xte

I do not intend to judge the level of competence or respect of Finland's teacher's only I'm really curious how they were formed in the first place.

In general when something new appear (to stay, with success) we have a pioneering phase that start to "form and initially spread" the new "thing". This phase may be quick, however it have to be at least 5-8-10 years to be "spread and know enough". After we have a "consolidation and popularization phase" that normally last long, 10-15 years if it's quick, after it became spread and know enough to have enough "thought currents", it have developed a sort of "stable" philosophy etc. This is the stage we can start to form teachers, normally for tech schools and universities. Only after a decade or even a generation we can start to arrive at "initials schools" teachers.

Counting those years and see "IT age"... Well, we can say we are at start phase of teaching in schools, so it's really hard to have enough competent and "tested" teachers now...

Also about pedagogy and professionalism I remember a personal observation, limited to universities, before I have observed too little: teachers with professional background tend to know far better what they teach and normally are more capable to communicate it. Teachers coming directly from academia tend to know far less and are far less able not only to communicate but also to create interest and transmit passion.

Of course that's not a valid statistics nor I can generalize it for the entire world but... Well just as an example at first year of computer engineering degree course I have a course in chemistry, the first part was held by an teacher "definitively and proudly made in academia", it was a disaster not only for me. The second part by an actual chemistry doctor coming from the industry that start teaching to remain active instead of retire. For some results was still poor for other me included was really well. The same for economy course. The same for all subsequent courses and years. The third year in particular nearly no one digest mathematical physics (a sort of variant of rational mechanics adopted for a not-really-industrial engineering course), the second semester another teacher results completely changes. For essentially all.

Long story short: only few know how to transfer knowledge and I can call them "pedagogues" do not caring to much if they study that subject or they are naturally brought to teach. That's needed but not sufficient. Competence in the field is also needed and for non-academic discipline it's hard to have gained, metabolized and summarized enough to teach. Also passion for the matter is needed and that's again should be trained and formed in years of activities. Like a construction worker's that see if something is valid by instinct even before actually calculate it. Only people with such experience can properly teach. And while normally young schools are considered "easier" to teach is at that stage that we really form our knowledge and start to develop paradigms.

I'm curious how they can get enough teachers. I mean people who now IT enough not only to being able to actually "program" themselves for real a bit but also teach to children.

In my personal experience even at universities (Italy with very limited knowledge of Swedish unis) for IT-centric courses we have only very few really competent teachers that also are able to communicate their competence well, transmitting passion for the matter, drawing a big number of possible evolution paths, instill the desire to explore autonomously, solving personal problems etc...

Perhaps today's things have change but...

Oh, sooner or later we need to seriously teach IT like we seriously teach our motherlanguage because that's the actual nervous system of our society and we not only should but must know it enough to being able to master the part needed to our life and having an informed opinion on that topic to avoid disastrous trends like today's one, only I really can't imaging how to form enough people.

Even in casual events organized by LUG or few companies/universities I hear casual conversation from "supposed" technicians that make me shiver or from certain mailing lists...

Perhaps that's due to my terrible English... However I see few "downvote trends" not against me but against certain "families of arguments", normally without zero accompany comments to explain why, counterargument etc

Perhaps it can be a nice analysis to made on whole HN comments to "track" the trend and discover why...

That's a curious and a bit off topic phenomenon: in some countries dominant class have tried to form people to create a real country, that's Russian Tsar Peter the Great for instance that create a sort of "Intelligentsia" to create a united country and that's result in Russian October revolution (that's was led in fact by Peter's Intelligentsia not by "proletarians") in Italy we do the opposite and the country is still not really united. In Germany even if there were far less language differences and even if Germany was united "before" people coming from ex-DDR zone still act "as strangers" in the ex-"west Germany" zones.

I never really study history in that sense but decoupling parochialism and substantial differences between people's in a country may be an interesting exercise :-)

My experience of Swiss is really limited and "in central district" but... The first time I bring my meal I was told like a father to a child "no, here you work, there you eat, we are humans not slave nor machine" and it wasn't a "left-wing extremist"...

Italy is a relative young union of many states that does not exactly speak Italian. How many word you know that coming from some dialect being "Italianized" and even in few dictionary BUT they are only know in few part of Italy?

