I vastly prefer plain JS over React, but I will admit that React probably was instrumental in helping create frontend frameworks that are actually good, like Svelte. So I will give Facebook credit for that.
Svelte is awesome. Svelte 5's runes are especially powerful because they let reactivity escape the component boundary. The same reactive model works everywhere, whether you're updating the DOM or building plain application logic.
Rich Harris makes the point that React isn't actually reactive: "React doesn’t have any understanding of the values running through your app. It is not Reactive."
>Modern JavaScript frameworks are all about reactivity. Change your application's state, and the view updates automatically. But there's a catch — tracking state changes at runtime adds overhead that eats into your bundle size and performance budgets. In this talk, we'll discover an alternative approach: moving reactivity into the language itself. Your apps have never been smaller or faster than they're about to become.
He starts with spreadsheets as the archetypal reactive system.
Defines reactivity as values automatically updating according to dependency relationships.
Contrasts that with React's model of rerunning component functions and diffing virtual DOM trees.
Argues that React "doesn't understand the values flowing through your application" and therefore isn't reactive in the traditional sense.
I started with manual ajax calls and browser compatibility issues. It was a painful time. I remember jquery solved some real problems.
But I found the best development cycle as a rails/django multi page apps developer. Anytime I encountered something I needed to update without a refresh it was easy to solve with polling or eventually websockets.
I felt the same: when folks ask this question they might not be using the correct terminology, but what they actually want to know is how many different PDSes (that's what you mean by "atproto hostings", right?) there are in a typical feed.
And only a handful of those have open signups (13 with open signups have >50 users).
Many of them are actually ActivityPub instances with a PDS bridge, e.g., https://join.wafrn.net/
And most of the other open signup instances are also primarily designed as their own social network, just using AT proto as a compatibility layer, e.g., https://sprk.so/https://haruhwa.com/ (which is an invite-based, snapchat-style ephemeral social network), https://surf.social/, https://pckt.blog/ (a microblogging platform), aesthetic.computer (a collaborative programming/art platform)
That leaves only bluesky, blacksky, eurosky, selfhosted.social, self.surf and npmx.social.
Even during Facebook's heyday, the unsuccessful diaspora/friendica/gnu social/etc networks had more decentralization than that.
Right, but I think a typical Bluesky user never sees data from there in their feeds?
Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty cool that you can run all these different apps and have them store their data on their own PDSes. And theoretically it's possible for everyone in my Bluesky feed to be on their own PDS and use different apps. But the question from a Mastodon point of view is: is that the case in practice, and if not, how likely is it that there will ever be a significant portion of non-Bluesky posts in an average microblog feed, on atproto?
Heh true, I did actually use Sidebery before switching to the built-in vertical tabs, which is what I was referring to - but yes, extensions can add tree-style tabs.
There is no correlation between better educational outcomes and higher teacher pay. Washington has the highest teacher pay and the smallest classrooms yet is below average in educational outcomes. Stop this canard, it just isn't true. US Schools have plenty of money, they just don't spend it wisely. In fact, both Mississippi and Louisiana have better outcomes than Washington state despite the fact they have half the spend per student.
The Washington schools constantly ask for more money so they can teach. I don't see what monetary resources are needed to teach arithmetic beyond a blackboard and chalk.
Projectors, videos, computers, tablets, calculators, are all completely useless in teaching math.
I have a great deal of respect for you. Your math skills are much greater than my own. But you have stretched your statement too far. Flash cards can be very helpful in teaching math. Timed tests for math facts can be very helpful. Both of these can be facilitated with computers or tablets. Animations can be a very useful instructional tool. Even taking a picture of the chalk on the blackboard and putting it online can help students (and possibly helpful parents) review the in-class lecture from home while they do their homework.
I don't dismiss your overall point, but don't be too flippant. A video of the lecture can be very helpful.
I mostly agree with you. However, if you imagine yourself sitting down with a set of exercises that you need to figure out how to do, it is true that some well-chosen animations / models will be helpful in that process.
You have to do the exercises. But it might be beyond your ability to start doing them straight from the textbook. Crafted didactic material can walk you through initial exercises to the point where you have a theory of where to begin on another one. Or it can let you investigate a structure until you have an idea.
