java User's Group, where I attend from time to time. He's definately a contraversial figure, but I don't think it has so much to do with him trying to (gasp!) make money in the software business. I think it's more about personality and how he carries himself, which is a "retro" style harkening back to dot-com days most would prefer to forget.
At the last user group meeting where I remember Mark speaking, he managed to drop at least a half-dozen F-bombs in addition to various fecal-related 4-letter words (this was in a BUSINESS setting). He also spent half the time pointing out how cosmopolitian he is due to years in California and Paris, and hammered home the point that anyone who questions him simply "lacks vision". In short, he comes across as EVERY obnoxious, phony, three-card-shuffle, smoke-and-mirrors aspect of the entire dot-com era... ALL distilled down into one annoying and pretentious walking sterotype.
The problem with Mark is that he makes open-source SOUND like the dot-com era redux... another batch of vaguely-qualified fruity visionaries with their half-baked business plans. The focus on Mark in the money-making open source market creates the same problems as the focus on Richard Stallman's personality over on the Gnu side. It's the messenger getting in the way of the message.
One thing that should be said: Encyclopaedia Britannica has sold its print version by sending extremely high-pressure salesmen into poor neighborhoods to imply that if poor families didn't buy Britannica their children would always be ignorant. Parents were often extremely intimidated.
I am one of the children from the neighborhoods of which you speak. I'm the son of a 3rd-generation railroad worker, and I grew up in a rural south Georgia farming town where the local high school dropout rate seldom dips below 50%. My parents hoped for something better for me... and when I was in middle school they saved up what for us was a lot of money, and bought a copy of the World Book encyclopedia for the house.
I got hooked on reading that thing, and in the summer of 1987 I read the entire encyclopedia from A to Z over a few months (not bad for a pre-teen). I can't begin to describe what a profound effect that experience had on me and my development. Had I been born 10 or 20 years later, the Internet could have (MAYBE) fed the same growth and opened the same doors in my mind. However, prior to the 90's all we had were books, and encyclopedias in particular were ideally suited for youthful curiosity.
Today I'm a first-generation college graduate, who's starting salary on his first day in the workforce was greater than my father's after working 30+ years. I'm now an evening student in law school, and plan to move beyond I.T. within the next couple years. It is no exaggeration to say that none of this would have happened had it not been for my parents purchasing that encyclopedia when I was a kid.
I didn't plan to jump into this thread, because I recognize the change of direction that technology introduces and don't cling too hard to the past. However, some douche taking shots at encyclopedia companies for "preying upon" poor people is just too smug and condescending to let slide. Of all the things on which working-class people waste disposable income, it's ridiculous to question educational expenditures... even if the products may not be used to their full potential. Parents who are "intimidated" to spend money on education feel that way out of desire for their children to have a better life. Given that I have worked with so many successful programmers who lack 4-year degrees, what is college if not an expense paid in the face of intimidation?
Don't concern yourself with the plight of people from poor neighborhoods, believe me when I say that we are better off without your help.