This is in my opinion actually a decent interview question. If you know JS in detail, if you know how the "+" operator works, it's a super easy question. If you don't know JS in detail, if you don't know how the "+" operator works, it's pretty tough. If you want an engineer who knows JS in detail, asking this question can be valuable.
"+" isn't some singular operator. They are different operators for different types using the same character. You'd have to memorize a table of all JS types and what "+" does for each, which is silly considering that the only place it should really be used in modern JS is arithmetic and the occasional string concatenation.
afaik these two places ( arithmetic and string concatenation ) are the only ones where + operation is defined. JS picks one of these two operations and casts the operands accordingly.
Edit: Wait, there is also the unary + which takes only one argument, but it also could be considered arithmetic.
My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning with what I believe he should learn, topics like statistics and probability and finance? Should I teach him Latin? JavaScript?
I personally feel like I am capable of providing an “agentic” education but I almost certainly won’t have the time nor the persuasive powers to convince a (hopefully) rebellious 7 year old that, say, grammar matters and gardening is dope. Seeking any suggestions.
Hits close to home… had these exact thoughts a little over seven years ago. At one point I was convinced that sending my son to a public school would be child abuse… actually I still kinda feel that way, but I’ve softened my stance a bit.
I read up quite a bit on unschooling, which sounds great on paper but is probably only feasible when both parents are enthusiastically committed. Sudbury schools are probably the closest thing to unschooling without having to do it yourself, but there’s probably less than 100 such schools in the entire world.
One big realization I’ve had is that children really grow when their parents aren’t around. Schools may suppress agency, but so do parents. There’s a reason that all the stories in this article are about apprenticeships and first jobs—the outside world will always be a much richer source of new and unexpected interactions and discoveries than anything inside the home. Maybe that’s my suggestion: get your kid out of the house and around other trustworthy adults as much as possible. (I moved across the country to live near family just to make this happen)
You should let your child have lots and lots of freedom to do whatever he wants, even if that is often watching television or whatever. Ideally you would have a lot of outdoor places for him to roam --- whether that be a large amount of land that you live on or just a green neighborhood.
This is based on my own experience, because I was allowed to manage my free time. When I got out of school, I had a chore or two, but the rest of the evening was mine to manage. (I was expected to do my homework at some point, though, and make decent grades. In fact I made A's and B's.) But the rest of the time I watched about 2-3 hours of TV, drew a lot, jumped on the trampoline, and in general ran around outside (We lived on five acres).
My parents never sent me to summer camp. The summer was mine. They never made me take piano lessons or join the boy scouts. Nothing.
I graduated magna cum laude, started my own business (which failed) then pivoted to a completely different field (web programming) and taught myself everything, through books, blogs, etc. That was 15 years ago and professionally speaking, I lead a very stable life.
When I hear about today's children being shuttled from school to one extracurricular activity or another, where they have very little unstructured time, I scream on the inside on their behalf. I've known a handful of adults who were homeschooled, and most of them have turned out very poorly. They basically are walking time bombs: quiet and obedient through childhood, then they get out of the house and explode.
As my mother wisely said, "Kids need to be kids." (We had a very strong religious teaching, however, in my household --- firm but not oppressive. I ascribe my own acceptance of that teaching as a key reason I did not just squander all that freedom on drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll. But most of all, I felt very, very loved and accepted as a person, even if I were to screw up royally.)
> I've known a handful of adults who were homeschooled, and most of them have turned out very poorly. They basically are walking time bombs: quiet and obedient through childhood, then they get out of the house and explode.
I don't doubt your account of a handful of adults, but the research seems to point to the opposite conclusion:
> Homeschooled children are taking part in the daily routines of their
communities. They are certainly not isolated, in fact, they associate with—
and feel close to—all sorts of people. Homeschooling parents . . . actively
encourage their children to take advantage of social opportunities outside
the family. Homeschooled children are acquiring the rules of behavior and
systems of beliefs and attitudes they need. They have good self-esteem
and are likely to display fewer behavior problems than other children.
They may be more socially mature and have better leadership skills than
other children as well. And they appear to be functioning effectively as
members of adult society. (Medlin, 2000, p. 119)
I know nearly innumerable homeschoolers, they regress to the mean like any other group, but they also have far more hyper successful outliers.
There are a number of people I know who transcended the station of their birth but I know a disproportionate number of homeschoolers who did from an early age per capita.
All bets are off if the homeschooler is insularly religious. Has a kid at a young age or they became "homeschooled" because they were kicked out of every regular school for extreme violence or other similar behavior.
