Sileni

It helps to drill in basic syntax and increase your speed of thinking in the language. Also gives you an opportunity to practice debugging and optimization on a low complexity system, so you have all the concepts in your head when moving to a larger system.

It's really bad for things like project structure and tackling multiple complex, related problems. Bigger picture ideas get lost because of the scope of the problems.

Really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Think of them as a set of flashcards. I'd say it's one of the better ways to bridge the gap between beginner programming books and actually building small, useful programs.

Or, that he is, and is following through just to spite you.

I really can't tell anymore, but I'm certainly entertained.

That's our jam here in the US. Can't afford $1k/month rent? Sleep in the streets, or get assaulted in an overcrowded shelter. If you're lucky once you freeze off a couple of toes you'll be taken to a hospital, where they'll load you up with debt. Then, we'll pass you off to one of our for-profit prisons for failing to pay off the debt, who will also charge you for the time you spend in the prison.

This is an actual worst case scenario in our country. If you think we're a little psychotic, it's because if we've experienced poverty in our lives at all, that daily lottery draw has been in the back of our minds since. That sort of insecurity just does not go away.

And recognize that any work people do while stressed and tired is probably adding enough back end technical debt that you'll be double paying for those hours without a long term gain in progress.

It's not that they don't, it's that they're quite literally less capable of doing so[0]. Bootstraps indeed.

[0] : https://www.princeton.edu/news/2013/08/29/poor-concentration...

"At Full Speed with Python" sounds more like an intermediate to advanced book. "Up to Speed with Python" sounds more like what you're trying to achieve.

At a certain point the cycle repeats. Remember, most people believed some form of religion had all the answers at some point. Most of their answers were "accurate enough", in the same sense that anything you read within 30 seconds of searching is "accurate enough". For a lot of people, those answers are still and will continue to be "accurate enough".

Think about the following with "Church" or "Search Engine" as [institution].

"I had a question.

I visited the [institution] and found conflicting or unclear answers.

I decided to explore the question on my own, because the [institution] was just confusing me further"

One is part of human history on a grand scale. I hope the other will be as well.

RE:2) Anecdotal confirmations:

Worked in a large lab that had a pretty good cafeteria, where they would rotate caterers in over time. Lunch meetings were regular, and when there wasn't an actual meeting, I'd grab a co-worker or one of the project leads to have lunch with. Really laid back affairs over all, but I feel like I learned a lot during these impromptu meetings. Often, about things that had nothing to do with what we were working on, but ended up being useful. Got to meet a lot of people I wouldn't have otherwise because people would show up mid-conversation looking for a place to eat.

On the opposite end, my current job is effectively a cubicle farm. No one talks to each other unless necessary, and only a handful of people ever go to lunch together. Cliques are a fact of life here, but I'd bet the average person feels more lonely here than at the previous office.

I'm not saying it's entirely caused by the dining area. But the dining area certainly encouraged the culture at the previous office, at the least.

Pretty sure this idea has been sitting in the back of the mind of anyone really thinking about what technology is now capable of. What happens when all of the "drudgery" is taken out of life, and we can't consume any more media?

There's certainly no way you could put 10 billion people to meaningful work if it takes a million to supply all of the basic needs for those people. Even including all the forms of art we pursue, is there enough "work" to be done that we would value all 10 billion people?

I'm still really hoping for the Star Trek timeline. Yeah, we get blown into oblivion in about 30 years, but the recovery looks like a world I'm happy to work towards. I'm really afraid that we're steadily marching towards 1984, though. I don't know that I believe there's much realistic middle ground between the two.

If you watch the movie about his life, "The Theory of Everything", they make it really clear how much she held him together.

Owned a burner in 2006 when I realized my parents were going through my call logs. Thankfully, back then they weren't clever enough to realize they could download my text logs.

Considering a smart phone can be bought for the equivalent of a month's lunch money today, good luck to anyone trying to keep one out of a kid's hands in ~2030.