Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It's Off To Work We Go -- July 24, 2018

Every day I ride into town to work on the blog, and every day I wonder if there will be anything new to blog.

And every day I am pleasantly surprised. Today was no different. Wow, there are a lot of stories. And that's even before I get to Trump's tweets, and the "back stories from a reader in New Mexico."

I started blogging about 5:00 a.m. this morning because of family commitments starting about 8:00 a.m. local time.

I may or may not be blogging again this morning, but most likely I will.

It's Off To Work We Go, Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
From the internets (as both my dad and Bush II would say):

In a foreword to The Hobbit, published in 1937, J R R Tolkien writes:

"In English, the only correct plural of 'dwarf' is 'dwarfs' and the adjective is 'dwarfish'. ... So, "dwarves" was coined by Tolkien about 80 years ago to give his dwarves a dignity that dwarfs could hardly attain.

I remember reading that about "dwarfs" and "dwarves" years ago when I was in my belated "Tolkien" phase. This is one of the reason English is such a hard language for non-native speakers to learn. Or so they say.

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A Note for the Granddaughters

Our son-in-law enrolls the two older granddaughters in activities throughout the summer so they literally have no "free" time: software coding at local university; sailing lessons; scuba diving lessons; painting; cooking classes; baking classes; summer junior Olympics (water polo); etc, etc.

They've been doing that for the past several summers.

Earlier this summer, the middle granddaughter took (another) summer course in computer coding at the University of Texas, Dallas. This time it was Java Script. She said it was very challenging and would like to take the course again. [It's rare that she would call a course "challenging."]

Yesterday, I came across a computer coding article in The Economist. [I was able to access it yesterday, but not today.] Here's another article on the same subject: Is Python the future of programming?

"I certainly didn't set out to create a language that was intended for mass consumption," he explains. But in the past 12 months Google users in America have searched for Python more often than for Kim Kardashian, a reality-TV star. The rate of queries has trebled since 2010, while inquiries after other programming languages have been flat or declining.

The language's popularity has grown not merely among professional developers -- nearly 40% of whom use it, with a further 25% wishing to do so, according to Stack Overflow, a programming forum -- but also with ordinary folk.

Codecademy, a website that has taught 45 million novices how to use various languages, says that by far the biggest increase in demand is from those wishing to learn Python. It is thus bringing coding to the fingertips of those once baffled by the subject. Pythonistas, as aficionados are known, have helped by adding more than 145,000 packages to the Cheese Shop, covering everything from astronomy to game development....

Python was already the most popular introductory language at American universities in 2014, but the teaching of it is generally limited to those studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

A more radical proposal is to catch 'em young by offering computer science to all, and in primary schools.

Hadi Partovi, the boss of Code.org, a charity, notes that 40% of American schools now offer such lessons, up from 10% in 2013. Around two-thirds of 10- to 12-year-olds have an account on Code.org's website. Perhaps unnerved by a future filled with automated jobs, 90% of American parents want their children to study computer science. 

"The CIA has employed Python for hacking, Pixar for producing films, Google for crawling web pages and Spotify for recommending songs," notes the Economist.

I sent the article to our middle granddaughter and then mentioned it later to the older granddaughter.

This was the older granddaughter's response: "Oh, yes, I know all about Python."

This was the middle granddaugher's response:

"I'll be sure to read it [the article], but it's quite interesting (even just seeing the headline), as many of my friends use that program to create games and such. My friend and I played around with it whilst still working on the House Museum (to create an interactive advertisement), and I believe it's pretty simple to start writing. However, it would be interesting to see what more complex commands look like."

The family subscribes to The Economist so the middle granddaughter will have no trouble accessing the article.

Meanwhile, this is the youngest granddaughter at "finishing school," learning to properly serve tea.

LOL.

By the way, all the paintings on the wall that can be seen were done by the three granddaughters before they were five years old.

Am I a proud grandpa or what? Wow, I must be overbearing. Sorry.