Interesting idea. You're basically arguing that the IDE and pointy-clicky interface are more important for newbies.

It would be interesting to find a pool of newbies and do some comparisons.

That's true. I bet only BASIC has more shoddy code out there (including Visual Basic). But I was thinking more of the newbie who has no clue and only wants to find out what programming is, not become an expert. You might almost say shoddy examples are better, because if someone still likes it, they can survive and prosper.

Programming and life in general always come with puzzles and headscratchers.

The trick to being a good programmer is liking programming puzzles. That's the most important thing for a beginner to understand.

That's probably true once they get past the initial hurdles. But for newbies who don't even understand the most basic concepts, trying to explain the difference between 123, 12.3, and "123", or why 12 / 5 is different from 12.0 / 5.0 is confusing.

Javascriupt's primary benefit is letting the newbs discover for themselves whether they like programming. I used to tell people, way back in the day, to take any community college beginning programming course; if they couldn't wait to get to the class and stayed late at the lab using the class computers, they liked programming and would make excellent programmers. If they had to force themselves to keep going to class and ducked out of labs as soon as possible, they hated it and would make terrible programmers.

Programming is like hot rodding up to the 1970s or so. You don't need a degree, you don't need classes, you can pick most of the basics up from books, friends, and experimentation. What counts is whether you like it.

I tell friends to play with javascript.

* Any web page has source code to learn from.

* Small edits to said source pages show instantaneous results and are painless.

* No need for a comand line, which scares some people.

* The GUI changes, like changes ol to ul, or adding table cell padding, or changing styles, or easy and fun.

* Adding loops and conditionals are not very complicated, since most web pages with javascript provide sme examples.

Overall, for someone curious about programming, it's about the best self-taught intro I can think of. Anyone who wants to learn mroe can find out if the like the concept, the puzzles, and the headscratchers with just as much time and thought as they want.

You know you're a clueless fuck, right?

The real lesson is to keep as much out of government hands as possible.

Whenever anyone tells me how great that President Obama is doing such-and-so in some devious manner because the Republicans have forced his hand by their recalcitrance, I ask how they'd feel if President Cruz or President Paul were to use the same devious methods because of recalcitrant Democrats. Crickets.

Same thing during the Bush and Clinton eras. Always crickets.

Same thing here. Did you object when the Dems push GMO labeling against all scientific consensus, or did you scream the consensus was wrong?

Crickets.

Someone drop a 1? 13,400 sounds more believable.

Calling Bill Gates an innovator and inventor is really pushing the fanboi envelope. Businessman, entrepeneur, sure, but Microsoft's innovation was all in the lockin, nothing to do with technology.

The balancing act is almost exactly the same at the last moment of forward flight as it is at the first moment of retro burn, just in a different direction.

Aerodynamics matter very little at high altitude. They matter some at lower altitude, but I doubt they make much difference when the engine is burning.

The mass is less, and presumably easier to control, but yes, that is a difference.

The relative speeds are the same. Launch starts at 0 and increases to 1300. Landing starts at 1300 and ends at 0.

Actually, that is a small difference. Launch starts at 0, but landing ends at 2 m/s, leaving shock absorbers to reduce it to the final 0.

The tower drops away BEFORE liftoff.

And I don't mean the speed of light kind.

At 14 stories tall and traveling upwards of 1300 m/s (nearly 1 mi/s), stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for reentry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm.

EXACTLY the same as takeoff. NO difference.

The link is to sciencemag but the text says "Nature" (which should be lower case anyway).

Especially when such basic facts as the timing of the Cambrian explosion are so wrong. It was 542M years ago, according to wikipedia, or 4B years after the earth formed. This summary implies the Cambrian explosion was 3B years sooner, unless by "tens of millions" they actually mean 3000 million.