mcafeeryan92

My thought on this is that the current Uber valuation is related very strongly to the idea of their future worth, which is currently quite optimistic due to their self-driving car research. Uber without having to pay drivers at all is still the end-goal for them, so it may just mean that they need more capital investment in the short-term and investors may be happy to do so.

This sounds great. Funding people over projects is the right approach to doing research, imo, because of the dangers of pursuing research topics simply because they seem fundable or being afraid to pursue more risky research that could be more beneficial solely due to fundability. I hope this model works great for them and finds its way into more types of science as well.

Well that's the only metric that most of us should be considering...whether or not someone considers that they have more to learn. If they don't, they will never be great. But anyone who wants to learn can become a good programmer, and being called a 'bad' programmer early on just because they haven't reached that competency yet is the problem that we're really talking about.

I couldn't agree more. When I first started out studying CS I was constantly afraid that I wouldn't be able to cut it because I didn't always immediately see how to solve algorithmic problems or write code that would work. I got bogged down in thinking about programming as a problem of learning syntax, and missed 'obvious' things. I couldn't reverse a string or write FizzBuzz and in fact part of the reason for that was that I was so sure that programming was a magical ability that I didn't have because I compared myself to people who had been writing code since their childhoods, and this created nerves which made it hard to really think about solving these problems instead of feeling helpless when I didn't immediately 'know' their solutions.

I powered through that and ended up doing very well in my CS program at Northwestern, and now am a professional software developer that my peers consider to be a 'rockstar' programmer, although I still contend that I am mediocre and there is always SO much more to learn. At my job I frequently mentor our college interns, and many of them when they come into the job would be laughed out of the room by 'good' programmers, but after a little bit of mentoring and consistent daily practice on the job, in 2 months they emerge 'rockstar' programmers themselves, and in reality they are still probably about average.

Most of the 'bad' programmers many of us come into contact with are just farther behind on their journey to being great software developers, and may only be as bad as they are because of fear to ask questions and be judged by those who think there are only 2 types of programmers.

Yes we are :)

Am I terrible for actually getting quite a chuckle reading this?

That looks awesome, thanks!

Thanks!