Why does it take being lucky to learn how to program?

Access to a public library w/ a web browser would be enough to learn the client-side of the world. A donated or sub-$200 laptop and a free GitHub account would be enough for almost all the rest of it (save for some top-tier ML or distributed-systems work).

Not that I'm suggesting everyone flood to being a programmer, per se, but becoming one has to be amongst the absolute lowest barriers of entry to a decent living that has ever existed short of being born into landed-gentry.

It requires no credentials. It requires almost no capital. It's trivially easy to advertise your skills (via engagement in a popular open source project). It's harder and more expensive to become a groundskeeper than it is to become a programmer.

Yes, all of this is true today. (Most of it, anyway. I strongly doubt that "advertise your skills via open source participation and leverage that into a paying career" scales as well as you seem to suggest. And 'watwut is right about the rest. When did you last use a computer in a public library? It is rarely an environment conducive to study.) None of this was true when I started; perhaps you overlooked my mention of the model of machine on which I did that.

But that's beside my point in any case. My point is that that wasn't the only good fortune which mattered - necessary, to be sure, but not sufficient. Had I not in later life happened upon a job with someone who made it possible for me to transition from the second-shift telephone support role for which I'd been hired into what became my first real dev job, and served as an apprenticeship in business besides, I'd be driving that Uber today.

Again, my point is not that one or another specific piece of good luck made it possible for me to build the professional life I have. My point is that to do so has required so many pieces of good luck, any one of which going differently would have changed the entire course of affairs, that it is impossible to imagine this approach could scale. It's like flipping a coin ten times in a row fairly, and having it come up heads five times and land on edge the other five. Clearly that can happen, or I'd be driving that Uber right now. But you cannot reasonably expect it, or demand it, or require it, of anyone.

Let's not forget your point about voting for Trump to "shock" our nation and wanting to drag other folks to hell with you.

That's likely where you lost sympathy.

Yours, perhaps. But your erroneous reading of my statements here suggests strongly that I never had it, so that doesn't seem like too much of a loss. Perhaps you'll convince me otherwise.

People who just learned a bit of JavaScript or whatever programming in library wont be able to produce impressive enough contribution to popular open source. They are unlikely to pass technical interview, whiteboard or not, in a company that does them. They literally need company ok with hiring juniors and mentoring them.

Ok, it is possible to fake your way to position if you can project passion and throw around buzz words, but that requires hipster cultural adaptation - not rural one.

Most likely thou, they will simply learn wrong things. It is perfectly possible to learn by yourself and by reading of internet, but it requires a lot of time on the internet. It wont happen in three months (unless they are highly charismatic ).

I know several people who got full-time gigs at companies you would definitely have heard of with almost no prior professional software experience based nearly entirely on the fact they went about fixing bugs in commercially supported open source projects. Some hired by the vendor itself. Others hired by people reliant on those projects.

Demonstrating initiative, conscientiousness, and acumen are apparently sought after traits.

Some in Python, some in Ruby, some in Javascript. What they all had in common is that they'd all been working food or coffee service up to that point, not programming professionally.

I'm not entirely sure where the 3 month time limit came from that you added?

I know a lot of people with a similar story: born in a rural area, had the good fortune to be pointed in the right direction, worked hard, escaped to a good life in a city far from where they grew up.

This is held up as the model for success, especially by the Republicans. I agree that it works but doesn't scale.

The key question is: How do we help the people that are left behind in poor rural communities with no good opportunities?

I'm afraid nobody has good answers.

Trump's​ astonishing success came from raising this question, which is more than anyone else did. Unfortunately his answers are more about blaming immigrants, foreign governments and intellectuals than solving the problem. His policy proposals actually make it worse: Exhibit A: the ACHA, which significantly reduced benefits in Trump-voting areas.

The Democrats focus on hand outs. People reject this because it makes them feel useless (side bar: people complain about Obamacare while demanding they keep their expanded Medicaid... Politics makes no sense).

Ok, so Trump says it's a problem but has no ideas. Democrats say of course it's a problem and want to build a national safety net. Rural voters reject the safety net idea while using it heavily and request good jobs so they can get assistance.

