That is a good question; but as the life expectency of our population increases while the prospect of any of us getting social security decreases, the fact is we may be at a point where retirement doesn't happen until one is at least 70 or even older. A 45-year old entrepreneur with, let's say, 20 years experience in the field who doesn't plan on retiring until 65 or 70 still has at least 20 years to invest in the company; additionally, think of what you at 18 or 20 could have learned from an internship with someone like that. I think our culture is continually redefining what is and isn't "old"; I for one don't think 40 is truly all that old.
Completely agree. I'm only 24; I just finished my CS undergrad and masters' degrees. I'm getting married next year and just took a high-paying job as a software engineer at an established big corporation rather than taking up any of the start-up offers I got from friends. I really wanted to do the start up thing but my fiancée and I want kids; I want them sooner to reduce the risk of infertility as well as mental and health problems that are statistically more prevalent amongst older mothers. Along with that I grew up very poor, so I want to provide for them with a house, steady food and small comforts, things I lacked until I was able to work for myself at 16.
I think that other women may take different choices - if I didn't want to have kids, I would be all over working on a start up, but as it stands, I wouldn't think about it until I am older.
I think that the article has its plusses and minuses but one thing we should all agree on is that the YC model should be adopted for the needs of many different groups. I won't want to do anything risky until my kids are more independent and I've built a solid nest egg. But my fiancée feels the same way as me! So, I don't see why the article needs to be quite so gender-specific. I would like to see this idea come to fruition, with emphasis placed on attracting more women to the field but maybe geared more towards anyone 35-40+ who has a family and responsibilities but would like to take on a start up project.
Ahh! This is my course!!
I am actually an undergraduate student, and this course was my first foray into teaching. Please note that this is not intended to be an in-depth semester course, but rather was an intensive two-week course during MIT's January semester. Class met three hours a day and was intended on giving a springboard introduction into the basics of Python and a short bit on classes/inheritance for students taking MIT's 6.01 course the following semester.
The ocw page is a bit bare-bones right now as getting the class together was a bit of a challenge :) If you search around the site, you should be able to find exercises and example code in addition to the readings. Answers, unfortunately, to the exercises cannot be posted because so many MIT students focus more on getting an A rather than learning the material, so releasing OCW solutions typically leads to rampant cheating.
I do, however, plan on improving the page next January, adding a better set of handwritten notes, more example code, and some short OpenOffice presentations on various concepts to promote self-learning. I appreciate comments here on the course, what you would like to see, etc, and I will try to incorporate them. Keep in mind that solutions and videos are not going to happen - solutions for the aforementioned reasons, and videos because of the cost to OCW. However, I may be able to self-record my lectures and post to YouTube if there is sufficient interest :)
One last plug - I troll the programming forum on linuxquestions.org, username robotsari; if you post python questions I try to answer!