vturner

Similar story here. I got RIS 2.0 after it had been out for awhile, but my parents couldn't justify the cost. Finally, Toys R Us had a beat up box sitting on the shelf and marked it down. I wandered over to that aisle every time we went in. Then it showed up one Christmas.

I learned Java because of leJOS too. I wanted to display something on the screen. The rest is my career.

Thank-you!

Wish I could offer more than best wishes, but I am in a similar boat: pondering some product ideas while working as a SWE.

This line caught my attention - "I also love learning about mechanical engineering and manufacturing"

How do you go about that? Have you found any good books, YouTube videos, etc. that are accessible for us SWEs?

There is such shortage of skilled contractors. It's unreal, so I've considered getting in via being an electrician.

The starting salaries always stop me though. How can I reset the salary clock 10 years?

Maybe if I had started out at 20 on this route I could do what my father did: carpet cleaning and supported two sons and a homemaker on his one truck operation. We were solid middle class. All the needs met.

It's amazing what quality hard work, calling people back, and time can do.

Better get back writing my self evaluation...

How did you come to have the skills to design and build whatever it is you manufacture? I'm guessing you have a mix of mechanical and electrical background.

I always have ideas for little products (some involve electronics others not) I'd like to build, but how to go from raw idea in my head to working assembly, I'm lost on: choosing motors, control board, mechanical reliability, etc. Maybe I just need to read some ME books, but if they are like math and physics texts, there is gulf between the text how to do build something practical.

A couple years ago I became quite interested in building my own grow lights for starting garden veggie seedlings. The YouTube recommendations surrounding such videos were quite interesting... It turns out another plant needs high power as well.

JsonParser() is Scala syntax. Not sure how you'd accomplish that in Java and as for parse<Book> Java's generics are erased at compile time.

Grondbreaking? Unless this extends to more components, Kia has had this since at least 2009.

Agreed, I'll have to check but I'm fairly confident my 2009 Kia Soul had 10 years and 100,000 miles

The impetus to leave these big tech platforms has gone up at least 40% for me. If I want filtered information, the big news players provide that 24/7.

This is off-topic, but your comment on your user base caught my attention.

Do you think Android app development can be monetarily worth the time investment for individual developers who would be just starting out?

I made two apps years ago and greatly enjoyed it, much more than any development I've done since. At that time, the markets were dominated by the big players. Only the big apps made any $$. Is that still the case making individual development a hobby with the occasional bit of $$?

MIT and Harvard being rather dishonest here. Seems like this is reverting back to what was before?

"Due to COVID-19, SEVP instituted a temporary exemption regarding online courses for the spring and summer semesters. This policy permitted nonimmigrant students to take more online courses than normally permitted by federal regulation to maintain their nonimmigrant status during the COVID-19 emergency."

The assymetric geometry brings back memories. Trying to tie a stack of bricks together with a "girder" vertical across connected with the pegs!

I guess there's upsides and down. I think what bugs me is each brick before was more variable. You could build a corner if you needed to. Agreed not nearly as structurally sound thoughm

Does anyone else find the studless beams and associated pieces much more difficult to build with than the old (very old as in Robotics Invention System) beams and pieces with studs? This was my second year coaching an FLL team. The kids seem to have difficulty building the things they need, and I don't blame them. One has to think in multiple dimensions at once. With the studs, you think vertically up or horizontal at once.

Recently came back to a React GUI at work. Doing the Docker build is almost comical as the npm red text rolls by :). You would think the thing is surely going to explode. Of course, when you run the app React reminds us of all the new best practices which were non existant 6, 8 months ago

As I've been learning Scala, traits is the feature that grabbed me and is what convinces me to keep learning. What a brilliant feature that cuts through all the OOP clutter that can come from various patterns to build up functionality. it is the killer feature, I think

Where in Ohio is this? I'm not doubting, just like to read local news on it as I'm in Ohio too.

I applaud DeWine for acting quickly, but I'm concerned that maybe for rural and small city locations the shut down was too much. I wonder if we are creating a cry wolf effect for non-metro areas. All the mass effects in my area are purely from the response. Of course, one may say, what if we hadn't a shut down; but, I think that argument is going to be harder to make to the small businesses in a small city or rural area next time around.

Hope not too off topic, does anyone have books on building simple electric-powered machines? I often have ideas for little machines for my garden or cooking but have no idea how to go about selecting motors, controller boards, designing strong enough parts for my 3D printer, etc. I'm not expecting an all inclusive book for such a deep topic. A series or several books would be much appreciated!