So how do you get them good jobs? Mining coal will destroy the world and their bodies too. Factories need skilled labor, good infrastructure and communities of practice, none of which these areas have.

The only hope I see is massive education investments, but even those will only help people leave unless the students decide to stay and build. Why? Because a flat world becomes spiky: productivity comes from density, which be definition is an urban phenomenon.

http://bigthink.com/articles/the-world-is-spiky.amp

Tragically, I think these really are the only solutions (1) massive Federal subsidies to sustain people living in uncompetitive areas or (2) massive Federal subsidies to educate them, allowing the next generation to escape routinely​ or, if they can be convinced to stay, invent new reasons for their communities to exist. Really, you probably need both.

Again, Trump isn't doing either of those things. He's just scaring people and breaking things.

Historically, in the past, there was a wave of automation from the 1900s-1920s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture_in_the_...) that arguably affected rural America to a much greater extent than this current wave: the mechanization of agriculture.

Back then, the solutions provided were roughly:

A) An emphasis in education. This doesn't help folks ingrained, but a strong rural education system did help the children move to the cities where the opportunities were. (This describes one of my grandfathers: our family still owns a farm, but only one person is needed to maintain it these days. He got a college education and moved.) From my perspective, this is one of the better options even for the modern automation problem.

B) Some forms of subsidies and quotas, as tried in the 1930s. I would personally prefer options more on the lines of improving health, resettlement help, and public works. Handouts for nothing create stagnation, and handouts in the wrong direction (eg agriculture subsidies, which tend to benefit farmers, who often may be prosperous already) may create distorted markets. Later World War II also provided an escape valve (another option I don't see terribly appealing).

It's tough for me to see anything else working. If companies start becoming more remote friendly, we'll need less of option B perhaps. But I can't see escaping option A.

The politics of Donald Trump can be explained to some extent as an exploitation of the long-running "Southern Strategy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy), which in contrast to the name is actually national in nature. I do not believe that rural voters are rejecting the idea of the safety net per se. It's more that in the current American political scene, identity / tribe politics often far overshadows economic politics. I believe that Bernie Sanders showed that a safety net oriented campaign with less emphasis on identity / tribe type politics can be quite popular with rural voters.

And the DNC ruined him for it.

Not that hard to convince people to stay, I think. On balance, I'd rather have; even now, I'd much prefer it be possible for me to take what I've learned and become, the things of which I'm now capable that I never was before, back home. I'm not sure what decision I'd make if it were possible, because I've come to love Baltimore much more strongly than I would've imagined possible when I came here. But that's moot, because the career I have isn't one that I can go back home and still sustain. There are a lot of companies that talk about taking remote work seriously. Almost all of them are lying, and those few which are not have tall stacks of applications from engineers much more distinguished than I ever hope to be.

Had it been possible to build this kind of career without leaving home, I would have done so. Make it possible for others to do so, and they will. The subsidy model has been shown to work by Silicon Valley VCs; I see no reason why it can't be made to work with federal dollars in Mississippi, too, alongside the sort of education subsidy you describe. If you see a need for an inducement to stay, which I'm not sure I do but all right, you could add a stick to the carrot by building the education subsidy on the extant student loan model, and tying payment deferral and eventual forgiveness to locality - if you move out of state, or outside a certain radius of states, or whatever, within some period after graduating, then you can do that, but you do it at the cost of paying back your loans yourself instead of having them forgiven. Too, this neatly straddles the divide between the sort of handout so destructive to pride, and the need to convince people to accept help when they need it. You do that by making it feel earned, and this would at least come closer to achieving that requirement than the sort of pie-in-the-sky UBI schemes so often mooted here.

Of course nothing like that is ever going to happen, because it makes far too much sense. Don't pretend the Democrats are going to do it, either, any more than the Republicans will - to do so would constitute an insult to your own credibility, and the intelligence of anyone who might happen to read such a comment. In a world where Sanders had a genuine shot at the DNC nomination, I might say otherwise, not least because he'd have won it overwhelmingly. (I'd also have voted for him.) But recent events demonstrate that we do not live in such a world, and I voted for Trump in full knowledge that scaring people and breaking things was the most he might possibly accomplish. That I judged this a more desirable outcome than a third Clinton term should perhaps frighten you - it certainly frightens me! But here we are.

