It's more of a response to the market. Beginning about 5 years ago I was increasingly asked to do more numerically oriented things. Prior to that I was mostly writing applications that generated SQL and wrapped the results in some HTML. Pretty boring. Data science is more compelling.
Over the past 15-20 years there has been a massive amount of information piling up in databases and log files; not just from web applications but from desktop and mobile apps too. And there are companies who want to pan for gold in that data. So if you want to do something more interesting than fiddle with canvases, or CSS or MVC frameworks, then data science is fairly accessible if you're not afraid of math. Furthermore, most companies will have a need for it even if you don't really care to develop their software products directly.
NB: I doubled my salary by moving into data science. Nowadays gas station attendants can write a Rails app to search a database. The bar has been lowered. Understanding stochastic gradient descent (among other things) and knowing where/when to use it commands more earning power.
"I was mostly writing applications that generated SQL and wrapped the results in some HTML. Pretty boring." - This is basically why I'm interested in making the move (eventually). Earning power may turn out to be a perk but the main motivation is something that is perpetually stimulating.
I agree with the author in general. However, I would write an article about a more general and insidious fashion (fashion repeats itself). That fashion is "I hate typing" or, alternatively, "typing less makes me more productive." Guess what; it doesn't. Here's why.
If you're using programming slang to make yourself more productive, then you're not programming. You're a boiler-plate code generator. Therefore you could be replaced by a program or DSL that a more adept programmer could write. Stop using slanguages and start thinking about what and how you're coding. You'll become a better programmer. Quit trying to fool yourself that syntactic sugar and shortcuts are a valid development paradigm. You'll become a better project manager.
I abhor things like CoffeeScript and Markdown and various metalanguages, because they are speciously productive at first. You type less and get the same result. Great! However, most coding actually requires some thought and the logic and structures don't simply fly off your fingers. It comes slowly and these slanguages stop being useful at this point. So you take the time and effort to learn a modified, non-standard syntax that stops paying off once you get to the core of your task.
I hate to think of how many wasted programming man-hours non-standardized formats have produced.
I think that the original post and your comment both miss the point in a big way.
You are upset at all the people who use markdown and think they are coders. Do you really think such a sample of people exists? Where exactly? Nobody can say that with a serious face and anybody who's into learning markdown has at least enough knowledge to know that.
Use case for markdown: when I build website (by hand, writing pure HTML-CSS-JS on my text editor of choice), adding the copy can be a chore. If I write it in markdown, or ask people to write it in markdown, or reprocess whatever they send me in a markdown editor with html output (I.e. Byword), I save a ton of time by producing a very simple html text block I just need to copy and paste where needed.
Second use case: when I wrote my degree thesis I chose to do that with a normal text processing software (Pages on the Mac). When I had to put it online, I simply copied it inside a markdown editor coupled with a previewer (Marked) and I quickly wrote a couple of scripts to convert footnotes (supported by hyper markdown). Half a day later I had my chapters in a format that I was able to quickly turn into html blocks for my website and convert to ePub with Pandoc. Markdown saved me hours of work.
Third use case: whenever I write a post for the web publications I work for, I write it in markdown with Byword, because it gives me a good distraction-free writing environment and the ability to send my editors (that being myself, sometimes) a perfectly fit HTML a version of the article. When I write articles, I want to focus on writing the article, not writing even the simplest HTML.
Last, but not least, the guy seems to willfully ignore the plethora of very good markdown editors (with incredible support to HTML conversion) out there.
This is why the article sounded more like a bitter rant, than a thought critique.
It's a critique, impassioned and curt albeit; and here's the most powerful metaphor you'll hear in regard to the topic of non-standardized formats.
Non-standardized formats/languages are the jive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_jive_talk) of the development world. It sets you apart from the general population (of programmers) when you use it. It primarily effects obfuscated communication to a smaller group. The specific form of jive will fall out of fashion a few years after you learn it. There is very little value in committing it into your brain other than for 'funsies'.
(In regard to Markdown specifically: there are tons of WYSIWYG HTML editors out there. Use those and copy/paste the HTML text. It requires no learning at all. Markdown was pre-emptively made useless over a decade ago.)
From what I can tell, Medicare doesn't run out, and its benefits are not contingent on employment history.
It doesn't sound like he's hospitalized right now. (Medicare covers 90 days of hospitalization per benefit period, with a lifetime reserve of 60 days that does run out.)
