A couple undergraduate classics courses would be far cheaper and much more useful in that regard. On a similar note, studying Greek and Latin in college gave me a large leg up in other areas of study (e.g. I had a much greater mastery of English and writing, programming language syntax was far easier to learn, etc.). Classical languages are far more useful than people realize.
I studied Latin and to me it’s the syntax that’s interesting and useful for this career. Subject-object-verb structure, and the words change depending on their usage (declension/conjugation). Picking apart a sentence in a foreign language and making sense of the structure is a lot like programming so it’s a transferable skill
Sure you can. You can add flavour with other languages, too. For example, I only really learned about the subjunctive mood after learning it in French, which uses it much more distinctly than in English.
For me it would be less useful due to the similarity(e.g. I had little to no difficulty learning Spanish as a native English speaker. Sure, there were differences, but the similarities allowed me to focus on and pick up the difference more quickly without being overwhelmed). It would be like going from Java to C#. Some differences, but very few because the base is so similar.
I should have specified it was learning Koine Greek that helped (Latin was somewhat of a bridge that made it less painful, because Latin also relies heavily on declension/conjugation instead of straight word order). Koine Greek is wildly different than English. I think it would be the difference between something like going from an OOP language to something like Prolog.
I don’t think so. It’s not about the particular language, just studying the structure and figuring out the rules. It’s good practice. Latin is interesting because it’s a root for so many languages and in particular English
Indirect relation. It forced me to think differently about language and syntax in general. For example, English (and many other languages) relies on a word order typology. Greek relies on inflection and declension over word order, which is wildly different.
Between taking a term in statistics/law 101/ and learning Greek I would always go for the first group.
I am trilingual, but I have never found anything in natural languages to be useful for programming (well, apart from knowing English because most of the software is written in it). Moreover - learning syntax of a programming language is the easiest part.
The hardest part for natural languages are your vocab/familiarity with the culture, and the hardest part of programming languages is your familiarity with the ecosystem/libraries.
If you don't believe this should be on HN, flagging the post would be a better use of your time and a more clear adherence to the guidelines that you appear to think are not being followed by this submission.
Thank you for the links. I always did well with math classes in school, but my retention was always so so after passing the final. Will give this a try for a more lasting understanding of the subject!
Instead of throwing out my notes, I tend to "refactor" them multiple times, condensing them down to the bare minimum. By the time I get them to that point, I no longer need them. I also tend to utilize multiple mediums: first note taking is writte; then I condense them to a digital format; I print that off and highlight, work in the margins, etc.;I will sometimes rewrite them a final time, depending on difficulty of the material.
My recall of things I got wrong on the tests is almost visceral, like it was traumatic that I was wrong. I figured this out pretty young and my studying habit was very similar to the methods employed for learning foreign language vocabulary or typing; progressively focus on the things the person still gets wrong.
So I'd read my notes and highlight or copy out only the facts that I found myself being surprised or flummoxed by. I'd go over those a few times, do one more scan of my entire notes, and sit before the test just going over the hard ones again until the instructor started handing out the test.
I had a workflow similar to this. I took all notes by hand (pretty sure laptop wasn't a viable option in 1993, anyway) and then typed them out later. During the course of studying, I'd condense things to a single sheet whenever possible. It worked very, very well.
... and if they can't, the society they impact needs to force their hand. Unfortunately, we have a much larger problem when it comes to regulation, as our representatives are more beholden to the companies that fund them than the electorate they purport to represent... I don't see this changing in my lifetime.
Yes, corruption is a problem, but I disagree that it is the heart or bulk of the problem.
A 2018 Gallup poll found that only 25% of Americans thought there was too little government regulation. Another 33% thought we had the right amount, and 39% thought there was too much.
So I would say that for the most part, while the representatives are not representing your views, their views are consistent with the majority of America.
I say this as someone that believes the US desperately needs more environmental regulation. I would also love if congress could create some common sense regulations to standardize website/app TOS and privacy policies. But that's just me.
I think there is a trend to blame "politicians" for all of our problems as if they were some exogenous force. Unfortunately, for the most part I think they represent us just fine. If democracy is a government by the people, we can't reasonably expect that it will be much different from the people in it.
I dislike when politicians are reflexively held responsible for our societal ills, because I feel it is a kind of mental laziness to avoid having to engage with the large portion of the nation that disagrees.
> A 2018 Gallup poll found that only 25% of Americans thought there was too little government regulation. Another 33% thought we had the right amount, and 39% thought there was too much.
The question of "Is there enough regulation" is the wrong question. The right question is "Is there enough _enforcement_ of regulation?". I suspect that answer is very different.
Lusted after EQ when it came out, but didn't have a pc that could run it until Dark Age of Camelot dropped (loved that game). Migrated from that to City of Heroes... then to WoW. Finally got the MMO monkey off my back at that point because it became way too much of a time sink after college.
My understanding is there is a "cap", but the brain basically has the equivalent of "garbage collection" for memory objects that are no longer being used.
