Source code: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/4ttSWf

Wut?

Python has been around for a while and Python 2 is still in widespread use. AutoIt is fairly beginner friend and a useful language for office work. Then there's core programming principles, like declaring/calling functions.

Again, this isn't about trying to make everyone into a software developer just like reading/writing isn't about making everyone into a novelist. Even construction workers benefit from being able to read/write. Likewise, office workers in 10 years will be able to benefit from having a basic understanding of programming.

I'm not talking about dedicated programmers. I'm talking about people that happen to be able to code. Like the difference between someone that can write an email to their boss and someone that can write a full length novel that people want to read.

Looking at question 1, without understanding a line of code, how is someone supposed to parse "a = b"? I know from experience that this means, "assign a to the value of b", but someone expecting it to behave like algebra could easily be confused.

Programming is going to be the literacy of the 21st century. Not everyone should be a novelist, but everyone should know how to read and write.

That's the rent seeking nature of unions. They know there's more workers than jobs so they make it as difficult as possible to get in the "good" circle of the union as possible.

Ultimately I don't think Unions are the right tool for 21st century problems, but their existence is definitive proof that the employer-employee relationship won't resolve itself. I think it's a good starting point to get the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" that are most US workers to admit that some problems can't be solved on their own.

A Universal Basic Income would be a better solution and it has a huge number of benefits, including smaller government compared to section 8, SNAP, etc.

employers ... had difficulty finding workers

Is a code phrase for, "They didn't want to pay the going rate."

You do know that only about 2% of our country works in agriculture, right? Machines replaced the massive number of farmers we had. And for a few decades, working conditions were completely terrible. It wasn't until we started rationing jobs, aka the 40 hour workweek, that working conditions really started to improve. What the fuck do you want for data anyway? Worker retires, co-workers stop slacking and use the tools they've had for ages to cover the job. Position is never refilled. Common story, but they're not exactly advertising these non-postings on job boards.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-replaced-by-robots-2015-5

https://curiousmatic.com/2030-nearly-half-jobs-replaced-machines/

Unions are to corporations what corporations are to government. Ask any CEO if they've had good experiences with government or if government gives a shit about their problems. And then the corporation negotiates something out in a way that only benefits the corporation.

Are corporations parasites and should they be abolished?

Individuals just don't have enough clout to negotiate anything. The company can play the workers against each other and even play the government against the workers (thus H1Bs) to keep wages down.

The leeching you see in Unions is because the reality of our modern economy is that there aren't enough jobs to go around. Until we drastically change how we think about supporting people, rent seeking is far more profitable than doing work. And this doesn't only apply to unions. Companies do it too. So if you admit that Unions demonstrate parasitic behavior, they're mimicking corporations and how corporations are sucking the life out of our country.

None of this is going to change until we address the shrinking number of jobs. Increasing the supply of labor (Women in the workforce, immigration, etc) is one part of the problem, but automation is reducing the need for human labor and automation is accelerating. We need to figure out how we're going to operate in an economy that simply doesn't need everyone toiling as hard as they possibly can. And if you think this is absurd, we already have the 40 hour workweek to limit the amount of toil an individual should be doing so we have already faced this problem in the past.

So you're saying increasing the supply of labor reduces their bargaining power, and thus their wages? Funny, that's what I'm saying too!

I want workers to keep a decent share of what they produce. Right now they're being taken for a ride.

Labor does not play well with the laws of supply/demand. When labor is in oversupply, wages drop (as expected), but people work harder to make the same amount of money. Which causes wages to drop even more. This creates a feedback loop until either some outside force intervenes like shifting market needs, war/plague/bolsheveks culling the population, or unions, or labor reform like the 40 hour workweek.

This isn't a problem that's just going to magically fix itself. Sending the H1Bs home is a step in the right direction (and fits above as a means of culling the available workers), but it's not likely to be enough. Just like the 40 hour workweek isn't enough for most industries today.

Then there's the 60-100 hour work weeks. Get used to sleeping in your cubicle.

This is the primary reason we need unions/socialism. If a few people put in extra hours, they get ahead. If everyone does it, wages plummet and it becomes the new norm.

Once I decided I'll stop shopping for libraries and do stuff "the hard way", I started getting more stuff done. Plus I have a better idea about how it actually works and I'm not stuck troubleshooting or hacking around the limitations of the library.

These terms are not trivial. Programming is becoming more complex so that while you may understand the concepts, different languages and frameworks can also have different tools and IDEs and ecosystems to pull snippets from. Companies are used to getting exactly what they want and they'd rather not wait even 2 weeks getting someone up to speed with the ecosystem before they spend 6 weeks getting them up to speed with the code base.

Also... They love impossible requirements so they can claim they meet H1B visa requirements.