Just an example:

- waste. Official italian's worlds for that are "spazzatura" or "rifiuti" however in north Italy we commonly use "rumenta" from Genoas/Ancient Republic dialect. In the center-south and south "monnezza" is the most used term.

- posacenere is the most used word for ashtray (ancient portacenere) while in the south nearly anybody use "ceneriera" that coming from spanish "cenicero".

- in Tuscany Melone is not the melon like any other region of Italy, is actually mortadella the famous salami and the melon is "popone". And that's Italian, not dialect.

- again in tuscany "mesticheria" is what the rest of Italy call drogheria (grocery store)

- edicola is the most common word for the place you go to buy newspapers, while in the south is "giornalaio" and sometimes it's used in the center and few north area. In the south edicola is a religious image often sculpted in few ancient houses corners or in church.

- the school bag is normally named "zaino" but sometimes also cartella, while in Lombardy and few part of Piedmont is often named mappetta. All of them are Italian world.

I can continue for long. Language evolve and sometime a language specked by different people from different origins changes. For instance in Swiss, in Italian cantons "fare i fari" or "lapeggiare" (flashing with car headlights) is "bilux" or "biluxare", order something instead of ordinare/fare un ordine is comandare/fare una comanda, mobile phones instead of "cellulare" are named "natel" (that's even do not sound Italian at all). Etc. The same for French in metropolitan French vs Swiss vs Quebec etc.

To really know a language you need to speak it daily with native speaker otherwise you always encounter terms you do not know and even can't find on dictionary or without apparent meaning. Think about English "being at cloud nine", translate it in Italian. It's meaningless. Italian version is "being at seventh sky" that's also meaningless for an English speaker in turn.

It's Milan's dialect but commonly used in all north Italy and maybe in many part of the center (I'm Italian)...

Of course not everyone bring food from home, especially in big towns where "worker's launch" cost around 9/10 euros, but that's the name I always hear. And it has on many journals recently (so, not only in north Italy) due to a series of litigation between schools and parent that do not want their child to eat school-provided food coming from obscure cooperative society often at the center of many scandal for low quality food and hygiene. Few examples:

- https://www.luinonotizie.it/2018/11/07/luino-schiscetta-a-sc...

- http://www.oggiscuola.com/web/2017/01/29/la-schiscetta-class...

- https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/perlei/articoli/1098601/le-r...

- https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/food/2016/09/27/schiscetta-sc...

- https://d.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/09/16/news/mense_scol...

- https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/schiscetta_scuol...

This last one is a Naple's journal.

Thanks for the link however the point is simple: people who write those norms have no idea what programming means and how it can be done in modern desktops.

If, and only of, we have modern Alto or LispM perhaps we can teach few "programming" concept to let most scholarized people able to script/design their own "home environment" on a desktop otherwise it's only a waste of time especially if is done as classic high schools in Italy or Sweden (starting with some Pascal dialect end try to offer C or JS after).

Take it with veeery long fireplace tongs but IMO any living being, not only human try to have the most he/she want at the least "cost" so we humans during our evolution we do various kind of effort with various kind of success to have more working less.

Nowadays we struggle a lot less to accomplish many tasks we need, for instance we can cut wood with machines so quickly and with very little fatigue, we can dig ground with an excavator in minutes instead of hours and hours of manual work with shovel and pickaxe etc.

Naturally for us it's still "fatigue" so we want do automate more, work less. That's natural nor positive nor negative (we may say that avoid struggling and have much free time is positive and counterarguments that we discover obesity, diabetes and many other disease due to that) but trying to bend it to have people work is a subtle form of slavery.

For instance Google classic "game-fill workplace" to me is more a way to "capture" workforce than a nice way of work...

Of course I'd like to work in my favorite field so work seems more pleasure than work but with some limits: work is work, play is play. Even if they seems to blend work have expiring dates, require a certain kind of attention and do not require other kind of attention. Play have normally no expiring dates, no guarantees etc.

Long story short my own personal "best compromise" way is being responsible adults that try to play together for our own sake. The modern idea of reject individual responsibilities and so being directed like sheep in the flock happily ignorant is not really different than ancient slavery and it certainly not a thing I like.

