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I should have loved biology too

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Re: I should have loved biology too

#121
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

[dead]

Re: I should have loved biology too

#122
post #2

A while ago, I taught CS for a year in a local high school. I can very much relate to the notion of "astonishing facts were presented without astonishment": as a teacher, you don't have the freedom to teach whatever you want (of course), but you're very tightly bound to a curriculum that's developed by the state government. And for CS, this curriculum was so uninteresting and uninspiring (what a surprise: 13 year old…

I basically found this in college too, I quickly gave up on computer science as a major. I'd rather just go out and learn how to build what I want to build versus hearing a 3-hour lecture about how the jvm works.

The answer is it's magic and no one cares, now let's go build some games

Re: I should have loved biology too

#123
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

Write that in Old English orthography and you'll make a more consistent argument.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would love to do something like this but simply cannot afford it. Work for a company that will pay for it.

I can't imagine why a company would pay an engineer to get a masters degree in biology

Try something in the medical field, my company will pay for a bunch of medical related stuff when I just want to further my CS background.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies will pay for at least part of whatever college classes you take, without auditing whether or not it would be good for your specific job. I encourage people to look into it, it's a benefit a lot of people have but don't use and it's leaving money on the table.

Can you say more? What kind of company would so such a thing? Maybe I live in a bubble but that's so far outside of what I've seen that it just sounds fantastical.

My company uses guildeducation.com and we can use basically $5k a year (I think, it might be semester), a lot of if it is just individual classes, but there are also some degree programs. I don't know if they preselect which courses are available to us or if we have access to the whole catalog. I suspect it's somewhat curated, because we are a medical company and most of it is medical stuff. There is a CS bachelor's program but last I checked there wasn't an MS CS program.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#126
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much a tangent, but I think it's nearly certain that "segway" will end up overtaking "segue" as the predominant spelling for the word that is defined as: "to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene, or part to another" The "mistake" happens so often, partially because "segway" is a much more straightforward spelling if one has only heard the word said aloud, that I think it…

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

Tbh, I’m more critical of commonly confused words in English like affect and effect, or discrete and discreet.

In more forgiving of mixing up homophones, even if one of them is a registered trademark (Segway).

Re: I should have loved biology too

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies will pay for at least part of whatever college classes you take, without auditing whether or not it would be good for your specific job. I encourage people to look into it, it's a benefit a lot of people have but don't use and it's leaving money on the table.

Every company I ever worked for constrained it in many ways 1. Masters degree only, they won't pay for anyone to get a bachelor's or associates 2. Must maintain a B average or better 3. Cannot take any time off, it has to be entirely on nights and weekends 4. Reimbursement after the fact, so you're taking on the initial financial risk up front.

Plus usually the employer wants it to be related to ones job, from their very limited perspective of the world and management decisions. For example I couldn't even take a language course for education vacation, as the employer did not make any use of my language skills.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

Actually it's not an absurd take at all. The absurd take is that we "should not bend language around ignorance." That's precisely how language changes over time. Language is not a strict set of rules. It's based on understanding and consensus, so sometimes things that are "wrong" do end up being accepted. I suggest this as a great introduction into what languages are and how they evolve over time https://www.amazon.c…

I am not a native speaker, but the two words do not sound even remotely the same.

How does this mistake happen so often? Can you explain people's thought process a bit? Is it just: "Something something 'seg...' ... ah I know, I will simply use another random word that starts with the same 3 letters and doesn't make sense in this phrase!"?

Also this is the first time I see it.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurd take. We should not bend language around ignorance. There is a beauty to effort. Please take a second to explore this for yourself.

Write that in Old English orthography and you'll make a more consistent argument.

Þis is án ungeswutellic andswaru. Wé ne sculon bǣgan spræce ymbe ungewitt. Þǣr is fægernes tō earfeþe. Bidd þé niman án ōþer tid tō smeagan þis sylf.

Re: I should have loved biology too

#130

The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. This has resulted in what we have now: A subject where the prerequisite to understanding is the ability to read long passages of text littered with jargon and visualize what that might represent. Even if everyone's reading skills were where they should be, the second part is not a super common skillset. It's one of the reasons why I work in…

> The field of biology was created by people who love to classify/name things. More to the point, the field of biology is so complex that for the longest time we could only name and classify things. Understanding came later, when we'd accummulated enough data and had hints from chemistry and other fields. The problem is that once we gain that understanding, we add that as one more chapter to our textbooks, one more l…

Agreed 100%! Really like this
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