Personally, I've cracked very few programming books and I've been building websites since ~2004 back when magazines and books were the best sources for information. Some people learn skills from books well, and some people end up bewildered and confused until they can actually try it out and see how it works. I need to explore to discover and learn.
I did find "Eloquent JavaScript" very helpful, it didn't just get me started on JavaScript but actually introduced that whole computer-sciencey side of programming that I hadn't encountered in my various markup and stylesheet language coding. I never finished Eloquent JavaScript though, it was like a springboard that got me into JavaScript (which is dynamic and has an interactive runtime) and as soon as I could be having a conversation with JavaScript at runtime, from there I continued learning by talking to the REPL and seeing what happened.
I've always been told by my parents that people can still hear and understand even if they appear unconscious or non-responsive, and so I have a personal policy of speaking respectfully toward them just the same as if they were alert and responding and part of the conversation, but it has shocked and amazed me (and saddened me) by what some people say in the presence of a living person who can very possibly hear and understand but may not be able to respond. Be careful not to be cruel to people in that situation!
When it says "arrays, which may be thought of as functions whose domains are isomorphic to contiguous subsets of the integers", is it saying that this:
const list = ['a', 'b', 'c']
is syntactic sugar for expressing something like this:
function list(index) {
switch (index) {
case 0: return 'a'
case 1: return 'b'
case 2: return 'c'
}
}
I copy/pasted it into my editor to see it larger. I still used my brain. This 'test' is not a true test but a trick, and the trick doesn't have to do with programming ability.
So cool! Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of one of those very old cameras with the bellows or accordion. I wish I could look through it myself to see what you see with it!
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I see that the man was Israeli in the original story and I don't want to presume a religious perspective, but I can share some thoughts from my own based on his story and yours. I've read the New Testament within a Jewish framework and one of the things it says, Rabbi Shaul says in 1 Corinthians 12:23 that those people in the community who are most embarrassing or cause us to blush, like the parts of our own body who are honoured or dignified by being clothed with underwear, likewise in the community are owed a special covering and to be afforded dignity by the other parts of the same body/community. Just something to think about in light of this story!
Back about 20 years ago there was a lightweight Gecko-based web browser called 'Camino' that was a delight compared to Firefox or other 'full' browsers. It was fast, simplified, and still rendered pages well. I didn't always use it, but it was a joy to use.
I downloaded Helium and gave it a spin and my first impression was "Ah, it's like Camino all over again". I can't use this for my job where I need to use stock {Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge} because our customers do - but for personal browsing I'm currently using Arc which is very comfortable but heavy, I might try to use Helium for quick simple things when I want less overhead! Thanks for sharing!
I'm not saying that people should kill others or themselves because of the amounts of money involved here, and I'm not entirely sure what the minimum threshold is for financial crimes where that becomes an (grim and unfortunate) side effect, but when we're discussing the largest fraud in history it's definitely on that scale. Even though he stole money, the human cost of that is beyond just fractured careers and relationships, undoubtedly because of how humans behave people almost certainly lost their entire lives due to the continuing effects caused only by this crime. That cost in human life should be taken into account here, even if it shouldn't have had that kind of cost.
I did find "Eloquent JavaScript" very helpful, it didn't just get me started on JavaScript but actually introduced that whole computer-sciencey side of programming that I hadn't encountered in my various markup and stylesheet language coding. I never finished Eloquent JavaScript though, it was like a springboard that got me into JavaScript (which is dynamic and has an interactive runtime) and as soon as I could be having a conversation with JavaScript at runtime, from there I continued learning by talking to the REPL and seeing what happened.