Depends on the person. I spent every minute of free time I had playing video games as a kid. I had a lot of free time since my parents were very laid back and gave it to me. I wish my parents were more strict and forced me to do other things, literally anything else.
My limited experience shows that a good way to influence children is to lead by example, and build on previous knowledge to provide context.
Using gardening as an example, choose a fruit or vegetable your child likes, then go with them to a store and buy seeds / trees / whatever. Then get them to help you plant it and look after it. Children love harvest time, the excitement is palpable.
If you have chickens you can feed them wheat. If your child likes bread then you can show the child how to turn wheat into bread.
The key is not to force things. Monkey see, monkey do. If my nephews see me doing yoga, suddenly they are all trying their best to copy me.
For programming, I am not sure. But i think the best way is to start with a simple language that can alter something visual, so that there is clear cause/effect.
This is basically how I hope to tackle the problem. I’d like to try and fill my own life with more practical endeavors and then weave in intentional/intellectual/thoughtful moments where we (me and kid) consider whatever slightly more abstract principles are in effect at that particular time. I’m having a hard time believing this is not much much much easier said than done though.
Your intuition is correct: raising and teaching children is a difficult skill to master, much easier said than done.
But if you have patience and determination the difficulties will be manageable. The love one feels for ones child is a deep well to draw from during frustrating or difficult times.
Parent here with 2 boys, ages 6 and 2 :). I have some good news for you if you're worried about planning! I was wondering the same things before they were born, but it turns out that children will develop their own interests and are much happier digging into what they are interested in. The best thing you can do is help support their interests! They will also see what you are doing and want to follow along too.
Don't worry too much about planning things out, because the any grand parenting plan will go out the window once they baby arrives haha
> but I almost certainly won’t have the time nor the persuasive powers to convince a (hopefully) rebellious 7 year old that, say, grammar matters and gardening is dope. Seeking any suggestions.
Mine are grown up and have moved away, but I do have a suggestion. It's okay, and may be the best method, to just say, "grammar matters and gardening is dope," then stop talking while you gauge their reaction or listen to what they say. If all you ever do is talk with them, they will listen and talk with you.
I've always (attempted to) live my life as if my words matter to everyone. I dislike speaking for the sake of conversation because it tends to lead me to say things I don't fully mean or intend.
This came about from possibly taking this old saying too seriously:
"90% of what people say is untrue"
My childhood self didn't want to be the sort of person with that kind of pointless conversation. Combine that with something I picked up more recently:
"People don't remember what you said, people remember how you made them feel".
Choose your words carefully. Words are cheap, but their effect can be expensive.
I was fortunate enough to have two parents that let me stay at home and homeschool until high school, then they sent me off to learn from others. They taught me how to do almost all of those things in your list as the opportunities presented themselves. Did we disagree? Yes. Did I hate gardening a lot of the time? Yes. But then my parents would play video games with me after we were done which I loved. We learned how to give and take, how to do what each other enjoyed, and how to do life together. Now that I'm in my thirties, working from home, and have a little family of my own, I'm trying to replicate my childhood as much as I can. I think you have a great dream, I say go for it!
I’ve put both my kids in preschool from about the time they turned one. I can teach my kids a lot in my own, but what I can’t give them is plenty of training interacting with other kids. They might not be able to read when they are four this way, but all those things are trivial in comparison to learn a bit later.
They'll follow you around and do all those things with you if you do it. My six year old mows the lawn since he could push it. Each kids has a raised bed they tend to each summer. School is ok for socialization but a lot has to happen at home in terms of this agency thing.
My intuition tells me this is the crux of the matter: If I spend my time in the kitchen and the garden and wrenching and cutting and repairing, then my kid will be drawn to like activities. I hope I can behave accordingly and I hope you're right!
I would definitely not say "Reasons and Persons" is clear. It might be precise (I personally don't think so, I think he makes tons of subtle mistakes), but it's at least not clear. It's full of ideas like "rational irrationality" which is at best a poor choice of naming, IMO.
Without context, sure, but when we're talking specifically about the precision of expression, I don't think so. Some philosophers operate closer to mathematical precision than others, and when those sorts of precision-oriented philosophers screw up their precision, it's a bigger problem. In Reasons and Persons, Parfit jumps through hoops to make his statements precise but ultimately trips all over himself (in my opinion).
> Every time I've looked at philosophy in my life, I kept searching for this promise - where intellectual giants grapple the truth and discover their secrets.
