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Interview by a 15 Year Old

paulgraham.com

61–70 of 101 posts

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#61
post #16

"The combination of forces that produced the default curriculum was so random" This seems true and sad. What would be a first principles approach to "What should every kid learn" if we were to start from scratch you think?

I can't hope to enumerate all topics they ought to cover, but math (arithmetic), history, science (scientific method), and language (reading, culture, literature) seem to be pretty important cornerstones wouldn't you think? It's hard to imagine living in a modern world where citizens could not read, write, add, subtract, or conduct simple experiments.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#62
post #51
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that there isn't (or may not be) a such thing as first principles at all, outside of acculturation, if education is so context dependent?

Kids need to learn to read. Society works sooo much better when you can assume every adult can read. Give man a fish vs. teach to fish..

This was true when print was orders of magnitude cheaper to distribute than audio or video. Of course text still has distinct advantages, particularly for further education (a lot easier to skim and pull the factoid you need out of a textbook than 80 hours of video), but "society" shouldn't be affected nearly as much as it used to be.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#63
I was surprised that the presence and importance of teaching the arts in school wasn't mentioned given Paul's background. Aside from the inherent benefit of learning art for art's sake, it requires self-discipline and relentless self critique. No artist thinks they will just be "ok", they want to be the best. I think this type of self-driven pursuit would benefit any young person on their path towards a startup.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#64
"What makes a good entrepereneur? Are these the type of people you accept into the program?"

The entrepreneurs around me are numerious. My neighbor's are very rich. I grew up with wealthy kids. Many are entrepreneurs. They all(95%), or more gave one trait in common, and it's never mentioned in these Q & A's, but we are all in the big world now. That trait; They have a sympathetic/understanding/wealthy parent.

The wealthy parent(usually the father) bankrolls the Entrepreneur.

See, poor, middle class kids usually get one chance at a risky entrepreneurial endeavor. If they do get funding, it's usually high rate credit cards. If they fail, they don't get a do over card, and it's Hello UPS, or some other barely livable job where you need to commute 1.5 hours.

For some reason this is never talked about, and probally for good reason. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, guys like PG have tried to reverse the formula, but I have seen this combination work so many times, I feel comfortable calling it a law. It makes as much sense as Moores law, in my eyes. Rich dad helps(money, legal, generation of networking, sometimes the idea, the garage, encouragement, family CPA.) out kid=Kid becomes Entrepreneur. If you born into the right family--it's great. To the poor, middle class kids, do well in school. Get a credential in something. Don't fall for this BS about hard work, and a good idea. Give a rich boy a shot at funding your endeavor, but realize you will have to work a lot harder than the rich kid. Don't bust a gasket in the process. Most of the Entrepreneurs leave what I'm telling you out of their orations. It's embarrassing most weren't Horatio Algiers? Most of their wives, wives usually out of their league, don't even know the real story. I've only heard one Entrepreneur tell the absolute truth, and that was George Sorors. But George's first love is writing, and you can't be in denial if you want to be a good writer/journalist.

(Didn't edit, so please lay off my typos. I don't usually even come back to a post, so the nit picking goes unheard. I sometimes fear writing a post like this, because they can track an ip. And even if speaking honesly, we all need to play the game--smile, and act like the free money wasen't there. I really wish Google didn't index every word forever. Hopefully, one day, we will have the ability to pick, and choose what is on Google servers. At least, what we wrote?)

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#65
Sorry for being a grumpy grandpa, but I think the first thing we need to learn young people is that 'coding' is not 'programming' (cue discussion on linguistic descriptivism vs prescriptivism in which I'd normally be in the former camp and defend the use of "y'all"...)

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole. Programming is a fraction of the jobs in this economy, and it's not even the largest employer when it comes to STEM. People in medicine, finance, or small business don't need to code.

> Programming is a fraction of the jobs in this economy Yeah, but they're the fraction that don't suck and aren't going away in ten years. And again, most people with jobs that require knowing how to code aren't actually developers. E.g. it's difficult to get hired as a customer retention marketer without knowing how to code, but most of those folks also aren't coding on a regular basis, if ever. It's just that when…

What even is a "customer retention marketer"? Is that the person who tries to prevent you from canceling your Comcast cable when you call Comcast to try to cancel your cable? I guarantee that those people just need to suppress their shame and sometimes pretend not to understand English.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming is a fraction of the jobs in this economy Yeah, but they're the fraction that don't suck and aren't going away in ten years. And again, most people with jobs that require knowing how to code aren't actually developers. E.g. it's difficult to get hired as a customer retention marketer without knowing how to code, but most of those folks also aren't coding on a regular basis, if ever. It's just that when…

What even is a "customer retention marketer"? Is that the person who tries to prevent you from canceling your Comcast cable when you call Comcast to try to cancel your cable? I guarantee that those people just need to suppress their shame and sometimes pretend not to understand English.

More like someone who is halfway between a data analyst and an email marketer. E.g. they do things like cohort analysis, but also send out email blasts to increase engagement.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is a "customer retention marketer"? Is that the person who tries to prevent you from canceling your Comcast cable when you call Comcast to try to cancel your cable? I guarantee that those people just need to suppress their shame and sometimes pretend not to understand English.

More like someone who is halfway between a data analyst and an email marketer. E.g. they do things like cohort analysis, but also send out email blasts to increase engagement.

So "spammer." Got it.

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#69
"An entrepreneur is someone who starts their own business. But only a tiny fraction of new businesses are startups."

This needs a context: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Because Paul Graham (and probably Silicon Valley in large) clearly has different definition for a term 'startup' than the rest of the world. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/start-up)

Re: Interview by a 15 Year Old

#70

"An entrepreneur is someone who starts their own business. But only a tiny fraction of new businesses are startups." This needs a context: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html Because Paul Graham (and probably Silicon Valley in large) clearly has different definition for a term 'startup' than the rest of the world. ( http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/start-up )

>I am really interested for Paul Graham and others to define term 'startup'.

Here you go: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

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