rml

Agreed. I think this has something to do with the fact that programming is not about the objects on screen themselves, it's about the interaction that occurs between those objects and the mind of the person looking at them. The objects are not real, but mere representations.

Therefore, the interaction I have with a block of code is defined by my experience wrestling with the problem at hand in the language of that block, during which my brain has "mapped" from the text to a sort of abstract visualization of its value (or "serialized", as you put it).

I don't think a tool that makes a "picture-block" for me will ever help. My brain has to do the work of understanding those blocks by compressing each text block into a form (block? graph node? neither?) that I can hold in my head.

Strangely enough, if the above is correct, that means that there is more value in implementing a tool like this (for the implementor) in $LANGUAGE than there is for a potential user. Perhaps this is why programmers keep writing them, and users keep on not using them.

As the user, I need to learn something either way, and learning is usually hard/expensive. Therefore, why learn the (imperfectly-mapped) "picture-block" abstraction at all?

It'd be interesting to see if programmers feel the need to keep using these sorts of tools them once they've written them. My guess is no.

Call me "biblical," but where I'm from farting in a grown man's face will get you punched in your own face, repeatedly, in a highly civilized manner.

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"So when you hear about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism), understand that answers that don't return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren't even considered answers. They're not even considered."

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I think the author is blissfully unaware of the fact that universities are often judged (from the outside) on their effectiveness not as "learning institutions," but as markers of belonging to a particular social stratum.

The existence of anachronisms such as "legacy admissions" seems to merit this view.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/arti...

Add in fluctuating energy prices (read: shipping costs), medical insurance premiums that rise year on year, and it's difficult to see what your costs will look like in five years.

In short, I agree: it looks expensive out there.

In the course of this research, I found that several medical sites based in the US (WebMD among them) mentioned corrective surgery as a possible remedy. The UK-based sites I came across made no mention of surgery, only lifestyle changes and other palliative measures.

It seems that Mr. Brooks likes to do at least some of his editorializing based on actual research. We need more like him.

- whatever the topic at hand is, I haven't thought about it enough yet.

- my attempts at humor will not come across in text (without context).

- the person I'm corresponding with is smarter than I am.

- Despite my best efforts, I will be misunderstood.

One of the best quotes I've seen on this topic is from Mark Dominus: "Advice to people wishing to become smarter: Get in the habit of assuming that everything is more complex than you imagine."

I think this probably applies to humor as well.

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http://www.cpan.org/misc/ZCAN.html

"Don't try to fix the bug, just put in some code that notices when it's about to happen, and heads it off."

(From Stewart Brand's The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT.)

Having said that, I mostly disagree with this writer, though I understand her reaction as a parent. In the course of my training, I was told that handwriting, and cursive handwriting in particular, are important to learn because when done correctly, they reinforce the brain's neural pathways associated with particular letters and sounds (1). For example, we had students stand at a whiteboard and write large cursive letters while reading/saying them at the same time (2). The acronym was V.A.K.: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic. The idea was to associate lots of information (from the eyes, ears and muscles) in the brain with the different letters and their sounds.

Of course, most schools don't do that, so the lesson of this article seems to be this: teaching handwriting to kids is bad for them if you're doing it wrong.

(1) I'm not a neurologist, so this might be the wrong way to describe it.

(2) The students worked one-on-one in private rooms with tutors that they trusted, NEVER in open classrooms. This is an important point.

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It sends a bit of a chill down my spine -- I'm trying to imagine what my copy of Kleppner & Ramsey's 'Quick Calculus' (about a $20 book) would have cost if Newton had 'patented' Calculus, and if his (hypothetical, avaricious) descendants and their attorneys had insisted on their 'right' to a cut of the profits.

(I know that's a false dichotomy, but it has a nice ring, doesn't it? :-))

Take a 12-year-old kid in middle school. Let's assume he is bright enough to do well, if he did the homework, etc. He goes home every day to a dirty house, where he spends hours by himself playing video games. His mother is at work earning an hourly wage, and when she gets home, she is bitter and sarcastic. His father is gone. There isn't enough money to pay the bills, so the phone, tv, etc. are constantly being turned on and off (i.e., general chaos).

At his suburban middle school, he has to endure the humiliation of being pushed toward lower-status "vocational" programs despite his (at least average) ability, because of his poor attitude, laziness and the fact that his family is known in his hometown as being somewhat "troubled."

It is only natural that a young person in such a situation might become disinclined to work hard, because he doesn't know what the point of "working hard" is. In his world, and the world of his family, "working hard" just means putting in more hours that enrich someone else. He hasn't been exposed to any other ways of life, and the well-to-do telling him that he's "lazy" probably won't serve to motivate.

Having said all that, there is nothing stopping this person from realizing the error of his ways as an adult and acting accordingly. Luckily, we have many examples of successful "late bloomers" available to us these days, but I think for many kids the damage will have been permanent.