This expresses an approach to philosophy that I think is, at its roots, ineffective. It treats "philosophy" as "Philosophy", as some thing, some well-defined corpus that deals with truth and can be explored top-down systematically, something that you can "look at" or "come to" or whatever. But that's not really what "philosophy" is or, rather, there is no "philosophy" in that sense. There's just people in the world trying to understand it and to communicate their understanding. There's just questions and people all the way down, nothing else. We use the name "philosophy" because it's convenient but I'd say it's maybe the least useful name for anything we've ever come up with.
Philosophy is ultimately personal, it's the most personal, and most of the most famous philosophers can only be appreciated if you go out of your way to read them from a deeply psychological and empathetic perspective. At least this is my experience. It's not easy and takes a lot of work to get into the headspace of whoever you're reading, but once you get there you'll feel the lightbulb go off. This is especially important when you read older philosophers or philosophers who have a fundamentally different metaphysics from yourself. Of course, sometimes you just can't get there with certain thinkers. For example, I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously.
Have you read Kant? I've had a lot of trouble with Hegel as well, and everyone tells me it's because he's responding to or building on arguments that Kant makes that seem to be pulled from whole cloth without that context (Kantext?).
We're certainly not the only ones though, a lot of famous philosophers think Hegel is bullshit. I don't know how much respect the Hegelian lineage has outside of continental philosophy circles these days. I suppose Fukuyama is pretty Hegelian.
Maybe that's true but tbh I'm kinda over Hegel, I don't imagine there will ever be a time in my life where attempting to seriously understand Hegel will be worth the time.
I also find it easier to read certain philosophers than others because they themselves seem to be empathetic in the way they write their thinking. Almost as if they know that they could be wrong about the conclusions they're coming to, and that the truths they uncover aren't necessarily absolutes but instead, at least to a certain degree, subjective and personal.
Reading phenomenology for instance doesn't get me feeling like the author is self-indulgent. I find it easier to empathize with the philosopher because the philosopher is trying to empathize with me.
> I have a really really really hard time taking Hegel seriously
I really enjoyed Schopenhauer 80+ pages rant in "Parerga & Paralipomena" on Hegel and why he considered him a fraud. Nothing in philosophy is as consistent as Schopenhauer's "Hegel bashing" or using the term "Hegelian" only in a dismissive way.
Maybe I ought to read Hegel since he is a central figure in Western philosophy. My excuse so far has been that he is only needed if I want to understand and keep up with what influenced thinkers like Marx, the "Frankfurt School", etc. So far I haven't felt not reading Hegel is a problem. It might have even shielded me from a lot of pretentious texts but idk.
Agreeing and emphasizing with Schopenhauer was perhaps my reason for why Hegel now feels like a waste of time. Putting the effort needed into fully understanding him will be pure uphill struggle. This limits my understanding on Hegel to how Schopenhauer understood and interpreted him.
I used to enjoy Schopenhauer, and am still fond of him, but his student Nietzsche has taken his place for me, a cheerier, funnier companion. Well, like me, Nietzsche was inspired by Emerson throughout his life. Emerson was never funny, but always inspiring.
Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is one of my favourite books in philosophy, a history of German/"continental" thought from Leibniz to the Nazis—published 1916. Chapter II, The Protestant Heritage[0] begins:
"The German people, according to Fichte and Hegel, are called by the plan of Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe.
A little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely to the heart of German philosophy than would the usual laborious approach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge."
Gold! I love Santayana's gentlemanly, restrained sense of humour, so superior to, say, Russell or Nietzsche's savage mocking.
The best short thing I've read on Hegel is William James' essay On Some Hegelisms[1], and the long Note at its end, where he recognized Hegel-style thinking in his own crazed thinking while on nitrous oxide. Very funny, insightful stuff. After all, psychological experiment was James' own field:
"It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition, as 'nothing — but,' 'no more — than,' 'only — if', etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter."
thanks for this wonderful William James quote and the links. I've yet to read him and I already sense from this quote I like his way with words.
From what I understand Nietzsche himself didn't have too many great things to say about Schopenhauer. He must have rubbed people the wrong way wherever he went and perhaps the only way for him to ever be recognized is be dead long enough so the writing is removed as far as possible from the man.
I'm going to read Santayana - thanks for the tip. Much appreciated. If you appreciate funny philosophers do check out Peter Wessel-Zapffe[1] a crazy Norwegian who loved his mountains and is quite dark[2] in a brilliant way.
Welcome! Ok thanks, will check him out. Not really into dark though! <Checked him out> Arggh, yeah. He sounds miserable. Getting a headache reading that..well, it was 1933 I guess. Sounds a bit like Cioran, who I expected I might like but it's just continual depressed whining as if being smart means you must be miserable as hell, and pitying those whose don't share your misery. That doesn't sound smart. Mencken and Kierkegaard are about as far as I willingly go in that direction—not very far. But they're very funny and brilliant writers.
