As a preschool app, it's not that bad a game. It helps her learn to spot count (looking at a group and immediately seeing 4 without needing to count each object individually) as well form problem solving skills. The primary problem is that it enforces the idea that once you find the solution to the game, then that is the only way to solve that particular problem and is discourages her from looking for other ways to solve the problem. Why should try putting 1 and 4 together when she knows that she will get 5 if she combines all the fish and then splits them?

I think you have found the primary problem with computer based games (or any game with rigid rules). The predefined rules rarely cover all possible scenarios and often overly simplify the world. How many times have you played a game where in order to advance to the next level you need to jump from exactly the right spot and then grab a vine even though you have a grappling hook in your backpack or some other such nonsense?

Computers are a tool, nothing more. Like a screwdriver, they can be used to fix things, take things apart, or kill people. It is not the fault of the tool if it is being used improperly.

My daughter (age 4) plays a game on the iPad where she is asked to do object based math. She is supposed to combine groups of 1, 2, 3, and 4 fish in order to form groups of 5 fish. The iPad tells me that she has yet to master this skill because her solution is to combine all the fish into one big group of 10 and then split the group in half, getting two groups of 5. The two groups of 5 fish merrily go off to get eaten by the whale and she completes the level happy, but the iPad will not advance her to adding to make 6.

The game is fun and helps her practice these skills in a easily reset-able environment thanks to the magic block fairies, but at some point she is going to need a person to tell her why the game doesn't like her solution.

Apparently people have trouble going from Java to C...

I'm currently involved in migrating a large legacy C/C++ project to new hardware and updating our external interfaces. They gave us a bunch of java programmers to help us out and they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that if the system isn't behaving the way legacy did, they are supposed to read the code and figure it out on their own. Apparently if Eclipse won't highlight the line or an error message doesn't get printed to the screen explicitly telling them what's wrong, they have no fing clue what to do. Maybe it's my developers, but none of them seem to be able to make the switch from Java to C and C++.

And then Memphis dumps all their crap in the river and it flows downstream... New Orleans gets the river AFTER almost 2/3 of the country has dumped their crap in it.

The city of New Orleans gets their drinking water from the Mississippi River...

I'm not sure what this obsession with street lights is... We don't have street lights where I live and it's nice. We somehow manage to not run over children and animals, though the deer do occasionally hit cars. Stupid deer dashing out of the woods and running into cars... (cars never hit deer, the deer always hits the car).

As a result we can look up and see the sky at night and we don't have street lights shining into our houses in the middle of the night.

Actually... Upskirting is apparently currently legal.

One of my coworkers is teaching a class at the local university. They are paying him $6000 for the semester. He has 30 students, each student pays the uni $2600 to take the class so the uni got $78,000 in tuition for this one class and had to pay the professor $6000. Where do you think the money goes?

It's an online class. There is no lab equipment, no building fee...

That actually varies by state to state... Some states require the landlord to provide notice, others do not. I had this problem at my first apartment. The landlord was constantly sending in maintenance and not bothering to tell me. They had to do work on the furnace, inspect the fire extinguishers, etc. At least once a month they came in and the only reason I knew was because I bought a security camera. It was ridiculous. In the end, I moved out. Legally there was nothing I could do and trust me, I was pissed and tried.

Actually... yes... If you have a security clearance you are required to report traffic violations resulting in large fines. Until recently the limit was $150, but in the last couple of years they upped it to $300. Apparently the US government thinks that if you routinely drive 90 in a 50 you are irresponsible or something.

We have a new hire going through our one project and fixing compile issues (we are porting to a new architecture and upgrading the compiler). He hit a series of errors about copy constructors being private. His solution was to just friend the class instead of asking us why the copy constructors were private. It was a database connection class and the destructor closed the connection. Those of us who knew what was going on, knew that this was Bad and we needed to fix the implicit copy that was happening with the new compiler, not just litter friend throughout the code to make it compile. Had we tried to run his fix, the system would have failed with closed database connections.

So yes. Experience is worth something.

I once interviewed a guy who complained that he almost didn't make the interview cause he was still hung over from last night...

We didn't hire him.

Grand Theft Auto serves the same purpose that Naughty Nurses VIII serves. Not all movies explore the deeper aspects of mankind, morality, and story telling. Not all games will either. We produce a lot of crap in all industries. Not everything will be worthy of being called art.

If we are to claim that games are an art form akin to books, movies, poetry, music, and painting, then we have to accept that art often is designed to make us uncomfortable. Often, an artist calls attention to an issue by exploring it. For example, you have a gay protagonist who struggles with his own inner lack of acceptance and self-confidence as well as fears of how society views him. You include a scene where the gay guy gets beat up because he is gay. A successful artist would establish empathy between the character and the player, causing the player to question the moral implications of the scenario. Maybe he was ok with beating up gay guys before, but now he has established a bond with this character and thus becomes uncomfortable with the scene and questions long held beliefs?

It is not about turning the games into something like Sesame Street or Magical Friendship Land where we watch everyone get along. The stories that resonate the deepest with us are the stories that hit the closest to home. It is ok to portray the struggle of social injustice. To try to pretend that it does not exist is foolish and will not send a message other than "look how PC". Instead it is about creating a story that feels real, causes us to empathize with the characters, and thus question our own personal prejudices.

But if we have the correct Processes in place then all the people just become interchangeable, unthinking cogs that blindly follow the all powerful Process!

If you are having trouble with your people not knowing how to do things or having trouble coming up to speed, then clearly your Process is broken and we need to pay 10 managers to take a week long trip to Hawaii in order to revamp the Process.

All the workers need to know is how to look up the correct Process and follow their check list. The Process will cover all scenarios and situations imaginable and should never be deviated from.