Thanks, but this was actually made by my friend Nathan Bashaw (nbashaw). I just submitted it because I think it's awesome :) I think the tool is great for a certain group of people: beginners and front-end folks who want to quickly see what something looks like or do some debugging.
I'm not sure if codepen supports the realtime google-docs-style collaboration, either, which Scratchpad is good for. It's simple product with no superfluous features.
If these are the type of students I'm thinking of, they really don't want to become computer scientists, or software engineers, even. They want to learn how to code so they can build stuff, namely web apps. I'm assuming that since they don't want/can't handle a theoretical program, yet still think they want to learn Comp Sci, they fit this description.
So I'd teach towards that:
1) an understanding of the technology stack for a web app
2) Javascript
3) Ruby or Python w/ Rails or Django
Yes, I think web apps is a significant part of it. Looking at projections of software sales, web apps and web app support are on the horizon for almost everyone.
Literally die the hour you lose your job? No. But lose a job and become homeless? Or desperately find another job that barely supports your family and you end up living in poverty in a neighborhood with high crime? Almost every major US city.
I wonder--does it become less special because it's sent in a medium like this? Nearly automating the process seems to take the thought out of it, and it really is the thought that counts with your parents.
Since this is mostly satire--what are some actually good articles/blog posts about how to write better? I'm familiar with "Writing, Briefly". Any other suggestions?
I think a no-commitment sampler of the kind of music I'm signing up for would be sufficient. I would toy around with that and make a better informed decision based on it. I probably would not sign up for a free trial.
The price did make me hesitate at first for sure, though. Once I understood that it's for 365 songs I felt better about it.
So, I just recently taught myself HTML & CSS, and this is my first project.
It's a simple site for people who like indie music--you can subscribe to a list for 16 bucks and get emailed a new artist everyday. I'm doing payments thru PayPal (I know, I know).
Any and all thoughts & criticism would be welcome. Thanks!
I personally think that the "internet" does need to learn about Congress, or at least be aware of what is going on. ICANN controls the root DNS servers for TLDs, and before ICANN, the US government did.
(addressing both you and waqf, bringing up the same point: The US is in control of some nice part of the internet infrastructure):
You are right, of course. That means that I care about a world-wide disruption caused by (local) laws in the US. I read about those and follow the development of these laws to a point.
The article addresses the internet first (me included) and then talks about educating the US congress and throwing money at US lobbyists, while fixing the US system so that it doesn't _need_ this kind of involvement anymore.
I'm sorry, but that leaves me out.
- I cannot take part in the education of statesman overseas/abroad and doubt that they'd listen to me
- I certainly won't (especially on an individual level, but even corporate that would be waaaay weird and wrong) throw money at lobbyists in another country
- I'm not allowed to take part in the political system in the US, so I cannot realistically help with any systematic change
I think while you are, as I already admitted, entirely correct about the fact that Congress might affect the whole world, the article is still wrong in calling out to 'The Internet' to fix it. The issues have to be resolved locally. My way of influencing it _might_ be voting for a party that wants to wrangle for informational freedom in the EU and more independence from the US, but that's about it.
> Also, hand-made isn't fighting against capitalism, it's fighting against mass-production, sweat-shops and machine-people jobs like the ones portrayed on Chaplin's City Lights or even Discovery Channel's How It's Made.
That's capitalism. To be more specific, those are inevitable effects of capitalism.
The inevitable effects of capitalism as taken to the extreme, losing any sense of humanity. Which seems to be where we're going. However, I don't agree it has to be this way. Comments like yours push any form of capitalism into the bad stuff corner, throwing out the baby with the bath water IMO.
It's not that any and all forms of capitalism are bad, but capitalism has its benefits and its drawbacks. Obviously, there are lots of benefits. The aforementioned effects are some of its drawbacks.
I'm not sure why people have this notion that we can only take the good parts of capitalism and leave out the bad parts. It seems this is what you're suggesting--but how would we do that? Because when you do, you're most likely making the economy _less_ capitalist, and more of a mixed market economy.
You get the good parts of capitalism by not treating it as the end-all solution to everything, but using it as a tool where appropriate and curbing its excesses where necessary.
Seems that what you call a mixed market economy is exactly what I meant. It worked for a long time for quite a few countries here in Europe, until "free market" was suddenly considered a panacea for everything according to the ones in power. Before we got to the casino-economy of today...
I agree with you. I think the free market infatuation many US politicians have without truly understanding it is a major reason for our predicament.
That said, a free market is capitalism at its purest, and in a free market, we'll get sweatshops and the like (which are very sought-after jobs in developing countries).
I guess my point is: semantics matter. If we want to push back against these effects, I think it's important to realize we're actually pushing ourselves away from capitalism and more towards a mixed market economy, which is a good thing in my judgement. But we shouldn't see a mixed market economy and call it capitalism, because they're not the same thing--mixed market economies attempt to mitigate capitalism's negative effects.
That's capitalism. To be more specific, those are inevitable effects of capitalism.
I'm always wary whenever anyone says "That's the effect of capitalism", since Karl Marx thought that global socialism was the inevitable effects of capitalism. So which is it? Global socialism or expoiltative labour?
I'm not sure if codepen supports the realtime google-docs-style collaboration, either, which Scratchpad is good for. It's simple product with no superfluous features.