If you voted for Trump then you've made those lives you care so much about worse, not better. Trump is someone who makes a lot of noise but who has absolutely no idea on how to actually implement any solutions and in the meantime he will remove the last little bits of the structures that keep those people alive. So congratulations on doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Doing the right thing wasn't an option. The party that claims so much to be the only one that cares saw to that. So I did the least wrong thing I could find to do.

That makes no sense at all. Trump & Co are all for dismantling whatever still functions on a federal level. By cuttting loose the states and making this a local problem you pretty much guarantee that it won't be solved and that what little bits of leveling were still there are going to go away. So effectively you've helped to destroy the lives you claim to wish to help.

Besides that they are busy removing the few barriers that stand between a much worse living environment in those areas due to a removal of environmental protections.

Quality of life will go down, there will be less money and the local environment will suffer (tremendously), the cumulative effort of doing this for a couple of years will be paid for by the next generation.

The beneficiaries: the billionaires.

So you did the wrong thing, not the least wrong thing. What puzzles me is this: how do the republicans, either under Trump or any of their predecessors get people to consistently vote against their interests? Looking at it from an economic perspective they should have maybe 5 to 10% of the vote (affluent, mostly white people). To see so many people vote for them (repeatedly) with some cheap emotional buttons being pressed and - predictably - 4 or 8 years later an economic mess to be cleaned up (see the last 4 electoral cycles) is really incredibly hard to understand for me.

I find it remarkable that you see Clinton as having promised some sort of improvement here. Let's not forget that the situation on the morning of November 8 was the direct result of eight years under Obama, the loving-est, caring-est president that ever did sit behind the Resolute desk. Not that I don't have considerable respect for the man, but really - if that was the best he could do in eight years of what I do believe to be genuinely giving a damn, where is the sense in expecting better from someone who so clearly did not give a damn that she didn't even see purely cynical value in putting up a credible pretense of so doing?

Based on what you say here, it's very clear to you that for poor people to vote Democratic favors their interests, and that for poor people to vote Republican goes against them. This is very evidently not so clear to everyone. Perhaps all those who disagree with you are simply hateful, ignorant fools. Then again, perhaps they're not.

Obama pulled America out of a recession caused by the previous GOP administration and the bankers. So yes, he did the best he could, especially given that the GOP was obstructing him every step of the way. (Incidentally, one of the first things that Trump did was remove the restrictions on those bankers so we can all party like it is 2006 again.)

> Based on what you say here, it's very clear to you that for poor people to vote Democratic favors their interests, and that for poor people to vote Republican goes against them. This is very evidently not so clear to everyone. Perhaps all those who disagree with you are simply ignorant fools. Then again, perhaps they're not.

Not so much ignorant as misguided. I suspect that the complexity of a modern country is such that it has become quite hard to follow the money trail.

But blaming immigrants and dismantling the small bits of social support that America has is emphatically not going to solve the problem, it will in fact do the opposite.

The question then becomes if you will feel at least fractionally responsible for the damage you have caused or if you're going to disavow your contribution.

If you want to solve a problem - any problem - you should first own the problem. Pointing at others is not going to work, it never ever has.

You speak of money trails as though there were anything to choose in that regard between those candidates who made it to the general.

You also speak as though the party you credit with social support et cetera were not also the party of "free trade", i.e. globalization. Perhaps you'll be the first to explain coherently, and in a fashion which accords with reality, how their very successful efforts in such regard have materially benefited rural Americans.

I'm not proud of what I did on November 8. I'd have been proud to vote for Sanders in the general, as I did in the primary. But, thanks to the machinations of the DNC leadership, that option was denied me, and I faced - all Americans faced - the worst choice that last year's party primary process could possibly have left us with. I took the option less incompatible with maintaining my own self-respect, and I'm still not wholly reconciled to that decision even though I could not possibly have brought myself to do otherwise.

