code_pockets

Thank you for the nice comment.

I do not use twitter, but you can feel free to tweet it. Just send the profits of the tweet to the FSF. =)

I saw that ad, thought about applying, but decided not to.

Here is why:

-- A list of common languages is something that pushes me away. Why? Because it tells me (by experience) that they want someone who can do it all (impossible). Its fine to list 2-3 languages or frameworks, but more than that just makes me very suspicious.

-- A bachelor's degree. I don't have one, I will not get one. Why ask for one when a lot of CS graduates can't program?

-- Experience? Sure, lots. But when you get older (I'm 32+), everything looks the same: just data sets, and problems to be solved. There is a blurry line between languages/frameworks/etc. Everything is just more of the same (I do, however, enjoy it!). Ask for experience in engineering, and not for experience in the latest dohicketydo.

Great point.

Though you may have not thought of something: wisdom (which is what you seem to be referring to) works something like this:

wisdom = knowledge(experience(actions(decisions * time) * time) * time) * time //why do I always end up writing lisp?

We spend our whole lives developing our wisdom, but we also spend our whole lives learning how to acquire it, and how to understand it.

How do we transfer something that strictly depends on time and discipline (when time is undefined for all, and discipline is lacking)?

Agreed, though I'm guilty as charged.

This has led me to re-think the README/documentation problem, and gave me an app idea. A little web app that allows the user to build a proper README with a template. Sort of those build a resume apps, but for README files. I plan on building it at the end of February, after I ship my current foss project.

Agreed.

I also use DDG in the same way you mention, though only going to google for the rare image I can't find anywhere else (which is about once a month).

Such is the reason why I'm always promoting DDG to others. It just works.

I plan to contribute (code) to DDG as soon as I finish some open source projects I'm working on. They openly invited hackers to create stuff for them, which is a fantastic idea.

I think duckduckgo works like google should.

That's why I changed , and will never go back.

The year was 1986, and I was on my first Disney World trip. After a couple of days of traveling up and down Florida visiting the various theme parks, my parents decided to stop at a local electronics shop.

Now, back at home we didn't have many fancy electronics stores, so this huge emporium of transistors was pretty amazing for all of us.

My mother hinted that they were going to buy us a Nintendo (NES), and I was ecstatic. I had never heard of such thing, but seeing Super Mario Bros. on the display machine was pretty mind blowing for an eight year old.

But, my oldest brother (who was a bigger nerd than me) did not want the NES. Crap. I was furious, and really disappointed. Instead, he wanted some stupid computer. It was big, bulky, ugly (light brown with black function keys!), and required a huge monitor to be of any use. It also required a disk drive (a 1541 model).

Yes, my brother wanted a Commodore C64.

So, my parents decided against the NES (oh the humanity!), and purchased the C64 with a 13-inch (I think) color monitor, a 1541 disk drive, and a color dot matrix Okidata printer. They must have spent like a million dollars. An amazing feat, because we were barely middle class.

After learning how to turn it on, writing to the diskette, printing demo images, playing Ultima, I started to code some BASIC. Nobody taught me, I just picked the manual and started coding.

My first programs were something along the line of:

10 PRINT "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10 30 END

Now, for an 8 year old kid who was teaching himself how to use the damn thing it was pretty awesome to pull such simple programs.

Then at age 9 I bought my first "computer", a Tandy PC-7 at the local Radio Shack (after saving my lunch money for months).

Now, as a hacker/programmer/software engineer/whatchamacallit I look back at those days and appreciate what my parents and brother did.

Such experience has led me to teach my nine year old niece how to "program" in HTML. She enjoys it very much, and even asked me to put Ubuntu on her desktop. My daughter will also learn how to code, even though I don't expect her to follow in my footsteps.

tl;dr: Teach your kids how to code. They might go on to become hackers themselves.

Another point to consider is the following:

People have been taught by their IT dept., their family members, friends, store clerks, etc., to not mess with a computer. This also applies to their automobiles, appliances, etc.

In short, a lot of people out there have been hit with a newspaper on the nose (various times) for trying something new.

So, they decide to learn a new hobby (or craft), and they spend (waste) a lot of time fighting the fear of breaking things.

Yet, we (as in hackers) all know that one can't really do much harm to a computer with a simple approach such as the one used by CodeCademy. But non-hackers do not know that. They fear the machine (or the result of making a mistake with it (their files will be deleted! - plays in their mind)).

So, CodeCademy, I suggest you help people overcome such fear by showing them what they can do before showing them how to do it.

The terminal is fine, actually, I find that it was a genius idea. But, learning how to code is not bound to a terminal. It is bound to thinking, problem solving, abstractions. A learner cannot be afraid to break things, otherwise, they will not learn.

Challenge their fear (and ignorance) from the start. Instead of throwing them crumbs in the form of a simple string.length exercise, show them that they:

- cannot mess their computer up by playing with your website - will not get a virus - should try again if they fail at something - programming (not coding) takes time to learn

How will you do that?

I can point north, and tell you that Nirvana is that way, but I cannot walk the roads for you.

Sit back, and think about what I'm saying.

Help people learn how to code by helping them get over themselves.

I wish your team the very best;

code_pockets