vph

Research software typically have a very small user base and can quickly become out-of-date, so there's no great incentives for current software packages to upgrade. But I'm talking about the developer community of scientific Python, not the user community. The developer community includes such things as numpy, scipy, matplotlib, etc. are pretty much Python 3 compatible. This makes it easy for new scientific projects to jump on board with Python 3.

There are two significant factions in the Python community: the scientific group and the web-dev group. The scientific group is pretty much on board with Python 3. Perhaps due to unicode handling intricacies, that the web-dev group ain't exactly on board with Python 3 yet. But this needs to change and it takes leadership. Fortunately, bit and pieces such as webob are Python 3 compatible. And personally, I feel the Python web frameworks need a fresh redesign.

Facebook is still growing and have not quite finished defining itself yet. Further, Facebook as it is, is not really a platform. So, as it grows and introduces new features to enhance user experience, the third-party developers will become obsolete, one by one.

No, it is not.

People ought to realize that Twitter, Facebook, were created to provide a product, a service, an experience that was not meant to be a platform. Facebook is a social network. Twitter is a microblog. Everything that they do and create thereafter ultimately must enhance and strengthen their core true selves. This includes what is supposed to be "platforms" for developers to create Facebook, Twitter addons. Facebook/Twitter isn't supposed to be a platform for developing social apps. The platforms that have existed are simply meant to strengthen their core values. So once, such platforms no longer serve their core values, they cease to exist.

>For my use case I do a single query to fetch my self contained User object which would need 30+ queries if I was using a relational database.

This can't possibly be right. The 30+ SQL queries would have provided additional information that your 1 NoSQL query doesn't.

> team Postgresql has never seriously asked the question of why MySQL has had more market traction than Postgresql.

And how could you possibly be so sure about this?

do you have a link to their paper?

To be the Dark Knight of the Internet, one must at least beat down a handful of Internet villains.

These are good entrepreneurs and programmers, and they are using great tools, but I don't think they are qualified to say they are redefining teaching basic Computer Science.

Interactive platforms and approaches have been constantly introduced by CS educators to teach introductory programming. Educators are very aware of the value of interactivity and reactivity in teaching and learning. The only new thing here is the utility of cool new tools equipped with latest web-based technologies. Further, their approach is limited to programming, which is a large part but not the only approach to Introductory Computer Science. For example, they can't touch approaches such at MIT or Rice (I think), among others, which employ cool physical robots to teach coding, thinking, programming and robotics.

So this is not so much redefining, but rather a little enhancing CS education with cool tools.

Of course, his main point is to advocate for using computers to teach and learn math; he's selling Mathematica/Wolfram Alpha.

But this is dangerous and a little shallow. And here is why.

Math is the language of science; just like a C -- or any other programming language -- is a language of computing; just like English is a language of humans.

There are many ways to learn a language, but I think they all have something in common. You have to spend a lot of time learning, reading and writing. The writing is quite important. You have to write the language to be good at it.

The thing about math is that currently to write as it is supposed to look like can only be done most conveniently on paper. Writing a math formula in Mathematica or Wolfram alpha requires a latex-like mini language, another thing to learn, and can be disrupting.

This fact alone means that computers can only supplement; and they can be an excellent supplement. But it can not replace doing math by hands, on papers, particularly for those who are learning this new language.

The author seems to suggest that the main problem -- as suggested by the title -- is that the Chinese are strongly anti-foreigners. This might be true. But I don't think it's why his business was robbed.

The main problem, I think, is the Chinese's jungle-ruled platform associated with its single-party tyranny. What happens is they will invite you in and give you lots of promises and flexibilities at first. They will learn from you. And when you get too big, they will change the rules to favor their owns, and kick you out, robbing you if necessary. It's not so much that you're a Caucasian foreigner.

I believe that a lot of outside investors and companies will eventually (unless they are big) find out that doing business with the Chinese will end up looking like this person. I am not anti-Chinese as a people or a culture, but I have seen this type story again and again.

