Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".
I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...
Regarding what this looks like in a few decades, I talked elsewhere in the thread about slideshow evenings and it was correctly pointed out these are exclusively thought of as a joke. I believe that's where we're going: we'll mock the narcissistic behaviour out of the culture. This is a good start: http://youtu.be/Nn-dD-QKYN4. Of course, a new thing will come along and it all repeats.
"Stop using strncpy already!"... or you might as well write an article called "Stop using null-terminated strings already!"... or since many commenters here have already pointed that out, and the author is talking about C++ anyway, perhaps "Stop fearing std::string already!"
I got that sense as well. Which led me to the ask: so what is the point of this post? To spend many more paragraphs essentially saying what we already know.
Cooking is not for everybody. But we still learn to cook.
Mechanics is not for everybody. But I was still out their working on the car yesterday.
Politics is not for everybody. But I still vote.
Accounting is not for everybody. But I still do my taxes and balance my budget.
It can all be summed up with one sentence: Every job is not for everyone.
I dunno. There are vast patches of ocean that are going pretty much unused right now.
(Yes, I know that's still science-fiction, but is it really that much more of a stretch than the AI/robot/automation "software will eat the world" firm-belief that you see daily on HN?)
Since I've been trying to deconstruct "programmer" into "systems analyst" and "coder" in other comments, I might as well continue in that vein here, but with a slightly different tack:
Farming is a lot more like "software engineering" than "programming". You can't pause a farm. It's an "engine" that you have to keep running, no matter what calamity occurs (weather, breakdowns, etc.)
indeed, but if your goal is not running it for profit but just producing tasty organic veggies from a hobby garden, then things mostly just work if you're in a temperate area with predictable climate. Just keep watering it and it will grow to the point of producing stuff, even if you totally mess up everything else. Software, on the other hand, rarely "just works"... nature and the "experience of evolution" are not on your side in the programming field...
Does being able to land on other celestial bodies and examine them up close not count as world-changing for you? Or do you think we could pretty much just do space exploration without computers?
I don't disagree - but energy, mining, and forestry are also fundamental parts of the economy (with transportation, construction, and manufacturing on the level just above those), and if we're talking about giving kids a rudimentary insight of the mechanics and economy of this big system in which we all live, I don't see any reason to stop at agriculture.
I agree with your point. But to riff off dschiptsov's comment, how do you define "programming" (as opposed to, say, "coding"), and how does knowing programming help you answer questions like "How can I speed up harvesting on my farm?"
I would call the ability to understand and solve those kinds of problems analysis, not programming. It used to be the case that "systems analyst" and "programmer" were two different job titles; at this point, they've largely merged, but I still see them as two different skill sets. (And then there's "software engineer" which is a whole other can of worms.)
That's a fair question, so I'll try to explain how I see it. Problem analysis as you mentioning it, to me, seems like the theoretical form of programming. So here I see "coding", or programming, as an easy way to practice problem analysis in a real context, and not just by going through a text book like we do with math in school.
And I agree with you regarding programmers and system analysts. There are so many titles and job descriptions nowadays that try to look fancier than the other just to make it easier arguing for a higher salary. Even if what they do is basically the same. Here in Sweden, there is a long running "joke"-ish alternative title for a cleaner, and that is "hygiene technician". One sounds fancier than the other, but it really isn't.
Regarding how speeding up the harvesting would be done, I have no idea since I am not at all familiar with how a farm works. The point I was trying to make is that if you have knowledge about the domain of farming, AND you know how to program (or if you are good at problem analysis, which I think you are if you can program), then I'm sure that it would be easier to think of something than if you weren't.
Does it make sense or am I just rambling like a crazy person? :D
That's a reasonable answer, and yes, it makes sense.
You could say analysis is a theoretical form of programming, or correspondingly, that programming is an applied form of analysis -- specifically, applied on computers.
I guess my main reservation is that if kids' first exposure to analysis is through programming, there's a risk of skewing their perception towards looking for solutions that use computers. ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")
In my experience, I've seen problems that have been approached like: We're doing X too slowly, and it's costing us; what kind of computerized tool can we build to let us do X more quickly? And after the tool has been built, it introduces a new set of processes with its own set of burdens, and X is not really done significantly more quickly. My conclusion is that you often need to step back and re-examine what people are actually doing (and why), and what they actually want to accomplish (and why.)
(And a significant obstacle with that is that people develop habits, and they get comfortable with them, and don't want to change them -- so, without knowing the details of the problem, the first step in "How can I speed up harvesting?" would probably be to have some willingness and flexibility to try out variations in your methods of harvesting.)
If we can find ways of teaching kids to program that build their problem-solving skills while also not clouding their heads with the idea that computers are necessarily part of the best solution, I'm all for it.
YMMV, but I found this poisonous. At least mildly so.
My hobbies are what I do for fun. I don't give one whit if they're ultimately "successful". I engage in them because I find them intrinsically interesting.
After reading this, I feel like there is a peer pressure, however slight, to have hobbies that have "momentum" which will ultimately make them "the future". (Like, oh no, maybe I'm engaging in the "wrong" hobbies, because I'm pretty sure than in 10 years, still not everyone will be building ships in a bottle.)
This sort of pressure completely defeats the point of having a hobby, sucks all the fun out of it, and will leave me personally feeling discouraged and apathetic (for this morning at least -- until I can flush this mild poison from my system.)
i respect your perspective, but i think instead you should consider that many (all?) of the hobbyists Chris is talking about weren't concerned with "momentum".
I understand there has been a sharp rise in natural gas (and a corresponding drop in coal and nuclear) in the past two years, since fracking took off. (I wouldn't be surprised if coal is still at the top though.)
Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".
I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...