I have relatives with property along a river in Bath county Virginia. Across the river stands a ~200ft high cliff with caves that go for miles. I was told that they were formed by the ocean. That explanation bothered me because the caves face west. Now it makes sense! They have also discovered seashell fossils by the river!
> He then told me about an Arabic parable or the like that each child comes with a bag of money.
I can see how an empathetic person having children would increase their focus to succeed, but what is the limit on the number of kids? How would one know when to stop having kids? Why did you stop at four kids? Are you going to have more?
While indeed the story as told sounds like I am promoting copious reproduction, really one child fulfills the meaning of the parable: Many if not most of us operate at a very low level of effort, and succeed to some degree regardless. Having a child (which really is a surrogate for "having a reason to pursue success", which to others might simply be intrinsic drive) seems to make many focus the effort and improve efficiency.
We didn't expect our third child, or the fourth for that matter. That's life though, and I'm a very roll with it sort of person and am extremely pleased with how things have turned out.
Of course I am speaking from a very privileged position of happening to have the right sort of mind at the right moment in history in the right situation where I can talk about pissing most of my time away and still achieving what many would consider a lot of success. This obviously doesn't apply to all careers or all people.
I am not a psychologist, so give careful consideration to what I am about to say.
Have you ever noticed that you can achieve a goal when there is no pressure or expectation? If that is the case, I recommend finishing this semester the best that you can, and then take a one or two year break from school.
Apply your creativity to a project that incorporates some of your education so far. Don't set a deadline, don't tell anyone about it, and don't concern yourself with whether the project can be monetized. Come up with a project that starts out small but can be built onto and improved. A project that can be used later in a larger project is ideal. Don't spend a lot of time researching before you get started; simply start on it. Don't obsess over details; remind yourself that you are working on a prototype, and that afterwards you will be building another one. Take regular breaks from the project and go back over past course materials for ideas in ways to improve your next design. Most importantly, the whole process should be FUN.
The one or two years spent should allow you time to fortify your education and change your subconscious attitude towards engineering. Completing a large project will give you a reference point of what it takes to succeed in the long term.
On the days that I workout in the morning I skip the first dosage.
You need to be very consciously aware of yourself, because it can be easy to forget about yourself. Buy a sphygmomanometer if you don't already have one so that you can regularly keep an eye on your blood pressure. Make certain that you are eating and drinking regularly. Finally, make sure that you are getting enough sleep.
NEVER take more then the prescribed amount; regardless of whether the medication is working or not. Certain foods can dampen the strength of the medication; particularly foods with citrus. The common tendency that I have seen, is to take another dosage because of the perceived lack of effect. This might just be the single most significant reason why people spiral out of control. Regardless of how they feel or perform, the medication is in their system, and by adding another dosage, will cause their tolerance to rise. The rise in tolerance will only make it that much more likely that person will experience the same scenario in the near future.
...for now. The bar to entry will be lowered as development tools increase in sophistication, programming languages become more abstract, learning resources become easier to grasp, and children are taught programming at a younger age. In the future we will likely see the market become saturated with programmers. This is not bad for society. However, competition will be significantly higher for less pay. I'm willing to bet that if you're in your 30s (maybe even 40s) you will likely see this play out before retirement.
This has been drummed up over and over, and frankly the trends aren't promising. We aren't graduating any more STEM grads than we were in 1985, despite increased college attendance on the whole [1]. I don't know how to interpret this, other than there aren't very many engineers on the margin.
I don't think this will result in a flood of for-reals programmers any more than math or writing courses result in tons of mathematicians or writers. What it could/should result in is a future generation of people who even if they don't seriously pursue programming are at least able to hack together scripts to automate tasks that are important to them, just like they are now (hopefully) able to do enough math to get by or enough writing to communicate ideas in whatever field.
So I'm in support of the idea fully, though like barbs I think the video is fluff marketing bullshit that paints an inaccurate picture of most software development.
There is quite a bit of focus on the jobs aspect here, which will inevitably push people towards the business.
When I was a student, there was a similar push for teachers (a field also having a shortage of people at the time). The result is that I have several friends who are fully qualified to be teachers that haven't been able to find work in the industry for many years now.
I agree that simply having programming in school isn't going to see everyone becoming programmers. Programming has been offered in the schools here since at least my father's time – though there does seem to be a disproportionate number of programmers come from my region, for what it is worth. However, code.org specifically does seem to come with the purpose of trying to bring more people into the industry.
"It sounds like lots of the interested people are more interested in preparing students for a career in software engineering"
That could be the case. Programmers are expensive because there isn't enough to meet demand. If you can get a lot more people interested and entering into the market, the cost will go down. I would imagine an employer would prefer programmer's salary to be more in line with what a typical employee's salary is. If there is an end goal, it would probably be to make programming an expected skill set in addition to a specialty, rather than a specialty in of its own.
