Minecraft is _hugely_ popular with anybody under 14. To the point that it's no longer only nerdy parents that showed their kids it, it's kids hearing about it from other kids.
It's simple to buy and install and get working. There is no reason to assume that Mac users running Minecraft are going to also have Xcode or Little Snitch.
My daughter had hers disabled, never found the reactivate link. It sucks because she is now 13 and a non-issue, but lost her email address of 3-4 years.
The kindle/amazon is not always a solution either. I live in Canada and there is nothing I hate more than being given a suggestion (from amazon) about a book for my kindle, only to find that it's "not available in your area" when I go to purchase. I normally rage a bit, then find a torrent.
I'm a Java developer using IDEA. I still spend most of my time in a shell. Mouse pointing and clicking to do things like run builds annoys me when I can alt-tab and run a script to run unit tests.
I think IDEA is a fantastic IDE, and possibly there are shortcuts to do what I'm doing in a shell, but even screen redraws etc take up needless time and force me to wait when I don't need to with smart use of a shell.
I'm an old school vim/perl hacker though, so maybe I just am used to working a particular way, having "grown up" with the shell, I can't imagine not using it to do most of my work for me.
Currently receiving RSUs & work for a company that provides financial reporting solutions for companies that reward with equity. Part of the lock-in is simply the desire of the employee to wait for the vest date.
Simply put, for the first year, I received a non-negligible amount of RSUs that vest evenly over 2 years beginning a year after grant. I was receiving these on a monthly basis based on company performance. My first awards began vesting in June of this year, and will continue (monthly) until March of next, with the second half of the grants beginning vesting in June of next again.
It's a pretty strong argument to convince me to stay until at least March of 2012, which at least keeps me here for as long as I've been anywhere else (will have been a total of 4 years). Additionally these shares vest and the value is deposited into my ESPP plan, making it a no brainer to hold onto these shares for the time being, as the company is continuing to grow.
RSUs are a great benefit to the employee, there's no cost up front to them, and it's an obvious correlation between share price & value - vs options that can sometimes be very confusing for employees.
Like OpenDNS however, any further grants coming my way are more likely to be of the Option variety. Personally options are less of a reason for me to stay - if they're granted at a price that is "just out of reach" - there's not going to be much benefit for those 100000 options granted at $1 when the stock price is $1.01.
Lastly, nobody has to pay to quit, often times an option exercise is simply an exercise to cover cost of shares - so the 100000 options at $1.00 would be a benefit of $1000, without the employee having to front the $100000.
My parents have never shown any interest in IT whatsoever. My brothers, never. Me, as soon as I started messing around with a Commodore-64, I was hooked.
Give your kids the opportunities to explore everything and anything that they can. Something will click, if it's IT, then you can offer your guidance.
"At least I’ve heard IntelliJ IDEA is great, I’ve never used it."
That's like complaining about image manipulation software when all you've used is GIMP.
I'm a vim guy from way back, I always avoided big IDEs because of the bloat. IDEA is the first I've tried where the IDE doesn't feel like it's getting in the way, and actually makes the job easier.
Obviously a little late to read this.. but the source now shows this:
Now the that big switch is gone, here are some fun facts:
1. This site was created in 2002, using Visual Studio 2003.
2. Yes there was some editing done in frontpage. The editors worked better than VS 2003, and we had a license for it.
3. A lot from the funky mark-up is from some early generation .NET thirdparty controls we've been maintaining.
4. We look forward to updating the site as much as you (probably more in fact!)
Thanks for the QA, Redditors!
I'm surprised that The Pragmatic Programmer isn't on there. Am I that much out of date that this book is no longer recommended? It completely changed the way I thought of development at the time.
I have one boy that reads constantly. I too used a lot of the points here and seems to have worked, thinking about it my parents did the same with me.
I will, however, chime in and mention that we also have a PS3/Wii/PS2/Gamecube/N64/NES & 2 DSs that are all in use, and often played, so the systems being around has not impacted his love of reading. He'll often put his DS down and pick up his most recent book. My daughter is the same way.
I think that point #8 is likely the biggest reason for this, as although I like to game, I often will be reading instead.
Interestingly enough, I had the exact opposite experience as a Canadian camping in the US this summer. The customs at the US was fantastic, it was our first time visiting, and my 11 year old daughter was very nervous. The customs office asked questions in a nice way, smiled at my daughter and told her not to be so nervous, indicated that we'd have a great time where we were going, and generally was very friendly and welcoming.
Coming back into Canada, the customs agent was not nearly as friendly. Perhaps we looked a little scruffy after a week of camping, but the questions were more brusque and suspicious.
I wouldn't be entirely sure of your assumptions that missing class makes them fall behind.
An example is myself. I am a high school drop out. I gave up when, in Grade 11, I passed my Math 20 class with an 85% - but had credits withheld (meaning that I either had to retake or had to make them up with some other class) because I missed 60% of the class. This repeated itself in other subjects. I didn't need to go to school, I was still learning the concepts etc, but I would not have graduated without repeating classes (and actually being there for them) because of my attendance record.
I'm also aware that this is anecdotal, but from discussions I've had with other people in similar situations, it's not that I was necessarily unique.
My question is why do we treat students differently in exams than we do in classes?
When I was going through K-12, there was no collaborative work, we sat at our own desks, did our own work, and although cheating was there, there was a significant portion of students that did not cheat. The people that struggled were quickly noticed, and either given extra help or told that they need to work harder etc.
Fast forward to today. My daughter, Grade 7, sits in a "pod" instead of in a row. Essentially all work is either collaborative or copied from the one person that knows what's going on. The people that don't know what's going on can coast.
Quizzes are in the pods. non-final/midterm exams are in the pods. Why, given the level of cooperation that we've drilled into them since Grade 1, are people surprised that students copy off each other, use other peoples homework to get their answers, etc etc.
It's simple to buy and install and get working. There is no reason to assume that Mac users running Minecraft are going to also have Xcode or Little Snitch.