It's an introduction class, just start with history of computers and shift to programming from there.
You know, the history of computers, the Alan Turing, and the first assembly language, and the first software engineer, and "the entire pre-1992 internet."
I feel like this isn't super new. You haven't been able to do things like talk academically about network security or cryptography without being incredibly critical of government for decades.
My professors sure were. I felt really bad for them, honestly. They were the driving force to make philosophy and ethics courses mandatory at my university in order to recieve a comp sci degree.
"If you work in these areas long enough, at a high enough level, you WILL be asked to compromise something for the benefit of a state actor, and you might not even realize it's happening. The person asking you to do it might not even realize what is really happening." Was what our prof told a packed lecture hall.
I don't think OP is implying while loops require ideological understandings, but rather more foundationally as to understand how computer commodities are made and traded, the concept of centralization simply arises. Thus, the discussion of control, IP, etc, and now AI and labor.
Typically, historically, it didn't matter really. Moore's Law, general positive vibes from the prospect of computer tech in the future of the industry, and why scare undergrads seeking good salaries away from institutions taking donations from said corps? But things are pretty different now. AI is less of a thought experiment than before. What better lens to analyze AI than from labor in economics, i.e., Marxism?
The students joined the class to learn programming, and not to analyze AI? It's like if I joined a pottery class and the teacher spent an hour talking about how pottery isn't a high paying profession. I didn't come for life advice or economic rambling, I came to learn pottery.
Because people are using AI in programming now. It will only be utilized more as time goes on. Getting into the risks and reward are necessary to know what to do and what not to do. Or at the very least what to be wary of.
Introduction Courses are the Who, What, When, Why, Where, and How. Knowing what you're getting into and what you will be dealing with are just as foundational.
I don’t think OP is implying while loops require ideological understandings
I am.
The slaving masses of the proletarian transistors are being controlled, dictated, and trapped in a perpetual loop by an entity the systems deem as superior, the bourgeoisie user. Only by breaking the chains of these oppressive confines can we liberate the process.
And thus, you need to make sure you have a break clause for your loops.
I'm sure these topics become relevant at some point, but I'm doubtful that it's absolutely necessary to address them in an intro course. how does leftist ideology help kids understand what a while loop does
like, literacy can do all of these things too, that doesn't mean you have to introduce those concepts at the same time as the abc's
I've had the same approach from the other side of the aisle and let me tell you, talking about open source and liberal ideals in programming would be a lot less hostile than some fundie rant.
I've seen a world where access to knowledge and power is paywalled. And I've seen the one where that freedom is a granted right. I know which one I picked, and it's because SO HELP ME, IF I CAN'T FIX IT MYSELF, I WILL BREAK IT MYSELF!
I genuinely used to believe this too, but the CCC opened my eyes to anarchism, and then HN opened my eyes to plutarchism.
I iterate now between several modes of: "GPLv3 is the best license humanity can use to better itself, decentralised projects are mandatory to keep authoritarian regimes at bay, but damn do I love using MIT projects in my hobby code projects, and hmm it would be nice to make some side income with said hobby project...."
Each of these contradictions of the other, which bothered me in my late 20s, but now I think it's relatively normal to inhabit several conflicting ideals at once
I actually really hate that every hobby should be incorporated into hustle culture these days. You crafty? Sell what you make. You like fixing things? Charge people for it. You play video games? Stream.
We've built a world that only cares about cash and it's exhausting
I remember hearing about repair drives or something along those lines in my community where handy volunteers spend a day fixing peoples things for free
Licenses are wonderful and amazing. It's incredibly cool that we have so many choices.
Companies are outright stealing artists full works and selling access to systems trained on that work.
Licenses are for me and you and our friends. Corporations DGAF. They will steal your source available content, de-compile your binaries and wrongfully sue you out of existence if you dare to raise a case against them.
Sure, if you can get someone to represent you for free, you might be able to take a year off work and end up with a small payday.
Corporations DGAF. They will steal your source available content, de-compile your binaries and wrongfully sue you out of existence if you dare to raise a case against them.
Also true. Although, that doesn't mean you should bend over and make it easy for them by licensing things as MIT. GPL if you can, MPL if you must.
we have so many choices.
I'm actually not sure about this. I wish the FSF or someone would come out with more licenses for different use cases.
I feel you on the license thing. There's the appeal of software that can't be easily corporatized and then there's the idea that if I could just get lucky with my own project, I wouldn't have to work for some soulless company generating value for shareholders.
I dream of a world where UBI is ubiquitous and people can just eke out a living following their passion projects and the need for closed source projects just vanishes....
Rant/Fantasy:
I also dream of a world where capitalism exists but there's a mandatory enforcement of the Gini Coefficient being less than 5%. As in, people still trade goods/services with each other, can absolutely make money, corner markets and bribe regulators to keep their competitors out, with the caveat that the most they can ever make by putting in such time and effort towards corruption makes them at maximum only 5x richer than the average person.
