My path to programming, as a product of the internet generation:
As a child, I loved the idea of computer programming. I got books at the library that told you how, but they always needed equipment I didn't have. I actually wrote fake programs in Ami Pro because of sample code I found in books! My parents were cutting-edge with computer purchases, but were otherwise nontechnical. They didn't know that toy programming languages existed, and probably didn't care. They just wanted me outside!
Time passed, and in 8th grade I needed to sign up for high school classes. I saw "Computer programming" in the class listing and I registered immediately. I didn't want to enter the class knowing nothing, so I researched C++ (the language taught by the class) and came across DJGPP. I spent a lot of nights that summer careening through internet tutorials and wrote a mountain of crap, but it was fun!
The first day of school was very disappointing - I got the syllabus, and saw that I'd already learned everything on the sheet. I was equally disappointed 2 years later when I signed up for the AB C++ exam and realized I knew nothing on the sheet. The next year was the worst yet - I knew everything on the AB Java exam, but I had to spend the year relearning it all in Java! Yuck!
I run into plenty of situations where I have multiple lines, and I'd like the respective elements to align. It's not limited to tabular data, but it's the easiest example
There are plenty of problems with CSS. You can't specify the width of an inline element, for one. That alone prevents a lot of reasonable layouts, like tables. Also problematic is a standards body that ignores this use case! In this case, they protect the writer from over-filling some boxes with more boxes. But that would at least be visible - in this case, the workarounds end up far worse.
The police investigates crimes that have already been observed. Journalists have the freedom to investigate potential crimes based on their gut feeling. Recall Enron - a police officer standing anywhere in Headquarters would have missed a crime. However, some pesky reporters asking too many questions brought the whole operation to its knees.
But my original point is that there's one dev team in the middle of this dealing with concurrency, and any number of remote applications that can use it through a library because someone else worried about the hard parts. There isn't a day of reckoning where developers as a group worry about efficient concurrent computation, it's the few guys in the center.
It's not some silly vision of the future, but an oversimplified version of today! A brief and incomplete list of applications I use in a typical day:
Remote storage and/or processing: GMail, Google Docs, Weather.com, Reddit.com, Hacker News, Outlook web client, Google.com, DuckDuckGo, Delicious, Facebook, Github, tens of blogs/articles, online help documentation for, well, everything
Local storage and/or processing: Windows+Linux, Firefox, Chrome, Outlook, Visual Studio, Emacs, Python (or other dynamic languages), Acrobat, Amarok, random Unix utilities, various games
Most of my applications exist solely to present data stored elsewhere. I see no reason the trend won't continue: for instance, why would I compile C++ code on my machine when I can farm it out? Why would I store flat code files on my machine when I can have synthesized views of the code I need to see at one time?
Split up by time, most of my attention is spent manipulating or displaying data from somewhere else (or that could be stored somewhere else)
Most application developers won't worry about concurrent program design. Ever. More and more applications are becoming layered each year, and all of the hard work is done on the server side. Drawing an application's chrome takes little power in comparison.
Concurrent programming ends up in the data center, fussed over by the (relatively) small core of engineers and software developers. Everyone else just queries this data and makes it look good. Concurrently fetching data doesn't need a paradigm shift, just a good library. If you still need a few threads, you can use the same crummy techniques we've always used.
Cloud computing will alter Moore's Law on most devices. Devices may need twice as many transistors every 18 months, but the transistors are no longer on your desktop. They're mostly in some data center.
Rejewski and Turing's Enigma cracking accomplishments were staggeringly significant, but they won nothing. If the Allies bombed every submarine that radioed a position, the Germans would have thrown the machines into the ocean. The Enigma let the Allies stack the overall war strategy in their favor, but it was far from over.
I do agree that brainpower won the war - our cryptology was stronger, resource management between the Pacific and European fronts was superb, and the Allies had a knack for picking battles and battlefields where they could excel
I disagree with your perspective. Scientists don't need to understand everything about life to make meaningful contributions to our lifespan. This stuff isn't magic - there are sound, repeatable principles at the bottom of everything you mention, and the principles are possibly within our grasp. The technology needed for making these discoveries only gets better with time, never worse.
