biotech

How is it misleading? Saying that someone is in the "Top 5%" most viewed profiles is pretty straightforward. Just because there are a lot of people in the top 5% doesn't make it "misleading".

I love to see these articles. It's uniquely challenging to teach children to program at that age. I'm starting an after-school program to teach kids (~10 years old range) how to program. When researching tools available to teachers and students, I came up with a list that it strikingly similar to that which is presented in this article.

When teaching kids a few years older, your world really opens up in terms of tools you can use - I think a motivated 13 year old should be able to grasp any one of a number of different programming languages and/or different paradigms.

One of the issues with teaching younger students has to do with the immediacy of results:

Something like "Scratch" has a simplified programming model (visual drag-and-drop programming to create interactive animations), but gives immediate results that you can see on the screen right away, and it's impossible to create a syntax error.

When you teach a "friendly" programming language like Basic or Python, there's still a decent amount of background material before you actually create something visually cool. So, while a 9 year old might get bored and start to loose attention, I would expect a 13 year old to have the patience and persistence to know that the cool stuff (ie, making a simple video game) is on the horizon. He/She will continue to plow through the boilerplate.

When you go to Java or C, it requires all the more motivation, because the background information is that much more difficult to ignore. Syntax is much trickier. API's are less friendly to new coders. It takes more time and focus to create the result you're looking for, especially if it's graphical.

That was my thought process that eventually led me to choose Scratch as the way to introduce the students to programming in our computer programming club.

> If change from within worked, it would have accomplished measurable effect within the first decade.

Why do you think that's true? Is that just a gut feeling, or is it based on some logic that you did not include here?

To be clear, it is far from obvious to me that what you say is true. It seems to me that change from within could potential work, despite the events of the last ten years.

This is great. I'm working with a local elementary school teacher this fall to teach kids (9-10 year olds) programming. We plan to use Scratch as it gives immediate results and demonstrates many core programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals, etc). If they take to it very quickly, we may try a real programming language.

If anyone has experience teaching kids this age programming, or if you know of any resources available, please let me know. This is a new experience for me.

Looks like they don't (except under very specific circumstances which include not living within the USA)

https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/about/faq#Anonymous

> 40% of voters believe the Rapture/end of the world will occur in their lifetime. This is unprecendented in any secular country

This is unprecedented because it's simply not true. The best statistic I could find for this is 11%. Even 11% seems like a very high number based on my personal experience. As an American who has lived in different parts of America my whole life (and currently living in a high-tourist city with people from all over the US), I can say that most people in most parts of the US do not believe that the rapture will happen within their lifetime.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_US_0602.p...

A Bachelor's Degree.

Many people will say that humans are the exception, but I think it is nonetheless interesting to look at this from an ecological point of view. A common pattern of population growth for animals includes a period of exponential growth (as we are currently seeing), which ends with an "overshoot" where the population continues to grow past the "carrying capacity" of the environment. The population then decreases (possibly due to starvation or disease), and begins to cycle around the carrying capacity, creating an equilibrium. If one believes that this is a reasonable model to apply to the human population on Earth, the real question is: "What is the carrying capacity of Earth?"

I can't edit the post, so here's an update (bar by popular demand):

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/unledlauv.png/

I just graphed the data: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/unledwte.png/

SEEKING WORK

I work with back-end systems; most of my experience is with C, C++, and Java. I can work with most technology stacks, though - it's the application that interests me.

I have experience with telemetry and data analysis for avionics and medical devices. I feel at home with large data sets.

I'd be happy to work remote or travel to your site.

You can see my resume here: http://ctbaldwin.com/resume.pdf

I like the comments after the article - many people suggesting that Intel is selling themselves short with this prediction.

No doubt there are many organizations capable of building an operating system, and a few with enough influence to cause widespread adoption. Indeed, Google is a great example, as they are responsible for more than one OS: Android and Chrome OS. Both of which are Linux-based, and therefore C-based OS's.

