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fatalogic's comments

fatalogic | 6 years ago | on: Duolingo becomes first VC-funded $1B Pittsburgh tech startup

To add on to these great suggestions I'd also say speak to people. Go on Italki or HelloTalk. Caveman brute force a 5 min conversation if you have to but imo speaking asap is essential and using the resources above + a frequency list can get you through the the first 5 minutes of conversation very quickly.

I think a lot of language learns focus too much on vocabulary and grammar when starting out but they don't take the time to drill/ use the vocabulary they are learning in actual conversation. There is no point in passively knowing 1000 words if you can barely use 100 in an active conversation.

Another resource that I like but wouldn't recommend it unless it was on sale is the mimic method. Learning the phonetics and how to hear/create the unique sounds of your target language is really important but it's too expensive for what you get imo.

fatalogic | 7 years ago | on: Insured, but Still Owing $109K for a Heart Attack

As someone who used to work in the medical field it can be a pain to even know how much insurances will reimburse for procedures. Especially when it comes to smaller / union insurance providers, health care providers have to call and wait for a fax or snail mail for a reimbursement table. This leads to balance billing or the provider just eating the cost.

On the consumer side I just found out about healthcare blue book and they have prices for just about any procedure.

fatalogic | 8 years ago | on: Investigating a ten-year-old estimate that “most social programmes don’t work”

It would help some people but for most of the people I worked with money was more a symptom of their issues than a root cause.

Lets say we have a child who is in 5th grade who reads at a 1st grade level. Most programs will say oh well he/she just needs more education so they create after school tutoring. That's great but there are so many things that can be hindering that child's ability to read. The real root may be a medical issue, family issue, cultural issue, structural or a combination of one or more.

People aren't equations, you can't just input x and expect y.

fatalogic | 9 years ago | on: Software developers who started after 35, 40 or 50

I think it doesn't really matter. Programming is not a physical impossibility for a vast majority of people. Like I could train for years and never be able to bench press 400lb because of genetic limitation but learning to program doesn't have that limitation. Learning to program like most skills just takes time, effort and dedication. I think if you fail at it either you weren't as interested as you thought or you may have been trying to learn a language that just didn't vibe with you.

Programming also seems like the only profession people just assume they can pick up in a year. No one wakes up and says I'm going to quit my job and become a doctor, or a professor, or lawyer in 3 months to a year. If they are making that type of career switch they go in with the expectation that they will have a lot to learn and it is going to take more than a year of concerted effort. Not everyone is going to become a software engineer at google or apple but there are plenty of well paying programming jobs.

Sorry for the long post I just get frustrated when people want to look at others failures as a gage for their own capabilities. Believe in yourself and put in the work, the results will come.

“He who who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually right” – Confucius

fatalogic | 9 years ago | on: Software developers who started after 35, 40 or 50

You have to figure out your why. It also helps if you have something to remind you of your why every day like a picture or saying. Then it become a mantra. I started learning to program at 25. In my earlier years I wasn't very motivated but then I was faced with my mortality and that can be a pretty great motivator. You only live once so why not try to make the most out of every day.

fatalogic | 9 years ago | on: If the U.S. Won't Pay Its Teachers, China Will

On the other hand sports bring in insane amounts of money, publicity and status to colleges, especially state schools where without them they probably couldn't compete with private schools.

http://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/ncaa-20-college-footb...

Also given the rising obesity rates and health concerns related to obesity I would say physical fitness is very important in today's society. Education spending should be improved but education isn't all about studying from books. We need mixture of arts, physical education and formal education.

fatalogic | 9 years ago | on: Choosing Functional Programming for Our Game

Whether this they stick with Clojure/FP or not, isn't it important for them to at least try. Sure maybe FP isn't the best tool for this job right now but maybe someday it will be. However as a development community if we don't even try to use it for real projects it will never get better.

Perhaps through their trials and tribulations they will gain the knowledge to aid in the development of Arcadia/ Clojure + Unity. I just feel like there is a lot of well meaning but discouraging comments here but I think people often forget the science part of computer science. Sometimes you just have to experiment and fail and experiment some more to push a paradigm farther.

I don't know how successful they will be with this approach and maybe they will end up ditching it but even if they fail the first time they have the opportunity to gain valuable experience.

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