bpyne

Good point.

Her teachers tend more toward the exception you described. They have conversations about the quality of sources. Teachers definitely follow some links to make sure students aren't bullshitting. She was definitely introduced to the mechanics of putting a bibliography together. But I think the emphasis is on looking at issues from different sides. I remember thinking that it sounded like my friend's recollection of law school where he had to make arguments from different points of view.

Critical thinking is taught in schools. When I think back far enough to my daughter's elementary school education, teachers were trying to develop it by at least 4th grade (9-10yo). Starting the next year, she had classes in civics that continued through to high school (14-18yo) where she is now. As I write this comment, her world history class is discussing yesterday's events in DC in a point/counter-point fashion.

Despite the effort to develop critical thinking skills, a small but not insignificant number of students parrot what they watch on questionable news outlets.

I tried black coffee for short durations and hated it. So, I'm willing to say my experience follows the conclusion of the study.

However, people have wide variations in what they taste (and smell) as pleasurable. Without reading the study, I have a hard time being as binary as "nobody likes the taste of coffee".

I quite several times over the years, one time as long as 6 months. I go back, ultimately, because I love the flavor.

That said, I would never work as early as 9am if I didn't have to. Caffeine allows me to jumpstart my brain for programming. I need coffee in particular: tea sustains but doesn't jumpstart.

Exercise first thing in the morning can act as a substitute for coffee in getting my brain jumpstarted. While I find it easy to exercise at 6:30-7am in the Summer and Fall, Winter and Spring in southern New England suck. At 6:30am, it's often dark, 10-20F, windy, and damp. It's an area made for depressions. I can't see ever giving up coffee while I live here.

It's important to point out that about every decade you're going to have to adapt your diet and exercise to meet changes in your body. I'm 53 now. When I don't exercise at least 5x/week I start to have sleeping issues. Alcohol affects me more, especially my sleep. Carb bombing happens with a portion of half the amount I could eat 10 years ago. Back to coffee, I have 2 espressos in the morning and, occasionally, one after lunch but never after 2pm. Breaking any of those coffee "rules" causes me hypertension, sleep loss, and/or a sour stomach.

Sorry for the tome. Hopefully some of it is useful.

The author seems burned out given his age. (I'm going to assume a male author given how few women were in the field 20 years ago.) I went through the same stage after working for a mid-sized financial institution. I had a plan to retrain as a physical therapist. I left the job and lived on savings and my wife's salary. Six months into it I started to write software again: I missed it. So I contracted for 1.5 years and wound up working in-house for a university as a developer. Here I stayed for 14 years now.

Early in my time at the university I started to feel again the way the author describes. When I started to attend local tech meetups and started to take university CS classes out of interest, I started to feel rejuvenated. About 3 years ago, I changed to a team of much younger developers. They used modern tools, had less bureaucracy, and developed distributed applications, which I had little experience with. That was the step I needed to get excited about development again. Now I'm working extra time on my own because I enjoy the work. I'm also taking up niche areas, like language design, in my personal time.

To anyone reading this who might feel the way the author does, I give the advice to focus on finding your cultural fit and figure out the priority of your values. When I worked for startup companies I loved the absence of bureaucracy and the rapid adoption of new technology. But I hated having to wear a lot of hats: I really despise desktop configuration and system administration. My current team has some bureaucracy but we have teams to handle the things I dislike. So it's a compromise that I feel works in my favor.

Yes! That was my experience exactly.

My university realized the need for a proof writing course a little too late to help me. Students who did well in the more abstract math classes, aside from the outlier "gifted" mathematicians, formed study groups. I wasn't mature enough at the time to realize how valuable those groups were so I went it alone and my grades reflected it.

I didn't notice if "participation" meant meals available or actually picked up by kids. Kids, particularly younger ones, who are in unstable households may not get to school in time to pick up what's available. Some districts have adapted by doing grab-and-go available anytime or serving meals in the classroom.

My biggest problems as a math major at the undergraduate level were proofs. I could muddle my way through abstract algebra proofs but real analysis just didn't click.

The oddity is that I could read proofs for both subjects: the reasoning made sense. But I couldn't develop a proof.

I have the same reaction. I suspect a lot of RAM is wasted by os's and applications.

Python is an excellent teaching language. It's simple to install. You follow a tutorial by typing something at the REPL and it gives you results. Learning stuff like importing modules, etc. happens as your coding ambitions increase.

Something else to consider is the Python shell at python.org/shell. Students often have Chromebooks. I'm about to mentor second year high school students who are interested in CS. Several of them have Chromebooks only. I can recommend Python and point them to the shell.

I would think Python got a good bump through Hour of Code and other programs to introduce people to coding.

Interesting tidbit. I'm take an online course in Mexican cooking. The first unit is making tortillas. The chef covered the traditional way. You take dried corn, cut from the cob, and soak it in lime (pickling lime) water overnight. Then you grind it. I wondered how Mexicans use corn as a staple when it doesn't digest well. Question answered.

Interesting. Does the domain setup forward to your web mail account?

I think we need to be careful about the free speech debate in this case. Free speech applies to civic life, not your relationship with a business. Near me we have a bar that doesn't tolerate swearing. On your first offense, the bartender gives a warning. On the second offense, you have to leave. The bar owner has the right to make a rule that makes his business a more pleasant environment. As a result, the bar does quite well. Google has the right to do the same in order to make the experience of YT better.

It's amazingly difficult to get away from. For those of us who had Yahoo email accounts, trying to get people to stop emailing them is a slow drawn out process. My wife and I switched to Gmail accounts at least 5 years ago. We still get friends and relatives sending to our Yahoo accounts. This, despite multiple requests to stop.

People seem to either reply all on old messages whenever they want to contact us or copy/paste email addresses from old messages, like invitations for Christmas parties, when they contact us. Either way we can't get away from Yahoo.

The other issue is companies using email addresses as user names. Just a few days ago, I went through Yelp to order a food delivery fulfilled by Grubhub. The order confirmation listed an old Yahoo account as the contact email. This was courtesy of Yelp using the Yahoo account as my login. Yelp provides a way to add an email address and make it the primary. Not all businesses do.

If I could snap my fingers and be done with Yahoo, I'd do it. I started to move us from it when Marissa Meyer was still CEO.