Notices by Michela Marie 🏳️‍🌈 (michelamarie@mastodon.social), page 13

@jeffalyanak Awesome!! Thank you for posting this!

I've been using VS Code since my instructor for a course I recently took asked the class to do so, and actually like it so much that I kept using it after the course was over, but I was always uneasy about that binary Microsoft license (I turned off all the telemetry that the settings would allow).

Now I can feel a lot more comfortable about my code editor. 😄

@paulfree14 @dansup Hi, there! While I respect you as a person, I disagree with you.

That said, I did already say in an earlier comment that some people do not want higher education and that I respect their choices.

I also think that even if some encouragement or thoughts may not suit or be accepted by everyone in every situation, it of course, still may be given. If others disagree with such encouragement or thoughts, they may simply discard them.

"Katie Bouman: the 29-year-old whose work led to first black hole photo"

"Bouman is a post-doctoral fellow at MIT whose algorithm led to an image of a supermassive black hole"

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/11/katie-bouman-black-hole-photo

#computerscience #womenintech #astronomy #blackhole #space

Also relevant: more tar sands development does not equate to more jobs:

"Between 2014 and 2016, production grew by nearly 10 per cent, but 39,000 fewer people were employed. "Albertan oil output increased over the last four years while the jobs were lost," Jaccard said."

Yet another reason the Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan #pipeline should not be expanded:

" if the world honours its pledge to keep global warming under 2 C, there's less than a five per cent chance that new oilsands investment — including pipelines — will be profitable over the next 30 years."

This, along with the fact that it would contributes to a threat to all life on Earth.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-bitumen-boom-oilsands-election-experts-1.5091759

#Canada #BC #environment #sustainability

@Transflux @dansup Yah. I think it's always tougher, but probably exciting, to study under a newer degree program

Canada is amazing! 😀 I actually got my undergrad in the US. That school was solid, but not as good as the school I went to for my master's degree. The schools in Canada are of very high quality. The cost is generally higher here than Europe & generally less than in the US

I really loved getting my degree here (and my undergrad too!). I learned so much, and did a lot of cool stuff!

@steveroy I totally agree.

It's also a ridiculous thing to call oneself, even apart from the meaning of the phrase.

@Transflux @dansup All that said, I totally hear you. One definitely does not *need* a degree to become a very good web developer

My comments mainly came from hearing about dansup's story & abilities & deciding to encourage him. I'm a huge advocate for higher education. I believe that everyone who wants to attend should be able to do so, and that it helps elevate society and people's lives. Even so, it's not something everyone has to or wants to do, which I very much understand & respect. 🙂

@Transflux @dansup Finally, there's information like this (https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/unemployment-rate-2-1-percent-for-college-grads-4-3-percent-for-high-school-grads-in-april-2018.htm).

At the *macro* level, people with university degrees simply make a lot more money, and are a lot less likely to find themselves unemployed or automated out of a job.

Of course, that's statistically speaking. So there are plenty of examples of people without degrees who make just as much money, and are just as unlikely to be unemployed, but it is not usual.

@Transflux @dansup Then there's all those other courses that are required for a degree -- languages and literature, math, Earth sciences, social sciences, economics, philosophy, that are instrumental in developing one's understanding of the world and how to operate within it. People often seem to underestimate those, but I am quite convinced they are at least as important for one's life and career as those directly applied to a major.

@Transflux @dansup Well, I won't dispute that, or suggest that there's anything wrong with not having a degree (absolutely not!).

That said, college and university give one so much more than just the foundations in a given profession, be it CS, finance, or what ever.

The thing is, a university education teaches one *how* to learn, and how to think rationally. Then, it shows one how to put that knowledge and thinking to work on hard problems.

@dansup You can do that no matter what your grades in high school were (those are quite irrelevant at this stage), and even if you had poor SAT/ACT marks, or didn't even take those tests at all -- those don't matter much in your situation either.

Nice work on getting a trade certification. Those seem to often be really stable gigs, and any courses you took for that might also be applicable to other programs.

@dansup No worries. It's true! 😀

With regard to getting in to college or university, you can actually take courses at a community college without declaring a major or joining a course of study, and taking one or two courses at a time -- this is what I did, because I was working full time and didn't have the money to study full time. In doing it this way, you will have good grades in college on your transcript. Then you can declare a major, get a diploma, and transfer to university! 🙂