wainstead

True, however, the primary problem with the SO survey is the participants are self-selected [1], not randomly sampled. (It's explained in the survey's methodology).

What this means is we have no idea if the sample of programmers is representative of the worldwide programmer population.

I'd argue that C# and other Microsoft languages are vastly under-represented in the SO survey, but we have no way of knowing if that's true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias

"Never memorize what you can look up in books" is often attributed to Albert Einstein; the long version is "[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#1920s

Indeed, and if you have to work with those languages, a good templating system like emmet or yasnippet will save you a ton of typing. Let the machine do the typing for you.

There are a few shell modes in Emacs. I think ansi-term might do what you want for a full screen interactive terminal application.

> Yes, I know Emacs has a text-based UI for configuration, too. I've used it. It's bad. Okay? It's just bad. The controls are non-standard and weird, the organization is utterly mystifying to someone who doesn't already understand Emacsology, just... no. Start over.

I’ve used GNU Emacs for twenty years and totally agree. I avoid the customization menus wherever I can.

> I do disagree with a lot of it since I believe more in maximizing human potential through mindfulness and tuning ourselves instead of our tools.

Cannot one do both?

Yup, this comment should be at the very top. The first problem with this analysis of job salaries is it's based on a self-selected survey and not a random sample.

Hi Tyler! :)

> so how could Git have succeeded because of Linus, other than Linus originating the genius design of it?

Perhaps that is exactly the point. There was a fair amount of hype and press coverage over Git when it was first unveiled. And it was because Linus wrote it, and wrote it in an unexpectedly short time. And it was on the coattails of the whole Bitkeeper saga.

I used ratpoison for a while on one of my Linux boxes and much liked it.

> The name "ratpoison" reflects its major design goal: it lets the user manage application windows without using a mouse. Unlike other tiling window managers like Ion, ratpoison completely ignores the mouse (or "rat"), and avoids window decorations as much as possible. The default keybindings are specifically designed to not conflict with Emacs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratpoison

This is a technique called "active recall" and is a good practice!

I find the act of creating the card is part of the process of memorizing and internalizing the fact. I agree with others here that using Anki can be a real chore sometimes; one has to devote a chunk of time just learning how to use Anki.

With more and more use, using Anki becomes second nature like with any application.

I got the most out of Anki after watching videos; this one in particular opened doors for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwcr25334J8&t=99s

Really, any of the scripting languages.

My recollection is there was a lot of disdain for scripting languages because they could not match the speed of C or other low level languages. Today, computer speed is so many orders of magnitude faster it’s hard to believe the speed of scripting languages was ever an issue.

John Ousterhout’s paper on programmer productivity gains comes to mind:

https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/scripting.pd...

Actually, this is excellent advice. Many of the people I know who went through art programs and hung out in the art scene later applied their aesthetics to things like the construction trade (fashioning complex plaster jobs, painting) or started some kind of small time manufacturing.

> What do people think Florida is going to do? They're already losing their drinking water and they're still in denial.

> Build pumps, dikes and create flood plains.

Just want to point out this approach won't work for Florida (and I'm not implying you said it would). The land in south Florida is porous limestone, and the water will just pass under any dykes you build.

> I have a few books in progress, some farther along than others, and seeing posts like this with actual numbers on revenue is extremely helpful.

This. You might find @b0rk's post on her zine sales interesting: https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/10/01/zine-revenue-2019/

> It's insane how much programmer instincts maps to mathematics. It's not fully 1 to 1, but it helps a lot more than it harms.

I worked on khanacademy videos and problems for a few months and had the same experience! I enjoyed the gamification aspect of khanacademy and need to take it up again.

Second this, and I wonder how people who live near the equator respond to seasons and light vs. people closer to the Arctic circle.

And, I would add, in an entirely keyboard-driven way. I appreciate, as an Emacs user, how much I can get done without using the mouse.

Indeed, to your point:

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-us...

> There's a growing body of evidence that early specialization produces less champions. Kids are encouraged to participate in other sports well into their teen years.

This is the subject matter of the book "Range":

https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...

> This is why it’s funny when literary novelists who couldn’t write a competent John Wick novelization (I put this challenge squarely to A.S. Byatt) call J.K. Rowling a bad writer.

Neal Stephenson wrote a lengthy reply (item #2) to a question that touched on this topic, posed on Slashdot many moons ago, and is still a great read:

https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-...

I'll add sixdegrees.com to the "missing" list, which may have been the first social media site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com

But the tiny learning curve made them so accessible. Back then you could introduce a wiki for your team and start churning out project documentation right in a meeting. Where the wikis back then didn't hold up was for long term documentation sites. If your wiki would only have a short shelf life it was an awesome collaboration tool.

If by "zone" you mean "flow," then yes; here's a relevant quote from Deep Work:

> The connection between deep work and flow should be clear: Deep work is an activity well suited to generate a flow state (the phrases used by Csikszentmihalyi to describe what generates flow include notions of stretching your mind to its limits, concentrating, and losing yourself in an activity—all of which also describe deep work). And as we just learned, flow generates happiness. Combining these two ideas we get a powerful argument from psychology in favor of depth. Decades of research stemming from Csikszentmihalyi’s original ESM experiments validate that the act of going deep orders the consciousness in a way that makes life worthwhile."

Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (p. 85). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

> Remarkably, the same material that stupefied me just prior to "shorting out" would become crystal clear the next morning.

Very much in line with what one reads in Barbara Oakley's "A Mind for Numbers," and her free Coursera course based on the book (both recommended).

The universe may have...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings...

The Soviets succeeded in returning surface images from a number of their landers, and the photos are quite tantalizing.

http://mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

"Venus Revealed" is a pretty good read:

https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Revealed-Clouds-Mysteriious-Pla...

Second this, if you only work through the Khan Academy stuff on the various things like scatter plots, standard deviation, the normal distribution, etc. you'll be much better off for it.

The age is skewed heavily to younger programmers, so your hunch has merit.