Look at it this way: crude principles applied at the macro level have extended our lifespan by decades. As scientists get better and better at piecing together the building blocks from the bottom, they'll likely find principles at the micro level that improves our lifespan as well
If I feel extra contact with someone is inevitable, I usually try to request that the person email me some helpful info that I need. If they say they'll "just call," I point out that [list of people] might find it useful, and joke that I can't forward them a phone conversation we've had. Some people still insist on calling, and I let them.
You could take the beginning of habit 5 as complementary to Emacs. Has another program ever been extended to do more?
Towards the end of point 5, Bram really points out the strength of Vim over Emacs - it is small enough that it could be refactored to be embeddable. This is the real slight towards Emacs - Emacs will never be embeddable, not in a hundred years. It is the all-purpose consumer that provides little benefit to outside programs. I think Bram saw a niche in creating a 'libvim' that other programs could use
Keeping your email under control requires an unreasonable amount of discipline. I've managed to avoid 'defaulting' on my email so far, but at a decent overhead rate: Every hour or two, I wipe out my inbox completely and leave only items that absolutely require an action. Most mail is read once and interesting email gets archived by sender name. I have lots of filters set up for people who usually send me uninteresting mail. Everything else is deleted.
I've almost lost control a few times - mostly because of vacations- and I'm certain that I'll hit a tipping point where my time doesn't scale to my inbox size. I couldn't handle my boss' email load, for instance...
Are there any good techniques that scale for dealing with email?
First, I'd stare at the Clojure webpage, and try some examples in the REPL. I'd feel like I'm not grokking idiomatic Clojure, so I'd try some Google searches, but find nothing compelling. I'd hit random Clojure links on Hacker News and Reddit for a few weeks, but give up and move to a language with a more active community.
A year later, I'd accidentally find it at the bottom of an unrelated post and yell "If only I had that a year ago!"
"There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go"
~ East of Eden
After reading this, I lost all guilt about losing some old friends due to moving around the country.
I lightly approve of anecdotal posts like these. Facebook controls all of the data needed to make informed decisions, and they're not going to share if the OP's claims are accurate. Lots of bad press about CPM and cost/click will force Facebook to publish data proving the worth of getting Facebook ads that transcend the 'case study' nonsense. If they continually ignore lots of bad press, that's a big tell that the only party that benefits is Facebook, even though it's not a smoking gun.
I've taken this approach with PayPal. I'd use them for person-to-person finances, but I've heard so many small-business horror stories that I'd invest the time to make a merchant account if I made a startup. It's not exactly scientific, but PayPal's not exactly flooding the market with data either
"I sure as hell don't remember being showered with praise or getting athletic trophies just for turning up"
I experienced a lot of that, but in retrospect my parents managed it pretty well by rewarding hard work. If I got a trophy for a bad sports season, they gave me the option to throw it out. I always did. When I was little, I earned an allowance by doing chores and yardwork. When I was in high school, I was expected to work in the yard if I didn't have a weekend job, so I was always working, but only sometimes getting paid. I was given cash rewards for quarterly grades through high school, but a B paid so much less than an A that it was more of an insult.
I came out the other end a little backwards: I dislike getting awards, and I feel uncomfortable if someone tells me I did a good job.
In the end, child development always comes down to parenting. If the child's environment isn't pushing them hard enough, they can do something about it
As a child, I loved the idea of computer programming. I got books at the library that told you how, but they always needed equipment I didn't have. I actually wrote fake programs in Ami Pro because of sample code I found in books! My parents were cutting-edge with computer purchases, but were otherwise nontechnical. They didn't know that toy programming languages existed, and probably didn't care. They just wanted me outside!
Time passed, and in 8th grade I needed to sign up for high school classes. I saw "Computer programming" in the class listing and I registered immediately. I didn't want to enter the class knowing nothing, so I researched C++ (the language taught by the class) and came across DJGPP. I spent a lot of nights that summer careening through internet tutorials and wrote a mountain of crap, but it was fun!
The first day of school was very disappointing - I got the syllabus, and saw that I'd already learned everything on the sheet. I was equally disappointed 2 years later when I signed up for the AB C++ exam and realized I knew nothing on the sheet. The next year was the worst yet - I knew everything on the AB Java exam, but I had to spend the year relearning it all in Java! Yuck!