But you said it yourself: you need a visa. It's not simply a question of whether an American or anyone else finds it satisfying to live in another country. The government has to want/permit you to be there. And in the case of Japan in particular, that's a difficult situation to navigate, especially if you are looking for a place to live for your retirement years.
that girls and women prefer collaborative rather than solo work, that they are more engaged in “things” if they can see the “people” aspect to it, and that they are prone to perfectionism and a fear of failure
although I suppose you have to imagine what a tech classroom/work environment would look like if it supported folks with such learning preferences since she doesn't fully spell that out.
Please don't use code blocks (indentation) to quote text. it causes side-scrolling in browsers, making it difficult to read on desktop machines and nigh impossible on mobile devices.
A common method of quoting text on HN is prefixing the line with a ">". I personally like also wrapping it in asterisks to italicize the quote.
Somehow most of the female programmers that I know well enough are not at all like this, so lets please not turn this into one-size-fits-all model and force it on every woman out there.
I completely agree. I've worked with many good and bad programmers, both men and women, and it was usually only junior programmers and the bad ones that could not do their work without being 'collaborative' with others. Gender, like race, etc has nothing to do with it.
The code formatting is confusing on mobile. Didn't know I could scroll through it.
Like I just said for another comment, that quote doesn't seem to be true just for women or even possibly for women more than men. The few female programmers I've worked with weren't like that. There's guys who will be like that.
I always thought ways of learning best were more on the people and environment (and how it affects the person) than gender by a long shot. I don't see why males wouldn't suffer just as much as women in the issues marked in her quote.
I just want to say that this sounds like an amazing and much-needed service. I totally understand where the comment from MarcScott is coming from, but from my brief experiences in the edtech world, it definitely seemed like teachers were the ones largely uninterested in helping developers make a better product, not the other way around.
At every edtech or digital learning meetup/conference my developer colleagues and I went to, it was all other developers, non-profits, and edtech startup people, but almost never any teachers. And yet, all of us were dying to connect with classroom instructors! We understood of course that teachers were super busy, but edtech is a two-way street. Teachers have to meet developers at least part of the way if they want edtech products to improve, right?
Anyway, I'm really thrilled that you're finding those teachers who are willing to give feedback and beta test and putting them in touch with developers. I wish this had been around a few years ago.
I have done lots of research in the field and found the 3 top 'no no's' and why the disconnect can still exist:
EdTech developers (not all) make the mistake of talking and forgetting to listen once they finally get in touch with a teacher.
Teachers are tired of being told "we have the BEST tool for ...." Let them make that judgement.
Giving teachers your sales pitch instead of a 2 way collaboration process.
I hope that with TinkerEd we will continue to narrow the gap.
As you say it is a 2 way process and it is exciting to see some great advances from all parties.
Another perspective: if you are a teacher, your natural habitat is the classroom, not a digital learning conference. That's where user studies should really be conducted, anyway; the learnings are more accurate and relevant.
I have to agree with tedivm. It seems somewhat disingenuous for him to act like he barely broke even if he was able to pay off $15k of debt that he was prepared to eat regardless of whether he sold a single poster or not.
Frankly, it sounds to me like he should consider himself lucky that, despite grossly mis-estimating the actual cost of printing and delivering his posters, he actually received enough funding to meet his obligations to his backers. If he had only raised the amount set as his goal, we'd be reading about yet another guy who's project was never delivered.
Maybe I'm being too uncharitable here, but I think his article is really a case study for why people should be wary of funding low-cost kickstarter projects that require delivery of physical goods.
He precisely estimated the cost of printing:
"Printing was precisely what I estimated it would be: $9,500 "
The cost of re-printing, and re-shipping the posters came out to $7,073, or 9% of the total amount raised. I think we all make these large screw-ups occasionally, but rarely enough that they're not in budgets. I think I cost my last job 20k in an afternoon once.
I don't think this at all indicates people should be wary about funding projects: everything was delivered.
He would have been able to print the posters, but had he only raised 10,000, he would still be in the hole for:
Less shipping supplies ($5,811)
Less storage lease for 5 months ($690)
Less postage ($4,701)
Less temporary help ($741)
Less charity: water contribution ($2,000)
$13,943 in addition to his $15,000 loan, as well as Kickstarter taking 5% and the 5% merchant fee, which would have come out to ~$1000. I don't think people would have received the poster.
I love the idea and execution of this simply because I find making myself practice vim commands to be the hardest part of learning vim, but $25 for a 6 month limited license?
I'm all about game developers getting paid for their work, but that seems crazy overpriced to me & really turned me off of the whole project.
If you consider the price in terms of the utility you'll get out of it I think that's a reasonable price. This book[1] is recommended up the page and that's $23 minimum.
