Apple has a Software Problem — Why I'll be Switching to Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.kevinsookocheff.com/2013/04/30/apple-has-a-software-problem-why-ill-be-switching-to-android/

<comment><USER2> Beware, Android has its own share of software problems.

Reflecting on this, I've come to the following conclusion, let me motivate it a bit.

Jobs was a notable fan of Sony's industrial design in the 80s. But Japan's traditional industrial problem has been poor software despite great hardware. Often software so bad that it brings down an otherwise great piece of hardware.

Jobs tried to solve this, great hardware _and_ software, tightly integrated, completes the product. Small details, from the trackpad on a Mac to the clickwheel on an iPod, to the interface on an iPad are all examples of this philosophy.

Fundamentally this puts the focus on building a product, the industrial design, the power supply, the BOM and the software (instead of all the previous bits and _then_ later some software). But a product oriented development process means you build the product, ship it, then move on to the next product. You don't really keep revving a product after it ships.

But software is a fundamentally different beast. As a discipline it has transformed into a continuous practice instead of a discrete practice like hardware. "Cloud" computing, with continuous updates are simply an extension of this understanding. It puts _tension_ into Apple's product focused development practice because it forcibly decouples the software part of product design that Apple has spent so much effort into coupling.

I'm not saying Apple never updates its software, to the contrary, Apple software is generally well supported and receives updates. But it feels like it's done in a begrudging kind of way. Major software updates tend to be lockstep released with major new _hardware_ product launches, not independently (and _then_ some older products can be updated with the new software).

Contrast to other parts of the computing industry where the system software and hardware are completely decoupled. Which is the better approach? I don't know. Apple's innovation tends to come in huge leaps, followed by slow refinement. It's easy for consumers to keep track of and it seems to have worked well. But then every once in a while competitors will move ahead, and if it's early in an Apple product cycle it can take _forever_ for Apple to reach parity since you have to wait for the next major product release to get the next major software release. It can feel like catching up.

Some software development just simply works better with a continuous development process. Maps is a really notable example, all of the data lives outside the product and as the data improves, the product seems to magically improve as well. I think what we're realizing is that voice recognition applications (Siri, Google's Voice Search) benefit from out-of-product improvements to the fundamental algorithms as well.

And this is where Apple is struggling, by viewing software as huge steps with small shuffles in between, they struggle in cases where software development works best as a continuous reasonable walk. It can feel like Apple just can't be bothered sometimes while you wait a year or two for the next major product cycle.

(comparatively, Google suffers from the opposite, by keeping on their regularly paced march, the product ecosystems ends up horribly confused, you might be able to get the latest google tech on product A, but can you get it on product B? Who knows!? It can be frustrating as a consumer)

<comment><USER3> Overall an excellent thesis.

One quibble, though, with this: _"Some software development just simply works better with a continuous development process. Maps is a really notable example, all of the data lives outside the product and as the data improves, the product seems to magically improve as well... And this is where Apple is struggling, by viewing software as huge steps with small shuffles in between, they struggle in cases where software development works best as a continuous reasonable walk._ "

I happened to be traveling in Italy during the last week of iOS 6 beta and the first two weeks of iOS 6 release, and was amazed to see the sudden dramatic improvement in maps on an almost daily basis during that trip. At the start of the trip, we still preferred the original maps on iOS 5, but by the end of the trip, the iOS 6 maps felt superior in most ways.

Apple was clearly updating both the "cloud" map data and the map functionality without a point release to iOS itself, and iterating incredibly fast. Seems to me if the "new maps" journalism had been delayed about three more weeks after iOS 6's release, the "first" impressions would have been markedly improved.

I also believe, based on the types of things that changed, that the iteration was driven by real world mass usage data that Apple just couldn't get from the beta or GM install base who use iPhones differently.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I agree. I think Apple is moving towards this kind of development, but it's just not in their present DNA. I wonder how much of the rapid map improvements were the very public bad press and the apology by the CEO putting a laser focus on the problem vs. something that would have happened organically? Looking at the glacial pace of Siri improvement and the low prioritizing of the iTunes recommendation engine, I can't help but wonder.

