puddlesworth

I do think you're being overly sensitive. Talking about relatives growing up and how your family came from nothing is like politics 101. It's a base appeal to emotion, and I would prefer any politician stick more to policy than wasting time on this kind of stuff. But its no where near the grossest thing some politicians do. It's orders of magnitude better than some of the manipulations used today (or last week specifically).

I don't think we know enough about the situation to say he's not cut out for programming. It's certainly not for everyone, but I have no reason to believe his struggles are worse than I had when I started to program. He could even just have a shitty teacher or something.

What language are you learning in? (Java/C/C++/Python etc.) And what specifically are you having a hard time with?

Without knowing any specifics my only advice is to try to simulate your code in your head line-by-line. Start at the first line in your main() function and walk through each line, in your head perform the operations on that line and keep track of the state of all your variables. If you act like the computer then you'll be able to see why the computer isn't doing what you expect.

Alternatively, add a bunch print statements everywhere.

I came here to say that I'm super exited to play episode 3 tomorrow. But I guess civil war talk will do,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."

-- Alexander Stephens (Vice President of the Confederate States)

The idea that slavery had nothing to do with the civil war / confederacy is disgusting revisionism. And should be an important reminder that politicians who parrot state's rights over and over again are usually talking about the state's "right" to deny rights to its citizens.

Any language is probably fine to start with, however I think something easier like Python is better for beginners. C++ is a beast of a language, I won't say it'd be bad to start with, but It wouldn't be my suggested beginner language. The trick is, once you learn your first language it becomes much easier to learn others. C or C++ would be a great second language (again just my opinion).

Code Academy is a good place to start, you can learn Python or web languages/markups (javascript, html, css).

http://www.codecademy.com/learn

If you want a full academic class I recommend this: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/index.htm

It has lecture videos, and exercises (the class is taught in python so if you ultimately choose a different language it wont be as useful)

The new Khan Academy CS courses sound awesome and seems to be taught in javascript. I only know a little javascript, I think it could be a decent starter language but it has some weird quirks that might be annoying.

@ABK_92: @ABK_92 said:

@Puddlesworth said:

@ABK_92 said:

Wait so people are refusing to eat there now because of the CEO's opinion on gay marriage? My brain hurts.

No, it's because the company funnels millions of dollars a year into anti-gay hate groups.

edit: Although the funding anti-gay groups thing has been known about for years, the owner's opinion is what brought this spending into the public eye.

Oh no not the anti-gay groups I'm so afraid of all the harm they can cause. How dumb. Please don't respond to me with any more of your idiotic comments.

Wow....

Are you really denying the harm that hate groups cause, really? The fact that the stigmatization of the gay people is a major reason that suicide is so common in the gay community. That the fact that gay people can't marry in most of the country is blatantly discriminatory to any gay person that wants to marry, or their partners who are denied marriage benefits (financial and otherwise).

Man I don't care if anyone boycotts, or you say its not worth the effort or there are more important issues. Whatever that's up to you. But really? How is it idiotic to not want one's money to fund hate groups.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@NlGHTCRAWLER said:

@Puddlesworth said:

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@SathingtonWaltz said:

Are you suggesting that it's my fault that assholes give money to other assholes? When I give a company my money, I'm not supporting their political beliefs or what they choose to spend their money on. I'm supporting the milkshake that I payed for and wanted.

@NlGHTCRAWLER said:

And Pray The Gay Away camps are not "attacks" they are just stupid camps that try to convince people that they are not gay. Now you tell me. Which sounds worse to you? Child slavery/kidnapping? Or Pray The Gay Away camps?????

Exactly my point. For those in this thread wagging their finger at people who will still eat at Chick Fil A after this, please do us all a favor and post a list of what I'm sure are the MANY companies you are currently boycotting for human rights violations.

Also, pray the gay away camps are stupid and all, but if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have But I'm a Cheerleader, the best movie John Waters never made. You all didn't think about that, did you?

Ah the classic "If you can't boycott everything that is bad then you might as well boycott nothing" argmuent.

I think it's more of a... "There are more important things to focus on and apply energy to in this world" kind of argument.

