shamney

starting strength involves perhaps 30 minutes of active exercise in a week with most time in the gym sent recovering between sets. that is simply not enough to develop any sort of cardiovascular fitness unless you have an abnormally strong response to training.

your links in support of the injury prevention and mass building benefits refer to startingstrength.com and Practical Programming. That book is health cult literature, not a reliable scientific resource. The linked article links to evidence that resistance training can aid health (in elderly subjects). This does not support the idea of high intensity barbell training as a magic injury prevention tool.

Everyone who lifts for mass does a lot more higher rep volume than Starting Strength. Lots of guys have strong physiques yet use mostly "inferior" bodyweight exercises and machines. Take a look around you in the gym next time you're there and you might be a little surprised :).

Weight gain is a problem. Most people have no health reason to gain mass rapidly (or at all), yet many trainees struggle to progress without eating a large calorific surplus. This is a pretty good reason why such a training program should not be your default recommendation!

Strength is absolutely not that basis of all fitness. Many extremely fit endurance athletes never lift any weights. Even if this rather bizarre statement was true, it does not explain why powerlifting training of this sort is ideal for everyone. I note that you didn't dispute that it will interfere with other physical activity -- one of the most compelling reasons why the average person should not do Starting Strength and why it is most definitely a powerlifting specific training regime.

You may have had a great experience with Starting Strength. But other people will often have a very different response to training and health goals. Ask yourself also how much real evidence you have for your incredibly strong and dogmatic opinions on training.

strength training 3x a week will with no other exercise will leave the average person with extremely poor cardiovascular fitness. if you lack the strength to carry out household tasks you would be better off with basic bodyweight exercises. the average western person is sedentary and does not exercise enough, so it makes little sense to recommend 3 hours a week of training that consists of mainly of recovering between sets.

there is also no evidence for the preventative benefits of heavy lifting. for the average person who starts lifting to feel and look better, starting strength makes no sense: it is sub optimal for increasing mass, is hard and not that enjoyable compared to less intense weightlifting routines, increases the length of workouts, interferes with training for other sports, is incompatible with serious participation in sports (outside of powerlifting), requires rapid and unhealthy weight gain for progression for many trainees...

even if you don't agree with all my points, at least ask yourself if it makes sense to recommend a highly specific sports training routine to everyone looking for basic fitness advice.

heavy lifting is inherently risky. there is little evidence that "correct" form will protect you from potential injury. there is also no real reason to do a strength focused routine if your reason for going to the gym is to improve your health and/or body. don't listen to the starting strength cultists!

is there any evidence for this theory or did you just make it up?

one very old question does not prove anything about the actual cultural bias of the SAT now or then! research on this topic mostly shows that cultural bias is not a serious problem: http://lp.wileypub.com/HandbookPsychology/SampleChapters/Vol...

how will this make any difference? if you're a non urm who doesn't already know that top colleges provide very generous financial aid, it's highly unlikely that you will have developed the right all round profile to get a place at stanford.

seems a little silly to support low income students like this yet continue with class biased "holistic" admissions

what new technological advances in back end web development have occurred in the last five years? why should senior developers spend their spare time learning new ways of doing exactly the same thing?

it isn't bad for us at normal levels of modern consumption

why the obsession with cutting out a harmless and tasty part of a normal diet?

could you link to some of this literature?

competency based interviews are standard for junior positions with large companies in the UK. however, this approach often turns interviews into a bullshitting competition.

are competency based interviews really a well established method of finding the best people?

what were you not able to accomplish with vba? you can use c# with excel as well. http://exceldna.codeplex.com

was vba too hard for you to learn?

why would the bmj take such a strong stance when they simply don't have the evidence to back it up? the linked study does not show that moderate consumption is harmful or demonstrate that previous results are exaggerated...

"In summary, the study is grossly underpowered to convincingly prove a plausible protection, and they have committed the cardinal sin of saying that non-significance is the same as 'no effect' in a study lacking sufficient events, in this case, deaths in non-drinkers. Maybe epidemiological studies should include power calculations, which make sure there is a reasonable chance of detecting a plausible effect, and which became standard in clinical trials after too-small studies were being used to claim that drugs did not work."

http://understandinguncertainty.org/misleading-conclusions-a...

where does it show that moderate alcohol consumption is bad for health promotion??

30k is at the top of the range once you exclude finance jobs...

i didn't say anything about screening kids out at that age -- i'm not sure where that came from?! i was simply pointing out that there is another very important factor in explaining success at cognitively demanding tasks like programming .

practice, experience AND intelligence

most people are not smart enough to be even mediocre coders

what is "correct form"? and where is all the research demonstrating its success at preventing injury?

what about the countries that are then deprived of this talent?

interviews for graduate legal jobs in biglaw are mostly focused on "fit".

most of the work GPs do is far easier than bog standard web or mobile development

it is not the same writing or simple arithmetic for most people. this sort of comment is exactly what the original post was talking about -- programmers are often unable to imagine other people will struggle with tasks they take for granted.

not everything can be taught to all people. a person of average intellectual ability will always struggle with cognitively demanding tasks like mathematics and programming.

would you really want to hire a young steve jobs for a junior software developer position?!

the downvotes are quite amazing. this is just a basic factual matter -- nothing to do with whether watson's broader claims are true -- yet it seems some people are simply incapable of dealing with reality...

why would someone downvote this? I'm simply pointing out facts. For example, see this paper by Wicherts et al [1]: "Our estimate of average IQ converges with the finding that national IQs of sub-Saharan African countries as predicted from several international studies of student achievement are around 82."

[1]http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wicherts2010IQAFR.pdf