mongoDB

The future has arrived and I can’t ignore it—I’m going to add schema-less databases (MongoDB and Redis) into my PHP, Ruby, and my soon-to-be Python courses. I ran a few tests last week and I’ve got to admit that I was totally impressed. Mongodb was especially interesting. I’ll be showing my intermediate PHP students MongoDB next week.

I admit that when I saw these “No SQL” dbs several years ago, I turned up my know-nothing nose and hoped they would just go away. Oh, how the times do change.

Solarized – Ethan Schoonover

This a great color scheme—light and dark versions, both readable and easy on the eyes, available for Vim, Emacs, gnome-terminal, Terminal.app and lots more.

The gnome-terminal version is tricky to install, since gnome-terminal lacks a decent configuration gui. Check this link for accurate instructions. Terminal.app is a little tricky, too tricky for Mac hipsters, so I suggest that they should pass on this one—if Steve wanted you to have Solarized, he would have included it in OS X.

On second thought, I’d rather keep this color scheme all to myself. It’s so sweet that I’d hate to see everyone else using it. Oh well, it’s too late. I’ve already pushed the “Publish” button.

Is it really the next bubble?

…For a start, the latest available numbers suggest that college enrolment continues to boom and that going to university still pays. According to data from last year’s census, average earnings in 2008 totaled $83,144 for those with an advanced degree (ie, a master’s professional or doctoral degree), compared with $58,613 for those with a bachelor’s degree only. People whose highest level of attainment was a high school diploma had average earnings of $31,283.

This “education bubble” is starting to look like a variation of the age-old Attack on Education Bubble.

We’re hearing more propaganda these days that an education is a waste of time and money. Peter Thiel of Paypal fame has declared an education bubble. He says that big name colleges are overselling the value of their degrees to desperate parents and students. To help correct this fraud, he’s giving selected young entrepreneurial types big $$$ to skip college and get an education by creating businesses. He and his cohort will be mentoring the acolytes, giving them are pointer or two.

Thiel’s models for success without formal education are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and their ilk. Thiel, by the way, is a billionaire and has several degrees from Stanford, so he doesn’t really speak from personal experience.

So, I’m going to call bullshit. You can quote me: the more education you have, the better off you are. It’s as simple as 1 + 1 is 2. I’ll say it again. The more math, science and finance you study, the more history you read, the more literature you consume, the more foreign languages you speak, the more you know about art, dance, and music, the richer your life will be.

I speak from experience.

I demo-ed Rails for my PHP students tonight—the famous blog in 15 minutes demo. The room was filled with blown minds. That’s is the usual reaction when I show Rails to a PHP audience—shock and awe. Some are amazed that Rails makes some tricky things ridiculously easy, and some feel that I’ve been hiding the good stuff from them.

Still, Rails’ beauty isn’t enough to pursuade a student to switch from PHP to Ruby. It’s simply that PHP has more mindshare—and more job potential—than Ruby. My students are pragmatic; they see PHP as a better investment of their time than Ruby, a language they’ve never heard of.

I can’t blame them. Despite my crush on Rails, I’ve never worked on a Rails project other than my personal sites. Though PHP is a homely language, noisy with braces and semi-colons‚—and bizarre inconsistencies—it pays the bills. That’s hard to give up for a pretty face.