pdiddy

I would find this article hilarious if I weren't horrified that people may take it seriously.

In the 50s, people could identify Buckminster Fuller, Saul Bellow, or Jackson Pollock. Many educated people now could identify Frank Gehry, Toni Morrison, or Jeff Koons. But having a cadre of public artists who "shape in meaningful ways our image of ourselves or define our collective values" is a very narrow way framing the issue and has not been the trajectory of art for decades, if ever.

Look at that reception to Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present. People stood in line for hours. I saw a segment about it on CBS Sunday Friggin' Morning. The public is engaged with art, it's just not the art that the writer wants them to be engaged with.

Your analogy conflates the medium and the message.

Seriously? Why the double standard? Seems cynical.

It is a thoughtful gesture and proper etiquette.

It sounds like you discussed this with her already (when you said "she's too"). If so, you're having an emotional affair. In either case, you need to stop immediately. It's very difficult, but force yourself not to think about her.

My process: keep a bug journal. If I hit the same bug I hit three months ago and go through the same research to fix it, then I know I am not progressing. Ideally through this process I will learn what it is that I don't know and then learn it.

If you are worried about injury in a theoretical sense (by that, I mean you haven't noticed particular discomfort with your typing style), it is probably better to focus on exercising your hands (and body) than to retrain your typing style.

I haven't worked through it but the approach to Learn You a Haskell seems fun:

http://learnyouahaskell.com/

I would encourage anyone who hasn't read The Second Machine Age to check out the discussion of this topic. It is true, as you say, that a relatively poor person and a billionaire can both have the same iPhone. The contrary side of that is when it comes to paying for something like education. The cost of education is increasing very rapidly and student loans can be crippling. That is not great for society, let alone those stuck with the debt.

Which coincides with a large increase in bankruptcies due to the "two-income trap."

I love that he calls <%%> "tie fighters."

>Well, 2006 was a -long- time ago, and Ruby and Ruby on Rails have come a long way.

Right. I recently listened to a lot of the archive of the StackOverflow podcast. Joel & Jeff periodically discuss Rails, and Joel eventually recognizes Rails as a viable option once it improves. This blog post must have been before that.

Right. I think we are actually making similar points. What I was trying to say in my example of the C code compilation is that it doesn't really tell you what code is, but rather this is what it's like to write code, or rather the human story--as you described it.

I think WIC is great--very enjoyable--and agree with this article that its presentation is basically a work of art, but it fails to explain "this is what code is," especially for the layperson.

Before reading this article I reflexively sent it to my wife, thinking that WIC will clarify what it is I do for a living. WIC does that remarkably in explaining what it is like to be a programmer. It tackles the business side of things, the current trends, and some history. But it is much less successful, when it comes to explaining the code.

An example of where it fails in explaining code to the layperson is the part about compiling C code in the command line. Yes, a layperson could follow this step by step, but I think if they did they wouldn't be able to put it in a larger context. Ok, it is compiled but what does that mean? How does that compare to other languages? These are questions that are left unanswered for laypeople, so it is just confusing and unrewarding.

For me as a professional dev, I enjoyed that part, especially because I could relate to it: it is like finding a basic tutorial on line, starting from scratch and following it line by line, something I do all the time. WIC is an excellent insider piece that really captures the zeitgeist of programming. The question should be reframed. If you really want to know "What is code?" you should read Petzold's Code. Any layperson could read it. You would have to work but it rewards. What is Code is better at answering "What does it mean to be a coder right now?