Why Are Most Programming Tutorials Impractical?

Think of it this way:You need to learn to read childrens books before you can read the NY Times, or a Physics textbook. (And you need to learn a lot more than the language to actually understand what youre reading.)You need to learn to write letters, then words, then basic sentences, then basic paragraphs before being able to write an essay, or a report, or a book.

And then you need to know something about your subject matter in order to write something meaningful.When applied to programming languages;You need to learn some basics before you can even begin to read somebody elses code (say to debug, or tweak something youve just installed). Then, if you understand something about what the code is supposed to do (say, pull some data from a database, perform some math, then display a summary table), you might be able to follow what the code is doing.

In order to write some code, you have to know not only the language youre writing in, but something about the problem at hand and how to solve it.Hence, most tutorials are like childrens books, and 1st grade workbooks - not how-to manuals, much less engineering textbooks.For comparison, you might take a look at:Beginning Erlang: Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good!

(Which actually takes you through building a very simple application. )Actually using Erlang: Erlang and OTP in Action - A book, that you actually have to purchase, that takes you through using the Erlang libraries to build and package something useful (a RESTful caching server). Of course you have to understand what the server is and does, for the book to be meaningful.

More details about building serious applications: Designing for Scalability with Erlang/OTP - which talks about more general application building - assuming that you actually have built some serious applicationsAnd then there are lots of conference papers, and slideshare presentations about the details of specific applications. These tend to include details about tools, packaging, deployment, and run-time environments.Now, Im sure there are similar advanced treatments for C, Python, Java, JavaScript, C, and so on - but its been a while since Ive gone hunting.

But you should get the idea. You need to learn the basics, first - though, you might get some context by leafing through some more advanced treatments.

· Other Questions

How can I start in quantum computing programming?

Fortunately learning to program a quantum computer is (1) much easier than building one and (2) much easier than learning most of quantum mechanics too!The reason for (1) is the same reason that its easier to program a classical computer than to build one. Most computer programmers wont be able to explain semiconductor physics to you, but are plenty competent at writing programs that ultimately rely on semiconductor physics.

They work at a higher level of abstraction. The reason for (2) is that quantum computing deals with a very simple subset of quantum mechanics. A qubit is the simplest non-trivial quantum mechanical system there is (i.

e. it is 2-dimensional). And with multiple qubits you still only ever deal with finite-dimensional systems.

Further, quantum states are manipulated by using quantum gates (which are simply unitary linear transformations) rather than Hamiltonians, so you dont have to do any solving of the Schrodinger equation to understand how your qubits evolve. And finally the big reason: most of the difficulty of quantum mechanics is learning how to model real systems using it. This is an art that takes years to develop.

Fortunately, this isnt part of quantum computing. Youre handed a model of how a quantum computer works and you simply use it.My point is that learning quantum computing is not as daunting as it may seem.

All it requires is understanding some basics of linear algebra (e.g. what a vector is in an abstract sense, what linear transformations are, what a basis is, what the inner product is, etc.

) and some basics of quantum mechanics (e. g. physical systems are modeled by vectors in a vector space with dimension equal to the number of distinguishable states of the system, when a measurement is made the state vector collapses to one of the basis states with probability equal to the square of the amplitude of that state, etc.

).Once you know these, you can start reading up on some specific algorithms (e.g.

Grovers and Shors) and learn how to use a specific system (e. g. IBMs Quantum Experience).

Ive made some videos that assume no background with any of this and guide you through a rigorous understanding of Grovers algorithm. None of it is terribly difficult, it just takes a bit of time. But infinitely less than learning full quantum mechanics, which would be a prerequisite for building a quantum computer.

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My granddad was Estonian and that also made me an Estonian citizen by descent, but I don't speak Estonian. Is it a must that I learn this language?

Depends on your intentions.

If you plan to live in Estonia I think it would be a really good idea to be reasonably proficient in the language. Id call it practically a must in that case.If on the other hand you plan on continuing to live outside Estonia, there is no must.

I think you will appreciate trips to Estonia much more if you have some grasp of the language, however. You can get by in English, most times, is the best way of putting it. Although even this depends on exactly what you do in the country.

When my wife and I visit, we stay with relatives, often at my parents summer home in my Dads ancestral village of Parispea. And when we drive around we dont do touristy things or visit touristy places. I dont expect a car mechanic at some backwoods gas stop, or a middle-aged cashier at a grocery store in Loksa, to be fluent in English, lets put it that way.

And a fellow running a private military museum near the Sorve peninsula on Saaremaa exemplified my typical experience: he couldnt have spoken English to save his life.As I expressed in remark in another Quora thread about Estonian usage, I get a bit hot under the collar about the use of English by Estonians in Estonia. It hasnt happened often but on a few occasions Estonians in Estonia hear my overseas accent (and my use of outdated words that have been supplanted by borrowings from English) and switch to English.

Now, it is just the accent - my pronounciation is actually good, plenty of Estonians in Estonia have told me so. A Nova Scotian accented-Estonian, whatever that sounds like. But some younger Estonians cant be arsed to attune their ears a bit, and therefore switch to English.

What irritates me in particular is that their English is invariably not as good as they think it is - so in fact they are inflicting on me what they believe I am inflicting on them.Like I mentioned previously, even my parents have had this happen to them. Which is a bit rich: both of them were born there, they were teenagers before they left.

Its primarily the accent business primarily - it has changed quite a lot since the 1940s.There - thats my rant for the day. :-)I havent tried this yet, in those occasional circumstances where an Estonian insists on switching to English.

But I might just start speaking broken English with a sprinkling of Acadian French.

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The receptionist at the doctoru2019s office where I work as an RN refers to the medical assistants as u2018nursesu2019. I am the only nurse in the office, the rest are MAs.

The receptionist said u2018nurseu2019 is a generic term. How do I politely correct her on this?

I can fully understand what you're talkin about.

The doctor's office that I go to has probably 6 or 8 doctors in it there's one RN. I question sometimes whether there's even a nurse in there but, I guess there's one and she does case management. The rest of them are CMAs they refer to them as nurses too.

Now I kind of go along with it because I can see their point instead of trying to correct everybody they'll just say their nurses what infuriates me is when I call or they call me when I've had some tests or something done now I understand they're just telling me what the doctor told them it's when I have questions and they try to answer it and they can't even pronounce the medication that I'm on and they're trying to tell me important information and I know damn well they are full of BS that's when I get mad. I've said it to my doctor before I said I don't understand it I don't like them trying to tell me stuff or answer questions that I have that they aren't able or qualifed to answer but, they do it anyway. The other one that really gets me is I'm in Iowa I don't know if it's this way all across the country but here we have BSN-RN's then we have RN's that have a two year college degree and there RN's just like 4 year degree BSN-RN's then there are the LPN's basically they work in the nursing homes and of course there the CNA's nurses aids then we have the CMA's certified medical assistant then we have CMA's certified medication aids.

But now for our ends it just doesn't seem right for one that you have RN BSN nurses that have gone for years the bachelors degree and then you have RN's that come out of a 2-year college and they have an associate degree but they can do the same thing as an RN with a four-year degree the last one the CMAs I quite honestly think they just twist those letters around certified medical assistant and certified medication aide because I found very few of them that know anything about pharmacology so I can empathize with what you're talking about. Then at all the hospitals around the Des Moines area here the nurses are specialized now. They have emergency room nurses they have trauma nurses, surgical nurses, OBGYN nurses everything specialized and they have it printed on the back of their scrubs they all have the color coding from the different depts.

they work in. Then they have there ID cards with their names on them but they all wear those backwards so you can't see their picture so I can empathize with you