Oh yeaaaaaah... Like modern "coding mania" at school... Guys IT world is as complex as a society: you can't train anyone to be a prime minister in such society before train in being an educated citizen.

Most Finnish child can type on a Window PC with some proprietary (cr)app. They can probably play games, watch porn sites, social networks etc and that's for some older people seems to be like magic so they think that "programming" is only a small subsequent step like you can study integrals just after derivatives. And that's the ideal way to put people far from computer disgusted by obscene software and absurd training.

Problem of medical notes have a name: bureaucracy. The hope is leaving it apart, and today it seems a bit utopia...

Also in terms of "numeric/digital" vs "paper" the point is ignorance: how many people outside IT world (and even inside) do actually know enough a desktop to take their own personal notes in an ordered, usable and useful thing?

IMVHO a so small percentage that we can probably know them all by name. Just take a look at a "common" mailbox: most of them are an utter pile of data, few with some incoherent taxonomies, few even with the sole inbox as an archival place. Than take a look a common "home directories": the very same mess. And if this is for personal and generic data do you think that those people are able to properly not only manage but share helpful information with digital systems?!

Mh, actual status is not due to technical evolution but to commercial one. We have had, and there is no reason but commerce and ignorance, machines that work under the control of it user notably LispMachines, Alto Workstations &others.

They push knowledge, they help draw a personal evolution path, they solve problem. Today we have something similar with Free Software.

Those ideas are not much accepted by "the big and the powerful" because they mean a real free market in witch only knowledge and work have a value, not much marketing and certainly not commercial secret agreements.

So yes, digital revolution has turned from a free academical intelligent project and dream to a new way to subject whole populations and this start to happen years ago, and start to be so evident now that even totally ignorant in IT terms start to feel it.

Few subject succeed to displace public knowledge to private companies, to displace free market in a sort of Soviet Union planned economy draw instead of a dictatorial government by few equally dictatorial companies/founds. The next step is abolish entirely public (paper/coin) money substituted it only with digital payments, another step declare "politics" as a bad thing to be abolish substituting it with a corporate council like "Continuum" TV series foresee well, and George Orwell foresee even before with "1984".

Beware a thing in the past dictators need manpower so "force" is not all in few hands. In a not-so-far future manpower will not be needed anymore. So the chance to revolt and gain freedom is lower and lower.

Imaging a future with autonomous robotic army, cars, "smart" devices everywhere. Think how we can revolt, and against who. Also think how we can communicate, being tied to proprietary devices and platform, without pens, paper anymore, without the knowledge to write text with pen&paper, without the knowledge of "past" things like "postal system" and "newspapers" that well, we know but at the same knowledge of today's people know ancient mimeograph and polygraph...

Hem, I't common in any country of the world, perhaps with different names, different food, different packing but the same principles.

In Italy is called "schiscetta" (read in English Skishetta), in Japan is called "bento" etc...

In few countries however such kind of "productivity" is considered a kind of (self) slavery and it's not really accepted. For instance in Swiss it not common at all eat in your workplace no matter the provenance of food because we do not live for work but the contrary. In French is common only for low-paid labors, mostly young at career start etc.

Have seen the different idea of productivity in few countries and their relevant economic level I think there is no real correlation...

The problem is that we must mandate by law software to being open, easy to use, modify and deploy with simple means, that's to guarantee our freedom and democracy.

Than the business model instead of selling (cr)app and training and migration solutions, certifications, ... we can sell time&knowledge of programmers and operation.

Of course in this case many "administrative" & "marketers" will loose their job, but that's have a name: natural selection that it can be pushed a bit but sooner or later it will came by nature.

It's hard to compute but only try to estimate the cost of build a subway train with it's relatives stations, depots etc and the energy it consume. If you compute well enough you'll that it require far more resources than private vehicle in a countryside are. Even if you compute "CEP" (a french index that means primary (non renewable) energy/resources consumption, I do not know correspondent metric in English) of a a groups of single family's houses, with micropoles foundations screwed on ground and the rest in wood, glass and plastic/aluminum/... built with medium/high quality and proper insulation vs a single tall building for the same number of people and similar construction quality you still see that you consume more non-renewable/recyclable resources to build the single tall building than the many individual houses and if those are really well designed and built (so they can be heated and cooled with little non-renewable energy) you'll see that even energy consumption is better in individual houses. Simply because they have enough place for solar-thermal panels, efficient double-flux VMC at today's tech and cost are far more efficient, airtightness can cheaply be superior etc.

