I don't want them to let Flash on iDevices. I've refused to install Flash on my development machine at work since before there was an iPhone (well, before the world at large knew about it, anyway), and IMO the web has improved with the reduction of Flash use where it was entirely unnecessary.

The only downside to all this is the ads that used to use Flash (and thus were automatically blocked for me, no effort necessary) are now using other techniques that don't rely on browser plugins.

If I was recommending a book for a peer in a non-computer related field, I'd definitely recommend How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, which assumes no programming knowledge and builds up the thought process behind decomposing problems, etc. It's been a while since I read it, but I think it would work reasonably well for an advanced preteen. The version I read used Python, which I think is a great introductory language.

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ for a dead-tree version, or in various electronic formats (for free[-as-in-beer-and-in-speech]).

If you want another encouragement, about a year ago I switched to a tablet, because I was carrying a stack of documents about 3 inches thick to a weekly meeting -- often with a pair of them changing between the meetings each week, as the requirements for our system changed, requiring me to print out new ones. After I switched, I only took my tablet. Plus, as a bonus, I could take a bunch of other documents I occasionally wanted reference to in the meetings at no additional cost, even though previously it would have doubled the size of the document stack.

Every once in a while, it did feel a little limiting due to not being able to look at multiple documents at the same time, but overall it was a big help. Plus, the PDFs I loaded in had a linked table of contents one touch away, so I was often able to jump around in the document better than those who had paper copies.

I wasn't the first in those meetings to have a tablet; I was the second. By the time the meetings wrapped up a few months ago, there are 5 tablets being used when we met, and only a couple of holdouts on paper.

I very often use j & k to move up/down lines. I use h & l much less frequently, as w, e, & b are usually better for that anyway. As for hitting escape, I'm almost always in command mode anyway; I don't type and occasionally escape to command mode, but rather am in command mode and occasionally insert text.

Look at your last 50 or 100 bug fixes. How many of them could have been caught with a simple review? Take that data and apply it to your statement here: perhaps in the time you spend having your code reviewed, you and your coworkers will fix more bugs than you would have separately. It's just that bugs not submitted aren't as visible to anyone outside those people.

Try it. Keep some metrics on "bugs" found. You might be surprised.