In other words, I don't think Apple really wants to move to a more continuous software development model, but market forces are simply forcing it to do so. It is surprising that they aren't investing more of their piles of cash into expanding and improving their software development practices.

<comment><USER3> > _I wonder how much of the rapid map improvements were the very public bad > press and the apology by the CEO putting a laser focus on the problem vs. > something that would have happened organically?_

The iterations, things like building outlines, or on the iPad, 3D building textures for historic Rome, could not possibly have been produced on short notice.

I believe iOS 6 Maps was simply a month behind schedule, and iOS 6 was launched before Maps was ready, with data and features continuing to release until they hit their deliverable. After that additional three weeks, Maps seemed to stabilize into incremental improvements rather than the leaps and strides made during in the three weeks after iOS 6 release.

> _It is surprising that they aren't investing more of their piles of cash > into expanding and improving their software development practices._

My perception is Apple has a different dev model of sticking with comparatively small dev teams in an effort to keep product lean, focus tight, and quality and polish high. I'm not sure what the result would be if they expanded teams. Some research suggests both quality and output might actually drop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think Apple has a software problem. I think Apple has a data problem.

From the lack of movement on Siri to the numerous problems with MobileMe (or whatever it's called this week), the utter mess that was/is Apple Maps, Apple have proved time and time again that they can't excel where big data is concerned- sometimes they will be sufficient (the iTunes store, perhaps) but never great- and often subpar.

<comment><USER5> But the "scale" part of iTunes is just a CDN, isn't it? The other problems are proper big data problems.

<comment><USER6> iTunes has search, and it has some rudimentary suggestions. It's a store, like Amazon, but Apple just hasn't bothered to make it as smart as Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And yet, just 3 hours before the post, the author apparently tweetspammed his followers for a chance to win an iPhone 5:

      Kevin Sookocheff @soofaloofa 3h
      Enter to win a brand new iPhone 5 from @iPhoneinCanada and
      @TELUS! http://bit.ly/188DQzL

So maybe take this with a grain of salt?

<comment><AUTHOR> Guilty ... a free phone is a free phone.

<comment><USER7> And there's no crime in that. I'm firmly in the iOS camp, but have several Android devices for testing/playing.

Unfortunately, there's been a rash of proclaiming! (iphones, androids, standing desks, whatever) posts submitted to HN, and you go back a week or a month later and the poster is back to their old ways.

I would rather see submissions that are something like "6 months ago, I switched to x, and I'm never going back!". To me, these are the more insightful posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I completely agree. Except, unfortunately, there is no Android phone I can switch to. Apple gets most things right in terms of hardware.

Switching to Galaxy S4 would be downgrading my experience because of ugly and bloated Touchwiz and a display with wrong, exaggerated colors. Switching to HTC One, would be downgrading my camera. Switching to Nexus 4 would be basically be downgrading everything (camera, battery life, call quality, display) but the OS.

<comment><USER9> RE: TouchWiz UI - Did you know that you can use your own launcher and apply any theme you wish (legally; without even rooting the device). While I agree that it is not as polished as iOS, it can look great too. You can even make it look like iOS or Windows Phone with some effort.

RE: Display - Just like normal TV set, you can select your preferred display mode on the S4. According to DisplayMate, the movie mode gives you the most accurate colours. Please read their detailed display shootout between the S4 and iPhone 5: <http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm>

RE: Battery Life - Are you kidding? From my experience, iPhone 5's battery life is shorter than that of many Android phones.

RE: Call Quality - Wow. Really?

<comment><USER7>
      RE: TouchWiz UI

You're talking about just the launcher, but TouchWiz is so much more than that. It's a custom suite of apps that replace Android's vanilla apps. I'm talking about the Phone app, Calendar, Email, Messaging, Music, Camera (Although Samsung might have the superior here) and so on. A new launcher doesn't fix any of that.

      RE: Display

I don't get why people are obsessing over this so much. The displays are roughly on par. If you _really_ care about color calibration that much, stick with an iPhone?

