Grant (the 3Blue1Brown guy) has an uncanny ability to explain difficult concepts and the fundamental intuition behind them. In many of his videos, he explains topics from the perspective of a person inventing that topic (such as in his first Calculus video [1]). I can't recommend his videos enough.
It works for a lot of people, I'm just looking for something else, exercise-based computer-checked proofs to teach mathematics, something like that. Want it bad.
An amateur isn't really someone who knows nothing about a particular subject. On the contrary, every amateur by definition knows at least something about their subject matter. An amateur is simply someone who engages that subject in a non-paid capacity, for personal enjoyment or some other reason. Indeed, amateurs can be, and many are, subject matter experts.
I'm referring to the SME term used in business scope. Where a SME is proven through some standardized way, that makes it impossible for someone not so vetted to have input. Amateur being someone who has interest and knowledge but doesn't meet the checklist to have an opinion.
Similar to what I was thinking amateur doesn't mean stupid or lazy it just means someone who has little or no experience (yet) but has an interest in the subject.
I wouldn't even go this far. An amateur can have tons of experience, and even be an expert in their field. It's true, many people use the word "amateur" to mean unskilled, beginner, etc, but in actuality it's simply someone who engages in some activity for something other than payment. ("Amateur" means "lover of" in Old French, apparently.)
> an excess of analytical thought, particularly when applied to "what if" scenarios.
> This leaves me usually exceptionally well prepared for most situations life throws at me, through my incessant internal roleplaying, however also results in me "experiencing" many negative situations and outcomes, in order to understand how to either mitigate against them or to deal with them when they arise - and the emotions that come with them.
I do this ALL the time. I tried explaining it to my family once...they looked at me as if I just told them I'm a schizophrenic. I'm not having a conversation with myself and I don't believe these scenarios are real. I'm role playing because it helps me predict lots of possible scenarios and how people might react in those situations, which then lets me make more informed decisions about how to handle situations such as those and finds me less frequently being caught off guard.
Why they didn't understand this, I do not know. I'm glad at least someone does.
> Books aren't like software where you can release often and iterate.
That's not true at all. Check out https://leanpub.com/, Manning's MEAPs, The Pragmatic Programmers' Beta books, Apress' Alpha books, Oreilly's Early Release books, etc, etc. Of course these are all digital (mostly PDFs), but they are still very much books.
I don't agree with you. Therefore you lack the mental wherewithal to understand my point of view. I mean just look at all these connections I make between unrelated things. I also have all these cool statistics I made up to prove (not really) my point, so obviously you're wrong.
In all seriousness, though, maybe the programming you've done has been a slog. I'm sure I speak for quite a few programmers here on HN in kindly asking you to not call us all stupid for liking something you don't.
If any law would make suicide illegal, or any government would exert any control over you should you fail, then it stands to reason that those people making those laws, and those people in those governments, own your body.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUvTyaaNkzM&list=PLZHQObOWTQ...