31–36 of 36 posts
I don't share his enthusiasm about this. Doesn't everyone interested in computers/computing start programming things that are actually useful at roughly that age? Also, is an early start a guarantee that someone will choose a career in computing?
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Nope! But it would be great if the general population had some proficiency in programming, even if they don't choose a career in computing. My partner is an aspiring film maker, but knows how to parse a CSV in python and do pattern matching, he was looking for funding and needed to pull all of the "x.com" domains out of a giant spreadsheet .. for him, simple, export as CSV and string match the email field. This simpl…
Do you have links to any good tutorials about programming (in any language) for this purpose?
I don't share his enthusiasm about this. Doesn't everyone interested in computers/computing start programming things that are actually useful at roughly that age? Also, is an early start a guarantee that someone will choose a career in computing?
not everyone takes the same path through life.
I don't share his enthusiasm about this. Doesn't everyone interested in computers/computing start programming things that are actually useful at roughly that age? Also, is an early start a guarantee that someone will choose a career in computing?
Nope! But it would be great if the general population had some proficiency in programming, even if they don't choose a career in computing. My partner is an aspiring film maker, but knows how to parse a CSV in python and do pattern matching, he was looking for funding and needed to pull all of the "x.com" domains out of a giant spreadsheet .. for him, simple, export as CSV and string match the email field. This simpl…
I don't doubt the usefulness of programming to the non-technologist, but Excel proficiency can be even more useful. It's so much more than just a container for CSVs!
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No, and no. A fair percentage of people who start developing software early end up being passed by people who started later. A seemingly large factor of this is kids learning bad habits on their own and not being able to correct them later, or having a much more difficult time correcting them. (I'm not saying that is the case here, just generally.)
I hear this a lot, but I've never seen actual evidence of it. Everyone who started early that I've seen in computer science classes has been better than people who started later.
But I've also spent a lot of time correcting bad habits, reading on good habits, and relearning a lot of things I did as a child -- and most of the code I wrote as a child was pretty awful.
Still, it's something that I've heard often and I can understand the logic behind it.
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Jimmy Wales did not build Wikipedia. Thousands upon thousands of unpaid volunteers did. As for Howard Roark, who is supposed to epitomize Ayn Rand's "virtue of selfishness" ideal, I don't remember him being any kind of philanthropist. If anything, he (like Rand) has nothing but contempt for the masses. Wikipedia would be the antithesis of what Roark would want to build. The Encyclopedia Britannica would be more to hi…
Hmm, I don't know. Seems like much of Wikipedia is by smart people for smart people (like NPR). We all think of Wikipedia as the commons but it's far from it. Most people are on perezhilton.com all day. Anyway, Ayn Rand was more against the falseness around giving and the betrayal of the recipient when he is given something he could never earn.