A hard cap limit on the maximum wealth would IMO enable capitalism to actually function properly, the state wouldn't have such strong powers over the individual, and nor will the individual wield really that much power over others. I'm probably veering now into anarcho-capitalism, which is always dangerous territory because the greatest propenents for it tend to be cryptobro eugenic shitheads....
Edit: Oh and such enforcement would require some kind of god-level regulator without any humans in the loop, so I'm going to call it "anarcho-muted-capitalism-AIkillerdroneregulator". I'm also going to stop talking now.
5 per cent/per 100. 20 goes into 100 5 times so 5 goes into 100 20 times. Also 5 is half of 10 that goes into 100 10 times? Idk how does math even work
If we have to live under capitalism, wealth cap is the best outcome. Wealth cap ensures no more private equity, better utilization of capital and goods (no more super yachts!), and corporations become coops.
But then it’s a dangerous territory towards Christianity…
So any kind of centralized government requires to be a benevolent god… hmmmmm
You could literally sell the unchanged Linux kernel, the GPL allows that as long as you abide by the other provisions. Convincing someone they should pay for something that you also have to provide for free might be a tad difficult but it wouldn't be against the license
It's fine to contradict yourself, as long as you don't impose those contradictions on the world or externalise that tension. Hold it within yourself, and I will hold mine.
"...because when we go online, we free ourselves from consumerism, racism, and get to express ourselves however we want without it getting back to our school or employer."
Honest Trailers may have gone downhill from thier peak, but Hackers (and the OG Dune) videos gave great lines worth sharing
56 replies
If it's science, it's woke!
Real patriots use the abacus.
It's an introduction class, just start with history of computers and shift to programming from there.
You know, the history of computers, the Alan Turing, and the first assembly language, and the first software engineer, and "the entire pre-1992 internet."
Even just the facts are incredibly "woke" leaning unless you just boil everything down to a single sentence factoid and dont go into much detail
I feel like this isn't super new. You haven't been able to do things like talk academically about network security or cryptography without being incredibly critical of government for decades.
My professors sure were. I felt really bad for them, honestly. They were the driving force to make philosophy and ethics courses mandatory at my university in order to recieve a comp sci degree.
"If you work in these areas long enough, at a high enough level, you WILL be asked to compromise something for the benefit of a state actor, and you might not even realize it's happening. The person asking you to do it might not even realize what is really happening." Was what our prof told a packed lecture hall.
I don't think OP is implying while loops require ideological understandings, but rather more foundationally as to understand how computer commodities are made and traded, the concept of centralization simply arises. Thus, the discussion of control, IP, etc, and now AI and labor.
But why would that be discussed in an intro to programming class?
Typically, historically, it didn't matter really. Moore's Law, general positive vibes from the prospect of computer tech in the future of the industry, and why scare undergrads seeking good salaries away from institutions taking donations from said corps? But things are pretty different now. AI is less of a thought experiment than before. What better lens to analyze AI than from labor in economics, i.e., Marxism?
The students joined the class to learn programming, and not to analyze AI? It's like if I joined a pottery class and the teacher spent an hour talking about how pottery isn't a high paying profession. I didn't come for life advice or economic rambling, I came to learn pottery.
Because people are using AI in programming now. It will only be utilized more as time goes on. Getting into the risks and reward are necessary to know what to do and what not to do. Or at the very least what to be wary of.
Introduction Courses are the Who, What, When, Why, Where, and How. Knowing what you're getting into and what you will be dealing with are just as foundational.
I am.
The slaving masses of the proletarian transistors are being controlled, dictated, and trapped in a perpetual loop by an entity the systems deem as superior, the bourgeoisie user. Only by breaking the chains of these oppressive confines can we liberate the process.
And thus, you need to make sure you have a break clause for your loops.
Bits together byte!!
I'm sure these topics become relevant at some point, but I'm doubtful that it's absolutely necessary to address them in an intro course. how does leftist ideology help kids understand what a while loop does
like, literacy can do all of these things too, that doesn't mean you have to introduce those concepts at the same time as the abc's
Hooooo boy, this person is going to make a terrible and incomprehensible intro class full of irrelevant infodumping lol.
Chapter 41: how to open your IDE
Chapter 42: why VIM is the best IDE
I've had the same approach from the other side of the aisle and let me tell you, talking about open source and liberal ideals in programming would be a lot less hostile than some fundie rant.
in my first semester of compsci we learned about chomsky hierarchy pretty much on day one, while we learned about while loops like a month later.
Yeah, that comment is just way over the top
I've seen a world where access to knowledge and power is paywalled. And I've seen the one where that freedom is a granted right. I know which one I picked, and it's because SO HELP ME, IF I CAN'T FIX IT MYSELF, I WILL BREAK IT MYSELF!
I guess it is just a matter of time before the Trump regime designates logic as hardcore leftist ideology
(please please please be my prof next semester...)
I genuinely used to believe this too, but the CCC opened my eyes to anarchism, and then HN opened my eyes to plutarchism.
