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Former miners out to put Kentucky on the tech map

theguardian.com

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

#61

Post by rybosome »

jbawgs wrote: post #29
fuball63 wrote: post #23

I'm from the region, and work remotely as a coder. Some of these really backwoods areas are very beautiful and tranquil, and when combined with the affordability, I think it is a great place to code. A lot of local politicians and economic developers are grasping to coal/lumber/manufacturing, but I think there is opportunity to build small tech hubs for young people burnt out on expensive, crowded, and distracting ci…

There isn't anywhere else I'd rather be. Before I joined a program in Hazard like the one mentioned in the article, I was in construction for 15 years, and I've been a lot of places. Appalachia is the best place though. We could also stand to have an influx of bright young people with a broader view.

Do you feel that a lot of your friends and family are open to this type of development? I haven't ever seen surveys gauging local public opinion, but I had assumed that the foremost economic issue for Kentucky was coal, and the focus was on preventing legislation which would harm that market.

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

#62

Post by BurningFrog »

superpope99 wrote: post #2

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.

The studies I've seen are a few decades old, and I think programming has become easier since.

But the result back then was that even among young talented people who entered programming classes, a large percentage (40%-70%, don't remember) just couldn't do it.

The biggest "tell" was understanding pointers (in C). A lot of people just got stuck on that and couldn't move forward.

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

#63

Post by jbawgs »

rybosome wrote: post #61
jbawgs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't anywhere else I'd rather be. Before I joined a program in Hazard like the one mentioned in the article, I was in construction for 15 years, and I've been a lot of places. Appalachia is the best place though. We could also stand to have an influx of bright young people with a broader view.

Do you feel that a lot of your friends and family are open to this type of development? I haven't ever seen surveys gauging local public opinion, but I had assumed that the foremost economic issue for Kentucky was coal, and the focus was on preventing legislation which would harm that market.

In general, the fervor surrounding coal stems from the fact that for a long time it was the only industry where a person could bring home more than minimum wage, and see the decline of the industry as a personal attack.

What the people really want is work. The article tells the tale - a thousand applicants for a handful of positions. The program I'm in had hundreds of applicants for only ten positions.

To me, too much money has been spent trying to resuscitate the coal industry when it could have been directed at new industries. The politics of it all doesn't interest me, and it wouldn't interest the legion of skilled technical personnel now clamoring for even minimum wage jobs if they had somewhere else to go (aside from relocate entirely).

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

#64

Post by krapp »

leggomylibro wrote: post #48
mythrwy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. 95% of people can lay bricks too. But 95% of people can't lay bricks precisely enough or at the speed a bricklaying company is going to hire them. And for sure 95% of people aren't interested in laying bricks. Is it worth teaching 95% of people to code? I don't think it is. Most people don't have to lay bricks to live in house.

Coding is a good force multiplier for non-coding jobs, though; even a basic scripting knowledge can go a long ways. An administrative assistant who can compile their weekly reports with the press of a button is far more valuable than one who spends half of every Friday mucking around in a Microsoft Word template to do the same thing. Bricks aren't powerful programmable tools that most people already work with on a da…

>An administrative assistant who can compile their weekly reports with the press of a button is far more valuable than one who spends half of every Friday mucking around in a Microsoft Word template to do the same thing.

No they aren't. Either they're making the same salary either way, or else their employer has fired them and hired someone else to push that "button" at a fraction of that salary, once it became obvious that their job could be automated.

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

#65

Post by mythrwy »

leggomylibro wrote: post #48
mythrwy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. 95% of people can lay bricks too. But 95% of people can't lay bricks precisely enough or at the speed a bricklaying company is going to hire them. And for sure 95% of people aren't interested in laying bricks. Is it worth teaching 95% of people to code? I don't think it is. Most people don't have to lay bricks to live in house.

Coding is a good force multiplier for non-coding jobs, though; even a basic scripting knowledge can go a long ways. An administrative assistant who can compile their weekly reports with the press of a button is far more valuable than one who spends half of every Friday mucking around in a Microsoft Word template to do the same thing. Bricks aren't powerful programmable tools that most people already work with on a da…

Weekly report? You want a weekly TPS report?

No problem, I'll generate one so big you won't be able to read it in a year! And it will only take 30 seconds.

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

#66

Post by dsacco »

jbawgs wrote: post #51
jacques_chester wrote: post #45

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.

Did you mean to say "not mutually exclusive"?

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

#67

Post by yourapostasy »

jbawgs wrote: post #43
Muuuchem wrote: post #41

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.

I dealt with those kinds of limitations a few years back when I lived in a rural area, and if faced with the same limitations today, I recommend the following, as this is my current operating mode when on overseas trips and on limited connections while still needing to work. It still sucks, but I've done what I can to make it suck less. It still blows my mind when I observe while traveling that much of the "fly-over" communities in the US have worse or similar broadband terms, at more expensive rates (in both absolute and local PPP terms) than Nepal, or many other developing nations. The US post-industrial revolution is seemingly rotting out from within.

Basically, the high level solution is live in the CLI as much as possible, and remote into your "main driver" as much as feasible. I had to accept that I won't ever be working with my daily processes transparently. I had to make conscious decisions all the time, for example: do I work with this customer-sent Word file on the remote Windows box or download and work on my laptop?

Mostly I live in SSH and screen to various Unix boxes. Will add Mosh and tmux this year to try them out over unreliable connections. Windows RDP was okay on bandwidth caps, a license of NX was used for those few times I could not escape X11 (ship it to a remote Windows box to maintain state). ESXi for those times I had to work through a VPN and view the remote display via the VM video because the VPN cuts off all other remote access.

If you are in this for the long-haul, then your own Supermicro Mini-1U with up to 128GB RAM colo'd will probably be cheaper than even an OVH annual dedicated server.

Hope this helps.

There should be a public list of politicians who voted for blocking municipal broadband, to give tech-oriented voting blocs an easy way to inform single-issue voters how to vote against them.

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

#68

Post by jbawgs »

dsacco wrote: post #66
jbawgs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you mean to say "not mutually exclusive"?

Nope! They aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but a lot of folk believe that they are, hence my comment.

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

#69

Post by jasongrout »

Are there good groups in Louisville, KY, for adults wanting to learn how to do software development (or more generally, enter the tech industry)? Does anyone know of any good online resources for adults along these lines?

I know about a number of resources for kids learning to code, but those are maybe not appropriate for a motivated adult wanting to investigate switching careers.

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

#70

Post by kingkongjaffa »

jasongrout wrote: post #69

Are there good groups in Louisville, KY, for adults wanting to learn how to do software development (or more generally, enter the tech industry)? Does anyone know of any good online resources for adults along these lines? I know about a number of resources for kids learning to code, but those are maybe not appropriate for a motivated adult wanting to investigate switching careers.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/free.code.camp.louisville/
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