      RE: Battery Life

This wholly depends on your coverage area. In my area with great Verizon and AT&T LTE coverage, the iPhone 5 still bests any of the Android handsets I have tested here, including the HTC One, S3, Nexus 4, etc. The Note 2 and RAZR MAXX did hand the iPhone 5 its butt, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still dream of world where I can combine a hodge-podge of services that intercommunicate through open protocols. Maybe the integration isn't quite as perfect, but it gets the job done. I'll gladly make that trade-off if I can avoid picking an "ecosystem" the way we pick a sports team.

<comment><USER2> The trouble is and always has been that it's very hard to monetize this. From mashups to open web services to RSS, it's hard to insert an advert into a back-end data stream the user never sees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think he has a good point. The first thing I do when I have a new computer is install Google Chrome and log into my Google account. All my Google Chrome apps then get synced and I am ready to get to work. When I got a chromebook and signed in for the first time I did not have to set many things up as most of my stuff synced except for Skype and a few other apps that are not available on the chromebook. The lack of Skype on the chromebook just pushed me to use Google+ Hangouts more so a loss for Microsoft/Skype. I have started to notice myself moving away from using my iPad 3 and iPhone 5 due to their lack of OS level integration with Google. I suspect my next phone and tablet will be Android based.

</comment><comment><USER12> If Google was all I did with my devices, then sure, Android is the way to go. But this article discounts pretty swiftly that there is more to a device than my Gmail and Google Now.

As for me, I like Google Now and will continue to use Gmail integrated with my iPhone's mail client, but I'm not willing to walk away from my decade of iTunes use and migrate my media elsewhere, and there isn't an Android equivalent to my AppleTV experience yet (are they even still selling the Nexus Q?), especially over not having to log in multiple times.

<comment><USER13> iTunes lock in? I thought iTunes sold DRM-free mp3 files like every other music store?

<comment><USER14> Since 2008, yeah. But the only way Apple got the license to sell the music online in the first place was if they DRM'd it, and you have to pay to unlock the songs purchased prior to the switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually find iOS almost universally easier to use in terms of software than Android devices. This pains me because I'd much rather use a more open device running Android, and would much much rather not go through the awful experience of the AppStore review when developing software.

But I find the experience right through the stack from the UI, to the software architecture and hardware, far better on iOS than Android.

What I think I'd really like to see is someone make an open iOS clone. Sony actually started working on this, building on GNUStep but then dumped it. I keep thinking about picking that up myself, anyone what to fund me to do it? :)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's hardly unusual to find a 3rd party app that does something better than a system provided application regardless of platform, where _better_ is in part dictated by personal preference and needs. What's a bit unusual is that the choices are google, google, google, google, google. Seems you have a bit of a bias there.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am gonna chime in here. I think he is absolutely wrong. Apple has amazing software built right in and usually never fails me. Siri can be a pain sometimes but it works 90% of the time for me. Apple Maps are pretty good despite the lack of local transit routing. I have had Google Maps for iOS's turn by turn navigation fail me just as much as Apple Does. I've been an apple developer for a long time now, and just recently started developing for Android. I will say this apple developer tools/API/SDK's are far better than android hands down. I spend more time doing stuff in android that could be done in less code for iOS. The quality of the apps there fore tend to be much better and more polished on iOS than Android. and it shows.

</comment><comment> wes-exp If Apple's problem is that it can't upload my data to Google as efficiently, then I will consider that a feature, not a bug.

<comment><USER18> It does seem that a lot of people want to throw as much personal data at an advertising company. Maybe I'm the weird one , maybe I have something to hide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it interesting that just because someone has a different opinion, like that Medium piece on why "I won't wear Google Glass", it suddenly rises to the top.

This article basically reiterates what others have argued for the longest time. One platform is better than the other, one company better than another. Who cares if you switch what phone model you use? It's not like someone is going to be converted because of what you did. Your phone isn't a religion.

</comment><comment><USER20> This sounds like a person who likes their Google software to work on their iPhone without ever giving Apple software a chance. In fact he skipped right over Apple's software, never mentioning iCloud or other features.

