You may or may not be surprised at how many kids in Silicon Valley (especially San Jose) did a full year of remote school using only a mobile phone, and in many cases, where that was a shared mobile phone and the only household method of accessing the internet. It worked about as well as you might expect, given these kids are often from households with multiple other disadvantages.
Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
151–160 of 249 posts
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably means programming or debugging while dreaming, which certainly happens when you're up 4am in the morning fixing a stubborn bug or learning something new that captivates your brain.
I meant it literally. I've had dreams where instead of a normal language, I dreamt in C++, as if it was a human language. Instead of spoken words, a header file was changing in my mind, taking shape to match my thoughts. It's the most "alien" experience I've ever had.
That's really cool.
Sounds like it was an abstract-declarative sort of narrative - header files are generally references that prospectively describe and model things.
I'm curious if the code was valid. (Hmm, and if the numbers were all fuzzy... people sometimes say they can't read clocks or digits.)
A bilingual friend once shared that they sometimes forgot which language they'd heard something in, their brain could subconsciously translate back and forth with so little effort. This sounds kind of like that.
Hmmmm... programming languages are unique in that they're generally never sounded-out to the same extent as wetware languages, eg in how commas and periods turn into pitch changes and pauses. Human(-to-human) language does have a visual/written component, but it's maybe... hm, 50/50 sounds potentially wrong, but it is sorta half-half; audio serialization is generally awkwardly bolted on to the side with programming, which is generally always visual, and has strong correlation (or even fundamental integration) to control and problem solving.
To integrate all that very young may have perhaps slightly remapped things around such that that language processing developed strong cohesive lock-step with visual/spatial reasoning, with sufficient cohesion that the integration retained structural integrity even when the logical/rational/etc parts of the brain shut down when asleep.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#153Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#154But a phone is a computer...
Though Google is slowly killing apps like termux.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#155That "just a mobile phone" is a computer in small form factor and possibly more powerful than computers two decades ago. Especially on Android devices where you can run chrooted a full GNU/Linux environment, the only difficulty (but not a barrier) smartphones have for being used productively are the small display screens and the lack of keyboard.
Yeah I don't think anyone is under the impression that any smart phone is not powerful enough to do this, but have you actually tried development on a phone? Even with a keyboard this is masochistic.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#156Recently I was looking to donate some money to Sri Lankan charities and was talking to various groups, asking them what their most urgent needs were and where I should allocate money.
One charity was based in the Mullithivu region[1] which is an impoverished rural region in Sri Lanka. The kids there don't neccessarilly have access to the internet or computers at home, so with COVID are left behind as the schools move towards some form of digital teaching.
I thought it was interesting that one of the most effective solutions for this that the charity found was to purchase USB keys loaded with digital curriculums. Apparently while the homes don't have computers, almost all have Smart TVs (to access tamil language programming?) and thus the kids could follow along with school as long as they had their USB keys. The director of the charity also mentioned they were also trying to get the curriculum through phones (he mentioned Viber explicitly, but I'm not sure why it needed to be limited to that), which was another device all families had access to.
We ended up purchasing USB keys for an entire school ($5 each) and money to fund digital content creation. I wonder if there would be a big impact on education in these areas if someone could work out the UX/UI/ergonomics of teaching through mobile phone. Or whether it's just a better idea to fund a infrastructure (school computer labs). The advantage of the former, I suppose, is one could just do it and see if it has an effect.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm weird, your comment got me interested in Nepalese custom duties. I had a read through and it looks like notebooks do not incur import duties in Nepal! > Automatic data processing machines and units thereof; magnetic or optical readers, machines for transcribing data on to data media in coded form and machines for processing such data, not elsewhere specified or included. -Portable automatic data processing machin…
In Argentina you have to pay 50% of the market value for all electronic imports and you will have to deal with customs officers (who will usually try to make your day quite miserable if you don't "tip" em)
Is worth mentioning regarding Argentina and this HN submission in particular that the government is aiming to provide a laptop to every secondary student, they are build (assembled is probably more accurate) in Argentina and they come with a Linux distribution maintained by them called Huayra. I think that is pretty awesome for such a poor country.
Customs in general are annoying, I was arriving to Germany from the US with a new MacBook, I was stopped and they ask me where did I buy the computer, I had bought in Germany, so they say it was fine, they told me to send a copy of the invoice to them, which I did. They were just making sure I paid the taxes there.
From what I heard from Argentineans bribing is very common, but they somehow think people taking the bribes are the only corrupt but not people bribing, or avoiding taxes.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Argentina you have to pay 50% of the market value for all electronic imports and you will have to deal with customs officers (who will usually try to make your day quite miserable if you don't "tip" em)
Is worth mentioning regarding Argentina and this HN submission in particular that the government is aiming to provide a laptop to every secondary student, they are build (assembled is probably more accurate) in Argentina and they come with a Linux distribution maintained by them called Huayra. I think that is pretty awesome for such a poor country. Customs in general are annoying, I was arriving to Germany from the U…
> From what I heard from Argentineans bribing is very common, but they somehow think people taking the bribes are corrupt but not people bribing, or avoiding taxes.
Wait this isn't the case everywhere. I thought this how corruption laws are made.
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#159Sadly, this is how things are for many of us students, I currently study bachelors in CS here in Nepal and for me and some of my friends stuck in our villages (lockdown isn't still over here yet), we have been doing C assignments using editors avalialble in the playstore. Seeing these apps have millions of downloads, we're definitely not alone and I have seen many indian and other south asian friends do the same. My…
What Android version do you run on your J7? My J7 is stuck on Android 6 and can't install Termux. It doesn't get OTA and I'm not sure how to update it.
Use fdroid or from there github release find an compatible version. The internal env. are updated for everyone
Re: Nepalese student learns HTML, JavaScript, CSS using just a mobile phone
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that termux is packaging rust now, pkg install rust
Excellent! Although seeing how npm install took ages to complete I'm afraid it's going to take even more to compile even a debug target in Rust.
Actually that depend upon the phone phone you are using if its 2-3 years old. It should be fast enough.