We could solve this voting issue very easily. Every vote costs a dollar and you can vote as many times as you want. It would be no different from the current system where only the rich have enough money to advertise themselves to get voted.
> People are not going to spend months developing books and products if some parasite can just copy their work
"I don't ask for money. I don't ask for sexual favors. I don't ask for access to the hardware you design and sell. I just ask for the thing I gave you: source code that I can use myself."
Torvalds, Linus (2007-06-14). Message to Linux kernel mailing list. Retrieved on 2010-02-01.
Linux kernel is about 20 years old (So Linus has been developing it for a little longer than a few months). It has been sold commercially by people who didn't even ask permission from Linus before doing that. And Linus is okay with that. If you need more examples, you can google for free software, free movies, free books, free music.
I would like to add that Javascript can be used to write back-end code also: http://nodejs.org/
Sorry, but he invented it a lot later than Chinese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing
He was John Keogh, from Australia:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html
Why flowers look pretty? How plants can get to another island? How dirt can get on the top of the rocks? Where did humans come from? Before Darwin, God was pretty much the only answer we had to all unanswered questions. Most people didn't even think about other possible solutions, because God was so obvious answer. Darwin changed that and made it possible for others to question the easy answers. We might even still be unaware of DNA if we didn't have the unanswered question left by him.
While this is pretty good achievement, Darwin did it with style. He invented various cool and yet simple experiments to prove his point. For example he put a big rock outside and then just monitored it for decades to figure out how dirt can get on top of the rocks.
> You cannot obtain a patent on something that is public knowledge.
Yes, it is not like you could just go there and patent a wheel: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html
I also learned programming myself, over 15 years ago. Yet I have still today learned a lot of useful stuff from others who I have worked with.
This is what I think:
- If he is motivated to learn by himself, that is the best way to start. Not because of what you learn about programming, but because of what you learn about learning and studying new stuff.
- After a year or so, if possible, get a good mentor. This time, to learn about programming. There is a lot of advanced topics which you don't even know to exist unless you have a really good book or a really good mentor. This doesn't mean that you couldn't study this stuff by yourself, but you will need someone to tell you what to study. Here is a list, which contains topics, perhaps a bit too advanced for someone who just started to program, but the list contains a lot of things I wish someone had told me sooner:
-- unit testing (more important than the program itself),
-- more about testing and what you can do with it, e.g. performance testing
-- pair programming
-- writing clean code (e.g. why it is important that you think really hard how to many each variable you create),
-- refactoring (how you can do it and why you should),
-- programming principles and patterns (e.g. why a class or a function should have only one responsibility),
-- usability (how you can analyse it and improve it),
-- user experience (why people think that the software is faster and has less errors just because you changes the error messages more polite),
-- tools(version control, IDE, continuous integration with static and dynamic analysis, and how they can help you do your job).
-- Agile methods, lean, kanban. (these are pretty good to know when you start working for real)
My recommendation for language: Python with pygame (for writing games).
Yes, we count with our fingers, that is why we use base 16 and can count up to 0xFF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hexadecimal-counting.jpg
> Through in gimp, sure you might be able to do all the things that you can do in photoshop but there will be a huge learning curve.
I have to disagree with you. We did usability test with 3 people who had no experience with Gimp, but some had experience from Photoshop. None of them had any major problems and everyone was able to complete the tasks without help. The results of the tests were the exact opposite of the impression I have seen in Slashdot. Gimp is actually very easy to learn and use. I was especially impressed with the Photoshop user, he had no problems doing special tricks with Gimp, even he couldn't find the same tools he had been using in Photoshop.
> Actually, fitting a camel through a real eye of a needle isn't impossible
If you got the money, just buy a bigger needle.
Not if you write it down. I have kept a record of these predictions. None of them came true. E.g. in 2005 it was predicted that by 2006 we should have invented material for space elevator cables... still waiting for that.
None of the predictions I have monitored have come true. Some have changed the schedule, some have completely disappeared. But no worries, soon we have contacted ET, have eternal lives and we drive with flying cars. It is unfortunate that the Internet crashed a few years ago, but at least we don't need to worry about spam.
Or the developer could be just refactoring the code and e.g. getting rid of duplicate code lines.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