<comment><USER8> And your suggestion is using iCloud Mail instead of Gmail?

As for Safari, I'm sure he gave it a chance. I did too. However, I use Chrome on all my other devies and I love Chrome's tab and bookmark sync.

Google Voice Search absolutely destroys Siri when asking questions, unit convertions etc.

<comment><USER21> Safari has a pretty powerful bookmark sync as well, if you've set up iCloud correctly. All my bookmarks are synced across devices. I can also look up what tabs are open on other devices (provided the same user is logged in). With that in mind, I actually find it more powerful than Chrome's, and it's quite handy when juggling multiple machines for whatever reason (but I end up using Chrome 95% of the time anyway because of UI preference, and a better dev tool experience). I do prefer the Chrome iOS UI as well, but since Apple has concerns about letting people have access to JIT compilation, I stick with Safari on iOS.

Definitely prefer gmail, though.

<comment><USER8> Bookmark/tab sync is not the reason I use Chrome. I use Chrome on all my other devices and I want my bookmarks/tabs to sync with my phone as well. This is why I can't use Safari on iOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I also feel like they are much slower in terms of innovation or exciting features. They had everyone when the iPhone was first released as it blew everything out of the water. Competitors have caught up, and in a lot of ways, are starting to pass Apple in various ways.

Like the author of this post, Google apps have replaced most of the common Apple apps I use. I too am looking to switch to Android. If I do switch to Android, this means that staying with OS X and Apple hardware is far less important to me.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds logical, but Google are putting so much effort in to outshine Apple on Apple hardware that iPhone users get better Google maps and google Now than Android users.

Google's iOS team are producing some fantastic products, and I'm considering moving back to an iPhone to take advantage of them.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why declare to the world your next phone? Buy whatever makes you happy and use whatever you like using. These discussions go nowhere quickly.

IMO, you will be switching back to apple.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm using an Android phone. For long, I was never satisfied with the quality of software on Android. iOS apps are much more polished and innovative.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't believe that right now any single Android can beat Apple in a fair fight. But it could be 1979 all over again.

If Google follows in Microsoft's footsteps -- which is, to support Android in ways that 1) provide an Apple-like experience at a lower price; and 2) make life easier for developers, especially within the enterprise -- then it might win.

One might be tempted to say Apple's design will always win. In reply I present Exhibit A - the IBM PC.

</comment><comment><USER27> Apple has an ecosystem/infrastructure problem.

iPhone was built to be the best phone. And for a big part of the market, that's what it is.

Android was built to enable widespread unhindered access to the Google ecosystem. That's what it does.

Apple never built a competing ecosystem. iTunes is now 10 years old. The app store is 5 years old. Are there any other noteworthy achievements in ecosystem and infrastructure for Apple?

Apple has spent a ton on capex recently. One hopes a big part of that is for gearing up to provide a first class ecosystem for core user needs.</comment>


GIMP has moved to Gitlab - <AUTHOR> https://www.gimp.org/news/2018/05/31/gimp-has-moved-to-gitlab/ <comment><USER2> 1) Not related to the github thing (this move happened last week...)

2) They moved when GNOME moved to gitlab.gnome.org.

<comment><AUTHOR> They moved (gnome and gimp) the day before Bloomberg announced the possibility (which is now a certainty) of Microsoft buying GitHub.

Is it random ? What are the odds ?

Of course it can be random, but I doubt it (my opinion)

<comment><USER3> The Gnome project started the process that resulted in the move to GitLab a bit over a year ago. [0] That's a long time for Free Software advocates to stay quiet about Microsoft secrets.

[0] [https://lwn.net/Articles/722870/](https://lwn.net/Articles/722870/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> gimp is powerful, but not intuitive to use, I wish there is an 'easygimp' version that is geared towards basic usage.

