> I would really like to write an entire program sometime as a big tree, that would be convertable back and forth to something simple like JSON.
That would be Lisp.
> convert my simple statements like "when this sprite touches this sprite, give them opposite speeds) into the underlying code so I don't have to waste my time with it.
That's function application (if at runtime) or macro expansion (if at compile time).
Also try Crackbook [1] for Chrome which delays pages instead of banning them. Works much better for me that Stayfocusd, which I just disable after a while. (Disclaimer: I am the author.)
It seems to be using the pentatonic scale, which is generally easy to deal with. It is also quite limited though, with only 5 pitches available out of the standard 12 in an octave.
I read a course on Python for a semester, and I tried to use a similar approach: relatively few tests, a minor project for warmup and a major project (with emphasis on attendance & communication). I think it went fine, but it's not as easy as it looks. In particular, students would "show up", but it's not easy to motivate them to do more serious work.
What's the point of a "hierarchy" then, if the "upper" levels do not depend on the "lower" ones? Basically what you're saying here is a tautology: one is able to operate at a "level" that, well, one is able to operate at.
You don't have to get people to buy hot air. What the author has in mind is probably either a) "Assume that this product is fully functional. Will you pay for it $X?" or b) "I am planning to build this product. Would you promise to pay me $X when I deliver this product?"
There's a more interesting point to be made about getters and setters than the article offers. In my opinion, getters and setters are a little stinky because by nature they expose internal attributes of the class, even if they wrap them up in method calls. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565095/java-are-getters-a... .
Yeah, BNI seems similar in idea, but I had my eyes on small, new companies in particular, as they have the most to gain from small-scale, inidvidual referrals. The larger ones tend to do marketing, or they already have a reputation, so it's easier for them to find new clients.
If the experiment is opt-in, there will surely be a bias in the sample population. In this case, the strategy will select risk-seeking individuals, because risk-averse ones will not want to participate.
Strictly speaking, thinking about "what trees those are" or "about all the people who [sic] been here" is yet another instance of verbal thinking and it's emphatically not "mindfulness". Clearly you're not here and now if you're thinking about people who have been here.
I don't think it's possible to control the internet when any sort of stronger encryption is available that prevents inspection of passing information by the routing nodes. Even then, you could use steganography to hide data. It would be very, very difficult to enforce this sort of legal restriction even if it were passed as a law.
I'm not sure it's just personality traits though, the technical professions may be influential as well. In technical matters, things do tend to be much more black-or-white, and if something is "subtle and nuanced", chances are it's a bug. Arts majors have been going on for ages about Aristotelian/Boolean logic being coarse and artificially compartmentalizing, there might be a grain of truth there.
Indeed, humans like to "compartmentalize"; the problem is that by definition you have to compartmentalize to define concepts. Without that, everybody would be talking horribly vaguely.
I try to use "I" whenever possible. It makes the message more personal and invites comments and replies. "We" is best when talking about collective decisions.
I'm not sure your plumber example really works out. Facebook could hypothetically tell you that "Your friends X and Y used plumber's Z services, and liked it!", which is much more persuasive information than a generic ad.
I think that if it seems that "there is nothing new under the sun", you're probably looking at things from too far away. Try looking into more concrete matters (best: a specific problem, easiest: specific technology). In my experience I know that at times I have been engrossed in what would now appear to be awfully boring things, just because I dug deep enough.
[Corollary: if you think that revolutions in your field are happening every month, you may want to have a look at the state of things from afar.]