>Incorrect, a bunch of students with failed/successful experience is better than a bunch of students who go to college, because they were "suppose" to.

Not all college students attended college because they are "supposed to". Even for those who attend college because they are "supposed to", it is arguable that they will end up being better than choosing not to go to college. If someone has no idea what he wants to do in life, it's arguable that going to college is better than not going to.

The truth is that people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg are rare. Most people need a formal education. It's arrogant to think that you can design better alternative than an educational framework that has existed for years to educate the mass.

The Thiel's model works well for a small number of bright youngsters, who might exceed their potentials through a customized training program, instead of going to college to have an off-the-shelf training program. If more and more people drop out of college, or even skip college to do this, it's going to blow up in his face.

This model does not scale!

Few college dropouts are bright up to be selected carefully to go through this process. To do this en mass would be a disaster.

I'm curious if your team had experience with "traditional" frameworks such as Rails, Django, etc., and decided to use Angular.js because of certain advantages? It appears that this can be easily done with Rails or Django.

you can list it by a topological sort.

This assumes that the company is a stupid, big corporation that can't care less what its employees feel. But a good company should take this opportunity -- the exit interview -- to improve things.

Khan Academy is social-network type of learning, where you learn from the community. This is good. But learning from expert educators is also essential and perhaps irreplaceable. There are a lot of short-sighted people, who are marveled by current technologies that allow people interact remotely and immediately jump to the conclusion that we have an answer to learning, while dismissing the entire tradition, culture and knowledge of and about learning that has been established for centuries. Now, if Khan wants to make a quick buck, that's fine. But he's serious about teaching and learning, he should realize that Khan Academy and its approach is only complementary (at extremely great at that) and is not a replacement of the traditional ways of teaching and learning.

You can't easily, naturally do things on the client side as easily using Ruby or Python.

Meteor does not take advantage of Node.js async thing. Then, I'm not sure about the advantage of javascript being both on the server and client side. Javasccript just feels weird on the server side. Server-side apps written in Python, Ruby feel much more natural, and perhaps easier to manage.

It'd be nice if meteor allows a different way of handling server-side logic using solutions from the Python or Ruby communities.

flickr was the first of its kind. Huge potentials. It's too bad Yahoo! dropped the ball there.

data structures and functions are very much related and connected. In fact, all data structures are invented to perform certain specific functions. OO is not the answer to all things, but it provides a natural way to fuse data structures and its associated functions together.

on the other hand, I feel the sophisticated language is rather shallow, probably based on simple rules (e.g. if a form is dominant on the website, add "accepting" to the opinion).

Well, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

>2. The profile of users don't reflect who they truly are. It represent what they want to be, or at least how they want to be percieved by others. Admittingly this problem is also present when doing surveys.

Do you realize that you are saying what you think people are?

Which is which? who they really are and what they really want to be. Is Clark Kent real or Superman real? This is why sociologists have day jobs.

This article estimated the time of the "Blog Post" by saying the first comment was about "10 months ago", so the posted time must be before that.

This actually points out a very annoying thing that many bloggers do: They don't date the blog posts. For some reason, they think that the posts are timeless. This is especially annoying for technical articles, where the knowledge of time of publication is crucial.

My suggestion is: date your articles.

Most high school graduates have no idea what college can do for them and what they want to accomplish in life. Giving them $100K to do start-ups ain't helping. College -- for many -- is a time of exploration. A liberal art education provides the essential ingredients for a well-founded life. It's more than just getting in, learn the skills and get out to get a job. Further, college provides an environment where you meet and learn from your competitive peers.

Thiel and you probably seem to think that colleges are like vocational schools. But they don't.

Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?

Linus is spoiled; he uses a MacBook Air.

People are not idiots. Those who say we are just don't understand how human behaves. You expect most people will remember a 8-letter random strings consisting of letters, numbers and underscore?