If you think the ungodly hidden XML embedded in text copied from Word is its most hideous crime, try working with living, breathing 500-page "documents" (specifications, test plans, policies, manuals, procedures, what-have-you) which are simultaneously edited by multiple people all the time. Oh, and the document needs to be conformed to some "company standard formatting" which are meant to look good on paper but nobody really prints the whole thing out in real life.
THAT is probably a use case which happens more often in corporate America than the author's more specialized world of online publishing.
I don't think Word is the ideal tool for this case neither (I hear cursing directed at Word all the time), but it is the de facto standard.
As much as I want believe LaTeX is better suited for this task, nobody will use it. (Disclaimer: I last used LaTeX 12 years ago.)
I beg to differ on your point of math being inherently non-social.
In high school, I actively participated--and later led--my school's math league team. Every Friday, we were either home or away for a match with another school. My school wasn't particularly known as a math hothouse (unlike other schools with gifted programs), but we managed to get pretty far in the playoffs for the years I was there, finishing 3rd in the district once even.
Back then, I also actively participated in math and science contests, which eventually led me to be invited to a week-long math seminar. During that week, we had daily team competitions and other activities that were fun, social, and mind boggling at the same time.
And it doesn't hurt on that one faithful June morning too many years ago, I also met the person whom eventually became my husband. wink
I don't know about you, and your mathematics education background, but by the time I took my various math classes in university (I was in faculty of math), the higher level the classes, the less often I see numbers.
People seem to associate "mathematicians" with "wizardry in arithmetics," but even before I finish undergrad, I understand "1 + 1" doesn't necessarily have to be 2. That's how mathematicians think (at least those who are interested in rings, fields, etc).
That stupid 15% tip? It's child's play and has long since been delegated to calculators.
I learned my multiplication table in Chinese (mother tongue), which was way easier when every line has the exact number of syllables (4), almost like a poem. I believe I was taught at school in grade 1 or 2 back then, but I (and most other people) had it memorized at an earlier age. It's easy enough to "teach" my 3-year-old just by reciting it in front of him.
Memorizing multiplication table in English is a lot less intuitive, which I attribute to many people's disdain (or pure hatred, depending on whom you ask) of it.
I'm all for teaching a man to fish, but if he's starving at this moment, save him now by giving him the fish fish first before teaching. A dead man doesn't do much learning.
As for my son, he hasn't learned the multiplication table yet, but he's always interested to have us repeat it to him. (Ah, the curious minds of 3-year-olds.) In a few years, once he has learned the concept of multiplication, it'll be easier for him to apply it for the rest of his life if he has the table memorized. Before that time comes, the table is nothing but nursery rhyme to him. And that's fine with me.
The question is, do people at large even want to do casual programming?
Stepping back, what does "casual programming" mean anyway? Automate certain repetitive tasks? Do some complicated calculation? Write a two-player tic-tac-toe? Make a Sudoku solver?
For the most part, "casual programming" for people who are not into the abstraction layer have been mostly done in Excel/VBA. Most people just don't realize that IS a valid form of "programming" (albeit a very limited subset of it). It's like people who play Angry Birds/Farmville (or Minesweeper in the '90s) obsessively don't consider themselves as gamers, even though they might have spent more time "gaming" than most Counter Strike "gamers".
On the other hand, if you want to dig more into programming, tools like Lego Mindstorm or Scratch teach the concepts rather beautifully. It makes moving onto an actual general purpose programming language much easier.
I'm equally annoyed by people (in a non-personal setting) who asks me my birthday (down to the year) and then asks my age. The person asking is almost always some sort of government/healthcare agent (because most other people are not legally allowed to ask birthday in the first place) filling out some administrative form (paper or online).
Any data entry system which cannot eff-ing figure out my age from my yyyy-mm-dd birthday is an idiot, and deserves to have me "oops-I-calculated-it-wrong" my age.
Net worth of $1m is hardly "rich" in my definition, since it's not sufficient for most of first-world population to retire on. Heck, that 2500 sq ft down the road was listed for $700k and had multiple offers, and my neighbourhood isn't even considered "rich" (perhaps middle- to upper-middle class).
Net worth of $1m quite easily achievable by 50 with two middle class income, not being a spendrift, and not being a bonehead in investing. (For the record, trading stocks too actively is usually a bonehead move, so is putting all savings in CD's.)
What if Alice didn't know she was pregnant -- or wasn't even pregnant -- at the time of the interview? The process of hiring can drag on for weeks and months for many industries and companies.
The employer made what you've described as a coin flip choice and have to stand by that decision. Life is never "fair" in the way you're defining fairness in this case.
It's the same basic situation, just not as severe. Alice undoubtedly has some inkling that she may become pregnant, even if she thinks it unlikely. If Barbara isn't pregnant or planning to become pregnant, and has taken steps to prevent pregnancy, she is still a better hire than Alice, all things being equal. In a competitive market for labor under complete freedom of contract, a company could ask both Alice and Barbara about their plans to become a mother. The employment contract could also include clauses contingent on pregnancy, such as indemnifying the company against the lost productivity caused by unexpected maternity leave. The details would be determined by the relative bargaining power of the company and prospective employee. Those offended by such practices could simply decline to apply to such companies.
In short, under freedom of contract, company policies with respect to pregnancy would depend on free negotiations between buyers (employers) and sellers (applicants). The solutions would likely vary widely, each tailored to the needs of its particular industry. In effect, the status quo consists of a mandatory one-size-fits-all (or perhaps one-size-fits-none) solution that has many more negative side-effects that its proponents are prepared to admit. (Exercise: Show that compulsory compensation for maternity leave necessarily increases unemployment and lowers wages.) The idea that current policies necessarily benefit women is naïve at best, evil at worst.
Incidentally, there's nothing necessarily wrong with governments subsidizing procreation. But deciding whether and how to do so requires judgment and wisdom—qualities not particularly evident in those currently in charge.
As someone who became mother due to the lack of active prevention of pregnancy (call it a pleasant surprise), I am of course of a different opinion than yours.
There is nothing stopping either Alice or Barbara from lying about their procreation plans. Outside of abstinence, which cannot be proved or disproved by anyone other than the female in question (and it is not even something she has 100% control on -- unwanted sex do happen in this world), there is no foolproof birth control method. As such, and without trampling on employees' privacy, there's no point for an employer to inquiring about procreation plan.
I don't believe the clauses contingent on pregnancy is appropriate on employment contracts neither. If maternity leave is such a big loss on productivity that a company needs compensation for, one can argue either the market should already have a product for it (e.g. some form of "maternity insurance" provided to employers), or the government should subsidize the employer.
In Canada, where @raganwald and I currently reside, employers are not legally required to provide compensation for persons on maternity or parental leave. (Maternity leave is for mothers giving birth only; parental leave can be split between parents of either birth or adoption.) Instead, the government provides partial compensation. It's up to the employer to decide whether to provide additional compensation on top of government benefits. I don't know where you are located nor your local laws regarding maternity leave. In your opinion, would a policy similar to Canada's be suffice, or do you still want more protection for the employers?
I suppose you are opposed to Arizona's new birth control pill bill HB2625 then? [tongue in cheek]
