I'm sure glad I haven't been working on a tutorial series or anything (since I myself am still trying to even find good enough ones to learn a great deal from) because if I was I would be seriously eating words tonight. Words, instead of that super awesome pizza dipped in ranch and hot sauce... Kinda makes me want more. But no, I don't get more. I don't get more because I refuse to gain any more weight than I have already. It's bad enough that I had to cut down to only one as it is, but ultimately that's not even really the root problem. Even considering the occasional frozen pizza dipped in ranch in hot sauce, the majority of my days are only roughly 1500 calories in meals and, basically, everything I ingest before the evening comes. Once it's past about 4:00 or 5:00 in the evening, I face my real weight gain enemy: rum and Dr. Pepper 10. Even switching to Dr. Pepper 10 was a huge thing to me, I used to be quite possibly diet soda's firmest opponent, until I broke 200 lbs for the first time in my life...
So, to completely get back to what I started saying, which will probably prove ironic when I get to my ultimate point here, my programming dedication has drastically dropped. Instead of probably 2-4 hours of programming every day after work, and 4-8 per day on weekends, I'm at more like 2-4 every other work day and about 4 on weekends, and there is one thing to blame. In spite of their apparent fault, I find it hard to be upset about it: Dethklok. Ever since Doomstar Requiem: A Klok Opera aired, I just can't stop watching massive amounts of Metalocalypse. Sure, if I was plenty knowledgeable, I could most definitely come up with maybe a weekly tutorial at least, but given what I said about normal tutorial makers losing interest just when their lesson starts to produce a product that excites the novice student, it could be a potentially word-eating-worthy fact that my dedication is down to probably 50% or even ever so slightly less. It feels a bit false to put it that way, since I still feel the sense of dedication just as strongly as before, but it's just not enough to overcome my love for Dethklok. Not the irony I hinted may be picked up though. That wasn't directed at the word-eating potential, but at even as I talk about my getting distracted from programming, I get distracted from this very post about just that talking about something totally different.
I did however see something online today on my phone that a small part of me felt could have been an incredibly freakin' awesome idea, the greatest source of learning in quite some time aside from an actual education maybe, but ultimately all I saw was the next flop: Google has a new "people teaching people" service out. I honestly can't even remember what it's called specifically but it was something like "Help Out," and I could see exactly what might make it spectacular, but let's be honest here. In this day and age, anything that advertises a chance to make money (not their selling point, but a fact none the less) will typically become severely overpopulated by the exact wrong people. It won't call real experts, or even real almost-experts a lot of the time. I mean, they may appear from time to time, but they'll probably become drowned out in the search results. If they're really awesome at what they do in programming at least, I foresee them already being pretty busy in their field and only maybe putting out a small number of live-stream lessons compared to those who watched some beginner crap on YouTube and decided, "I could totally go make some cash on Google's Help Out or whatever it was called!" Note: It's not a requirement charge money to put up a live-stream help out video, it's up to the "helper" offering the "Help Out." So, if "regular jack-ov, just watched the Java for Absolute Beginner's Series" dude who isn't already swamped in real programming work can pump out, say, two to ten times as many "Help Outs," how will their profile look compared to a real expert?
All in all, maybe there are some fields that will absolutely thrive on Help-Out-or-Whatever, but while there are already programming help opportunities available I just don't see this being "the place." Still, while I feel like it's difficult to really get truly specific through free online tutorials in programming, there isn't a single source from which I have learned more from than Oracle's official tutorial trails, followed closely by The New Boston (even if he does have a pretty apparent tendency to just not care about this or that subject anymore and just goes on to beer making, wilderness survival, biology, etc.) To some maybe this sounds kinda cool, but I long to be a "subject matter expert," not "that guy who knows one or two things about everything but absolute jack in any one particular subject." I still feel (not based on experience quite yet) that real school is the best place to acquire this even considering the requirement to take a variety of classes, mostly just because the truest truth I know in life is that if something is free, then you get what you paid for: nothing. Still, I won't give up trying to get the biggest head-start I can find, since I don't see myself free of the army, school benefits arranged, and beginning classes until next fall and I absolutely don't want to just waste the next nine-or-so months.
Dethklok rules. Fact.
So, to completely get back to what I started saying, which will probably prove ironic when I get to my ultimate point here, my programming dedication has drastically dropped. Instead of probably 2-4 hours of programming every day after work, and 4-8 per day on weekends, I'm at more like 2-4 every other work day and about 4 on weekends, and there is one thing to blame. In spite of their apparent fault, I find it hard to be upset about it: Dethklok. Ever since Doomstar Requiem: A Klok Opera aired, I just can't stop watching massive amounts of Metalocalypse. Sure, if I was plenty knowledgeable, I could most definitely come up with maybe a weekly tutorial at least, but given what I said about normal tutorial makers losing interest just when their lesson starts to produce a product that excites the novice student, it could be a potentially word-eating-worthy fact that my dedication is down to probably 50% or even ever so slightly less. It feels a bit false to put it that way, since I still feel the sense of dedication just as strongly as before, but it's just not enough to overcome my love for Dethklok. Not the irony I hinted may be picked up though. That wasn't directed at the word-eating potential, but at even as I talk about my getting distracted from programming, I get distracted from this very post about just that talking about something totally different.
I did however see something online today on my phone that a small part of me felt could have been an incredibly freakin' awesome idea, the greatest source of learning in quite some time aside from an actual education maybe, but ultimately all I saw was the next flop: Google has a new "people teaching people" service out. I honestly can't even remember what it's called specifically but it was something like "Help Out," and I could see exactly what might make it spectacular, but let's be honest here. In this day and age, anything that advertises a chance to make money (not their selling point, but a fact none the less) will typically become severely overpopulated by the exact wrong people. It won't call real experts, or even real almost-experts a lot of the time. I mean, they may appear from time to time, but they'll probably become drowned out in the search results. If they're really awesome at what they do in programming at least, I foresee them already being pretty busy in their field and only maybe putting out a small number of live-stream lessons compared to those who watched some beginner crap on YouTube and decided, "I could totally go make some cash on Google's Help Out or whatever it was called!" Note: It's not a requirement charge money to put up a live-stream help out video, it's up to the "helper" offering the "Help Out." So, if "regular jack-ov, just watched the Java for Absolute Beginner's Series" dude who isn't already swamped in real programming work can pump out, say, two to ten times as many "Help Outs," how will their profile look compared to a real expert?
All in all, maybe there are some fields that will absolutely thrive on Help-Out-or-Whatever, but while there are already programming help opportunities available I just don't see this being "the place." Still, while I feel like it's difficult to really get truly specific through free online tutorials in programming, there isn't a single source from which I have learned more from than Oracle's official tutorial trails, followed closely by The New Boston (even if he does have a pretty apparent tendency to just not care about this or that subject anymore and just goes on to beer making, wilderness survival, biology, etc.) To some maybe this sounds kinda cool, but I long to be a "subject matter expert," not "that guy who knows one or two things about everything but absolute jack in any one particular subject." I still feel (not based on experience quite yet) that real school is the best place to acquire this even considering the requirement to take a variety of classes, mostly just because the truest truth I know in life is that if something is free, then you get what you paid for: nothing. Still, I won't give up trying to get the biggest head-start I can find, since I don't see myself free of the army, school benefits arranged, and beginning classes until next fall and I absolutely don't want to just waste the next nine-or-so months.
Dethklok rules. Fact.
