Buddha’s dream

When you chat to folks about working in XSLT and databases, you meet the darnedest people.

One young man of my acquaintaince recently posted the following as his IM tag line, it showed up in my UI briefly:

 Buddha: Should I be worried that there’s a manga that teaches the basics of my profession? http://www.amazon.com/dp/1593271… | Post a note

FWIW: if you do use the “post” link above, tell Zack I said howdy, and see if he remembers me.

Manga on databases 

Yes, I’m a little scared knowing that this book exists. 

On the other hand, if it gets more young girls interested, it’s probably a good thing.

On the gripping hand, that isn’t half so scary as finding out from Amazon (click the link above) that

Customers who bought this item also bought this

Are we really that predictable a bunch?  Sob.

Oh well. If you haven’t yet met Dr. Horrible, or Nathan Fillion, or Joss Whedon, it’s high time you got started.  You can read manga tomorrow.

11 thoughts on “Buddha’s dream

  1. Ok, this is kind of funny. Because the name of your post is “Buddha’s Dream” I thought this post was about the religion of Buddhism. When I saw there was a Manga guide, I had to peek at the link to the Amazon page you provided.

    Soooo…. it wasn’t really a Manga guide to Buddhism after all… Oh well.

    By the way; do you think it would be a good book if I want my son to start learning about computer programming? He likes things like Pokemon.

  2. That *is* really funny. Sorry I misled you! I have not read the book and can’t say whether it is a good book to teach programming. How old is your son?

  3. Don’t worry, you didn’t mislead me 🙂

    My son is 5 and a half and is going to kindergarten at the end of August.

    I unfortunately let him play TOO MANY computer games. But I am trying to stop that. So maybe he should start looking at how to program games instead?

    Thanks in advance.

  4. Sorry about this — I seem to have wiped out my own comment by making it too long. I will have to fix this… and do it later today.

  5. Hi again,

    My younger son, D, played lots of games at your son’s age. When he was 8 he wrote a BASIC game that was practically a game in words, in which you searched for Jolly Ranchers. The important point is that the games he played were sort of like programming, when you think about it: solve a puzzle, retain and utilize objects that you make or find. (They were Sierra and Lucas games.) IOW: They weren’t just physical skill, logic is always involved. And now he works for Google (although not as a dev) — so… not a bad progression :-).

    The important thing about moving from playing a game to programming (of any type) is to make sure that the new activity allows the child a new kind of power. Assemble items (sprites, objects, shapes, plus actions) together, and then push “Run” or “Go” or “Start”… and watch what you designed actually happen. This rarely happens in a game, and the sequential nature of it (Do something, cause an effect) is the new power I mean. Any GUI programming environment will do.

    D was obviously young a *long* time ago… and actually I had thought Turtle Logo was a good first choice at that age. But now maybe I would have chosen Python instead.

    There are a lot of websites for kids + programming available and I had chosen some ideas for you here in my original (wiped) post. Start here http://young-programmers.blogspot.com/ — check the “where to get software” links in the right column. And check here http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers – if you do go for Python, there is apparently something similar to Logo (PythonTurtle) now.

    I’ll continue this later, I know I came up with some good links, if you like.

  6. Like you said, its not a bad way of getting individuals considering a different topic, although I would think about its mainly Manga with a little bit of data source (possibly vice versa), so the individuals actually seeking to understand about directories would discover little/no use from it or get tired very easily. http://penyakitkanker.blogdetik.com/

  7. I agree. Many people don’t have much understanding of working on XSLT and databases. They need to update themselves on the latest happenings in the industry.

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