<comment><USER2> tux paint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This happened last day 31. Feels like karma whoring to me.</comment>


Another victory for Tesla - this time in NC - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/25/2989207/nc-legislators-drop-bid-to-curb.html

<comment><USER2> Common sense prevails. And for a red state whose politicians espouse a free market ideology, for once a chance to come away without looking awfully hypocritical.</comment>


What's the real cost of losing a talented employee? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130816200159-131079-employee-retention-now-a-big-issue-why-the-tide-has-turned <comment><USER2> I think hiring and retention has to be accepted as a continuing process, even for small businesses, partly because sometimes in the end game the right and best thing to do for a talented member of staff might be to encourage them to look for opportunities beyond those available in the organisation.</comment>


Show HN: Can I create a better image format than PNG? probably not - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorqribeiro/compactImage <comment><AUTHOR> I've created this project just for fun. I'm working from time to time on a tile editor [1] and I've been wondering what would be the best way to store indexed color images (8 bit pixel art) so I wrote this to indulge my curiosity. I had a lot of fun doing it and decided to show to other people to see what they think about it. [1] - [https://github.com/victorqribeiro/tileEditor](https://github.com/victorqribeiro/tileEditor)</comment>


A website for sharing images that can be seen only once - <AUTHOR> http://look2remove.me

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not only looks, but is! :)</comment></comment>


Google's nifty calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=(1%20%2B%201)%20mod%202 <comment><USER2> It doesn't work very well yet. The text in the calculator cannot be changed, and it thinks 180! = Infinity.

Compare with WolframAlpha: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1800%21>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you like that, searching for graph <function> will blow your mind: <http://www.google.com/search?q=graph+sin(x)>

<comment><USER4> graph sin(x)+cos(y) .... 3D plot... awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Handy. Minor nit - I think the trig functions should default to degrees rather than radians when you type in something like "Sin 45" from the main search

</comment><comment><USER6> Google vs. Wolfram Alpha is something I'm ok with.

</comment><comment><USER7> Who the hell upvoted this shit.</comment>


Make School Hard Again - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/05/26/make-school-hard-again/ <comment><USER2> I find the tone and tenor of the article to be closed-minded and exceptionally naive, almost as though the author had never really left the confines of the academy.

I disagree with the belief that schoolwork performs a valuable filter function when it is "rigorous". I agree that rigorous coursework that emphasizes book smarts selects for something, but I don't value that something outside a set of very narrowly defined circumstances.

Having completed both a masters in philosophy and an M.S. in computer science, I'll go as far as to say that I don't think college matters at all any more, in tech, and that's fine. My career path in tech went from Amazon, which didn't care about my "pedigree" to being self-employed, to my current job which just valued the evidence that I could get shit done. I don't like hiring new grads, but when I do what I look for is exclusively accomplishment outside the classroom. Sure, a B student from an MIT csci program will have a degree of algorithmic agility that j-rando web dev who's been hacking away for a decade won't, but I can think of exactly zero times that's mattered.

So I think the "academy" should be an opportunity to climb, to make things happen, to go above and beyond, but I don't think it fulfills its primary purpose by insisting upon harder coursework. In fact, de-emphasizing coursework in favor of making or doing things in the world of research/business/politics/etc. seems preferable to me.

<comment><USER3> > Having completed both a masters in philosophy and an M.S. in computer > science, I'll go as far as to say that I don't think college matters at all > any more, in tech, and that's fine

I always find interesting that the most vocal proponents of the "school doesn't matter" argument are often the most educated. Why did you get an undergrad and even go as far as to get a masters? Did you come to the realization after you finished your masters?

Would you advise family members to forgo a college education since it doesn't matter? How confident are you of your convictions?

It's easy to say school doesn't matter after you've achieved all the benefits from the signaling effect

<comment><USER4> We can't accept people who never went to college saying college doesn't matter, because how would they know never having experienced it?

And we can't accept people who have been to college saying college doesn't matter, because their revealed preferences are different and/or they're hypocrites.

<comment><USER3> I personally can't remember anyone that didn't go to college tell me that its not worth it. Either they say its not for them, they don't like sitting in a classroom, or they were faced extraordinary circumstances where they decided to pursue an opportunity.

