I couldn't agree more: as a self-employed software engineer with degrees in literature and psychology, I am living proof that now (not one day, right now) programmers are working for liberal arts "managers" ;-)
It's the same for me when I'm in England, the locals just don't understand me.
"you know what I mean, right?", I say, and they respond with, "oh, royt, e means royt!" WTF is royt, can't these people articulate themselves properly? k-rist they invented the language and we had to improve it, god bless America, rush limpbag and everything that makes the homeland free of the brave.
I come to France in the autumn and spring, have been doing so for 5 or 6 years; studied French as a kid, and lived off-and-on in Montreal for about 5 years.
I would not consider myself anywhere near fluent; that is, compared to how I am able to express myself in my native language, Scala. Hah, how clever, I actually am a rank amateur in Scala, but its hot, maybe you'd like to hire me?
Anyway, the point is, I've met anglophones who have lived here full-time for several years and, wow, sometimes the accent is just painful, all the words are there, but the ability to articulate themselves in French just isn't happening.
Really, language acquisition has to occur at a young age, the earlier the better. Furthermore, building up a vocabulary is helpful, but you can't think phrases in your native native language and then speak them in another language without creating confusion on the part of your listener(s)
I'd really love to hear the C1s, I think I might have a good laugh -- Skype anyone?
> Really, language acquisition has to occur at a young age, the earlier the better. Furthermore, building up a vocabulary is helpful, but you can't think phrases in your native native language and then speak them in another language without creating confusion on the part of your listener(s)
absolutely agree, I would LOVE to hear the C1 French speakers demonstrate their savoir faire with la belle langue NOW, with further years of practice post-C1 mastery.
I can guarantee that:
1) you will sound nothing like a native speaker
2) I will laugh
I find the doubters like yourself rediculous. Have you never emersed yourself in anything? Things that seem impossible aren't remotely when you take them seriously and let them consume your every thought. Focus 8 hours a day on memorizing the digit of pi, reading music, speed reading, multiplying four digit numbers in your head, "counting cards" in Blackjack, playing chess without sight of a board, learning JavaScript, playin Tetris, or whatever. You might find that what seems impossible now becomes second nature. You might find that taking something that is second nature to a higher level (speed-reading technical documents, reading symphonies, division in your head, beating level 41, or whatever) is doable in a few more months. Why wouldn't someone who has mastered the basics of a language, perhaps beyond the level of many native speakers in terms of grammar or vocabulary in say three or four months, not be able to reach a truly proficient level in just another month or two? The poster has devised a technique of getting to an accelerated level of learning as soon as possible. If you try, you might find you can do this, too. I won't laugh.
Not everyone has the ability or personality to be a hyperfocused genius working on a difficult task. Even if they could, it's simply doubtful that a learner would pick up everything necessary to be at C1 level in 5 months. On Chinese-Forums we have a few posters who have done intensive full-time study of Chinese using modern methods for months, and I don't believe any of them managed to achieve that level in several months. A2, B1, yes.
See this long debate about whether a guy can achieve C1 fluency in 3 months:
In the SW part of the country, the surf region, there are loads of foreigners, many of whom have been here year-round for more than a decade; still, the accent is poor, the phrasing limited, and the non-native speaker element is absolutely evident.
You may immerse yourself in everything French, but unless you start early on in life it will be exceedingly difficult to attain native speaker type fluency. Language is not just speaking phrases, being able to read literature, etc., it's also being, language is being the being of another culture.
I think you underestimate just how much there is to learn when learning a language that is very different to your own. Learning Javascript, which has a limited grammar and VERY limited vocabulary, really really doesn't compare.
5 months without living/breathing the language amongst native speakers, fluency, methinks NOT ;-)
I took 8 years of French growing up (10-18) and I understood nothing, literally nothing when I visited Quebec for the first time (that's a joke, do you get it?)
Anyway, the point is, fluency cannot be gained without living in the culture where the language is spoken. Book learning, reciting phrases, etc. will not give you the auditory queues that conversations with native speakers will. When you mispronounce a word or phrase, a raised eyebrow speaks volumes. Books do not raise eyebrows.
The best way to learn languages is to live abroad, in various places, watch loads of TV (really the more the better) and mingle with the locals.
Finally the absolute best way to learn a language is through your significant other; if he/she speaks the language you are trying to learn, and has no interest in speaking your native tongue, wow, spaceship language learning class of the highest order ;-)
> learn a language is through your significant other
That's a common misconception, and I have personal experiences: actually spoken communication with different native speakers improves your capabilities much more than the communication with only one, given the same amount of time.
