I'm also in the 'tabs are threads' camp, and I find Firefox's Tree Style Tab invaluable. They allow you to turn those meaningful threads of tab navigation into a hierarchy, then gives you tools to close entire branches of the hierarchy when they're no longer needed.

In fact I considered switching to Chrome earlier and having hierarchical tabs was the single reason I chose to stay with Firefox

It's part of a wider attitude to technology. The problem is that the costs of sticking to the old technology (missed opportunities, inefficient developers etc) are hidden inside the day to day running of projects, whereas the cost of upgrading is painfully visible.

I once worked in one of those IE6 organisations, and their projects were around 3x slower than they needed to be, but they didn't know it, so they kept on with the old technology. (they were still actively developing COBOL, so really ie6 was the least of their woes).

I'd be considering how much your skills match 1 page/javascript web applications. They (or the more complex ones, at least) tend to involve UI programming that follows patterns common to all UI code. Since you have some web experience and some UI experience, the gap is probably things like deep knowledge of CSS and javascript (inc quirks).

An intelligent potential employer (assuming you can find one...) would recognise the commonality, and if you had some projects outside of work that delved into Javascript apps, that would give them confidence you could pick up the difference.

I will, as soon as I get a vote and can have a say on the laws that the US imposes on my country too! :P

Similar concept, but the other end of the technological timeline is the ExtJs grid control (comes with some excellent docco)

You pick up a whole lot of complexity with the ExtJs framework, but you can pretty much implement a whole spreadsheet on it (someone has!), and it's all with Javascript since it's in the browser...

Might not be the same experience as local spreadsheets (no saving to a file :-( ), but it is extensible.

Assumedly something like the I'm Smart or the Sony Smart Watch, or the Pebble.

I'm personally keen on the latter because it sounds more hackable, but I'd be assuming that's not where Apple would be coming from...

An eg blog is Coding Horror - and a good starting out post is: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/10/a-pragmatic-quick-reference.html

I think the "only learn from others" here is overselling it a bit.

On one hand you'll miss something is you only learn when others learn from your code. You'll miss the ability to learn from how others code. I suggest reading about developing software. Note that this doesn't mean "read about X language" - I mean read articles and blogs about what makes code good.

To take it further, though, you'll miss an opportunity to learn *more* from others, as well as learn on your own if you don't take it further and be introspective about your performance and your code.

The idea is to try an idea or technique out - even take it too far - and simply see what the results are yourself. Read your code after writing it. Read it straight away, and read it much later after you've been doing something else. Spend time thinking about coding, how you've approached things and what the result has been.

Put these three things together (learning from others looking at your code from parent post + looking at others ideas + developing your own) and you'll become a better programmer.

I previously worked for an employer with a similar policy. When I left I asked and received permission to 'own' some ideas I'd been working on on the side. They weren't actually interested in owning *everything* I worked on, only things that were relevant for their business. I think the broad employee agreement was more about not wanting to put any effort into crafting a good one, rather than about greedily taking everything.

If I were you I would just talk to the company and see what they say first. Make sure you ask for confirmation of anything in writing - people often don't get serious about answering a question until you ask them to sign off on it.

[obligatory disclaimer]
Of course IANAL, so if you're really serious, consult one :)

The advantage of Logo is that it teaches the abstract concept of "Programming" (instructing the machine what to do, using particular sets of words) and it does it in a way that gives the student an easy payoff (they get to see a turtle moving). It also gives a good grounding in understanding the construction of logic (I want it to do this, then that), so I think it's a great first language.

That said, the interest is very geometrical/mathematical, and if that's not where your child's interest is, then you might miss the mark when they'd be possibly more interested if it involved a different subject matter.

LastPass is definitely nice - it encrypts passwords so that they're not transmitted or stored on the server in the clear. It's also one of the best integrated pieces of software I've used - it generally just does what you want it to.

I recommended it to a non-technical user recently, and she sent me back an email later thanking me because it removed all the mess that she was dealing with before and have her a single launch off point for her web logins.

I would have said it sounded like the opposite - that they are just about to open the doors to social networking and want to ensure that employees to it 'safely'...

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Phasmal