> And we can't accept people who have been to college saying college doesn't > matter, because their revealed preferences are different and/or they're > hypocrites

I would accept the argument of a college educated individual if they actively discouraged their children from attending university. Telling strangers on the internet is easy, but with your own children you have skin in the game. To me that's more telling of their true beliefs

<comment><USER5> > I would accept the argument of a college educated individual if they > actively discouraged their children from attending university.

I was pushed into higher education. I'll try to accept or even encourage if my kids prefer vocational education. It's easy for me who live in Norway to say because

\- many ordinary jobs now pay extremely well if you put some effort into it.

\- moving from carpenter or electrician to engineer etc is way simpler than the other way around && real world experience seems to actually be appreciated if/when you later decide to take higher education.

And yes, I have a bachelor degree and I while it was more interested than I expected I think the vast majority of what I know comes from colleagues as well as reading the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As former [tenured] faculty, I'm not sure what to say about this. Good luck doing it in a reasonable way. It's not like [some] universities don't try to rein in grade inflation. Instructors do regularly give out Cs and Ds or Fs at many institutions. Our university kind of did audits to just see if there was something glaringly wrong about grade distributions in courses systematically for certain courses.

Anyway, grades shouldn't be arbitrarily difficult either, or curve just to curve. That's misguided as well; there are reasons for grade inflation other than just being nice -- I think old school grading was often somewhat capriciously difficult and arbitrary which has its own downsides.

I think in my undergrad courses the average grade was usually about a B, which seemed about right to me. Of course I'm biased because it's my own grading, but these were usually upper-level students, who got to that point because they were reasonably competent, and my sense of things was that they had about a B level grasp of the material on average. That is, they understood most of the important points of the material pretty well, but might have become a little lost in the finer points. Why knock their grades down just to make the grade distributions prettier?

My experience was that the trickier part was dealing with new freshman, who didn't always seem as prepared as they should be for college, especially with writing. But it's hard to know if that's actually any different over time; there's been a couple of times I've found decades old samples and I was surprised how little things had actually changed.

<comment><USER7> You either learn the material and get the questions on the tests correct, complete projects that work, write essays that make sense, etc.. or you do not.

In the case of writing & humanities often the problem is that it is a lot more difficult to tell a correct answer from an incorrect answer. It could be as subtle as the students writing not matching with the professor's political bent.

But for STEM it is way more clear. Wrong answers on a math test are wrong. Software projects that don't compile should fail.

Not sure what the problem is. If the whole class is failing either the school is letting in students who don't belong, whoever taught the prerequisite classes failed to teach the students and passed them on with a curve, or the professor just didn't teach well.

<comment> ctrl-j > Wrong answers on a math test are wrong. Software projects that don't compile > should fail.

As a former grader and TA for both math and physics, I can tell you this is not the case. I've had students get the right answer the wrong way, stumbling into the correct numeric answer with invalid or incorrect math. I've also had students get 90% of the way through a large problem only to make a simple arithmetic error that lead to the wrong numeric answer.

Which student deserves more partial credit? Or should I pass the student who made math errors but got the right answer, and fail the student who grasped the concepts but made a trivial calculation mistake?

<comment><USER8> According to my math and physics profs, the student who got the right answer the wrong way would get 100% credit, the student who didn't would get 0% if it's multiple choice (often with those common math errors from years past intentionally given as potential options), and maybe 50% or so if it was a long form answer and the class was merciful. For those long form answers, we would be given explanations on exactly how they would be graded by the lecturer and later the TA in recitation before the exam. For ochem synthesis problems, the prof would give you credit if you reached the correct intermediates at least, even if you couldn't solve the entire reaction, or the TA would take a point off for every mistake, and if the question was weighted for 8 points and you forgot 9 things, you'd get a fair zero.

These aren't shades of gray, they are just protocols you need to establish and stick with before these questions come up during grading. Then you need to stick with these protocols as department policy for decades, so your department is able to maintain the grading scale no matter who the faculty will be 50 years from now. That's the sign of a good department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have mixed feelings on this topic.

