- bank
- bank getting
- bank run
- bank runs
- bank transfers
- Bitcoin
- Bitcoin
- bot network
- cryptography
- Currency
- Economics
- food
- Foreign exchange market
- fractional reserve banking
- funds
- HTML
- HTML
- Inflation
- International economics
- Jeffrey Tucker
- Jeffrey Tucker Next
- large peer-to-peer network
- massive bank
- Money
- Mt. Gox
- online access
- p2p
- passphrase encryption
- Paul Krugman
- peer-to-peer
- Peer-to-peer computing
- postmodern technology
- printing press
- Proof-of-work system
- Red
- secure computing methods
- United Kingdom
- United States
- well-written software
Forget chasing "standard" software such as 3DS Max, Unity, and others; the Internet is the small dev's most powerful tool. In this post, I'll explore how the internet has changed how we create media and the opportunities available to the little guy.
- 3D graphics software
- Amazon
- Animation software
- BBC Radio
- BBC Radio
- Blender
- digital media
- faster communications
- free software
- Graphics software
- important tool
- Internet horror character
- internet users
- internet-based markets
- iPad
- Mark Hadley
- multi-media project
- Portable software
- print media
- printing press
- printing presses
- Production Indie
- production software
- retail stores
- Roger Ebert
- social media
- Software
- software packages
- Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
- Technology
- Victor Surge
- Video game development
- viral creative network
- YouTube
An anonymous reader writes "An article at CNET discusses Google's ever-expanding role in search, and where it's heading over the next several years. The author argues it's becoming less of a discrete tool and more an integrated extension of our own minds. He rattles off a list of pie-in-the-sky functions Google could perform, which would have sounded ridiculous a decade ago. But in 2012.. not so much. Quoting: 'Think of Google diagnosing your daughter's illness early based on where she's been, how alert she is, and her skin's temperature, then driving your car to school to bring her home while you're at work. Or Google translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you're riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme. Google, in essence, becomes a part of you. Imagine Google playing a customized audio commentary based on what you look at while on a tourist trip and then sharing photo highlights with your friends as you go. Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you're no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you're being mugged.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
From the printing press to the Google glasses, the earliest lumbering efforts in technology morph over time into streamlined, unnoticed tools of daily life, writes Nick Bilton.
- Aldus Manutius
- Apple iPhone
- augmented reality
- Benji
- Computer
- computing
- Devices
- Disruptions
- Glasses
- google glasses
- Google Inc|GOOG|NASDAQ
- Human-computer interaction
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Johannes Gutenberg
- Mobile
- New encyclopedism
- Printing
- printing press
- Sergey Brin
- Sergey Brin
- Smartphone
- smartphone
- smartphones
- Software development
- Technology
- Wearable computer
- wearable computing
- wearable computing
- wearable devices
- wearable technologies
- wearable technologies
I didn't intend for Please Don't Learn to Code to be so controversial, but it seemed to strike a nerve. Apparently a significant percentage of readers stopped reading at the title.
So I will open with my own story. I think you'll find it instructive.
My mom once told me that the only reason she dated my father is because her mother told her to stay away from that boy, he's a bad influence.
If she had, I would not exist.
True story, folks.
I'd argue that the people who need to learn to code will be spurred on most of all by honesty, not religious faith in the truthiness of code as a universal good. Go in knowing both sides of the story, because there are no silver bullets in code. If, after hearing both the pros and cons, you still want to learn to code, then by all means learn to code. If you're so easily dissuaded by hearing a few downsides to coding, there are plenty of other things you could spend your time learning that are more unambiguously useful and practical. Per Michael Lopp, you could learn to be a better communicator. Per Gina Trapani, you could learn how to propose better solutions. Slinging code is just a tiny part of the overall solution in my experience. Why optimize for that?
On the earliest computers, everyone had to be a programmer because there was no software. If you wanted the computer to do anything, you wrote code. Computers in the not so distant past booted directly to the friendly blinking cursor of a BASIC interpreter. I view the entire arc of software development as a field where we programmers spend our lives writing code so that our fellow human beings no longer need to write code (or even worse, become programmers) to get things done with computers. So this idea that "everyone must know how to code" is, to me, going backwards.
I fully support a push for basic Internet literacy. But in order to be a competent driver, does everyone need to know, in detail, how their automobile works? Must we teach all human beings the basics of being an auto mechanic, and elevate shop class to the same level as English and Mathematics classes? Isn't knowing how to change a tire, and when to take your car in for an oil change, sufficient? If your toilet is clogged, you shouldn't need to take a two week in depth plumbing course on toiletcademy.com to understand how to fix that. Reading a single web page, just in time, should be more than adequate.