Well, one of Nietzsche's most amazing productions is one of his first, the short essay On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense (1873), somewhat in a similar vein to that Zapffe, but, uh, well, behold how it starts! :
In some remote corner of the universe that is poured out in countless flickering solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the most arrogant and the most untruthful moment in "world history" — yet indeed only a moment. After nature had taken a few breaths, the star froze over and the clever animals had to die.
Someone could invent such a fable and still not have illustrated adequately how pitiful, how shadowy and fleeting, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect appears within nature. There were eternities when it did not exist; and someday when it no longer is there, not much will have changed.
Further on, one of his most quoted passages:
What is truth? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation. Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions, worn-out metaphors without sensory impact, coins which have lost their image and now can be used only as metal, and no longer as coins. We still do not know where the desire for truth originates; for until now we have heard only of the obligation which society, in order to exist, imposes: to be truthful, i.e., to use the customary metaphors, or in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to an established convention, to lie collectively in a style that is mandatory for
everyone.
Actually he had a lot to say about him—check out Schopenhauer as Educator, a long essay from Nietzsche's first (full-sized) book, Untimely Meditations aka Unfashionable Observations aka Thoughts Out Of Season—it's a very grateful tribute.
William James wrote so many great essays, and one of the most accessible, and touching, is On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings and its sequel What Makes A Life Significant. OACBIHB has a lot of great long quotes from various places, actually that reminds me, I think I rediscovered Stevenson's essays from a long quote in that, which is itself a huge debt. I'm into writers who faced life with joy and courage, and who love passing on that gift—Emerson, Stevenson, Chesterton etc.
Santayana - I never got anything from the systemy Life of Reason or Realms of Being, maybe I should try again one day. Soliloquies in England etc are short nontechnical essays on all subjects. My favourite books of his are the ones with long essays on particular philosophers or philosophical/cultural scenes, like Character and Opinion in the US. And the chapters on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Egotism in German Philosophy are among the best things written on those guys, as seems so often the case with Santayana. Cheers!
p.s. Come to think of it, this page on my website has links to a fair bit of James' stuff, and a few good quotes by and about him! http://www.adamponting.com/william-james/
The combining of JSON & SQL is mostly inconsequential here. It is just a convenience for sending things in 1 file vs multiple.
The big takeaway is that SQL is a really great tool for exposing any sort of customizable logic over arbitrary datsets.
The only major caveat with this - You will typically have to perform some degree of transformation over source data in order to achieve a form of normalization well-suited to the writing of business logic (SQL). Assumptions (i.e. denormalizations beyond 3NF [0]) made in your schema here will inevitably hamper or kill the ability of the business to write flexible queries which can satisfy real-world needs. Today, a customer may have multiple accounts. In a few years, maybe we decide it goes the other way too. If you made an assumption, such as nesting these complex types in any way whatsoever, you are probably stuck with a steaming bag of shit that you now have to refactor and retest top-to-bottom. Using relation types to decouple nested complex types is the core tenant in my mind. Identity is foundation, but you can fudge your way around that a little bit.
This one caveat is why a lot of developers look at this idea as a bad one at face-value. It takes a lot of work & iterations with the business stakeholders to get this correct. You can't sit in a silo and expect to completely figure out the abstract nature of business types or learn how they might be related and in what ways. There really is a "correct" and "incorrect" way to go about it if you are being properly academic. Worry about webscale and performance later. Get it correct first. Nothing is too complex for a SQL schema.
If you can satisfy the academic gods of normalization and achieve a stable schema, then you are in for a wonderful ride. Between using views to compose higher-order functions, and UDFs [1] to wire into customized SQL functions, you can satisfy literally any degree of complexity required by the business. The only limit is your ability and discipline around modeling the domain types & relations, and willingness to get your hands dirty with some views and functions. You will find your business experts loving the power they gain by being able to write queries in a domain specific language they inherently understand. Giving them higher-order functions (views) and iterating on that side of the fence is yet another gigantic value play that is invisible if you are looking anywhere other than SQL.
Oftentimes when I'm working on a problem I lie on the floor face down and think about it for hours.
In terms of what you might call "mentally detoxifying contemplation", physical work on my house and yard and whatnot is great. I think the mentally salubrious effects of hard work are the real deal and too much overlooked these days.
Now that you mention this i can remember the effects of physical, repetive work. It is actually quite different to working out/excercise. Wonder why...
Edit: It also looks good (better maybe) on mobile. Props.