Learning how to think (2015)

Anyone with a computer related subject who didn’t learn to think wasted their time in school.

> I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. I would tell them that the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write.

Dear Son,

I am writing this slow, 'cause I know you can't read fast. There are a few things happening here at home. We don't live where we did when you left -- you're father read in the paper that most car accidents happen within twenty miles of home, so we moved. I won't be able to send you the address because we moved into your cousins old house and they took the numbers with them so they wouldn't have to change their address. The new place has a washing machine! It's in a small room that also has a shower in it. The first day, I put four shirts in. I pressed the lever and I haven't seen them since. The weather is nice here. It rained twice this week. Three days the first time and four days the second time. Remember that coat you wanted me to send you? Well, your aunt said that it would be too heavy to send in the mail, so we cut the buttons off and put them in the pocket. Monday we got a bill from the funeral home. It said if we don't make the last payment on Grandma's funeral ... up she comes ... Your father has a lovely new job. He has over 500 men under him. He's cutting grass at the cemetery. Your brother's wife had a baby this morning. We don't know whether it's a boy or a girl, so we don't know if you are an aunt or an uncle. Your uncle fell in the whiskey vat and drowned. We cremated him. He burned for 3 days. Last week 3 of your friends went off the bridge in a pickup truck. One was driving and the other two were riding in the back. The driver rolled down the window and swam to safety. The other two drowned. They couldn't get the tailgate down. Not much else. Write more often. Love, Mom

P.S. -- We would have sent money, but the envelope was already sealed.

same... this article doesn't actually seem to cover its own topic. One has to wonder if the article itself was written slowly, or rushed to production to garner more clicks?

I would have loved to learn about how to synthesize and filter what you read, and at what point your amount of stuff to read reaches saturation. I always hear "I read all the books I could find!" but that's an impossible statement for almost any field — I just want to know if there's an agreed upon state where one can feel that one has read everything available to start thinking for oneself and forming original thoughts.

This fear of failure by others is why so many people have a hard time delegating. Sometimes things will fail, and that’s ok (with a few exceptions, of course).

You would have included eating to your list. You sure are taking it out of context. He didnt imply you think before you do everything.

Even as Engineers we know that some of the problems we come up against in the course of a project could have been foreseen and tackled if only we spent some time to deeply understand the project.