I think assessing programming ability is a pretty difficult task (otherwise why would Jeff Atwood, Scott Hanselman and Steve Yegge all have blog posts about it?).

As a Software Engineer, I find other professions' interviewing tactics boggling.

Instead of telling people something is easy, I tell them that it's a little tricky, but that it gets much easier with some practice. This gives them an explanation for their poor initial performance.

I think the key here is, you should not care about what other people think of you, but you should care about how other people feel, because suffering is bad.

I never hold it against my friends or family if they're unable to give me something. I would feel really guilty if someone gave me a gift they couldn't afford; I don't need stuff more than they need money. I'm sure your friends understand that you still care about them.

Absolutely! When I study for a test, I spend two evenings doing all of the homework since the last test again. I rock science/math tests this way.

I think Puzzle Script would be a good choice. Making a game is very difficult, so starting with a very very simple idea and a very simple framework is the way to go for your first game.

Do you have a coding project in mind (like making a game, automating something menial, etc)? If you do have a project, then you should try to find the language with the shallowest learning curve that is commonly used for projects like that (for example, if you want to make games, then I would recommend something like…

To be fair, horrible people can provide good advice. However, Scott's advice is generic and unsurprising, so it's just a horrible person offering mediocre advice.

Another big reason people come out is because there are still people who hate gay people.

That's an interesting point. I based my recommendation on two premises.

I think C# is a great language, and I prefer it to Java, but I don't think it's a good language to learn to program with.

I would recommend starting with a scripting language (Perl, Ruby, Python, Powershell) rather than a programming language (C, Java, C++, C#, Objective C). The amount of setup you have to do to get basic stuff working in a scripting language is tiny compared to the work needed in a programming language.

Reading this article was way better with the Dictionary of Numbers Chrome extension enabled. $128 [ = Household daily income, 2011 ] and $2k [ = One Starbucks latte per day for a year ].

That's a great idea.

I think a lot of clients and bosses end up being nit-picky because their definition of "right" is what they had imagined. If they see something different that isn't obviously better than what they had imagined, they think it's worse.

I play Go rather than chess, and it's interesting how rule #2 is subtly different between the two games.

Last year I tried giving Amazon Prime as a gift, and I everything I looked up said it was not possible to outright buy it for someone else or buy it using an Amazon gift card. Has this changed?

I force myself to save up for things I want, or to finish big projects to earn things I want to buy.

People are really sensitive to manipulation, and if you're not sincere, then it can definitely come off as condescending.