I think a significant other helps to get you started, and later is handy for all the little cultural things which C1 fluency absolutely requires.
But you risk using the same terms all the time, getting used to each other's nonstandard pronunciation, and lastly, you may sound much more like a tomboy/sissy by only talking to the opposite gender. I really hope it's not too late for me to stop doing all of these :(
I do miss cmd-`, toggle through currently focused app windows from Mac, one of the few features that I did not get in my switch to Fedora 3 years ago.
Of course, so much more was gained, the point of no return has long been reached ;-) Now the question, to Gnome 3 or not to Gnome 3?
Am I going to freak out as a gnome-do + compiz + dual monitor (laptop + external) user, or, with time, one adjusts, and, like an arranged marriage, learns to love the other?
You may want to wait a bit if you are happy with gnome 2, since there are still stability and perf issues (at least in 3.1) the really bog difference is that window switching has mostly become a modal thing, which honestly isn't as bad as you would think once you get used to it
I was in the same boat as you. I looked long and hard and realized that 1) KDE has truly magnificent window management and customizability and 2) the only environment comparable to Gnome 2 in resource footprint is XFCE.
I chose KDE but your requirements may vary. The cool part about linux is Live CDs/USB drives. It's not difficult to try out new things.
Yeah, good point, live usb has been a life saver beyond os install and preview.
I've intentionally been sitting on the fence for over a year now. Once Fedora 14 goes EOL, going to have to make the move.
What I have now is a dream setup (gnome 2, gnome-do, compiz, emerald theme mamnager), so have been in no rush. Was hoping Gnome issues would get sorted out; i.e. they'd listen to the power users screaming bloody murder. Apparently not, or not entirely.
I'll take gnome 3 for a spin, it can't be thaaaat bad (I hope); if I'm appalled, check out XFCE, and then, if need be, KDE (KDE felt complex/clunky compared to Gnome 2 when I made the comparison a couple of years ago, maybe things have changed)
Wikipedia and CL largely serve static files, so no biggie there what the application server is, front end proxy (httpd, nginx, lighthttpd, etc.) does the heavy lifting.
Wordpress is an interesting one, I wonder if they aren't doing some C++ pre-compilation a la Facebook's HipHop? Maybe not, WP is pretty light code-wise (compared to the slow, bloated dog that is Drupal), and for the most part personal blogging sites are not handling Twitter level bandwidth last I checked.
@bad_user is a cool thinker @icebraining, no hot headedness to be found, he's just stating the facts in regard to industry trends for enterprise level applications: it's an M$ and JVM world.
oh, Twitter (Scala/Java), American Airlines (Java), Facebook (on HipHop in C++), Stackoverflow (C#), ESPN (Java)
I think by big that's a code word for enterprise.
The big sites you have worked on are comparatively small if Ruby is backing the show. That's not to take away from the ton of traffic that you guys were able to serve; it's just that there are few enterprise level Ruby backed sites running these days.
Github, I believe is one, but lately I've been getting the "unicorn is angry" icon when viewing repositories, so I wonder about scalability issues. For the record, I have never, ever seen a "unicorn is angry" icon on Twitter. Maybe switching to the JVM got rid of all the magic ;-)
That's not a clear definition. If I guess what you are implying is that "big" means a top 100 site. Enterprise is not the same thing as big, at all. They may co-occur often, but they are orthogonal.
"The big sites you have worked on are comparatively small if Ruby is backing the show."
That's a big assumption. You have no idea who I am or what I've worked on. One of the sites I worked on was yellowpages.com. That's a top 1000 site, but even that doesn't tell the full story. When I was there we were serving ads for most requests to bing maps. Do you consider bing maps comparatively small?
I currently work for disney who runs espn.go.com. The person sitting next to me right now worked on espn.go.com before she transferred to my group. I can assure you that espn.go.com could easily be served with ruby instead of java.
I'm questioning a couple of specific claims made by bad_user. That all big sites use the JVM or c/c++ or .net. I think that is false, or the definition of "big" is so narrow as to be meaningless for 99.9% of programmers. I'm also questioning the claim that the best backend is the one that is the fastest. I'd argue that the best backend is the one that is fast enough and the cheapest, wouldn't you agree? As I mentioned before, I was working on an api that served requests for bing maps with a very tight SLA. We ran it on MRI ruby, and we met the SLA.
Here's something that people often forget, you can put things like varnish in front of your API. This doesn't work for everyone, but if you're API is easily cached, then you shouldn't have any problems scaling it even if you're using a language like MRI ruby which has a GIL.