C is probably the most firmly entrenched programming language that ever existed, and it's not going away in the near future. One big factor here is the fact that all major operating systems are written in (and have core libraries to support) C. I think in order to "replace C", you'd have to develop an OS in the other language, and that OS would have to gain widespread adoption.

The documented evidence is from a case in 1996. According to the article:

Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.

I'm not so sure that this is still a common practice for modern phones.

If you smoke or drink caffeine, these can cause vasoconstriction which reduces blood flow to your hands.

If the problem is really serious, it could be a medical problem called Raynaud's Syndrome.

It's interesting how common this is in New Space:

Jeff Bezos - From Amazon.com to Blue Origin

Richard Branson - From Virgin Records to Virgin Galactic

Robert Bigelow - From Budget Suites to Bigelow Aerospace

Elon Musk - From PayPal to SpaceX

I'm hoping that this is just the beginning of a trend of successful businesspeople investing in humanities' future in space.

I see many comments pointing out that it may be a good technical decision to develop on Windows. This is a good point; many skilled engineers target Windows and .NET with great success. In that case, having a Windows development environment makes sense.

However, it sounds like the organization in question was not deploying to Windows - from the article:

...it seemed to me that most of your development happens on Windows (though it’s almost needless to say that you deploy to Linux)

I won't judge you for using Windows over Unix (even though I prefer Unix), but I will judge the choice of using Windows for development when you are targeting Unix. I have had this experience, and it was a Management decision - not an Engineering decision, and it resulted in significantly less productive work environment. Given two opportunities that are otherwise equal, I would definitely choose the company that develops on the same platform that they deploy on (assuming we're talking about Unix or Windows - there are obvious exceptions in the embedded world).

One caveat: It is common for an organization to use both Windows and Linux for different tasks. In that case, the choice of development environment is more complicated.

Either way, I'd say that the candidate should have asked up front during the interview, "Why are you using Windows for development, and could I use Mac/Linux instead?", instead of judging them based on what seems like a lack of information. They may have a good reason. If they don't, your decision is that much easier.

Here is the my naming convention:

1. Desktop computers are any land animal

2. Laptops are birds

3. Virtual machines and servers are any water dwelling creature

I try to progress through the alphabet. For example, "Buck" is an old, now defunct computer - "Gila" has only recently been retired.

The article you are referring to was recently posted on HN, but published in 2005: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html

It would be a challenge to find a spot on the North side that wasn't near a Dunkin Donuts. That being said, I think this is a reasonable thing to look for if you aren't sure. I personally don't go to DD, but if you enjoy going there on a regular basis, it can improve your quality of day-to-day life. I've had the same thought regarding living near a Borders/Barnes & Noble.

To the OP and anyone else interested in the North Side of Chicago: I don't think you can go wrong anyplace near the lake between Downtown and Irving Park Rd. It's all beautiful; plenty of grocery stores and Dunkin Donuts'.

How so?

This is a question from "Google Answers", a website that ran from 2002 through 2006. People were paid a small amount (usually; occasionally the amount would be reasonable) to do research (usually on the internet) and answer arbitrary questions. In general, the quality of the answers was very high.

> I'd be lying if I said I don't doubt you are not incorrect

Holy Shnikes, that's a tough one to parse! I wasn't sure what you were saying here, so I'm gonna break it down, working from the end of the sentence:

1. I'd be lying if I said I don't doubt you are not incorrect

2. I'd be lying if I said I don't doubt you are CORRECT

3. I'd be lying if I said I don't think you are INCORRECT

4. I'd be lying if I said I think you are CORRECT

5. I think you are INCORRECT

The idea is that each of the previous statements are saying basically the same thing; I'm just cancelling negatives each time. Anyway, am I correct to assume that you think that the GP is incorrect?

After reading this and some of your previous posts, I can see that your English is excellent. There's no need to second-guess your corrections.

> Do you have a source to back it up?

It seems unreasonable to expect others to provide sources when you don't source your own information.

The two things about software engineering:

1. You have to figure out what you need to build.

2. Engineer the solution in such a way that changes in the requirements result in relatively minor changes to the code.

You have a point. It's the Heisenberg principle at play here. By making the observation, you change what you are observing.