What is code, in the most abstract sense?
code (kōd) …
-
- A system of signals used to represent letters or numbers in transmitting messages.
- A system of symbols, letters, or words given certain arbitrary meanings, used for transmitting messages requiring secrecy or brevity.
- A system of symbols and rules used to represent instructions to a computer…
— The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Is it punchcards? Remote terminals? Emacs? Textmate? Eclipse? Visual Studio? C? Ruby? JavaScript? In the 1920s, it was considered important to learn how to use slide rules. In the 1960s, it was considered important to learn mechanical drawing. None of that matters today. I'm hesitant to recommend any particular approach to coding other than the fundamentals as outlined in Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, because I'm not sure we'll even recognize coding in the next 20 or 30 years. To kids today, perhaps coding will eventually resemble Minecraft, or building levels in Portal 2.
But everyone should try writing a little code, because it somehow sharpens the mind, right? Maybe in the same abstract way that reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from beginning to end does. Honestly, I'd prefer that people spend their time discovering what problems they love and find interesting, first, and researching the hell out of those problems. The toughest thing in life is not learning a bunch of potentially hypothetically useful stuff, but figuring out what the heck it is you want to do. If said research and exploration leads to coding, then by all means learn to code with my blessing … which is worth exactly what it sounds like, nothing.
So, no, I don't advocate learning to code for the sake of learning to code. What I advocate is shamelessly following your joy. For example, I received the following email yesterday.
I am a 45 year old attorney/C.P.A. attempting to abandon my solo law practice as soon as humanly possible and strike out in search of my next vocation. I am actually paying someone to help me do this and, as a first step in the "find yourself" process, I was told to look back over my long and winding career and identify those times in my professional life when I was doing something I truly enjoyed.
Coming of age as an accountant during the PC revolution (when I started my first "real" job at Arthur Andersen we were still billing clients to update depreciation schedules manually), I spend a lot of time learning how to make computers, printers, and software (VisiCalc anyone?) work. This quasi-technical aspect of my work reached its apex when I was hired as a healthcare financial analyst for a large hospital system. When I arrived for my first day of work in that job, I learned that my predecessor had bequeathed me only a one page static Excel spreadsheet that purported to "analyze" a multi-million dollar managed care contract for a seven hospital health system. I proceeded to build my own spreadsheet but quickly exceeded the database functional capacity of Excel and had to teach myself Access and thereafter proceeded to stretch the envelope of Access' spreadsheet capabilities to their utmost capacity – I had to retrieve hundreds of thousands of patient records and then perform pro forma calculations on them to see if the proposed contracts would result in more or less payment given identical utilization.
I will be the first to admit that I was not coding in any professional sense of the word. I did manage to make Access do things that MS technical support told me it could not do but I was still simply using very basic commands to bend an existing application to my will. The one thing I do remember was being happy. I typed infinitely nested commands into formula cells for twelve to fourteen hours a day and was still disappointed when I had to stop.
My experience in building that monster and making it run was, to date, my most satisfying professional accomplishment, despite going on to later become CFO of another healthcare facility, a feat that should have fulfilled all of my professional ambitions at that time. More than just the work, however, was the group of like-minded analysts and IT folks with whom I became associated as I tried, failed, tried, debugged, and continued building this behemoth of a database. I learned about Easter Eggs and coding lore and found myself hacking into areas of the hospital mainframe which were completely offlimits to someone of my paygrade. And yet, I kept pursuing my "professional goals" and ended up in jobs/careers I hated doing work I loathed.
Here's a person who a) found an interesting problem, b) attempted to create a solution to the problem, which naturally c) led them to learning to code. And they loved it. This is how it's supposed to work. I didn't become a programmer because someone told me learning to code was important, I became a programmer because I wanted to change the rules of the video games I was playing, and learning to code was the only way to do that. Along the way, I too fell in love.
All that to say that as I stand at the crossroads once more, I still hear the siren song of those halcyon days of quasi-coding during which I enjoyed my work. My question for you is whether you think it is even possible for someone of my vintage to learn to code to a level that I could be hired as a programmer. I am not trying to do this on the side while running the city of New York as a day job. Rather, I sincerely and completely want to become a bona fide programmer and spend my days creating (and/or debugging) something of value.
Unfortunately, calling yourself a "programmer" can be a career-limiting move, particularly for someone who was a CFO in a previous career. People who work with money tend to make a lot of money; see Wall Street.
But this isn't about money, is it? It's about love. So, if you want to be a programmer, all you need to do is follow your joy and fall in love with code. Any programmer worth their salt immediately recognizes a fellow true believer, a person as madly in love with code as they are, warts and all. Welcome to the tribe.