Many do not think that simply because do not know how modern houses are built nor how modern tall building are built and do not even see the mass of steel and foundation they have.

On living: you automatically agree that cities are not sustainable by themselves so we need to be low density and in nature, of course we can discuss density and it's variation depending on natural resources place per place but that's the point. We can automatize as we want but we need nature, we can't live for now in isolated artificial environments nor cities nor boats/submarine/starships. And that's probably will remain true for centuries to came.

My personal opinion is that a low density Riviera model is the best for now, where low density means low enough to been able to "survive" with local natural resources but no more so we still need commerce and cooperation but we can life in a not-so-comfortable and not-so-terrible way without. For my actual place (French alps) it means something around 8-10 humans per square km maximum in medium. Moderately concentrated like "USA dream" (single houses with a bit of private garden around, like 5/10 time the ground occupation of the house itself) in good place with place for nature around.

You may counter-arguments that a capillary, well maintained roads network is not cheap however being Italian I see the difference on roads between few countries and french's one are definitively cheaper than many other and even cheaper than highways. We still need some kind of ground high speed network but in a Riviera scenario with enough "local" economy that need is far less important than inter-urban networks.

Hum, actually any car can be "exclusively powered by electricity", see start&stop systems or a mere 1st speed/reverse + starter motor...

IMO an electric vehicle is a vehicle capable of run with electrical motor's in any condition. So a modern hybrid-series ship is actually electrical because it's propulsion is electric only, parallel-hybrid vehicle are not electrical since they can't really work only on electrical motors except for limited usage.

> Every study I have seen does not confirm this so I would like to see your source.

Me, myself and I, as a reasoning citizen even before being an engineer... I see exactly zero conclusive study about how to dismantle/dismiss used EV batteries and actual solution is to ship them in some part of Africa and least developed countries of Asia, the same for ship demolition, plastic etc. So there is NO viable strategy. Few peoples push totally absurd ideas like "reuse them for home energy storage" of various kind but again beside they are absurd because of costs they do not say a word about what to do when even least residual capacity will be over.

And even beside that there is exactly no real conclusive study on the effective environmental impact of EV batteries production, again the problem remain cached since work is done in China or other non-western countries.

Please do not confuse press-spread ideas from unknown with scientific study, they are a totally different beast and you can even quickly discover many of them simply thinking on what they say instead of being pampered by well constructed dreams.

> Per capita energy usage in those cities is lower.

Oh, sure and where in a city you produce food? Industrial product? I know for sure that an apartment consume less energy than a single house to be heated/cooled. It consume more to being built and maintained though and more important it can't be really used without non urban area... That's the real problem.

On economic productivity it's the same: more money turn, but they turn because suburb exists, without them it's like the ancient I think Sioux Chief that say "when you finish fish what you count to do? Eat dollars?"...

This is the real sustainability I talk about.

Without counting the amount of prime matter and energy needed to build big architecture vs small distributed ones.

Try to compute differently: how much usable energy you milk from gasoline/diesel? How many fill-up you do per week on your car? Now compute it at national scale and imaging it in electrical energy instead of chemical.

That's the "most real" consumption you can compute... Another easier and raw/spannometric computation can be counting a 70/80% recharge per day per car.

Results are far bigger than yours :-)

And I forgot to mention that Australia is one of the few developed country with a very little mean density and population so you have many possible energy sources and few people who consume them...

My English is poor so sometimes I write convoluted sentences since I do not know how to construct them, sorry, I mean did you know ANY sustainable reasonably big city? I do not know any.

Cities might seems to be more productive since our developed countries switch from production to tertiary sector but that's thanks to the rest of productive world that's now in easter Europe, Asia, Africa, South America etc. So in general cities are not more economically productive, it only offer more options per land area since there is more concentration but with the exception of tertiary sector you simply can't have industry, agriculture, breeding, ... in cities and well... We all need to eat, we all use industry-made product from bottom up.