Yes, as I said before:

And if I could wave a magic wand and either allow all gay people to enter the same legally recognized union that all straight people are entitled to, or stop all child labor and ridiculously abhorrent 3rd world working conditions, guess which one I'd pick? I'm not saying that you can only have one or the other, but I am saying that to care so deeply about one human rights cause, and then--most likely--completely ignore the other, that seems just a bit hypocritical.

This is especially true when one cause is a "pray the gay away" camp, and the other cause is FORCED CHILD LABOR.

And I'm still waiting for that list.

You're right, how could anyone focus on child labor when they are so busy not eating chicken sandwiches.

Like you said it's not one or the other , if you have some companies we should also boycott for their horrible practices I would actually be quite interested in that. I don't know why you assume we are ignoring any other issue by speaking out on this one.

@ABK_92 said:

Wait so people are refusing to eat there now because of the CEO's opinion on gay marriage? My brain hurts.

No, it's because the company funnels millions of dollars a year into anti-gay hate groups.

edit: Although the funding anti-gay groups thing has been known about for years, the owner's opinion is what brought this spending into the public eye.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@SathingtonWaltz said:

Are you suggesting that it's my fault that assholes give money to other assholes? When I give a company my money, I'm not supporting their political beliefs or what they choose to spend their money on. I'm supporting the milkshake that I payed for and wanted.

@NlGHTCRAWLER said:

And Pray The Gay Away camps are not "attacks" they are just stupid camps that try to convince people that they are not gay. Now you tell me. Which sounds worse to you? Child slavery/kidnapping? Or Pray The Gay Away camps?????

Exactly my point. For those in this thread wagging their finger at people who will still eat at Chick Fil A after this, please do us all a favor and post a list of what I'm sure are the MANY companies you are currently boycotting for human rights violations.

Also, pray the gay away camps are stupid and all, but if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have But I'm a Cheerleader, the best movie John Waters never made. You all didn't think about that, did you?

Ah the classic "If you can't boycott everything that is bad then you might as well boycott nothing" argmuent.

@Jams said:

@Puddlesworth said:

@Jams: The supreme court says marriage is a civil right (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia).

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

You have no idea what you're talking about. Non-religious people have the right to get married in this country too, it is not only a religious ceremony. Not to mention that marriage as a human concept certainly predates any of the religions regularly practiced today. For any marriage to be made "legal" the two people getting married, and a witness, have to sign a form and submit it to the government. It doesn't matter if a priest signs as the witness or a judge at city hall, and no ceremony is necessary. The debate is over whether two people of the same gender can sign that legal document. We are not debating whether a church must hold a religious ceremony.

How is marriage fundamental to our very existence and survival? Sounds like an outdated law where people expect you to get married to have kids. That's not the case anymore. People don't need to get married to "survive" and it isn't frowned upon to have kids out of wedlock. Don't get me wrong, I'm for gay marriage and I even voted for prop 8 in California. I just don't think it's right for these government officials to threaten a company due to their beliefs. That's not right.

Do YOU know what you're even arguing about? Yes, we know gays have the right to "get married". Some asshole CEO of some company doesn't think so. So everyone wants to drag him to the gallows for his thoughts even if he doesn't actively kick people out of his establishment that don't agree with him. I'm all for people of all kinds to marry each other. But I'm all for the freedom of speech without the fear of retaliation by the government.

You said marriage was by and for the religious, I and a few others have pointed out how wrong that is. Also great way to pull one word out of a supreme court quote that has nothing to do with its meaning. It says that marriage is a civil right, this is a case from 1967, not ages ago, and more important than it's age is the assertion that it is fundamentally wrong to deny people equal marriage rights based on their race. Replace the word race with gender and we have gay marriage. (It doesn't even require that sexual-orientation be recognized as a protected class, only that gender is) The quote has nothing to do with child bearing or anything like that.

Government officials (which we were not talking about before anyway), have stated their disgust with the companies bigoted policies (not just the owner's opinion). The mayor from Boston has made it clear that he is not legally stopping them, but he has every right to condemn their disgusting practices. I haven't followed the other mayor's but that really isn't the point, few are saying chick-fil-a should be shutdown, we are saying they use their money to hurt a minority group and speaking out against that.