And if you're reading this and thinking, "screw this Jeff Atwood guy, who is he to tell me whether I should learn to code or not", all I can say is: good! That's the spirit!
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- API
- Arthur C. Clarke
- Australia
- Babbage
- BASIC
- basic Internet literacy
- Bloomberg
- Brendan Abel
- C
- car analogy
- car mechanics
- car transmissions
- Chris Vann
- CSS filter
- Douglas Rushkoff
- energy
- energy regulation etc
- favorite search engine
- Gina Trapani
- healthcare
- healthcare facility
- HTML
- HTML
- input/output device
- Ireland
- Ive
- Java
- Java
- JavaScript
- Jeff Atwood
- Kathy Sierra
- Linux
- Michael Lopp
- New York
- oil change
- operating system
- Oracle
- overall solution
- paint
- printer/software
- printing press
- real-world programming tools
- RPG
- search engine
- software developers
- software development
- software monopoly
- solo law practice
- Structured programming
- T.Y.S.O.N.
- United States
- Viagra
- VisiCalc
- word processing
Personality is the mysterious force that attracts us to certain people and repels us from others. Because personality greatly influences our decision-making process, it can be a powerful tool in design. In an exclusive excerpt from his spanking new book Designing For Emotion, Aarron Walter shows us how to create a strong human connection in human-computer interaction by turning our design interactions into conversations, imbuing mechanical "interactions" with distinctively human elements, and using design and language techniques to craft a living personality for your website.
- admin tools
- Athens
- budding web designers
- clever little web app
- Communication
- Content Brand Arts Design Graphic Design
- Dave Gorum
- Design
- design solutions
- easter
- Eddie Izzard
- Freddie Von Chimpenheimer IV
- Georgia
- Herbie
- Human-computer interaction
- Human–computer interaction
- Interaction design
- iPhone
- Jimmy Stewart
- Johannes Gutenberg
- John Gruber
- John Hodgman
- Justin Long
- Kool Moe
- Kool Moe Dee
- MailChimp
- Mark Jardine
- Persona
- Personality
- printing press
- Psychology
- Social psychology
- Tapbots
- Technical communication
- Technology blogger
- Todd Zaki Warfel
- United States
- Usability
- User interface design
- Volkswagen
- Volkswagen Beetle
- web design
- web design team
- web designers
- web experiences
- Web Standards Project
- Web Team
- YouTube
Stories have been around as long as we have, helping us understand our world and ourselves. We learn and retain information best through stories, because they turn information into more than the sum of its parts. But what makes a story a story, and what does it mean for the digital world we’ve built? Elizabeth McGuane and Randall Snare weave an enchanting tale of attention, comprehension, inference, coherence, and shopping.
The world has a new nation. The Republic of South Sudan officially seceded from Sudan on July 9, ending a 50-year struggle marked by decades of civil war. After a referendum earlier this year on independence passed with the support of 99% of the population of southern Sudan, events were set in motion that led to Saturday's celebration. Joy marked the festivities, but South Sudan faces steep challenges. Although the country has oil reserves and fertile soil, there is much poverty and little infrastructure. Collected here are images from the last several months, showing scenes of daily life, portraits of South Sudanese, and the celebration of independence. -- Lane Turner (36 photos total)
Thousands celebrate their country's independence during a ceremony in the capital Juba on July 9, 2011. South Sudan separated from Sudan to become the world's newest and 193rd nation. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
- Abyei
- Abyei
- afghanistan africa
- Andrew Burton
- Ashraf Shazly
- Belgium
- Bosnia
- Central Equatoria
- East Africa
- Emmanuel Malau
- food
- Getty Images
- Glastonbury Festival
- Goran Tomasevic
- Guardian.co.uk
- Independence Day
- iPhone
- Jau
- Juba
- Juba, Sudan
- Kapoeta
- Khartoum
- Khartoum
- Konyo Konyo
- Lane Turner
- Liberation Army
- Liberation Movement
- little infrastructure
- Marc Hofer
- Mary Ayok Thil
- Medecins Sans Frontieres
- Medecins Sans Frontieres January
- Mine Advisory Group
- Mundari
- North Africa
- NY Times Co.
- oil reserves
- Outline of Sudan
- Pariang
- Pete Muller
- Peter Martell
- Phil Moore
- Politics of Sudan
- printing press
- religion science society sports technology
- religion science society sports technology
- Roberto Schmidt
- Salva Kiir
- Second Sudanese Civil War
- South Sudan
- Spencer Platt
- Sudan
- Sudan
- Sudan's independence day
- Sudanese military
- The Citizen
- Thomas Mukoya
- Wunlit County
- Yambio