primecommenter

Coding doesn't necessarily involve time deadlines, and maybe cooking doesn't either, although it seems to. I agree with the rest of what you said though.

Rule 11213: First person to mention "time" when linked article does not include the term "time" takes 1 step backward, 1 step forward, 2 steps backward, 1 step forward, 3 steps back. Back to the future.

Both are life skills and that is the context.

"If the mayor of NYC wants to learn to program in his spare time, why the hell not?"

I agree totally, not only would it be good for him but it sets a good example for his constituency (because as a basic competence it is good for anyone).

I'm not trying to be facetious, just misunderstanding whatever point original commenter is making. "Most people don't what programming even looks like"? I don't think that is true because most people can search for code samples if needed.

... and then profess to study that which his generational peers have foregone. If only we could all be mayors of NYC!

Indeed, why not? This is no more or less as exciting an announcement as that of a new knitting hobby.

As opposed to a professional "coder"? (I also see "programmer" as a more distinguished title and I prefer it to "coder" (and even "software engineer"), but I don't understand any of these terms to have any generally-accepted definition; personally it is only a matter of taste.)

I don't understand the distinction you raise in the first paragraph. Coding is programming. Just because everyone can divide doesn't mean everyone is trying to be a mathematician, but I think everyone should (at least have the opportunity to) learn long division. Programming may not be the fourth "R", but maybe "Research" is!

Most of us use most of a lifetime of knowledge in our day jobs, and machines are magical.

"Can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?"

If anything should trickle down, it would be the joy and satisfaction of acquiring a basic competence.

... who, according to the story, asked why, expressing approval and amusement, but not surprise.

This is nonsense. It's absurd for you to argue that the difficulty of writing "Hello world" on an Apple device is somehow a good thing for Apple or anyone else on the basis of a wishy-washy concept like "abstraction".

I don't see the connection. Is Go even bootstrapped?

It is possible to find the median in linear time (quickselect). Pivoting on the median makes quicksort optimal (O(n log(n))) while only using constant space. This is rarely used in practice because the overhead is large compared to the probability of being given a worst-case problem.

Doubly-homomorphic encryption (also called "fully-homomorphic") was recently invented and in principle solves the general problem.

It is already reduced to the initial handshake. That is exactly what a CA does. But perhaps you are right that a CA should sign certificates based on influence-weighted pseudonymous votes rather than simply receipt of payment! Should CA's require payment in bitcoins?

"We did this by computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of all pairs of moduli from RSA public keys on the Internet." For your key to be safe from this method, all you need to do is choose the factors of the modulus uniquely, not even necessarily randomly.

I particularly like the example of Literate Roy: https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/examples/sqrt.lr.... This example demonstrates some of the language features and syntax: https://github.com/pufuwozu/roy/blob/master/examples/structu....

How does equating rationality with profit-maximization further this discussion in any meaningful way?

Even more remarkable is that they build directly upon the 400-year-old method of Fermat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_factorization_method).

If p^2+p+1 is smooth or if p^2+1 is smooth then n can be factored with cyclotomic methods. http://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/1989-52-185/S0025-5718-1989...

While perhaps not an advance, the algorithms implemented are state-of-the-art (GNFS, Pollard's p-1 test, Williams' p+1 test, cyclotomic polynomial test). But whatever the running times, it is an astounding artifact.