
Jimmy Wales: This is super cool.  "I started to learn python..." - benn_88
https://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/359640425268649984
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dade_
I suggest reading the article before making a comment.

Jimmy Wales tweeted, "This is super cool!" about a girl presenting her
Raspberry Pi story, "I started to learn Python...".

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Cthulhu_
Which makes me wonder, why is Wales' tweet linked here as the news, whilst
it's the original article that should be linked and upvoted?

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Caketh
For the commenter's applauding Jimmy Wales' new language skills, he's
referring to the story of Amy Mather and her adventures with python and the
Raspberry Pi. Linked video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35XINnYFtA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35XINnYFtA)

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booop
I don't share his enthusiasm about this. Doesn't everyone interested in
computers/computing start programming things that are actually useful at
roughly that age?

Also, is an early start a guarantee that someone will choose a career in
computing?

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malux85
Nope! But it would be great if the general population had some proficiency in
programming, even if they don't choose a career in computing.

My partner is an aspiring film maker, but knows how to parse a CSV in python
and do pattern matching, he was looking for funding and needed to pull all of
the "x.com" domains out of a giant spreadsheet .. for him, simple, export as
CSV and string match the email field.

This simple skill alone, put him miles ahead of the other film makers in his
class, the others were using "find" in excel and copy pasting, he was done in
15 minutes, the others took hours.

There's so many examples where account managers, secretaries, business
analysts, chemical engineers etc benefit from simple data matching. They're
not going to write the next facebook, and are not interested in a
"programming" / "computing" career, but data extraction and simple programming
is becoming a basic skill like reading and writing, and it's all good I say!

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44Aman
Do you have links to any good tutorials about programming (in any language)
for this purpose?

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goldfeld
Though I haven't read it (I'm a programmer myself), I've always liked the idea
of this book:
[https://leanpub.com/scrapingforjournalists](https://leanpub.com/scrapingforjournalists)

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progx
Really important Hacker News. I started to learn node.

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xr09
Jimmy Wales is a role model, you must have modesty and defined objectives to
build that humongous platform and refuse to monetize, his quotations of "The
Fountainhead" made me read it, awesome, the man really is a Howard Roark.

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gnosis
Jimmy Wales did not build Wikipedia. Thousands upon thousands of unpaid
volunteers did.

As for Howard Roark, who is supposed to epitomize Ayn Rand's "virtue of
selfishness" ideal, I don't remember him being any kind of philanthropist. If
anything, he (like Rand) has nothing but contempt for the masses.

Wikipedia would be the antithesis of what Roark would want to build. The
Encyclopedia Britannica would be more to his liking, except that even it would
require too much cooperation and would be made to help others and instead of
himself.

Rand's ideal is the lone visionary designing his brilliant artwork for his own
pleasure, and to the gnashing of teeth of the ignorant horde who are jealous
of his genius.

~~~
AdamN
Hmm, I don't know. Seems like much of Wikipedia is by smart people for smart
people (like NPR). We all think of Wikipedia as the commons but it's far from
it. Most people are on perezhilton.com all day.

Anyway, Ayn Rand was more against the falseness around giving and the betrayal
of the recipient when he is given something he could never earn.

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pekk
Are we talking about smart people, or rich people? Because they aren't the
same category.

