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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

#101

Post by bsder »

Animats wrote: post #92
jbawgs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the only actual town for miles in any direction. All those other dots on the map nearby are incorporated hilltops. If they have a gas station with a Hunt Bros pizza franchise, its a town. That said, our leaders spend any aid money we get on 'tourism' which never pays off, but they don't learn.

Check out the tourism site, "Pikeville, Kentucky's Outdoor Family Playground".[1] There's zip lining, kayaking, and a riding stable. There's also a web site for downtown Pikesville.[2]. Boosterism is alive and well in Pikesville. It's a pretty little town. But it's just not going to draw tourists from far away. There are bigger places in much worse shape. Youngstown, OH, population down to about 60,000. It was once a…

> Pittsburgh came back from losing its steel industry.

Not really. It's still down population almost 10% from 2000.

Losing Westinghouse was a gigantic loss--and it didn't need to happen. Westinghouse should have been a source for tech talent during the Dot Com boom to combine with CMU and Pitt students. Instead Pittsburgh was a technology desert in that same time (I remember trying to find WiFi hotspots there in 2000-2002 and people staring at me like I was from Mars).

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

#102

Post by brianwawok »

mythrwy wrote: post #33
brianwawok wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or 95% of people can make more money at jobs other than laying bricks. 95 % of people can't make more money than coding. Some can and do. Many would if they could.

Hypothetical question: If you could make 1/3 more laying bricks than coding which would you chose?

It's hard to say. I really really enjoy coding, and have tons of passion for it. But I can get really deep into about anything and really enjoy it. I suspect I would find some position in the brick laying field that would satisfy me the same. I have worked physical labor jobs in the past, and as a whole I think they are "better" (except for the pay). I come home at the end of the day physically tired, but mentally fresh. Now I come home the reverse, and need to go run to stay in shape.

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

#103

Post by brianwawok »

bloaf wrote: post #57
brianwawok wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

So it is fairly easy to split building up into the thinking part (design, planning, etc), and the grunt part (nailing crap together).

People try and try to apply the analogy to software. Heck that was the entire premise of EJBs. Have your smart people design the system. Then hire a bunch of foreign slave labor to implement the interfaces and BLAMO the program is done.

It just. doesn't. work.

No matter how good your up front design is, designs need to change over time. That is what makes software so powerful. But if you are just a code grunt and you don't KNOW how to design anything, you won't know when things need to change. So what do you do, keep adding more and more if blocks until a senior person can code review it? That is a crappy way to build software. WAYYY better to have 2-3 smart people working together than 1 genius and 14 code monkies.

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

#104

Post by yanslookup »

reducesuffering wrote: post #78
true_religion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College doesn't really teach programming. They teach computer science. Professor largely expect you to pick up programming on your own to solve the problems given.

At the upper-division level (years 3/4) this is true, but my college certainly teaches programming and syntax in Python/C++ along with computer science concepts your first two years.

Really? What school? That sounds...bad.

Most CS curricula should definitely not be focusing on any one language, no matter what the year. A typical first few courses are something like:

1) intro to computer science. This is typically teach entry level program flow techniques, loops, if/else, recursion, some OO. My school used java but the focus was not on the language.

2) Data Structures and Algorithms. Overview of your typical data structures and common operations. Gets in to big O, etc. My school accepted assignments in both java and c++, but didn't emphasize either one.

3) Architecture. This is low level CPU architecture. Pipelines, caches etc. We used some sort of assembly for assignments.

4) programming paradigms. This was basically SICP. Meta circular evaluators, etc. We used scheme for assignments but again no real emphasis on the language.

5) OSes. Basics of operating systems. Threads, memory management, networking etc. Assignments were in C.

I think this is the standard CS curriculum, at least according to my experiences and most of the people I've worked with with CS degrees.

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

#105

Post by bpicolo »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #97
467568985476 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are dozens of cities in the U.S. that want to be the next hub for young tech entrepreneurs, and most of them have more financial options than Kentucky, which is among the most dependent state budgets on federal dollars. Additionally, young people are socially and politically liberal, while KY voters overwhelmingly elected staunchly anti-LGBT representatives and were strongly in support of Trump. I think it woul…

>> Additionally, young people are socially and politically liberal, while KY voters overwhelmingly elected staunchly anti-LGBT representatives and were strongly in support of Trump. in case you haven't seen "Generation Z" numbers - you're in for a surprise - http://www.dailywire.com/news/12785/gop-tsunami-looms-genera... also, while the 20-30 year olds did vote primarily for Clinton - definitely not in an overwhelmin…

Looks skewed because majorities in a bunch of liberal states chose the third option (and several red states, though for the most part red states were very red): would not vote in this election

https://public.tableau.com/profile/mycollegeoptions#!/vizhom...

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

#106

Post by EternalData »

It's interesting to have local politics geared towards attracting talented people, but there's precious little that can be done if talent is fractionalized at a national level through the concentration of urban bubbles to immigration policies that stem inflows of talented people...

Talent is distributed unevenly, but I don't think a series of competing local lobbies will change that. I've always thought that all of the local ecosystems for which talent flows unevenly should think seriously about banding together and working on policies that 1) increase overall talent availability 2) distribute its spread more evenly -- 1 would involve working to get Congress to create incentives for entrepreneurs/high-skilled workers of all kinds to come to America in the first place, for example, while 2 might be a combination of infrastructure/tax policies.

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

#107

Post by icantdrive55 »

austenallred wrote: post #55
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

"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."

1. I've noticed this in so many fields.

2. There are devious businesses/entities that count on this.

3. I think Programmers will have employment for a long time. In absolute honesty, I don't find Programming, or Web Developement that exciting. I guess when you build something useful, or money making, that's where the love comes? In my twenties, you couldn't pay me to sit in front of a screen all day.

4. I still think there's room for a better way to pass on this information. I'm not sure if any bootcamp, or school has nailed it yet.

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

#108

Post by ocschwar »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #36
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…

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'd love that kind of life too, and the bad broadband wouldn't worry me too much. "git push" doesn't hog too much bandwidth, after all.

But having to fly around the country for interviews ? That's the deal breaker, unfortunately.

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

#109

Post by siosonel »

yanslookup wrote: post #104
reducesuffering wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the upper-division level (years 3/4) this is true, but my college certainly teaches programming and syntax in Python/C++ along with computer science concepts your first two years.

Really? What school? That sounds...bad. Most CS curricula should definitely not be focusing on any one language, no matter what the year. A typical first few courses are something like: 1) intro to computer science. This is typically teach entry level program flow techniques, loops, if/else, recursion, some OO. My school used java but the focus was not on the language. 2) Data Structures and Algorithms. Overview of y…

From the post you responded to: "...along with computer science concepts your first two years."

Reducesuffering simply stated that some programming tools were taught in the first years of college and he or she did not say his curriculum excluded any of the topics in your list.

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

#110

Post by mythrwy »

brianwawok wrote: post #102
mythrwy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetical question: If you could make 1/3 more laying bricks than coding which would you chose?

It's hard to say. I really really enjoy coding, and have tons of passion for it. But I can get really deep into about anything and really enjoy it. I suspect I would find some position in the brick laying field that would satisfy me the same. I have worked physical labor jobs in the past, and as a whole I think they are "better" (except for the pay). I come home at the end of the day physically tired, but mentally fr…

Ya, it's a tough call. I've worked physical jobs as well including construction.

Both programming and physical labor are enjoyable and good for a person in different ways and both ruin a person in different ways if taken too far.

I guess if it all paid the same I'd lay bricks half a day and program the other half :)

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