Used to love building robots with Legos as a teenager, but alas the real world isn't so simple. ;)

Terrific! Data pipelines I've built have had JSON as their intermediary steps which I'm growing weary of.

The key point I presume is the definition of "market" here; and I'm not convinced the market "software that runs on iOS" is so large that monopwhatever can be declared there and used to justify price control.

Though as a thought experiment Apple is like a wealthy landed gentleman who sets up a well maintained outdoor market for the tradesmen to bring goods and the lower classes to buy them. If Apple owns so much land they are the only ones capable of setting up a large enough market, maybe we should regulate that gentleman's fees to the tradesmen? By virtue of people's need to be fashionable and the enormous cost to develop a smartphone and OS, Apple effectively controls enough "land" to warrant regulation. I don't know...

Finally, this rationale also it seems causes a dilemma with B2B relationships. What if your market is quite specialized? Are you a "monopsony"?

Thanks for the holiday chuckle :)

Us Americans have an impractical revulsion to lobbying and industry groups. Most Americans simply do not have the time and, at least until recently, are not too concerned what someone a state away does. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, voting isn't a frequent enough control mechanism on the authoritarians or simply narcissistic politicians ready to hand out favors. So, what do we do if lobbying and industrial groups are automatically not an option?

In the states, the authors model is absolutely true. Pick up a high school algebra text and it's a more colorful with some meager attempts at explanation version of a Springer book.

American education,at least what I have seen, is devoid of applications.

To be fair to educators, we do have a cultural issue here in that for manyadolescence is a time spent learning a lot about fads, entertainers, and gossip. It is hard to motivate anyone to learn when there's no external motivation.

Sigh, I know new language features are cool, but I highly doubt the growing dominance of Python and JS is a question primarily of language features. Python has a REPL and the outstanding tooling built on that along with an ecosystem of libraries where a default use case is the design choice. That all leads to "fast" development which what a lot of people care about. JS has the default use app deployment area: browser.

Meanwhile Java's REPL is a pretty sad imitation, and I see no movement toward trying to get back in the user app space.

I love the JVM and the language itself is good enough, but the management of Java features through the years leaves me disappointed.

* I know Android is Java and Kotlin focused but Android development is entirely different than writing a JavaSE app. Also know Kotlin compiles to JS, and I think that supports my grumpy young man persona. A hugely successful language IDE company saw it useful to build a cross compiling language on your platform.

That is interesting. I wonder how other national programs are generally funded (or would be funded, Medicare For All for example). Are they massive wealth transfers from low tax to high tax states?

This may be somewhat off-topic, but I'm often surprised that leftist policies like the article advocates are often proposed at a national level? Why is this? Why not propose a state-sponsored child-care system in a leftist state - California, Washington, Massachusetts, etc. I'm not trying to start a war here, simply genuinely interested why people on the left push national social programs versus propose them in very wealthy left-leaning states?

Trying in my limited spare time to learn Scala and use it here and there on the job for script like stuff of our Java sim and simple analysis. I found almond a bit slow in compiling cells and then found BeakerX. Seemed much faster. Have any thoughts between the two (if you've used BeakerX)

My personal hope is that because of the democratization of information and growing ubiquity of makerspaces and knowledgeable people around, that we will begin to not only repair but also produce many of the goods that once only came prepacked in a box and were sold to us at a high premium so insurance companies and executives could live the nice life. If that happens, our overall life costs will go down as people can order raw parts/materials and produce high quality long lasting items themselves.

Just as an example, I've decided I want to grow microgreens and tomatoes indoors. To do that efficiently, one needs grow lights. Thanks to the CBD community, there is sufficient information online to spec and assemble yourself grow lights. Whether you want to solder individual LEDs to a backing or glue COBs onto a heatsink, it's all there. Sure the initial investment is more, but product you can produce is staggeringly more powerful and the lifetime cost dramatically lower than what comes prepackaged.

Of course, then again this might not all happen if children are forced to be in school most of their waking hours.

This point has stunned me recently. I purchased an air conditioner and furnace recently and thought hey I wonder what is in the massive manual. It turns out a lot! The same is true for most of the appliance and machine manuals I've looked at. What scares me from using said manuals is my lack of the basics in plumbing, electrical, etc.

I second the request for any channel recommendations, I bought a estate of two small houses that needs work. Contractors where I live are so busy and expensive, it's hard to get someone so I'm trying to get knowledgeable.