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Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

theguardian.com

51–60 of 113 posts

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#51

We were lucky to host some visiting Bitsourcers in NYC. They were fantastic. They told us the same thing: coal miners have to think . You do the right thing, the right way, every time, or somebody could die. The stakes are lower for tech projects, but they brought the care with them.

I haven't met any of their devs, but when our program began the owners came to speak to us. They're good people.

A lot of times it seems people take it for granted that 'skilled/intelligent' and 'rural' are mutually exclusive.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#52
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused, are you guys suggesting that some cities and towns in Kentucky and other areas within the US lack the same broadband infastructure that I enjoy access to in small-town Mississippi?

I live on the most populous hilltop in Hyden KY. Our only ISP caps at 1mb, and its not terribly reliable. Satellite is of course an option, but the expense is prohibitive if you use a lot of data.

Wow, that just sucks. North Dakota has pretty good rural broadband on the whole. I get the feeling its because we seem to have multiple providers everywhere and the rural electric cooperatives and local telephone companies have stepped up with some serious fiber.

Technically, you should have benefited from some of the legislation passed, but after looking at it, it was pretty impossible to access.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is broadband expensive or bad or unavailable? What about satellite internet? I live in Mississippi and broadband internet is affordable and available throughout the state and has been for years so I expected Kentucky to have the same or similar. Some places miles away from the nearest town in MS definitely don't have broadband.

1mb 'broadband' service, offered as DSL, runs about 90$ per month, and that's our only ISP. One could get satellite that's faster, but satellite internet also has low data caps, and the cost scales out of proportion. The terrain derails reliable wireless services, and the low population density rules it out anyway - folk are pretty far apart.

Who is your electric company?

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with the broadband, especially in the current political climate of the FCC. I believe that having affordable, high-speed internet (where you are allowed to actually host a server), would revitalize Appalachia. Between the shuddered coal-plants that can be repurposed as data-centers, and rails-to-trails right-of-ways that can be used for fiber runs, there is plenty of opportunity. Good luck convincing the po…

I am confused, are you guys suggesting that some cities and towns in Kentucky and other areas within the US lack the same broadband infastructure that I enjoy access to in small-town Mississippi?

It's not the lack of infrastructure, it's the push to ban municipally owned ISPs that's driven by the telecom industries. Several states have already passed laws restricting municipal broadband, and in 2015 the FCC passed rules limiting the ability to expand municipal broadband in the name of competition. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the process is more suggestive of the idea that the resources likely to produce success when training people to code are scarce and access to those resources is therefore limited using highly selective processes to guard against allocating resources to false positives. I suspect that the process selected 11 people because there were funds to educate ~11 people and that ~11 would have been enrolled in the progr…

The resources are not scarce; they are free online.

I run an online code bootcamp, and I think most people assume that learning resources being available is all that's needed. That's true for some super dedicated people, but for most it's not enough.

For a while I thought the biggest value we provided as a bootcamp was direction and on-demand expert help. But now I don't think that's true. I think the biggest value we provide is that we make everyone show up at the same time every day and work until some other time, and we help direct what they should be working on during that time.

In short, it's social pressure, discipline, and scheduling. Those are everything.

Look at Thinkful's "part-time self directed" bootcamp - all the material is there, there's a mentor to help you once/week for a few mins, you pay $8,500 to do it - people are obviously dedicated to learning when they start. And the end graduation rate? ~31%.

I know another bootcamp that decided to just record their bootcamp and put it online, and charge you $2,000 for access to the videos. 28 people signed up and paid the $2,000, and one person watched past the first lesson.

I would guess that the percentage of people who can discipline themselves enough to learn on their own while balancing other responsibilities and not paying $2,000-8,000 is much, much smaller.

Think back to when you were in college - say it's a Calculus class. What do you think the graduation rate of that class would be if you gave everyone a Calculus book and said, "Fit it in when you can!" I'd guess it would approach zero except for a few superstars.

The same thing seems to be happening in programming. In 2017 the thing holding you back from learning something isn't resources. It's direction and discipline.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative way to prevent deskilling programming is to make the tools required to program such that learning to use them becomes mostly a matter of oral tradition rather than accessible. This might (or might not) be happening. For example, the evolution of Javascript from a low status programming language to a high status one has paralleled a shift from a stable core language and a well documented API to the DOM…

I think your learning style is leaking through here. While not a JavaScript expert (who designs a language with whitespace/formatting not being a first class concern?) I had no trouble picking it up from the docs and random blog posts. I'm a learn-by-doing type though, YMMV.

I agree people's mileage varies. My gut is that programming languages have generally evolved in ways that widen that variation and that the explosion in the number of people who are coding due to increased access masks much of that change.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#57

Time and time again I keep coming back to the same conclusion - anyone who has the desire can learn to code. I would say that 95% of people have enough innate logic to write code, they just need to be taught to express it formally.

I mean most people can make an alert box. Most people can't design and build a decent sized application. I have never met a good programmer not in the top 25% or so of the intelligence range. So at best that limits us to 1/4 people.

I'd suggest that maybe we're all looking at programming the wrong way.

Not everyone can build a decent sized building, and the people designing and managing their construction are likely also in the top intelligence quartile. But they're not necessarily the ones doing the actual construction of the thing.

In programming, there seems to me to be a refusal do the kind of delegation that occurs in construction. Instead, we've got a huge market of tools designed to reduce boilerplate and increase abstraction so that the highly intelligent programmer can get more done faster.

That's all well and good, but at the end of the day there are programming nails that need to get hammered, and its not going to matter if they're hammered by a MENSA member or not. The current mindset seems to want to deny this, and make every programming task something that must be handled by the best of the best.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#58
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1mb 'broadband' service, offered as DSL, runs about 90$ per month, and that's our only ISP. One could get satellite that's faster, but satellite internet also has low data caps, and the cost scales out of proportion. The terrain derails reliable wireless services, and the low population density rules it out anyway - folk are pretty far apart.

Who is your electric company?

Our electric company is AEP, but our ISP is TDS. They're awful.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is your electric company?

Our electric company is AEP, but our ISP is TDS. They're awful.

If you could get a group to approach AEP to also provide internet, it might be worth it. Several electric coops in ND are doing it and succeeding.

Re: Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

#60
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is your electric company?

Our electric company is AEP, but our ISP is TDS. They're awful.

Hadn't ever considered it, didn't know the power companies were crossing over like that. I'll definitely investigate further, thanks!
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