I live in Maryland, so of course my state's electors went to Clinton. I suppose therefore that I could, if I so chose, deny responsibility for whatever outcome a Trump presidency may have, and leverage the left's own arguments against the electoral college to do so. I won't, though, because the responsibility for, and the consequences of, my unforced actions are also mine.

I can't "own the problem", as you so facilely counsel. Problems like these are far too large for that, and I think that's a big part of why they tend to prove so intractable. I did what I still regard as the least worst thing I could do under the circumstances. That I do own. But every circumstance has its antecedents, which make possible that it occur. The circumstance of having to choose between Clinton and Trump is no different. And I think there's a lot of ownership, for the actions which brought that about, yet lacking.

Globalization is a mixed blessing in the short term, a good thing in the longer term because it allows other nations that otherwise would most likely starve to slowly pull themselves out of their misery.

On that scale the people you empathize with are doing spectacularly well, and have plenty of options. Once wages go up the local economy develops a middle class and becomes self sustaining companies may move on to the next low wage country but the effects remain.

That not everybody in a single country benefits from this (especially not the blue collar workers in the wealthier countries, especially those unwilling to adapt) is sad, but as much or more caused by automation than by work flowing to low wage countries. The disparity is so great that that work will not come back, no matter what.

Whatever was wrong with the DNC that it forced you to vote against your interests and those you claim to care for is beyond me, I just can't follow that kind of reasoning. Hillary Clinton was far from the ideal candidate but she'd be immensely better for your country than Trump is, and everything that has happened so far has both underlined that and has more or less been predicted beforehand.

Make no mistake: Bannon et al are out to destroy the United States as you know it to reshape it in to a much smaller pond in which they are the bigger fish.

Sow wind, reap storm.

It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the United States to save the world. Neither is it our place, or anything we have any business attempting. Neither is it our choice, or anything we have agreed in the large to do. To be impoverished in such a cause grows over time intolerable, and I think that's what lies behind what we're seeing in the political arena now.

I'll reap what I've sown. We all will, what we've sown and what our predecessors have. To imagine the sowing began in 2016 disregards a very great deal of history. But you are of course welcome to do so as you choose.

Gah I was writing you a long answer and my browser crashed, this very rarely happens :(

The re-run:

> It is not the responsibility of the citizens of the United States to save the world.

The United States do not exist in a vacuum. If the world does well so does the US and if the world is doing worse then the US will automatically also do worse. So it's a fallacy to think that the United States is (a) saving the world (the world does plenty already) and (b) that any help the United States does export is at its own expense.

Short term thinking vs long term thinking.

> I'll reap what I've sown. We all will, what we've sown and what our predecessors have. To imagine the sowing began in 2016 disregards a very great deal of history. But you are of course welcome to do so as you choose.

This obviously did not start in 2016, but it did get a lot worse starting 2017 and hopefully it will not break beyond repair before the music stops. If it does then you and yours will be the ones to pay the price.

If you really want to improve the situation you need:

- to get money out of politics

- reduce the power of the presidency (stop voting for a king/queen)

- get rid of the 'winner takes all' system so there can be viable third (and fourth and so on) political parties

Also: note that the United States' problems are far from unique to the United States in so far as the economy goes, and that other countries have managed to fix or at least reduce the impact. In the United States anything along those lines gets resolutely destroyed along the lines of fear of communism, even though those things are not even closely related.

Such irrationality does not help.

Anyway, you're about 2 months into your favorite presidency, do you get the impression that you are making meaningful progress towards your stated goals?

Since "throwanem" hasn't responded, I'll jump in to say that although your logic looks like it would be right, I agree with all of his reasoning so far in this thread. Like him, I also would have happily voted for Sanders, although unlike him I couldn't bear to vote for Trump and thus "threw my vote away" on Stein because she matched my positions best.

