Rondrak

So that's what it's called. I've felt that way for a good portion of my life, and only since I've started getting help in the past year did I realize something was actually wrong that could be fixed (it took someone else's genuine caring for a change to occur).

I originally thought I was just different from everyone else, or that "they" were wasting their lives on pointless pursuits. Now I actually understand why it's so great having a niece to take to the park.

I've worked for Microsoft for over a year now, and they've been exceptionally supportive of my peculiarities. I've suffered massively from depression and sleep disorders, and everyone's pretty willing to reschedule meetings, allow for an altered work schedule, or just let me work from home when it gets bad.

As long as I deliver what I'm supposed to, when I'm supposed to, they're very reasonable.

Take a look at http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/94992.aspx.

After the original post, most of them are "yeah right on!", or +1 type posts, until about 1/6 of the way down when streamOG begins chiming in. His posts get increasingly in depth and informative on the issue as the thread continues.

Would there be any practical difference between DNT baked into the browser and the cookie method from something like Beef Taco? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/beef-taco-tar...

Is it just me or does it appear that Lorne Michaels (page 7) is playing Snood on his computer? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Snood_%28vide...

Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding your comment. That's what I get for attempting rational thought at one in the morning.

Before I learned to speed read the way I currently do, I tried learning using RSVP. In my personal experience I didn't find it very helpful, and my comprehension rates (when using RSVP) plummeted. I'm in complete agreement there.

As to my 1,300wpm, you're partially correct. 1,200wpm is just about the limit at which I can read word by word, line by line in a book, using my hand as a pacer. After 1,200, I stop dropping conjunctions, pronouns, and prepositions, and anything that can be inferred through context or isn't necessary to the meaning of the sentence (e.g. - absorbing key words and ideas, but still more precise than 1/2 a page at a time).

Here's the book I learned from so you can judge the merits based upon something better than my attempted explanation: http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Rapid-Reading-Peter-Kump/...

See also, direct from the Tor blog: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-go...

sliverstorm, I don't want to take this too far off topic, but what are the rates you're hearing of that you have trouble believing? I read at a little over 1,300 words per minute (and I keep getting faster). As to comprehension, without taking a test it's hard to say, but by reading a section of material for a few minutes, writing down everything I can remember without looking at the book, then re-reading to see what I've missed, I seem to get roughly 80% comprehension, which I find acceptable for most things (and it keeps getting better through practice).

Disclaimer: That's depending on the material, I read at about half that rate (around 600 wpm) if it's extremely technical or dense, or a good deal faster in anything at or below a high school reading level.

I agree with what jchonphoenix said.

If you want to be a developer of note without school, you're going to have to work your ass off, and then once all your ass is gone you're going to have to work up some ass debt and keep learning, except that you're not sure what to learn next, you don't even know what you don't know, you don't have friends in class going through the same thing or guidance from a professor. You'll be on your own. It will be stressful, and there won't be any pretty girls to kiss.

If you want to be a developer of note with school, then you'll have an incredibly solid foundation to build off of. And if you work on your ideas on the side (as you should) there's nothing better than learning something in a lecture and being able to go home and directly apply it that evening to your own work.

You've already said that you want to make technology to aid education, so immerse yourself in it. Get the best education you can, study the education you're getting, not just the material you're learning. Ask yourself, "How could this be better, how could I make some manner of technology to improve this experience, or bring this to other people?" By furthering your education, you'll not only be getting the tools you need to create your idea, you'll be doing the research too. It's always better to kill two birds with one stone.

What do you want to do with your programming career, or what do you think you'd like to do?

Going to college with your major choices will teach you computer science, and you'll pick up some programming along the way. Conversely, going to work for a startup will teach you programming, and you may pick up some computer science along the way.

It depends upon what kind of programmer you want to be, and what you enjoy doing.

It is, isn't it? I found myself thinking, "I'll just watch for a minute to see what this is", then getting lulled in until a distraction broke my reverie.

Resharper is fantastic for speeding up programming and refactoring, I like to add vim to the mix (something like http://www.viemu.com/) for "simple" text editing as well.