For me, the right fit is Python and Javascript. However, my problems and your problems are not the same. Java EE might be the best choice for what you are tackling for all I know. Also, you'll likely find that the year being 2017 is not as important as you think it is.
For me, Anki reviews are a morning ritual. I do whatever it scheduled for the day. Then, I take time to review weaknesses. Then I move onto doing my actual projects. A combination of project experience and curiosity inform me as to what new Anki cards I need.
So yes and no to your question. Anki by itself isn't useful for learning to program. Anki as part of a larger personal development system can be pretty effective from my experience.
The first thing that pops into my brain is how memory allocation works on a computer. In that context, indirection works really well. My program makes a general request for memory resources. The vm handles talking to the operating system for me. The operating system deals with the virtualized and real addresses for accessing the memory my program needs. In most cases, I'm okay with this arrangement.
This issue is really all about systems in general be they computer or social. As things scale bigger, representative indirection becomes MORE important, not anachronistic as the article suggests. Said representation helps contain complexity and provides for a simpler interface.
And that's what the electoral college does. It simplifies things. It allows states to take care of their own election details. The central government doesn't have to much micromanage the details of every state. Their primary concern is who gets to that 270 electoral vote threshold. The fed level hopefully doesn't get too wrapped up in details of how ballots are cast or how votes are counted.
And yes, I concede that it's not necessarily "fair" and that there are edge cases that are unfortunate. But it is a reasonably stable and well-engineered system all things considered.
Morally, I agree with you. DRM is an exercise in futility. But you aren't really comparing apples to apples here.
I radio ripped my share of music too when I was a kid. It was a pain. I had no little control and often no warning about when a song I wanted would play. The dj would often talk over the start or end of the song. A song I wanted would sometimes fade transition with a song I didn't want. Reception sometimes stunk. If everything went right, the overall quality of the recording was still inferior to what you'd get if the single or album were just bought outright.
In the 80s, DRM was naturally built into the inconveniences of the technologies of the time. Now that technology has solved for those inconveniences, we find ourselves in a fundamentally different situation for both consumers and business.
The fun thing was that copyright law was probably never meant to be enforced against non-commercial copying. Of course, copyright laws are not the only example of laws that are poorly designed.
The truth is, you can't really design a law to withstand strong, powerful interest who simply want something not to happen. For RIAA, the society is kind of a piñata - you hit it with a stick, and candies fly out. A surprisingly popular business model, by the way.
At some point the piñata will break completely, though. Lots of candies, but then, game over.
That's not exactly the way I think of it. I try to be pragmatic about my tech choices, even if I might be wrong at times.
To pick on your NoSQL example. There was one project where I had a large set of records which were all JSON in a text file. There was no one set structure for it. Attempts to set up proper MySQL tables for these records didn't work out so well. It was only after the pain of trying that I decided that MongoDB made more sense for this "collection of documents".
Nope. jQuery came first. For me, it was a matter of spending a few years in Java shops. Most of the work was so server-side focused that I ended up forgetting a lot of my Javascript.
After leaving my last job, I decided I needed to update my skills and Angular seemed like a good road to go down. It was only recently that I decided to return to the old jQuery well to see what I could do with it vs. Angular. I'm glad I did.
I almost went down the event delegation route. The only thing that stopped me was having stumbled upon a tactic that happened to work where I just attached individualized event handlers one at a time. I appreciate the input and will make sure to give event delegation a second look.
>> Seems that SV and Stanford could do a lot more to fix the issues closer at hand in the Bay Area (homelessness, unaffordable living, rising inequality) and the US in general before solving all the worlds problems. Lead by example sort of stuff
Speaking as someone who currently struggles financially, one of those three things is not like the other....
Homelessness and unaffordable living are things that could potentially threaten me personally. Rising (income) inequality does not. There are bonuses and fat paychecks being received all the time by upper management in a casino nearby where I live. Those well-off managers are not the sort of things that are worth losing sleep over.
Hope that things work out for you. Definitely agreed there's a difference in immediate existential threat between those categories, but concentration of wealth isn't wholly unrelated. Some would argue it's a cause.
>> The true roots of liberal arts (which used to include everything from astronomy to mathematics to botany) lie in creating a well-rounded, educated, sophisticated person.
That's fine so long as you actually want to become the person that liberal arts education strives to create. That archetype is a lovely justification for four years and the student loan equivalent of a 2016 Porsche 911.
The instance or the archetype, on the other hand, is not so nice. If somebody ever called me "sophisticated", I would assume that they were being sarcastic or condescending. If I called someone else "unsophisticated", that would make me look like an elitist jerk.
As for being "well-rounded", liberal arts college education is both redundant and contradictory. It's redundant because we already have K-12 education to "broaden horizons beyond one's comfort zone". It's contradictory because the whole idea of college majors pushes students to be LESS well-rounded in favor of a specialization.