But painful as the last couple months have been, I still still think Trump was a better outcome for the nation than Clinton. I like and respect Obama, but I don't think you understand how badly much of rural America has been doing under Democratic leadership. Voting for an independent running as a Republican may well be more logical than voting for more of the same and hoping that this time things will be different.

get money out of politics

reduce the power of the presidency

viable third (and fourth and so on) political parties

I think these are great goals, and suspect "throwanem" would agree.

do you get the impression that you are making meaningful progress towards your stated goals?

Actually, yes, but in a judo sort of way. I think the backlash will be so strong that if we can make it through his term, I think the three goals you stated are more likely to be achieved in the near future than if he hadn't have won. I think both the Democratic and Republican establishments will end up weaker than they were, which I think is a good thing, and some days I'm even optimistic enough to think that Trump might accomplish some positive things along the way.

Let's hope the price won't be too high. The problem with causing avalanches is that you can only start them, you can't stop them and there is no way of knowing what the new stable configuration will look like. There is a good chance that the new situation will be much worse than the old one, and people like Bannon want to achieve just that and are very close to being actually at the helm.

If the end result of a Trump administration is a review of politics in the United States as a whole and the world ends up with rainbows and unicorns then we're all much better off, but there is absolutely no way to be sure that is what will happen.

I couldn't have said it better.

> But painful as the last couple months have been, I still still think Trump was a better outcome for the nation than Clinton. I like and respect Obama, but I don't think you understand how badly much of rural America has been doing under Democratic leadership.

The country hasn't been under Democratic leadership. Obama faced an unprecedented level of obstructionism from Congress combined with an unprecedented deliberately planned and closely coordinated attack from media agents who deliberately sabotaged and delegitimized his administration. Try to remember that 44% of Republicans still don't think Obama was born in the US [1].

The problem with this entire sad logic chain constructed by "thowanem" and yourself is that... you still don't get it. You've learned nothing these past eight years because you don't actually understand what happened over these past eight years. You have this idea that Democrats and the establishment "ignored rural voters" -- but this is a fantasy that has no basis no in reality. The reality is that thanks to Obamacare roughly 20 million people have healthy insurance now that didn't have it before. It's the sort of thing that's very difficult to prove but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that these suicide numbers would be far worse if Democrats hadn't passed comprehensive health insurance and expanded Medicaid.

Anyways, I just want to point out, on some level, this is why thins aren't going to get better any time soon. Too much of the country is caught up in delusion and fantasy and while everybody feels like they understand what's going on... in fact very few people are looking at the facts. Fantasy, the rejection of reality. is a privilege that is not sustainable. Reality always catches up and the truth will come out. But until then I suspect we'll have a lot of nonsense discussions about how immigrants destroyed Sweden and all the problems in this country are supposed to be traced back to some mysterious "establishment."

[1] http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-that-41-of-rep...

> What puzzles me is this: how do the republicans, either under Trump or any of their predecessors get people to consistently vote against their interests?

Because they are voting based on tribalism. Trump signaled that he was a member of their tribe with his "tough talk" and racist comments. It doesn't matter what he does now - what the voters cared about was that "their team won."

Yes. They are the problem, with all of their tribalism and their ignorance and their whininess and their et cetera and so forth.

That's probably the worst excuse for condemning our nation to four years of Trump that I have ever read. Do you honestly believe that harming large segments of the country, and world, is the best way to "stave off" being "dragged into hell"?

You have admitted to actively sabotaging our democratic process but in the same breadth claim you did it for the greater good?

So who is indulging in egoism here, exactly?

"Actively sabotaging our democratic process"? That's a remarkable thing to accomplish by casting a vote.

That was your intent, as outlined in your comment.

No. My intent was to give what I regard as the prevailing political and cultural hegemony, which very explicitly has no love for and places no value on me and mine, pause to think about whether continuing to cherish such arrant contempt is really so worthwhile a path to follow. I don't see any way in which I could've made that more clear in my prior comment.

If you believe that voting other than for the Democratic Party's candidate constitutes sabotage of the democratic process, I really can't imagine there being any kind of conversation that you and I might productively have.

That was exceptionally heartfelt and insightful.

One must give one's fury an outlet, after all. I wish I thought there was a point. Thanks for taking the time, in any case.