jwingy

I'm going to be cynical here and guess that the new keyboard is cheaper to make.

Kinda ironic too when people are arguing about the importance of learning programming because it teaches logic...

This may get downvoted because it may not necessarily add much to the discussion, but I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. Takes a lot of courage and it will undoubtedly help someone else (deaf or otherwise).

Sorry I understand the point you're trying to make with your analogy, but I think it greatly understates the fact that deaf people have to deal with this in EVERY aspect of their lives, and not just work. No disrespect, just wanted to point that out.

Interesting comparison, but I find it hard to relate to at all simply due to the sheer amount of words you need to learn in a real foreign language to achieve fluency. Seems much more daunting to me...but I guess my glasses are tinted.

Ya but sometimes you just don't know who's in charge of making these decisions. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came out and said this was a calculated business decision. Nothing surprises anymore.

The only thing all these counterpoint blog posts are proving is that while programming may or may not be important for everyone to learn in the future, being able to hold and understand cogent arguments most certainly is. I've read at least two blog posts today making counter arguments to points the op wasn't even making (op being Jeff).

I have a feeling a big part of it is the blogger proclivity to make link bait headlines that are somewhat related at best, deceptive at worst, giving rise to knee jerk reactions.

With regards to Vert.x, it seems like really cool stuff.

On the blog post about version 1 being released it mentions being able to mix and match several programming languages. Does this mean you can use different libraries written in different languages in the same Vert.x server?

Despite everyone's dislike of this, you have to think of this from the company's perspective. What's the cost of producing this? If they get even one sucker to buy into it, it'll have already paid for itself many times over.

Awesome.

On a side note, I wonder why this culture of popularity has to be the default in our schools?

Reminds me of a quote I heard somewhere from someone...(I apologize for butchering this but my memory is a bit hazy):

"Never make music because you have to, otherwise it will be the end of you..."

Corrections welcomed!

Unless you exhibit traits of aspergers such as often having an obsessive singular focus, this isn't about preference, it's a fact of the human condition. You will burn out and you won't be productive.

I didn't read the book but I wonder if what the scientific evidence concludes isn't necessarily the refutation of that equation, but rather that it's more complicated than x-y=z. For example, foods that require a bit more energy to consume such as foods high in fiber.

I mean, calories are just a unit of measure for energy, so if you consume energy, it must go somewhere, either expended or stored in the body. What happens if the body lacks the energy for its processes...doesn't it then burn fat? If you turn fat into energy, that means less mass in the form of fat, with the excess energy dissipating into heat. Isn't this just physics?

The basic equation is: calories consumed - calories burned = weight loss (or gain)

If you lost weight it means you burned more calories than you ate.

Ya, the grass is always greener on the other side isn't it? :)

I'm from Wisconsin and I don't think there's much there. But perhaps that's exactly why you went?

I read somewhere that fitness gyms are about cycling people through their facilities as fast as possible since you could never fit all the people that have memberships there at once. If anything I'd think they'd love to have a guy who pays full membership go there just for a shower.

These concerns are addressed in the article.

tl;dr Working hours longer than 40 leads to counter productivity in the short and long term. 40 hour workers are more productive in all situations except those where workers have an abnormal singular focus (apparently symptoms of aspergers).

Yes, all good points. As I think we both seem to be aware of, it really depends on the type of business you're doing. It could be high growth, or slow growth day 1 revenue generating machine, or something in between. It could be primarily virtual, or an older business model with a tech twist.

So, depending on your business model and your background, whether you're based in the U.S. or outside of it, both come with their own sets of challenges. I just think more business models have a higher probability of success if the company is based in the U.S. than they would if they were based in SE Asia.

From what I've heard by talking to other tech startups in the area, if you're looking to do a high growth type of startup, that can be difficult in this region and the reason is primarily due to funding. There's a cultural difference in the investors here that boils down to risk aversion. Asian cultures are typically risk averse and this no doubt applies to Asian investors as well. They expect you to already be making money or if you're not making money, then they'll want a sizable stake of equity - sizable enough to make the founders feel like employees rather than owners. One could get investment from firms in the U.S., but I've not heard of many who have gone that route, and I suspect many investment firms unfamiliarity with Asia could make that a little difficult.

Now if you want to talk about bootstrapping, then anything is possible within the limits of your abilities and tolerance.

If you're based in Asia but targeting the U.S. market, that's again not an insurmountable obstacle, but you'll need to be able to talk to your customers, and when your customers are based in the U.S., the time difference, distance, and being culturally disconnected can make this difficult at times. Possible yes, but at an extra cost.

So again, it really depends on what your business is doing. I think being in the U.S. gives you more options though.

Entrepreneur is one thing - a tech entrepreneur is another. I don't think you can compare the labor pool and funding climate in SE Asia to the U.S. Plus the large, homogeneous, wealthy market of the U.S. is really the key to all this if you're looking to do a typical high growth tech startup.

Certainly Singapore has its advantages, but I think you'd be hard pressed to value them more highly over the factors I mentioned.

Probably the biggest barrier to the success of online universities is convincing others that the credentials from a online university are worth their weight. If someone could come up with a good, reliable way to prove that, then I think we'd be well on our way to the true meritocratization (is this even a word?) of education.

If standardized testing and related work are good enough for college admissions, would something similar be sufficient for more specific course work?

See: Overton Window

Well you would hope most people would take whatever Rupert Murdoch says with a grain of salt considering the sort of publications his company runs. A man like him doesn't care about the truth.

Interactive entertainment is a markedly different form of entertainment from movies. You're comparing apples to oranges I'm afraid.

For me, switching to vim means moving my hand to use the mouse less often, which means less stress on my wrist. Of course, if you're typing on the keyboard all day, you still have some risk for RSI, but I find using the keyboard to be much more comfortable than using the mouse.

Plus it's much more productive!

Lenovo w520 here. Running kubuntu 11.04. I have no issues with it now, but there was an issue until recently with Intel's speedstep and power management. They just released a new bios that seems to have fixed it. Here's a long thread on it: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W520-S...

Other than that, it's a great dev laptop. Also keyboard and screen are great!

The first two sentences of his last paragraph:

"Is college really a scam? Most likely, no."

Thanks for admitting your title was linkbait?

Also, it's fine if you're going to complain about the college experience, but please offer alternatives. It's much easier to bitch than to come up with solutions.

According to this study (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...), there's a clear correlation between students from high income backgrounds having higher scores versus students from lower income backgrounds having lower scores as well.

fo sho. I think the local hackerspace would probably be a good place for it (though I'm not a member)....

Like Derek said, lots of good support and interest in the SG community. The government also (from my newbie eye) seems to be genuinely interested in promoting startups and creating a startup community.

On the flip side, unless your startup's market is geographically agnostic, I think you'll have to constantly remind yourself to look outside the SG market if you'll want any kind of real success, since the SG market is kinda small.

As for everything else (like talent pool), I'm not really sure yet as I've only been here for a few months :)