The problem of "countryside" is the concentration of alternatives per land area, you may have nearby a sole productive and attractive activity, if something happen to it you might have to go far away to found another option. In cities being concentrated you normally have more options nearby. However this is most a matter of economic organization that's still do not understand to much how to use territory than a mere thing from being in the countryside itself. Perhaps the most sustainable model we actually have in place is the Riviera one's with enough space to evolve and enough concentration of opportunities.

Google HQ is a tertiary sector activity and require hi-speed connections so a city is a nice place for it, however did you know where most data centers are? Did you know where we produce electricity for them? Concrete, Steel, Plastic, ... that is needed for them? That's a big point that many today forget but in case of real crisis that's represent a real and dangerous problem because if producer are not anymore in your country and are not anymore willing to work/commerce with you, you are TFU.

That's a thing USA and even more UK should have learned from China, we western Europeans should have learned from Easter EU...

First we still need petrol because look around you vast majority of anything you use is plastic, plastic that can't be substituted by bioplastic, from electric insulation to large part of your washing machine to dress. That's without counting lubricants that came from petrol, tires, sweeteners used everywhere, planes, ships, trucks, all heavy machines. So thinking that with EV the need of petrol vanish is mere marketing.

To avoid pollution we need a "circular" economy as much as possible. We do a little in that sense, like using aluminum that we can fully recyclable instead of steel that can't essentially be recycled (at maximum you can recycle high quality steel to low quality one, one single time). We can restart mass using glass instead of plastic for many food containers even if being heavy means a higher transportation cost, we can recycle paper and cardboard but not forever, at maximum one/two time so we need to use it far, far less to being able to have forest grown again etc.

Things are complex and the vague and simplistic idea that we can have smart Riviera's (did you see how most of "green future houses" are single isolated homes in the nature, not cities?) or never-really-designed smart cities it a sketch from a dream and marketing, not reality.

You probably pollute FAR more with EVs than actual car's, only perhaps you pollute someone's else land, for a while, until climate change and environment contamination knock at your door and in that's case is too late.

Essentially because require tons of fragile boilerplate code to work and it's mostly designed with web principle in mind, not desktop one.

You essentially can't found a QML GUI that not exhibit tons of error, from commercial one like TeamViewer to Kde/Plasma. It's surely more flexible than classic widgets but it's flexibility is not designed in a manageable way.

Without conspiracy can you tell the name of a sustainable and evolvable magacity? I found exactly NO one, not only of existing one's but also hypothetical in some architect's published ideas.

The first and most important reason is space: a city can't evolve because the lack of space. While it might be possible in theory grow the city and after have people moving from the old part to a new one to demolish and rebuild the new one no city I know of have ever being able to do so in practice. I do not know big not-crowded not polluted cities. I do not know any "safe" city in terms of various kind of possible events from floods to earthquake to terrorist attack to military attacks...

I do not want to say that's there are conspiracy-like factors to push towards megacities but I only see a big prevalence of negative things than positive, so no reason to push nor want to be in even small cities...

First of all thanks for the long reply, while I disagree you have take times and energy to answer and today that's rare and valuable.

On my counter-point, in order:

On residual value, while I know it's not common norm I do not buy vehicles to re-sell them after few years. I tend to prefer keep them longer (around 8/10 years) and use them at December to get more discount from the vendor. I do a bit of math and found this as a good ration between having a vehicle with proper maintenance that do not give me much surprise during it's life and do not spend too much in continuous buy&sell game.

On fossil fuels, yes, they benefit from many kind of subside, however not for us "end-users" but only to the industry and resulting price does not came in relation of subsides but, at least in EU, came as a bank for our governments to milk money without introduce more explicit taxes.

So came the decision to ditch diesel that IMO pollute far less than gasoline in newest Euro6+ versions and offer few extra benefit like:

- less maintenance cost;

- less fuel per unit distance;

- safer in case of accidents (diesel does not explode and it's very hard to burn from heated metals/sparks);

- easy to stock in big quantity without explosion risk (nearly no gas production) and without loosing efficiency after years of stock.

Those IMO are the real reason behind actual marketing against diesel. Since we know that we do not have gasoline trucks, nor in general gasoline heavy vehicles nor we use anything else to start newer ship motors. So we know that we do not really ditch diesel before we have something like small nuclear reactors safer and cheap and scalable enough to be on any heavy vehicle. And those vehicle actually pollute far more than private car's.

