No, I can't. I started out and I sucked. I got better eventually through experience. In order for it to be truly bimodal, people have to start in either camp A or camp B and end in the same camp they started in. Because if you transition from one to another over time, any point in time will capture a group of people in between the modes. Now, you can argue that people don't spend much time in between those modes but you haven't presented any evidence for that. What's more likely is you have geocities coders on one tail and John Carmack/Linus Torvolds on the other tail. And in between are people like the presenter and I. And since I'm not instantaneously going from bad to good, the reality of the situation is most likely some degree of a normal curve filled with people trying to get better at programming or even just getting better though spending lots of time doing it and learning a little along the way.

For all your attacks on the presenter, your argument of a bi-modal distribution sounds more flawed to me. I would love to see your study and hear your argument.

To be fair, you can spend a great deal of time talking about something and make progress on the issue without solving it.

For example the current metrics are abysmal so it's worth explaining why they're abysmal. I just was able to delete several thousand lines of JavaScript from one of my projects after a data model change (through code reuse and generalization) -- yet I increased functionality. My manager was confused and thought it was a bad thing to get rid of code like that ... it was absolute dopamine bliss to me while he felt like our production was being put in reverse. KLOC is a terrible metric. But yet we still need to waste a lot of breath explaining why it's a terrible metric.

Another reason to waste a lot of time talking about a problem without reaching an answer is to elaborate on what the known unknowns are and speculate about the unknown unknowns. Indeed, the point of this article seemed to be to advertise the existence of unknown unknowns to "recruiters, venture capitalists, and others who are actually determining who gets brought into the community."

Perhaps ... but that would imply that one does not transition over time from one hump to the next or if they do, it's like flipping a light switch. When I read this I assumed that he was talking only about people who know how to program and not "the average person mixed in with programmers."

But you just said there's no way to measure this ... how could he have collected data? What data set could have satiated us? The answer is quite obvious and such collection would have been a larger fool's errand than the original article's content.

Natural gas can be converted into heat too, with staggering efficiency. Nearly perfect efficiency, actually! It's in transferring that heat into the thing/substance you want heated that the losses are incurred; but a good condensing boiler can easily put 98% of the energy stored in natural gas into the water that it's heating.

So really, if the metric (that we seem to agree on) that determines "quality" of energy is how efficiently it can be converted to something else, Natural Gas is pretty damn good.
=Smidge=

It's not an idiotic waste of energy if:

1) The energy would otherwise come from other, equally high grade (or even higher grade) energy sources, e.g. natural gas

2) The energy would otherwise come from non-renewable sources, e.g. natural gas

3) The energy would otherwise not be used at all due to overproduction

The monetary value of electricity flowing back into the grid on net metering is extremely low - much lower than the cost to purchase that electricity from the grid. If you have a choice between selling the power to the grid or using it to "generate low grade heat" with an electric stove, then the stove wins just on financial grounds.

If your argument is that you could use direct solar thermal methods to generate that heat - skipping the conversion to electricity - then sure it would be more efficient that way. When the source of energy is free, however, and you have already invested in the infrastructure for other reasons, it makes perfect sense to utilize solar electricity for cooking and cleaning. The alternative is to invest even more on additional infrastructure to utilize the same free energy source in a moderately more efficient way.

Use it or lose it, as they say.
=Smidge=

From owner's estimations, ~90% of the battery's stated capacity is actually available for use. The 10% is not so much "fail-over" capacity as it is a buffer to keep the battery away from the extremes of charge/discharge states, where most of the degradation occurs.

Your cell phone battery has no problems charging to 100%, since you want to get as much energy (and therefore use time) in there as possible for the weight. However, charging to 100% harms the chemistry, and after a few years the battery no longer lasts as long. That's fine for a cell phone - part of it is planned obsolescence, part of it is the reality that a lot of people won't keep their phone more than a few years.

In an EV you have the luxury of maintaining a charge buffer, since the added weight and cost is fairly minimal and people have a much higher expectation of long-term performance.

So usage pattern + design (thermal management) + energy management which does prevent the user from destroying it = significantly different performance degradation profile.
=Smidge=

"There is no viable evidence" = "I'm too lazy to look"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Free)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... (Non-free but synopsis provided)

And that's just a minute or two of looking. Thousands of studies have been done on fluoride for safety and effectiveness on a wide range of topics, not just public water fluorination. It works, we know how and why it works, it's pretty dang cheap, and it's been hailed as one of the top ten greatest public health achievements.
=Smidge=

Well then those people are as wrong as the grammatical structure of that sentence.
=Smidge=

You might be over-estimating the effect heat actually has, the actual sources of heat or the rate at which it builds up.

I know i haven't had sufficient opportunity to test things out for myself yet, but it really does not seem like heat is really a factor outside of atmospheric effects.
=Smidge=

Too much fluoride causes tooth discoloration (fluorosis). It's harmless but unsightly.

But that aside, I wonder what's less expensive: Fluoridation programs, or dental treatment for the extra problems that would arise from stopping fluoridation. That would be an interesting study to thumb through...
=Smidge=

Parts act as blackbody radiators and will cool off just like any object would.

Solar panels also now act as passive radiators (source) so they now have dual functionality.

I dare say the new model makes it *easier* to get a rocket or space plane flying. Too easy, actually... my rockets and planes from 0.90 are all way too fast and destroy themselves much faster than they used to. I haven't had time to really dig into the new mechanics but so far it's promising that my 2000+ ton rockets might actually fair better than before!
=Smidge=

...means nothing with respect to carbon emissions.

Only for certain values of "benefit."

Liquid fuels are extremely energy-dense, portable and stable. Yes, you might trade total net energy for that benefit, but that's not a deal breaker if the energy is extremely cheap (renewable). You can have battery powered cars (of which I'm a major proponent), even battery powered/hybrid trucks. You're not going to have a battery operated cargo plane any time soon, nor an all-electric cargo ship, and I can't imagine a battery powered rocket.

Then there's transport. You can put liquid fuels on a truck or train car, or on a boat, and transport it anywhere. You can even use a pipe: A 6" pipe carrying diesel fuel can transport as much power as the entire output of a large nuclear power plant (~1.8GW).

The density and portability of liquid fuels is a HUGE benefit and worth paying the energy price for in many circumstances.
=Smidge=

Sure it does; you'd be extracting this carbon out of the air, or from a process stream that would otherwise dump to the atmosphere. Best case you have a net zero carbon emission, worst case you're using the same carbon twice (industrial waste stream to vehicle fuel to emissions) which is still a significant reduction.

Plus it cuts down on other pollutants, eliminates the environmental damage from oil extraction itself, eliminates emissions from the refining process and possibly reduces transport energy costs.

They just need to scale it up... easier said than done, of course.
=Smidge=