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benrhughes

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IME, children (I have 4 of them) have extremely high concentration levels, if they choose the thing they're concentrating on. My 8yo will read for hours, uninterrupted. My 6yo reads for 30min+. Even my 3yo will happily look through picture books for 15-30min.

Out of the box, ctrl-[ is mapped to escape. It took me about a week to un-learn Esc, but it is one of the better vim decisions I've made (along with mapping j to gj and k to gk, and mapping tab to :bnext).

Installing VsVim was thing that really helped me get comfortable with vim. I'd use it at home, but I write way more code in the ~40hrs/week I'm at work.

VsVim doesn't cover everything, so as you start to get more advanced in your vim usage you'll start to miss features (for me at the moment, it's only partial support for folding). But it really makes every day VS so much better.

That would be almost anyone who's automated a build for, say, a CI server.

I also use it to compile outside of VS, because 1) it's often quicker on large solutions and 2) it mirrors the CI build (sometimes VS is too smart and papers over issues).

I completely agree. It's not surprising though: Discourses and The Enchiridion were delivered as lectures; Meditations is a personal diary.

Marcus was obviously heavily influenced by Epictetus, and at times manages to state some of his ideas more poetically (esp in the Hays translation). Overall though, The Enchiridion is a much better base for Stoic philosophy. It's short, acerbic and almost every section can send you off into deep thought.

Meditations is mostly interesting as an example of someone trying to life a Stoic life - it shows Marcus' failures, his attempts to conquer his fears. It's well worth reading, but you'll learn more from Epictetus.

Edit: for Epictetus, I prefer the George Long over the Elizabeth Carter: http://www.ptypes.com/enchiridion.html

While that's true, I think it's possible to find your own corner of the world that's not obsessing over the issues du jour and generally worrying themselves to death.

After trying many time to cull the people I follow to create a more positive space, I ended up starting a new account and only following people whose positive:negative content is really high. So far it's working well.

I'm not sure people are being snarky - more pointing out that there are much cheaper ways to create an alternative. Plus, it's often a whole lot easier to add a DIY platform to an existing desk than to get your company to shell out for a mechanised adjustable height desk.

FWIW, I have a 27" and 2 24"s.

Although I'm very, very sympathetic to the idea that class hierarchies often cause more pain than they're worth, using JS to make that point is a bad idea.

In most actual OO languages, there is a clearly defined interface between a base class and it's inheritors: eg in c# you have protected (to expose state), abstract to force implementation and virtual to optionally allow implementation. In no way are you forced to expose all internal state (even though people often do).

I think there's a case to be made against class hierarchies, and also against using OO in javascript. But I'm not sure Ragan made either of them well here.

I went from CS at Uni into a full time dev job for a government agency. Since then I've worked for a mature micro ISV and now an environmental not for profit.

I have a paid android app and an OSS windows app that gets donations. The vast, vast majority of my income comes from my day job though.

Building someone else's dream can be great. Sometimes you get to work on things that are more important or just broader scoped than what you can do on your own. Also, a regular, decent paycheck has it's benefits.

I really dislike his transformation of the dichotomy into a trichotomy. It takes a simple, deep insight and muddies it. The middle category is just a subset of "things not completely in our control", all of which we should be indifferent to.

That aside, I found Irvine to be a great introduction to Stoicism, even if he misses some of the depth and grace of Epictectus. I think I would have had a much harder time getting into the Roman stoics if I hadn't started with this book.

A Guide to the Good Life has its issues, particularly around complicating simple ideas (for example, his "trichotomy of control" adds nothing at all the the basic dichotomy, other than confusion).

However, he does a good job of giving a basic introduction and framing for Stoic concepts. I think it's easier to digest the Romans (particularly the concise and acerbic style of Epictetus) if you are somewhat familiar with the subject. I got much, much more from Epictetus than I did from Irvine, but he is, I think, a valuable on-ramp.

I'm also not sure what the big deal is with Marcus Aurelius. Compared with The Enchiridion and even Seneca's letters, it's haphazard and dull. I'll give it another shot once I'm done with all of Seneca's letters.

Personally, I would start with Irvine, then the George Long translation of The Enchiridion (it's more poetic than the Carter translation, IMO). I'm about half way through Seneca's Letters, and while enjoyable, he takes a long time to cover the same insights as Epictetus.

(aside: on my 3rd or 4th reading of The Enchiridion, I wrote brief notes on each part, which you can find at http://thiscodinglife.com/dissecting-epictetus/intro)