[NeoTifa]

I've been throwing about $500 per month at my student loans and decided to see what kind of progress I was making.

[modi123_1]

Are you under the possible 5 billion dollars of National Collegiate that could get wiped out?

[ArtificialSoldier]

I think that covers about 12 people.

[modi123_1]

hmm.. an interesting choice Standford..

Quote

Stanford University dumps Java as an introductory programming language
[...]In its latest update to the Programming Methodology course code CS 106J, the University replaced the difficult to master Java language that was present in CS 106A, with the more palatable language Javascript. Even though to the layman the difference might seem arbitrary just from the namesake; but in reality, this makes programming easier to understand mainly due to the latter having less 'bloat' to contend with.[...]

[BetaWar]

Making all CS students web developers... great. Because it isn't already hard enough to find qualified people in lower-level languages. With any luck they still teach the fundamentals of datastructures/ algorithms/ etc. in a lower-level language later on.

[modi123_1]

I may have to hire a Romanian bot-wrangler to making an overwhelming number of submissions to have them switch to PHP.. the language greatness.. as jon intended.

[Damage]

i dunnnno, given some of the quirks that javascript has like variable hoisting and being almost indiscriminate when it comes to typing, would that make it harder for someone new to programming to move to another language?

[jon.kiparsky]

The school that has served as the home and haven for DEK for so many decades is going to be a javascript school? Bigly sad.

I honestly don't understand the fixation with Javascript as a beginner's language. I honestly can't imagine a worse language to start someone off with. I mean, even BASIC - good old fashioned line-number BASIC, like grandpa used to use - is a better choice. At least if you write a couple of programs in BASIC, you're going to come away understanding something about program flow and how it works and why it's a good thing to write clear code.

Quote

It's pretty much known to anyone in the programming world that Java is one of the hardest languages to learn right off the bat; that is if you've never written a line of code in your life.

Say what? Who has trouble learning Java? Yeah, it's got about four quirks too many for most people to really enjoy programming in it, but how is it difficult? Especially compared with Javascript, which has all the complexity of Java's syntax bolted awkwardly onto a sorta-functional language, and enough weird idiosyncratic boobytraps to fill a book

Some days I wonder about people. Other days, I'm pretty sure. Today is one of the latter.

[BetaWar]

Trying (once again) to install gentoo on a VM. Hopefully this time I succeed. I have tried a couple of times in the past, but I always wind up with a system that doesn't boot at the end. At the moment though, it appears to be hanging on compiling systemd, so that's fun.

[Martyr2]

I think I would have started students off with something like Python if they wanted to get away from verbosity and yet still have a lot of flexibility without having all the quirks of JS. I get this feeling that JS will eventually be replaced as soon as browser vendors can get on the same page and come up with a language that is more well thought out.

[BetaWar]

Agreed, and I think the replacement is already in the works. Between WebAssembly, and people putting forward the idea of having native typescript support in browsers, the web could be looking at a drastic change in how it is developed.

[jon.kiparsky]

Installed emms. Seems to work pretty good. Going to play with it for a while, and then it's goodbye iTunes

(yes, emacs has now taken over music playback on my computer... trying to decide if I'm going to take on Slack or Jira next...)

[depricated]

Been making my dreams come true.

Saturday was surreal. It was like a dream. Back in February we booked a show at the smallest major venue in town. This is the stage I first saw Green Day, NOFX, Goldfinger, REM, Radiohead, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Reel Big Fish, Flogging Molly, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. I've been to a lot of shows there, and when I was like 14 I was like "I want to play on the stage some day." Then last January, before we even played out first gig, I said to my bandmates, "next year we're playing at Bogart's." I made good on both promises. I was totally geeking out in the green room, too. Tried hard to maintain my cool, but the whole time I was internally like

One of the hosts of a local radio station was MCing the event, and is gonna play our song next Sunday night on a spot featuring local artists. So we'll have hit radio play.

And we're booking a tour in October! I think 10th-18th. I don't have a full itinerary yet but we're joining our friends Misunderstood - who sound kinda like the Distillers.

So I guess the next big thing to me is to open for a National act.

[jon.kiparsky]

That's pretty cool stuff.

[BenignDesign]

Graphic fucking-shoot-me-in-the-head design. It's always graphic design. They keep promising to hire a designer so I can focus on my actual job, yet here I sit... day after day... designing shit.

Today's design du jour: Creating a poster announcing a research award winner... in the "style of film noir"....

On the plus side, I made some kick ass zucchini bread over the weekend, so at least I have something tasty to munch on while working on this shit.

This post has been edited by BenignDesign: 24 July 2017 - 07:13 AM