19 years (a few months shy of 20) and I'm 23. I started with my dad's Commodore 64 and the BASIC reference manual. Flashing colors on the screen, followed by very simplistic text adventures.
Simply saying that they were wrong doesn't make it so. The original post had hard numbers. If you're going to say that those numbers were in error, I want to see the numbers that back it up.
I saw this today and wished I'd heard about it sooner. I learned to program way back when I was 4, using PET BASIC. Why did great work in the community, really encouraging people to learn and get over their fears about programming. I first ran into him while hanging out on Invisible IRC, chatting (and doing things here and there with) Freenet. Later, he got famous after his (Poignant) Guide. That only cemented my impression of him as an incredible hacker.
If there's one person I'd absolutely have to meet (and probably never will) in the programming community, it's Why. I'm sure you're out there somewhere doing great things. Good luck!
I'll second that. I find Objective-C nice to work with. The real issue is the lack of cross-platform compatibility (think Cocoa). The rest I write in C. That or a dynamic language. Ruby, Javascript, Python--they're all pretty much equivalent for me by now. I can transliterate code between modern implementations of all 3 without a hitch. Practically find & replace fast. Most of the semantics are roughly the same. All support JSON happily.
Lately, I've been using [Jansson](http://www.digip.org/jansson/) for JSON support in C. Wonderfully simple and fast. Also, [zeromq](http://www.zeromq.org/) for everything: logging, sockets, messages. Hoorah. F@&# yeah.
Steve Jobs' response irks me because he equates (by association) "freedom from porn" with "freedom from programs that steal your private data" and "Freedom programs that trash your battery," "Yep, freedom," itself. "[...] their world is slipping away. It is."
Freedom from porn? Steve pulls no punches--what does porn mean to us? Is it something evil, something that only subjugated people will perform in? Does it provide an legitimate outlet for a different sort of sexual fetish? Who uses whom? I don't know the answers, but I'm sure there are a multitude, many of them with a nugget of truth.
I don't feel as if we need to be protected from ourselves. This is a statement--assuming that it was, in fact, reported in good faith--written by a man in a position of power which asserts a sort of moral judgement about our culture.
Please, don't misunderstand: Mr. Jobs is entirely correct in his statement that, "Microsoft had (has) every right to enforce whatever rules for their platform they want. If people don’t like it, they can write for another platform, which some did. Or they can buy another platform, which some did." Indeed, Apple appears (from my non-lawyerly perspective) to be exercising the same supposed right without serious challenge in a court of law.
I, myself, write on a MacBook. I enjoy using and working with the technology that Apple offers--but I'm not married to Jobs' vision. I wonder what the future holds, and Jobs' words don't paint a great picture for me.
What does the world he and Apple envision for us look like?
I definitely recommend keeping sketchpads, graph paper, and a chalk/whiteboard around. It gives us a new mode of thinking in addition to plain old code.
This article really hits the mark. I wish more companies would adopt a pair programming discipline. My experience with it has been largely positive. It takes some getting used to, at first, especially getting down a good system for reading code aloud and directing each other's attention to a particular location in the code.
After a while, it feels pretty natural. And productive. Also, there's less burnout, more useful socialization. We've also gone the Nerf gun/slackline/juggling balls route for taking quick breaks between chunks of features. After the first person you seriously pair program with, it becomes easier in general. You're free to find your own similes.
Hear, hear! I really dread sitting through this, because it makes me cringe and squirm and want to correct them.
On the other hand, it teaches patience. Patience is worth a lot. When I first began tutoring comp sci students, I learned that, even among the technically inclined, you will need to sit through an enormous amount of misunderstandings and mind-numbing attempts to keep the ol' neurons firing just so. Think you have patience? Try teaching.
I picked up tutoring on the side to earn some extra money. As a side-effect, I feel like it's helping my skills in dealing with clients, programming, and teaching.
EDIT: Also, I love pair programming. Don't know about other people, but I feel as though I'm easily twice as productive on my normal days, even though I might be on an absolute roll by myself a couple times a week. It also seems to be easier to avoid design pitfalls or unnecessary debugging with an extra set of eyes on the code (as it's written).
"From what I can tell, nothing is more frustrating to an engineer than a non-engineer asking for something complex, and treating it like it’s trivial."
Yes, yes, and more yes. When programmers say "possible," they mean before the heat death of the universe. That doesn't mean all possible things are automatically trivial, despite their apparent obviousness.
Edit: 30-second overview: I enabled automatic updates and sent in the requested anonymous system profile--but both are strictly optional. The default hot-key selection is excellent (Shift+Command+Enter). The set of preferences is small, but useful: font, hide dock icon, hot-key choice and behavior (open/close). The Accessibility pane asks you to mark DTerm as "Trusted" in order to correctly present its window in apps other than Finder. I didn't even realize that it was running again until I tentatively tried the hot-key. It works, it's small, fast, and it works invisibly. Very nice, kudos!
Personally, I'd love to see support for Ctrl+r from BASH. Also, I wonder if there could be some way to use URLs from browsers.
Operating systems are a tool. All problems are not nails.