The idea definitely has potential. The current market they are targeting is the best setting for this kind of application. A bunch of horny college students in a confined location, i.e. a campus. If the founders manage things right I think they could turn this into a great platform for developers and advertisers and this comes at just the right time because everyone and their gandma at this point has a location aware mobile device.
"Code" by Charles Petzold is a wonderful book about how computers work and it covers pretty much everything but in a way that is accessible to anyone who understand basic algebra.
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Certainly, no one is denying this but people often stick to a single paradigm and tout it as the best thing since slice bread. People often make claims without any backing and since the argument is about programming languages it should be really easy to back up claims with actual working code. It's hard to argue with code that compiles and does what its creator claims it does.
Not what I meant. I'm familiar with several dozen languages and I try to get acquainted with at least one topic and programming language outside my comfort zone every six months. I've been keeping with this routine for about 3 years now and what I've realized is that almost all those things he mentions have absolutely nothing to do with being a good programmer. There are certain meta-cognitive patterns that are far more relevant for being a good programmer and it's hard to gauge these meta-cognitive abilities by just running through a grid of requirements.
This seems a bit unfair to people who learned programming by way of web development and tinkering with scripting languages because it seems to assume the usual undergrad CS course load.
How are you comparing public schools to universities? First of all each state has maybe a dozen universities but it has a hundred or more school districts, in some larger states, each with at least a dozen schools. The complexity of managing public schools is on a completely different level and saying universities do it so why can't public schools is way too simplistic.
Who are you quoting? Is it me? If it is how did you infer I propose doing the same thing but with more money? In fact I'm advocating the opposite. Currently the move is towards more and more customized education and it's not working out well at all. The whole thing is so convoluted that whenever a student ends up learning something people have no idea if it was because of their efforts or some other factor so moving towards even more customized education is going to make things worse not better. Also, in the future please refrain from putting words in my mouth if you were indeed quoting me.
How far are you going to atomize the students? Grade level, proper pacing, emotional development, what else? The logistics of what you are suggesting is simply impossible. I have been involved in the education space and I know people that are still in it. If we had more resources and a lot more teachers then providing a customized education experience for students would be possible but the system is simply not there and won't be there for a very long time because everyone is focused on making the system more and more convoluted. There is no push to simplify and streamline standards and processes because there is more money to be gained from making things convoluted. The problem is that politicians treat it as a business and consider tax dollars spent on it as an investment and naturally they want to see a return on this investment so they start to measure things which almost always ends up being the wrong way to approach the problem because an education is a holistic process and treating it in six month chunks makes no sense whatsoever.
I didn't say anything about penalizing people. If you are so gifted that you can take college courses in 7th grade then be my guest but you'd be surprised to know that in most other nations what people learn in 6th and 7th grades is what the US students learn in 11th and 12th grades. The point is that educators should be focused on educating instead of providing a custom tailored product to suit the prevailing political climate in order to funnel more dollars to their school's districts. Removing all the testing and separation and holding everyone to the same standards makes it much easier to apportion tax dollars in a fair way. Currently there are so many bureaucratic layers and so many constantly changing rules that by the time textbooks are published they are already out of date and new ones have to be ordered for the next school year. Obviously this only benefits the book publishers who are more than happy to reprint materials sometimes even different materials for adjoining states and get paid for it.
I've been educated in two different countries and the obsession that the US schools have at every level with segregating and separating students never ceases to surprise me. Administrators are so obsessed with the metrics used to perform this separation that they are no longer doing any real educating and are instead developing more and more arbitrary rules for separating students. If you don't believe me then I point you to the profits being made in making standardized tests. The solution is simple but it leaves a lot of educational pundits and standardized test makers out in the cold. Everyone is held to the same standards gifted or not with the caveat that special education still chugs along as it does today.
The world needs more people like him and your title is misleading. He is making a point about the inherent value of something and that it can not be measured by a select group of individuals.
I hate it when people buy into this 'government is a business' mentality and that it should have a 'balanced budget'. Government is not a business and people shouldn't expect to run it like one. The money spent on social services circulates within the US economy but corporate tax cuts get funneled to off shore accounts never to see the light of day within US borders. So what the politicians should be fixing are corporate finance rules and not social security, medicaid or some other social service.
Ever hear of the bell curve? It applies to everything from intelligence, height, weight, to whatever else you care to measure. Also I refer you to http://searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.ht... for a good read on what you can expect in general. Holding a grudge and fixating on the shortcomings of others will not help you in life. It is much better to focus on your strengths and to constantly improve yourself.