On charging infrastructure I laugh: try to compute how much energy demand a single classic car, sum that for the total number of car of your nation and try to compute how many GWh/day your nation need to charge an hypothetical all-EV car's nationwide fleet. Perhaps only Norway, Sweden and Swiss with their nuclear+hydroelectric power and very low population can afford that demand. Without counting the fact that we can't distribute such energy without burn our actual transmission infrastructure.

Battery life IMO it's a problem, not only for the car owner but also at a scale since we do not know how to dismantle used batteries and keep pushing them to poor countries does not really scale, nor is morally acceptable.

BTW in most cities people do not have a garage so they can't recharge their vehicle at home. That's a classic marketing picture of an individual house of happy people with a garden and a private garage. That's exists for few countries and for little areas of them. Not for the vast majority of developed world.

Also on distance travels they are surely not a majority but many people do work traveling on car's for long distance, and some of them are ruffly high in "social rank" of our timocratic society...

In the end, no, I'm not convinced at all and I add few point in the mix: I can easily store diesel easily for even few months of complete autonomy (because I've moved from the city to the mountain so I have adequate space). I can do the same for gasoline but at a far bigger risk (explosion/fire and time degradation). I can't do for electricity. Of course you may say that without electricity I can't do many other things and that's right but only partially: I can't be in comfort but I still can live, far better than cave-man survival. My garage big bi-energy freezer can work on propane/butane for around 4 months without gas bottles supply. I can cook on wood stove despite it's uncomfortable. I can heat water with the very same stove + thermic-solar panels that also heat my house via a VMC, I do not have one now but I'm planning to add a photovoltaic panel that's enough for thermic-solar water circulation + VMC. So I can stand, without comfort but far better than being in a camping tent. And my diesel car can move.

Another point to the mix: EVs tend to be connected/require regular connection to the vendor for many things, internal combustion vehicle are more and more connected but I can still buy and use unconnected one's.

Long story short I'm looking for, I hoping for a greener future, but I foresee a black future instead, not only because of climate change but because of actual social trends. And EV are a part of that black picture, not a dream of a better future...

Ah, ok... I'll wait to see something like:

"hey this is a Samsung USB-C cable, you can't use it. Go buy an LG's one. They are exactly the same except of authentication but we can't trust if otherwise, it's for your safety!"

Than I'll wait for a crying herd of fanboys that proudly try to justify it well pushed by marketing sheepdogs in disguise...

A small game:

- how much distance you cover in car every day?

- at how much speed?

- with how many energy heavy thing powered on (like AC/clima)?

Try to answer to find if you can afford a sole/primary battery powered today's car. Also check it's price.

After try to look at statistics: how many people actually buy full battery-powered cars in percentage by country? How many are essentially forced to buy hybrid models simply because of marketing choice? How many prefer to buy clean and cheap diesel Euro6+ cars instead gasoline's one?

Try to be honest.

After draw your conclusion and please publish it.

Well... If for you 30-35 miles are an acceptable range ok, for me it's far, far less then my need. And I talk about daily life, not counting holidays...

So they are winter tires, only spiked tires works (really) well on ice, unfortunately you can't use them on most country without majority of the roads iced for long periods...

Personally living, and have lived, in snowy area while I prize winter tire on snow I also prize 4WD/AWD, without them in many cases I'll have had to beg for a tow, no matter how good winter tire I can ever mount.

In some condition, like little snow, you only have slippery roads due to the moisture of salt/snow/dirt on the road and 4wheel help reaming on trajectory but you may still drive on 2WD at least if you are a good enough driver, on heavier snow 4wheels means have enough traction to advance and enough grip to still have traction when some wheel slip.

Mere line count does not tell a truth, simply because you can do more thing with a SLoC in a language than another, also sometime to be on certain platform you need an enormous amount of code only for them that's have no other purpose that boilerplate for a platform.

Too simplistic :-)

If someone do not use email hardly can be considered tech savvy. Sorry.

Perhaps he/she work for a company that do not really know IT so force their workers to use limited and limiting platforms, but it that's remain for personal world then no, it's might appear to you a tech savvy person but that's only due to Kant-ian glasses, not reality.