the Matrix stack. BUT! It’s hard to set up and nobody uses it!

Is it really that hard? For me it was just downloading an app and creating an account--easier than setting up Facebook Messenger. I think it doesn't yet have the network that Messenger/Signal/Whatsapp have, which makes it harder to use with others, but setting up has been easy in my experience.

Honestly, probably the most important thing is to move away from any tools that hide what is going on. "Magic" is bad for learning, though it can be useful once you already know what is going on.

If I were to teach a class like this, it would be something along the lines of:

• start in a terminal, perhaps using the Ubuntu server distro
• begin with basic commands like help, ls, and cd.
• show how to write shell scripts
• show how to install new programs using a package manager like apt

After they are comfortable with the terminal, I would walk through installing the Ubuntu desktop distro so they now have a GUI. Then, I would teach them a "real" programming language, probably Python:

• at first, I would require them to write their program in a plain text editor and compile/run it from the command line
• after they are comfortable with that, I would let them use a code editor
• as part of the programming unit, I would introduce the network stack and have them create a server
• at some time during this unit I would also teach them git

After that, I'm not sure where I would go--there's a lot of different directions! Some ideas:

• how computers work on a more low level (transistors to assembly)
• how to build a desktop computer (or even just take one apart and put it back together)
• how operating systems work (syscalls, time sharing, memory management, basics of C)
• bootstrap their own programming language (assembly -> Forth -> Lisp -> ???)
• web development (requests, databases, basics of HTML+CSS+JS)

I also think a capture the flag event would be fun (like /u/half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world suggested), but maybe wait till closer to the end of the year/semester for that

The only time I really heard this talked about was in elementary school, and finger guns were never a threat at the school I went to. Not even once, but the teachers and administration would harp on about it like kids were demonic for making them.

Few people find the bicycle useful for distances longer than 5 km (3 miles). In the USA, for instance, 85% of bicycle trips involve a trip of less than 5 km. Even in the Netherlands, the most bicycle-friendly country in the western world, 77% of bike trips are less than 5 km. Only 1% of Dutch bicycle trips are more than 15 km (9 miles).

This is extremely disingenuous. For reference, over half of all car trips in the US are also less than 5km. The reason people don't use bicycles in the US for longer trips is not because "few people find the bicycle useful", but because most of the roads here are designed for cars. Going far on a bike is a death trap in the US. There's also the fact that if an area is bikeable, you usually don't need to bike far because you don't live in suburban hell. This does not make the bike less useful. In fact, it's more useful because it doesn't take as long to get to your destination if it's nearby.

In contrast, the average car trip amounts to 15.5 km in the USA and 16.5 km in the Netherlands, with the average trip to work being 19.5 km in the USA and 22 km in the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, what fraction of those 22km trips are taken by train or bus? This is important information. You can't just assume "long trip + not bike = car"!

The electric motor can be used to reach a destination faster, or with less effort, but the cyclist remains unprotected from the weather.

Or, more importantly, the cyclist remains unprotected from cagers (i.e., car drivers).

Overall, this article was frustrating in that it was trying to sell some "alternative to bikes" but the author didn't really seem to understand the advantages/problems bikes have.

Yes, it's short for "cooperative". All of "coop", "co-op", and "coöp" are all technically correct (historically cooperative was spelled coöperative and co-operative), but co-op is probably the best to use because "coop" usually refers to chicken coops.

Unless every browser decides to allow scripting in a less shotgun-your-foot language, javascript will remain widely used.

It's called web assembly, and all the major browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge) now support it. That's not to say that Javascript is going to disappear, but other languages might take over much of its marketshare.

But they should be covered under the 1st amendment. The problem is that children don't have many rights in the US.

No. It's hysterical admins using lousy logic to conclude that finger guns = violence. The logic is something along the lines of finger guns = real guns = killing people.

Ah, I see. So being "devalued" is like mixing base metals in your gold coins, while "cheap money" is like loaning out the treasury. Both contribute to inflation, but in different ways.