In your analogy, if you want to be able to bench 150 pounds, at some point you'll have to bench 150 pounds. But a nonconfigurable 150 pound weight isn't the best way to get there. You can have a set of weights that let you start with easier tasks. You can have a set of exercises that aren't bench pressing. Those things are helpful, and generally required.
I watched "The Mechanical Universe" videos on newtonian mechanics. They used lots of animations. I found the animations to be too fast and too distracting to be of any use.
The series was created by Dr Goodstein, who was my freshman physics prof. I understood the same material via him scribbling on the blackboard.
I've seen other animations of mathematics, with the same result - confusion.
I suspect the problem is that an animation does not build a mental model in your head. Carefully examining the diagrams and the equations does.
What you've discovered is your learning style. It's not the same for everyone so it's an important thing that everyone should discover about themself.
There are visual learners out there. Being a visual learner doesn't mean you don't need to do the work, it means you typically need some visualization for things to click, and then you practice applying it like everyone else. Some people can even manage with just lectures.
This causes some students trouble in school because their needs may not be met by every teacher. It's especially worse if the student hasn't learned what their learning style is yet.
I have difficulty believing that my learning style is uncommon. Consider trying to build muscle. There are techniques that are proven to work best. There are no individual "muscle building styles" that work better, unless the person has a disability.
And I don't believe that in general the kids in classes are mentally disabled.
I think it's more of a motivation problem. Not all students are eager to learn. They may not be interested in the subject for whatever reason. It's hard to teach someone who isn't open to it. Learning styles can help bring some of those barriers down by shifting the material into a form that they are more open to.
The same applies to building muscle. Not everyone is self-motivated to do it. There are different ways to motivate people to work out. But in the end they all need to do the work/practice.
All good examples but all relatively low cost as well (and don’t require 1:1 student-laptops). However I’m pretty darn sure that videos do more harm than good - too easy to zone out during them, and providing them to students only allows them to slack in class with the attitude “I can just watch the video again later.” Despite being horribly inefficient this is true for students of virtually all ages. Providing videos to those who ask only might help.
The real problem beyond all this is that the educational spending goes to the wrong spots. If you ask me, teachers should be empowered to select their own curriculum using a budget and most of the rest of the money should go towards paid tutors, better teacher-student ratios, etc (and probably way fewer administrators). I am firmly convinced that a lot of kids act out because they can’t grasp the material, not in spite of it.
I cynically suspect that most people just cannot stand the idea that a teacher and a blackboard works better than all those technological crutches.
I remember when "educational" CD-ROMs came out for classrooms. The pitch was that at any time, a student could go look up the corresponding text on the CD-ROM.
Once I was at a presentation, and the presenter didn't show up. The organizer asked if anyone in the audience was willing to substitute. I raised my hand, and asked for nothing more than a whiteboard and markers.
It was the best presentation I ever did. It was a lot of fun, and the crowd was very engaged.
In the USA there are approximately 50 million students aged 5-18. If you paid for each student to get 1:1 attention one day a week, you would need one teacher per five students in schools that meet five days a week. Let's use that number because it reduces 50 million students nicely to 10 million teachers. Let's pay each teacher $70K/year. That would cost $700 billion per year.
The USA military spent $100 billion per year in Afghanistan.
If the USA provided the 1:1 attention only in 1st Grade and 3rd Grade, they could fund it with the same commitment they made in Afghanistan with a lot fewer deaths. The USA persisted in Afghanistan for 20 years. Shall we experiment with education for 10 years and see if we get a better result than we did in Afghanistan?
Even if the money had been available. you can't just spawn millions of teachers out of nothing. there aren't that many people who can and want to do the job.
Show me the lobbyist who will push for giving 700 billion a year to teachers.
That 100 billion goes to a bunch of extremely well-connected businesses who fund lobbyists to make sure the USA continues expending munitions in a series of utterly pointless, futile, wars.
I believe 1:1 is fundamentally different than ever 1:2 ratio. So, even if you can have 3 person classrooms, I don't think it would be the same as 1:1 time.
As soon as you are working with more than one student, you have to teach the common denominator, which may or may not (more often not) be the thing that will most help any of the students.
In 1:1, you can identify were the specific gaps in skill, knowledge are and tailor the session to close them. Personalized.
Plenty of places have relatively high teacher pay, relative high staffing (for instance 1 teacher + 1 assistant per 25 children is standard here - not quite 1/10 but pretty close). The educational outcomes are bad and getting worse.
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