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By that reasoning, we should not teach kids how to spell, or about punctuation, and just aim for them writing essays/stories/novels.

I'm afraid I disagree. I programmed in a variety of languages in grad school (physics): C, C++, Fortran 77, Tcl, Perl, Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Emacs LISP, etc. Not to mention the stuff I started on in high school.

When I switched my analysis to Python, I became so much more productive. And other science researchers I have known have echoed this sentiment. Even writing a C module to speed up my Python was pretty straightforward, if tedious.

Python had the fewest surprises. And debugging other people's Python is exponentially less annoying than debugging other people's Fortran or C. It's still my go-to language to get stuff done without fuss.

Loren C. Larson; Mathematics Magazine Vol. 50, No. 2 (Mar., 1977), pp. 69-74

Bristles are brass (alloy of copper and zinc; corrosion resistant, food-safe), and not magnetic.

Solution: Uber.

From the article: A report this past week from investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein, titled “The Silent Road to Serfdom: Why Passive Investing Is Worse than Marxism,”

"serfdom", "Marxism"... Let me guess: Libertarian Party propagandist.

The prevailing attitude is "I want to do biology, not computer science". I find it pretty frustrating. This is probably one of the last fields of science to be seriously computerized.

Like all questions, the answer is "depends". :)

E.g. number of kids falling and breaking their arm will be larger, but the population is larger and medical care is better, now. So, overall, I think the risks are actually lower than when I was a kid running around unsupervised.

I don't know about the number of pedophile predators per capita, but I imagine that may be a roughly fixed proportion of the population. Kids now also have cellphones, so that's a lifeline kids never had in the past. So, I'd imagine that percentage would not really rise, either.

For scientific work, I find it worth the effort to compile from source using Intel compilers + MKL (or a compiler + math library that can optimize well for your particular hardware platform).

Perception: there's a 75% chance my kid will be kidnapped by a pedophile. Reality: there's a 0.01% chance of the pedophile kidnap, but a 75% chance of drowning in the bathtub.

Numbers are made up.

Perception is not reality.

Another example: Trayvon Martin was a dark-skinned young male wearing a hoodie. Perception: he is a criminal casing the houses in order to commit a future crime. Reality: he was a kid walking home to his house.

Other examples: * Perception of the likelihood of terrorist attack, vs likelihood of dying in a fatal traffic crash.

* Perception that vaccinations cause autism, vs reality that vaccinations prevent fatal disease.