sumeeta

I learned programming by hacking on other people’s code – manipulating it to fit my needs. Try to find an open source project you can mess with.

I can’t say for sure how much fun this’ll be for you: The next time you think to yourself, “I wish this thing worked like this” or “I wish this thing had this feature”, if it’s open source, just load up the code and start playing with it. Your problem might be easier to solve than you’d think.

I don’t think a problem has to be significant to be useful to someone. I just think it’d be ideal to work towards a product (no matter how trivial) that the beginner could feel proud of and actually appreciate how it’s helping them.

Learning programming “for learning’s sake” sounds great, but it also sounds damn hard without goals.

I couldn’t imagine jumping into programming (or even wanting to) without a problem to solve first. That’s the whole point of programming, anyway. If someone wants to learn programming, maybe we could help by directing them towards a problem they’d find interesting.

How’d that work out for Reba?

And why did Reba want to learn programming in the first place?

I don’t know about amazing; this just seems depressing.

It's funny.

This is actually really cool, but all I can see is this:

> Warning: This isn't going to work in any currently available version of Internet Explorer* or many older browsers.

And all I can think about is screw Internet Explorer.

Beer.

That can be wise, but not entirely practical when you think to yourself all day, "I can't solve this problem. I'm going to sleep."

I like that Joel decides to say "OK, forget about Subversion or whatever you know about source control in general. I'm going to teach you about the DVCS way from the ground up." It's great that he treats this guide like an introduction to the concept of version control, but I think you really need experience with VCS before you can understand Hg Init.

Is there an easy way to educate older and/or less technical IT professionals about source control? I haven't been able to do it myself, and I wish this was it.

It makes me feel good to hear someone else say it like this.

When I think about it, I'm thrown off by this pattern whenever I see it, too.

It's also interesting to think about text input versus dropdown select if you decide to go for manual state entry. I prefer just typing in the abbreviation, but I'm not sure that's suitable for a wide audience.

Seems so simple. Why isn't this used more?

Right, and labeling them is not much different from calling them dumb.

I think something's wrong with us "passionates." Why aren't we seeing any value in these everyday "content" people?

Good job, this is really nice.

Like you mentioned in your announcement, this tool seems like it's primarily useful for (important) business. Is there anything you can do that would make me feel assured that the conversion is accurate? I'm 90% sure that everything is perfect, but that's not really good enough. I'd be much more inclined to use the tool if I knew I could trust it.

Is this a nugget of wisdom or a naive frustration / hate piece? I can't help but relate to the author (in this post, too: http://www.marco.org/43768310) and feel annoyed by the "average" person's lack of passion and inattention to detail. It seems that his main concern is that school as we know it is geared towards creating this type of individual – and that people need to be more like us and care about stuff.

Judging from the year he graduated college, the author is in his late twenties – pretty young. Since he's still several years older than me, I'm inclined to let him validate my feelings. And that worries me.

Would someone older (and wiser) like to chime in and tell us why we're wrong and why the "average" person doesn't suck as much as we think?

Gates is obviously really guarded here. The inspirational Bill from the 2007 D5 interview (http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview/) would be stoked on iPad.

Heh, I think we mostly agree. My real concern is that I'm not sure school bus wifi really does much to save kids from brain-rotting.

Is anyone else a little weirded out by this? It seems wrong that these kids are sitting quietly on their MacBooks instead of socializing while they're all together on a school bus.

Is the Internet really that necessary for doing schoolwork? Why did that kid need Internet connectivity for GarageBand?

My real question: Why is sitting on Facebook for an hour better for kids than socializing with their peers?

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we all had something like this when we were tiny.

Reminds me of the Google toilet ISP (http://www.google.com/tisp/).

Cool. Now what?

> But it can also be a steep learning curve to figure out which framework you should use (or if you should use one at all) and then how to use it.

I was really looking forward to hear someone talk about this.

I'd like to know more about whether or not I should be using one at all. I've found CSS frameworks useful for mockups or prototyping, but I'm concerned that they're too heavy and general-purpose to use in production.

My issue is more with people who like xkcd and the subculture surrounding it. I feel like that's really what the author is saying.

It's hard to deal with your world being infiltrated by newbies who act like they know everything.

That's exactly how I feel. I wish I could sit back and just appreciate the fact that things like xkcd help draw people into the great field of computing. But this new breed of misinformed, know-it-all techno-dorks is just so infuriating. I can't help it.

And I hate that brand of meritless humor that is funny only because it's supposed to be funny. But that's a much bigger issue.

As our focus has shifted to the web in the past decade, I think a lot of us (myself included) have convinced ourselves that the future lies completely inside the web browser.

Hearing Gates address the issue, and combining that with what we're seeing now with mobile and touch-driven computing has really convinced me otherwise.

I see this interview as a call-to-arms from our heroes to gear up for this paradigm shift. They've gotten us this far; and now it's up to us, the developers, to really drive it home.

I really enjoyed seeing that Gates is still super smart and really enthusiastic about the innovation that’s happening right now. Makes me wish he was still running the show at Microsoft.