I’ve been feeling somewhat drained the past week. I’m not sure why. This past weekend I went to my cousin’s wedding down in North Carolina. I was looking forward to it because I wanted to get my wedding count up. I think I’m one of the few young people who’ve been to more funerals than weddings. It was a Jewish wedding too, so I figured it’d be interesting. In the end it was ok, I’m not much of a social butterfly so it was weird not knowing anyone except my cousin, his mom, and my mom. And though I think my cousin is making a good choice, I think a lot of people rush into marriage. I still remember a friend of mine lecturing me about how “when you know, you know”, and then later in the conversation confessing to me that they weren’t sure if they really loved their fiance. How can you be sure you’ve found the one, but not sure you love them? I think a decent number of people get worried about not finding someone and then end up making a poor choice (Also, Noah, if for some reason you ever happen to read this, no, this story is not about your fiancee). Anyways…
Radiohead – In Rainbows
I don’t normally tout new music releases, but this music is ONLINE and FREE and by my favorite band so I figured it’d make sense to mention it here. Radiohead are trying a new experiment where they’re putting their music online and you can pay whatever you want for it. I recommend downloading it for free to see if you like it, and then if you do, go back and buy it. It’s honestly their best record since OK Computer. The song that sticks out most to me is “Videotape”, it’s by far the most beautiful song I’ve heard this year.
WikiBooks
My thesis: Programming books are becoming obsolete. Nobody seems to learn languages via books anyway. Even the smartest programmers I talk to seem to pick up things from reading various articles or through reading documentation while chugging through a new programming project. I picked up a book on PHP a couple months back, and I found myself wishing I could jump around to different topics. I could easily look up each interesting idea in the book’s index, but that’s kind of a pain in the butt. Plus I’d like to be able to interactively test examples as I come to them. That’s when the idea hit me: Why not make wikibooks? Of course, like any good idea, I figured someone had to have already implemented it, and after some googling, here’s what I found:
Wikibooks: Programming Languages Bookshelf
That’s it?
There was more to “dump”, but it’s late and I need to get to bed.
Still no picture?
To Shame!
To address your relationship/marriage points, I think you need to start with a few premises and then work forward from there.
1) Not all people get married because of love.
2) Love has nothing to do with marriage.
3) Not all marriages require sexual commitment to their partners.
4) Its better for children to be raised by two parents.
5) People who need their partner to be perfect are often left without a partner at the end of their lives.
6) Some people are capable of loving more than one person.
7) Some people are incapable of sharing the love of one person.
8) Not all marriages are entered into with the understanding that they would last for longer than two or three years.
So, given these premises you need to weigh the pros and cons to your life of having a significant other. Following that discussion, you will need to find someone to fit that role which is often an excruciating process.
I guess points 1 and 2 bother me somewhat – though I do agree with you on them. I suppose I’ve just always held the belief that the only reason to get married was if you fell in love and then wanted to start a family. It’s weird to see people feeling like they have to find someone to marry and then settling on someone they don’t really love. I guess if you want a family, you can’t wait forever. And maybe being with someone you’re “comfortable with” (words this girl used to describe her fiance) is better than being alone. Though I’m sure if she started saying “I’m comfortable with you” instead of “I love you” to him, he’d probably get annoyed and move on. So maybe it’s also the dishonesty I don’t like. Almost everyone says “I love you” to their partner, but not all of them are being genuine about it.
And I thought about throwing a picture into this entry, but I was sort of rushing to finish it while I was writing it. Next time, maybe.
I feel in general that a majority of literature has been made physically obselete by the computer. When I need help with an issue I consult Google, Wikipedia, and then other individuals. I actually like having a physical reference on hand when the internet is not readily available, when I’d like to learn something new prior to resting, and just because it’s nice to have something to follow once in a while when learning something new.
A lot of times I find that purchasing a book helps to motivate me to learn something further even if I don’t consult the actual book for every little piece of information. I have a book lying around that briefly covers a variety of languages (mostly .NET), and after skimming a lot of it I just began consulting sites like PHP.net.
“A lot of times I find that purchasing a book helps to motivate me to learn something further even if I don’t consult the actual book for every little piece of information.”
I find this is true as well, but it’s probably left over from the days when we actually read books more. Newer programmers probably aren’t even going to buy books as they come out since they’ll be so used to using the net.
The only programming book I ever bought was the “Gang of Four” Design Patterns book. It really helped me out quite a bit getting over my “I hate OOP” days. But, I’m not going to run out and buy more books because of it.
Documentation and online stuff is sometimes good, but with a lot of open source stuff, it’s totally useless. This is kinda the central premise in my theory that Linux is just a conspiracy to sell Linux books.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about the “Gang of Four” book. I actually wish I would have taken the “Design Patterns” class my school offered. The current PHP book I have keeps bringing it up and referencing it. It makes me wish I’d bought that book instead.
> my theory that Linux is just a conspiracy to sell Linux books
lol