This problem will be faced by many developers soon. The Internet is huge. Very large. The big companies are going to be dealing with huge data. You'll need to understand algorithms and math, and frankly, this stuff is a bit difficult to learn on your own. I thought I knew it all till I went into the algorithms class - that when I realized that not only did I not know it all, I was not as smart as I thought I was, and I would never have had the motivation to go through with this if I had not been forced to. And that goes for many developing.
Programming is a scarce profession now, but the simple stuff will soon be done by too many people. Software will become a real engineering task. In 20 years, the age of the code monkey will be gone.
Congrats. Continue in the fine tradition of traditional science dismissing everything that falls outside of known worldview without thinking about or discussing it.
Tip: Instead of writing the articles via your keyboard, get a good voice-to-speech machine (like the iPad) and simply free-talk about the topic. In 30 minutes, you can write on quite some topics. Totally unique content.
But then did not proceed to do so, but instead explained how lack of context in articles generally make them difficult for people to understand. People react too fast before understanding, like most people did on my comment.
And why do you assume that I am saying it does not exist? If you are widely traveled then you will understand the difference between articles and reality.
I think you misunderstand what I am saying. If you read my comment, you'll see I'm not talking about the content of the article or saying slavery does not exist.
It's difficult to tell people "think before you decide" when the people instantly assume that I am saying something that is attacking them and immediately start aggressively defending their opinion.
And that's the correct attitude. I don't say anything refuting the points in the article. I'm not against the article either. I'm pointing out that a single story does not describe a phenomena accurately.
But everyone is jumping on my comment as if I said that anything in the article is wrong.
No, don't believe this. The world is a very complex place, and what makes for a good story is often very different from what reality is.
When American journalists write about the world, they write as if the world is America. Stories are broken down into us vs them, people become black and white, some people are assigned the label 'good' and some the label 'bad'. Everything gets americanised, even the american obsession with skin colour or racial differences works itself into every conflict that is reported on.
Whatever the real story in mauritania is, it's made of centuries and centuries of history, a land caught between the arabs and the africans, a culture that has lasted hundreds of year.
This cannot be captured in a short article on CNN that reduces it all to the archetypal american "black people enslaved by people who are not us". After reading this article, you still know nothing about Mauritania. You have no understand of the complexities of their society. All you have is this single story, this opinion piece by a single author.
Your knowledge is second hand and it's second rate. You do yourself, Mauritania and history a great disservice if you read the article and believe it. A single story should only ever be something that invites you to discover the real history of a place and people (http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_...)
When you read an article like this about Mauritania, don't read it. Realise that it's like overhearing a conversation between two strangers. You lack context, you lack understanding.
That's why you should not believe this story. It's a single story about a place you know nothing about.
One core difference that I notice between Africa and the West, irrespective of the current development stage, is that people in Africa are mostly optimistic that things are better than the were, and they are expecting things to get much better. So they see the future as being bright and full of opportunities.
People in the west seem to have the opposite viewpoint - the see the past as having been better, and the future bringing doom and gloom. So their outlook is pessimistic.
So there is much more of this lets-work-forward energy in Africa.
Very faulty logic. 1 in 5 logged in with github, and 1 in 7 logged in with twitter, and this implies you don't need facebook? Measuring two other things does not have any meaning to another not-measured metric. One should add a fb button and then measure how many log in via fb to make such a statement.
I think both are just manifestations of intellectual curiosity - some people, when they talk to you, are asking themselves: "what is this guy trying to say?" So they listen. Those same people, when they see something unusual, for example, a new type of design, they ask themselves - why did these people do this? So they are constantly discovering, and it's that discovering of methods and ways that ultimately leads to them discovering the path that works.
The other people - the non-listeners - are not observing what's going on. They are looking inwards, so are unable to react to changes, and they are unable to see the path when they stumble across it.
I don't think this is a good idea. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that many people depend on all over the world. Encyclopedias should not just switch off for political reasons. Books don't turn off. Digital information should not turn on and off either for any reason. A big red banner covering half the page can get the message across without actually making us unable to access the information stored in wikipedia.
This argument is pointless, because it's about only the U.S, which is a small proportion of phones used in the world. The rest of the world does not have the insane carrier monopolies and unusual pricing structures that are prevalent in the U.S. For the rest of the world, phones sell on the merits of their software and hardware - and that's what android should be measured on.
Programming is a scarce profession now, but the simple stuff will soon be done by too many people. Software will become a real engineering task. In 20 years, the age of the code monkey will be gone.