The hospitalization part of Medicare has no cost -- all you have to do is be in the right age group and sign on the dotted line. The cost segment of Medicare deals with medical procedures other than a hospital visit.
As far as I understand it, the present campaign is described as being for his after-hospitalization expenses.
My advice is to completely downplay your [lack of] education. If they ask you about it, just tell them you are self-taught, and wait for the next question. You should focus on what you've done at your job and outside projects. Emphasize the results you've gotten and the systems you've built.
You might have a slight disadvantage during the initial part of the recruitment process (resume submission). My advice in regard to that is to try and get in touch or meet the non-HR people at the company. That way you get can a referral and your resume is just a formality. If this isn't an option for you, the just make sure you keyword your work experience well, and pray. :)
Lithium is not like you describe. I've taken half a dozen SSRI's, which at times made me feel totally empty and without motivation. I've taken one antipsychotic (risperidone) and it made me feel like an utterly stupid zombie, so much so that I stopped taking it against my doctor's orders. I was put on lithium and I found that I'm completely capable of feeling a full range of emotions, but what I don't experience is the accelerated spiraling of emotions that can send me into depression or mania. Compared to more recent psychotropic medications, lithium is pretty mild in terms of unwanted side effects; the only drawback is that if you're on a high dose, you have to stay hydrated to avoid lithium toxicity. That's a pretty small price to pay to stay level.
Quite a lot of psychiatric drugs affect different people in different ways; I would be very unsurprised if the people the grandparent post recounts describing it as "turning into a soulless robot" are fairly describing their own experience, while the parent post fairly describes that poster's experience.
One probably should avoid hastily generalizing one's own experience to what the drug's effects are like generally.
We'll agree to disagree then. I've heard several complaints about lithium but none of them was "it turns me into a soulless robot." The way lithium works is by stabilizing mood, not by inducing a different mood like other medications (i.e. antidepressants). So I'm going to be facetious and say the people making those claims were soulless robots before taking lithium.
Too little too late. The "usefulness" of that ephemerality feature hasn't stuck. One of the reasons why many of my friends quit using disappearing photo apps was because they actually wanted to keep many of the photos they took and sent, but couldn't because there's no option to. They all switched to more standard chat apps.
Just a guess, but it's probably a similar situation in the US when the same cohort is compared to their ancestors. My mom (66 years old) is certainly way better off than her mother was at 66+. My friends' parents seem to be similarly comfortable in their golden years. Post-WWII largesse really paid off for them, but who's really going to pay for it?
In GRASP this is called "Pure Fabrication" - a thing that is not directly modeled in the problem domain. Initially, adding a search method to Product seemed sensible by using "Information Expert" (another GRASP term), but when proceeding on to adding suggestions and requiring the User object, it begins to violate "Low Coupling". You have to "fabricate" another object to avoid the God object.
My depression didn't respond well to five SSRIs, one SNRI, two tricyclics and one tetracyclic. It turns out I didn't have major depressive disorder, but bipolar 2. The only medication that worked to alleviate my depression was Lamictal (lamotrigine). It also caused no side effects at all.
There are a few other medications that can be safely added to SSRIs, if you're not getting enough benefit from them. Lamictal is one of them. Buspar (buspirone) can also be added to help with anxiety. It's neither an SSRI (doesn't seem to work for you) nor a benzodiazepine (addiction potential), so perhaps it's worth a try.
But talk with your doctor, because I don't know your particular disorder or medication history.
My qualm isn't with the pharmaceuticals companies, oddly enough. I have issues with the psychiatrists mostly. They rely far too much on literature and don't listen to their patients. Also, the patients are overly supine and continue treatments that aren't effective (or are partially effective with significant side effects). This combination of behaviors is toxic and leads to reduced quality of life for the patient.
Over the past 15-20 years there has been a massive amount of information piling up in databases and log files; not just from web applications but from desktop and mobile apps too. And there are companies who want to pan for gold in that data. So if you want to do something more interesting than fiddle with canvases, or CSS or MVC frameworks, then data science is fairly accessible if you're not afraid of math. Furthermore, most companies will have a need for it even if you don't really care to develop their software products directly.
NB: I doubled my salary by moving into data science. Nowadays gas station attendants can write a Rails app to search a database. The bar has been lowered. Understanding stochastic gradient descent (among other things) and knowing where/when to use it commands more earning power.