I recently migrated to clojure from the php world. I have to say that although I am still learning the language, its actually fun compared to php, which would sometimes feel like pulling teeth to get some basic functionality. Way less boilerplate, and as can be said of anything good, it just works.
Also, the idea of thinking in the problem domain versus the subset of problems that arise in languages like php is an acute difference. Just being able to focus on the product as your programming keeps you on task and thinking about new ways to implement features, etc. -- big difference.
I made a career move from dentistry to programming. And I would say that anything I've used pre-clojure is a good approximation of pulling teeth. But even pulling teeth has the benefits of knowing when you're finished and the direct customer feedback is usually good.
I'd been programming since a child and I think in all honesty I was pushed into dentistry by the people that love me and wanted me to make money.
However dentistry in London is medicine in two years then three years specialising in the head and neck. Then two years dentistry training.
I found it a LOT of learning facts. I know that knowledge-based systems are better than humans for that application.
I had the pleasure of learning human anatomy for two years with Prof Harrold Ellis. Which is what I really took away with me. The guy was a genius. And the other was "If you are not certain then say I don't know, never guess, always seek truth" not that many people appreciate that knowledge in my experience. Robotic surgery yes, lying about the safety of amalgamate fillings no and telling mums of the effects of sugar and carbonic acid drinks was not enough scientific exploration for me.
I think I was too young, always the youngest in my year, to really know and show what I wanted to do. I should have studied Physics but was told at the time "I'd end up a Physics teacher" as if this was a bad thing...
Pre-uni I wanted to build quantum computers but my Physics teacher at St John Ruskin College school didn't know what direction I should head in (the school at the time was also being ripped off by the head mistress, look it up, bad).
After that I got a scholarship to a private school to do A levels which was absolutely brilliant. Dulwich College an excellent school where I was treated like an adult and learnt maths, physics and chemistry. Two of the best years of my life.
Nobody noticed really that I wasn't just lazy and so it was very tempting to my parents to be told I could go to the best medical school etc when I pissed the exams.
So I went to the best medical school in the UK, Europe not really sure why.
After two years depression forced me to take some action and I quit and got a job in a bank as a COBOL programmer. I learnt that COBOL doesn't cure depression but can even make it worse. However I learnt from two old ladies who were probably employed AS computers in their prime. And they were the awesome COBOL dinosaurs.
From there on its always been a bit of struggle not having a degree. Although what I've taught myself, and continue to do so, is worth several degrees at least. Probably a PhD or two.
I now know a lot of programming languages and have lots of experience in them. Clojure took me to the next level with regards to meta-programming and language design. I still have hopes for genetic programming.
My interests now are really into augmented reality and basically augmentation of human perception, memory and "brain power" both in the progression of our species and knowledge itself.
That's another issue too. If it's not a public website that you're building it's quite hard to show off your work!
One of my favourites was a forward-chaining rules inference engine written in T-SQL on MS SQL Server for a sixth-form college. The Management Information System (MIS) was called unit-e built by Capita PLC and probably cost a LOT of money.
It was quite a good system, the query builder for advanced users was excellent (every MIS should have one), but it had a fair amount of data duplication - names, addresses, previous address etc. And the admin staff had lots of name changes and spelling corrections to make. Also you had the data entry dudes who'd write a lazy name like fiesta try basharat instead of Fiesta Try Basharat.
So I built the rules-engine as a stored procedure (SPROC) called by triggers on tables. The rules themselves were just simple SPROCs and some not so simple but the rule interface was simple and so the system was robust. All of a sudden every letter sent by the school was formatted properly and went to the correct address! The admin team even gave me and my junior a present! And the 'junior' became an expert in SQL and learnt a secret ninja weapon (rules, inference engines and conflict resolution).
How many good things were created? How do you demo the transition of knowledge? How do you monetize the time saved? How do you portfolio the potential for benefit of new rules that haven't been thought of yet?
Expansion of knowledge, the beginnings of infinities, there's so much out there I love it!
I'm in the process of making the move from PHP to Clojure as well. FYI, deploying to Amazon Elastic Beanstalk with the beanstalk leiningen plugin is a breeze.
I think this is a very interesting game with an important message. However, the UX could be more engaging by having a more vertical leveling up structure. I felt as if I wanted to get to the next level but the onslaught of questions seemingly never ended- after a bit this becomes disengaging, specially when you aren't shown how many more units are needed to graduate.
In case you're curious where it ends, you first go through the belief charts. Then you start working with a little probability calculator. It ends with an embedded google form with open-answer fields for responding to harder text questions.
Im not sure why there seem to be some negative comments, this is absolutely amazing- albeit a little scary in a sci-fi clockwork orange kind of way...
Additionally, consciousness gets commonly defined in philosophy of mind as the "likeness" of sensation and perception (i.e. its "like" something to smell roses and its "like" something to hear Mozart). So, this study cuts at the root of consciousness.
If by intelligence you mean something along the lines of information processing/synthesizing ability, then intelligence has been shown (hedging- strongly suggested) to be dynamic as the result of neuroplastic brain events. Assuming you believe some version of the brain = mind identity theory (otherwise, your intelligence may not depend on physical events and my example fails).
This article is interesting but it overgeneralizes. I don't think its fair to say of tech entrepreneurs that they are somehow managed by their investors. Sure, some might be, but they are the exception, not the rule. If you listen to the rhetoric and read stuff (like venture hacks) about top VC firms, they ultimately serve the entrepreneur. I'm sure that if they own a majority share of the company and the entrepreneur is going off the rails they would intervene and run the show-- but they are in the service business. This is the golden-age of awesome entrepreneurs ditching the "pointy haired bosses" that the author points to-- a bunch of pg's essays extrapolate on this concept.
At the other end, however, are startups that never make it big by design. Not that they do not have the capacity to scale (it technically would not be a "start up" in the traditional sense if it didn't), but they just strive for organic growth in a niche market. These cases blur the distinction that the author strives to make between the tech and main street entrepreneur.
"Creative had a technologically superior MP3 player, but customers preferred the iPod, to the utter dismay of the Creative managers. They just couldn’t understand how customers were so irrational!"
I think design is just as integral to 'technological superiority' as any other factor might be...
First, I agree with the sentiments of some of the above commenters, "coders" just sounds ridiculous.
Now, this question is ambiguous between two different interpretations of being "worth it". Clearly engineers are "worth it" by any economic metric--viz. high employment rates and high salaries (when mean rates are compared to other disciplines/jobs). But I take the OP to have an existential dimension built into the query. Meaning: does a hacker value what she does when contrasted against what she could be doing? So, whether or not hackers value what they do is completely different from what they do being worth while. Perhaps someone working on something at Google may value what she does less than working on her own startup idea. In this respect, to each his own.
I agree. At the end of the day, it always comes back to personality types and drives. Each startup needs different things in different phases. Maybe a really smart coder is exactly what a non-technical co-founder might need, whilst a resilient hustler is what a well groomed hacker needs. In general, universal quantification over statements that are not law-like are doomed to fail. (<- yes there is an embedded pun there).
This sounds like the first line of a Kafka-esque horror story.