I iterate now between several modes of: "GPLv3 is the best license humanity can use to better itself, decentralised projects are mandatory to keep authoritarian regimes at bay, but damn do I love using MIT projects in my hobby code projects, and hmm it would be nice to make some side income with said hobby project...."
Each of these contradictions of the other, which bothered me in my late 20s, but now I think it's relatively normal to inhabit several conflicting ideals at once
This is a symptom of being forced to live under capitalism. If your needs were generally met by society you wouldn't have this urge.
I actually really hate that every hobby should be incorporated into hustle culture these days. You crafty? Sell what you make. You like fixing things? Charge people for it. You play video games? Stream.
We've built a world that only cares about cash and it's exhausting
I like to fix things. I more like to fix things for people in my community to help build community.
I remember hearing about repair drives or something along those lines in my community where handy volunteers spend a day fixing peoples things for free
My general approach to licensing these days is:
For things I might try selling: BUSL. It isn't FOSS. It's source available, but it turns into FOSS after some time period.
I'm not super happy with MPL-2.0: https://piefed.social/c/[email protected]/p/2231796/does-the-mpl-2-0-have-a-giant-loop-hole
I wish we had something closer to OSL 3.0, but OSL itself has its own problems. :/
Licenses are wonderful and amazing. It's incredibly cool that we have so many choices.
Companies are outright stealing artists full works and selling access to systems trained on that work.
Licenses are for me and you and our friends. Corporations DGAF. They will steal your source available content, de-compile your binaries and wrongfully sue you out of existence if you dare to raise a case against them.
Sure, if you can get someone to represent you for free, you might be able to take a year off work and end up with a small payday.
Also true. Although, that doesn't mean you should bend over and make it easy for them by licensing things as MIT. GPL if you can, MPL if you must.
I'm actually not sure about this. I wish the FSF or someone would come out with more licenses for different use cases.
I feel you on the license thing. There's the appeal of software that can't be easily corporatized and then there's the idea that if I could just get lucky with my own project, I wouldn't have to work for some soulless company generating value for shareholders.
I dream of a world where UBI is ubiquitous and people can just eke out a living following their passion projects and the need for closed source projects just vanishes....
Rant/Fantasy:
I also dream of a world where capitalism exists but there's a mandatory enforcement of the Gini Coefficient being less than 5%. As in, people still trade goods/services with each other, can absolutely make money, corner markets and bribe regulators to keep their competitors out, with the caveat that the most they can ever make by putting in such time and effort towards corruption makes them at maximum only 5x richer than the average person.
A hard cap limit on the maximum wealth would IMO enable capitalism to actually function properly, the state wouldn't have such strong powers over the individual, and nor will the individual wield really that much power over others. I'm probably veering now into anarcho-capitalism, which is always dangerous territory because the greatest propenents for it tend to be cryptobro eugenic shitheads....
Edit: Oh and such enforcement would require some kind of god-level regulator without any humans in the loop, so I'm going to call it "anarcho-muted-capitalism-AIkillerdroneregulator". I'm also going to stop talking now.
5% would be 20×
What's to keep someone from bribing someone to make it so they can make more money than other people
how do you make that calculation just out of interest. I "vibed" 5x but didn't know how to calculate it
5 per cent/per 100. 20 goes into 100 5 times so 5 goes into 100 20 times. Also 5 is half of 10 that goes into 100 10 times? Idk how does math even work
If we have to live under capitalism, wealth cap is the best outcome. Wealth cap ensures no more private equity, better utilization of capital and goods (no more super yachts!), and corporations become coops. But then it’s a dangerous territory towards Christianity… So any kind of centralized government requires to be a benevolent god… hmmmmm
Please, do not stop talking !
So basically the problem is capitalism
As usual
All would be cool if it weren't for rent and having to pay for food.
There is no contradiction between GPL and making some side income.
In fact, it's more likely, since for example, you could make corporations pay for being able to use your code under a different license.
If it was MIT, they can just use it and give you fuck all.
Or, as the SME on it, you can offer paid support for it
You could literally sell the unchanged Linux kernel, the GPL allows that as long as you abide by the other provisions. Convincing someone they should pay for something that you also have to provide for free might be a tad difficult but it wouldn't be against the license
It's fine to contradict yourself, as long as you don't impose those contradictions on the world or externalise that tension. Hold it within yourself, and I will hold mine.
But I need to be heard and seen at all times! I have an attention deficit problem!
What? This is plain stupid
found the omarchy user
I can't help but broadly agree, computing is the new de facto means of production. It is inherently political.
"...because when we go online, we free ourselves from consumerism, racism, and get to express ourselves however we want without it getting back to our school or employer."
Honest Trailers may have gone downhill from thier peak, but Hackers (and the OG Dune) videos gave great lines worth sharing
What's so political about hello world, data structures and algorithms?
Data structures: authority
Algorithms: the system
Hello world: community
Yeah those for...next loops are pure communism.
Well, programming lessons taught in 2016 are still pretty much going to teach programming now, so it shouldn't be too hard if you put your mind to it.
The programming hasn't changed; the Overton window has.