Learning to code
(Preamble: I talk about GCSE this and A-level that a lot in this post. For those unacquainted with English patterned education, GCSEs are equivalent to American high school diplomas and belong in the set of school leaving qualifications. A-levels are equivalent to AP courses and the IB diploma, and belong in the set of university entrance qualifications.) Unlike the majority of people, my first proper programming experience came when I entered a GCSE computer science for the first time when I was 13 (normally GCSEs start at 14 but the school I went to was weird like that).
Why True Meritocracy has never been tried
[Epistemic status: Written in a day because Procrastination; not a particularly insightful piece, I will probably rewrite this at some point] One of the most prevalent memes in modern Western society is meritocracy: the idea that anyone, regardless of background, can achieve success based on their own merit. Prima facie, this seems like an honourable ideal; it is obvious that if everyone has the same moral worth (another prominent meme), then everyone should have the same opportunity to achieve something in life.
Hello!
You are probably here, slightly confused as to why someone would buy the domain name picklerick.co.uk and use it for a blog that actually wants to be taken seriously. Well, I like its whimsicality, it matches my name, and I don’t really want to be taken too seriously. This blog really is just a multi-faceted experiment where I try to learn basic web development, website management, version control (trying to get this post up through Git was a nightmare), and most importantly, How To Actually Write, all in one go without really any guidance or experience with long-form writing in the Real World (yes I did write a long dissertation for a high school project, but that doesn’t really count).