I'm sympathetic to some extent. I'm a product of a boot camp (granted I had a technical background before that) and I've worked with CS grads who I'm a bit astounded by their inability to just debug something on a basic level (form a theory, test it, make a logical next decision). On the other hand I wonder if that is a case where they should have been filtered out, or if the issue is they weren't taught / tested on the right things?

>The old academic criteria, imperfect as they were, were in fact doing a reasonable job of selecting individuals able and willing to handle the rigors of traditional college. The blunt fact is that the majority of people who scored below a 1200 on the verbal and math sections of the SAT would have found it difficult or impossible to handle a curriculum like that required to earn a state-school engineering degree or comparable certification. Today, thanks to grade inflation, such students can and do pass through top schools with top honors, especially in the liberal arts.

Do we really want to just go by the "old academic criteria"?

Are the people who just scrape by all just bad?

Would it be better if those people just be pushed out the door?

So let's say we make it "harder", is that harder testing? More work? What then?

I feel like as far as learning about how people learn that it is pretty clear that some people work well in what has become the traditional education systems, and others less so, and I"m not sure that filter really determines who will be productive or if that's all we want from education... to filter folks based on how the education system works now?

Personally I'm inclined to lean towards more / better education, less focus on making everything "harder".

<comment><USER10> I believe that the key is rigor: if grades are a reflection of whether or not a student has mastered some material, and the grading is rigorous, the only way for a student to attain a high grade is to master that material. That's the point of grades, isn't it?

<comment><USER11> It is, but how do you know the material is hard enough?

If I teach history and have a finale exam with one question, "who was the first president of the United States?" then the students will all get A's, but nobody would consider that a college level history test, and even if you made an A, there is no way to know that you mastered the subject.

That's a simplification, but in essence the issue at stake here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When did education become a competition and why does John V.C. Nye want to make it more of a competition?

I stupidly thought the goal of education was for everyone to learn, but I guess the process of education is to stratify the populace.

I hated, and still hate the gamesmanship that takes place with teachers/professors. The trick questions on tests, etc. I never had the patience for any of the nonsense. For things that were nuanced I understood the reason to test on details, but to just play games, always pissed me off. I was an OK student because I wouldn't play their games.

During college I was a Comp Sci major and the Business Majors needed to take two computer science classes. Being the entrepreneur that I was, I started tutoring as many of the girls as their parents would pay my $25 and hour tutoring fee with a money back if you don't get a B or higher guarantee. In the first two years everyone of my students got A's. I made sure every student understood the material, their programming projects were always unique and I made the student do all the work. At the end of the class everyone of my students knew the material cold.

I was so successful that they Comp Sci department and the Business department tried to ban me from tutoring, not to mention that 3 students switched majors to Comp Sci and a couple others added Comp Sci as a minor. Their argument was that I was ruining the grade distribution in the classes I tutored, I guess the Comp Sci courses were weed out classes for the Business Majors. I had letters from every parent and every student, the University President laughed in the faces of the department heads and he dismissed me from the meeting, and from what I heard he spent 40 minutes yelling at them for being stupid and degrading the reputation of the University. Of course I somehow never got an A on any programming projects again, but it wasn't payback, even as a senior when in one class I wrote everyone else's programs for them, just to prove a point, everyone else got an A, I got a C+.

Education is not about learning, it'a a business, just like health care isn't about making people healthy, it's about profit and loss.

<comment><USER13> Why girls?

<comment> nv-vn Maybe the GP went to an all girls school?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >It is still very hard to get into elite schools, but it's not at all difficult to graduate.

I can't say for all degrees at all elite schools, but in the elite CS program I attended, I worked much harder than I ever did before attending, and much harder than I ever did after graduating.

In the weeks immediately following graduation I used to feel guilt if I would spend over an hour on something fun, like a movie or a video game, because over the course of my degree I had conditioned myself to spend every waking moment working.

<comment><USER15> "over the course of my degree I had conditioned myself to spend every waking moment working"

I'm _pretty_ sure that's not the best way to actually maximise performance - in the same way that even professional athletes don't spend 100% of their time training. You need recovery periods and, I find, breaks for stuff to actually sink in.

<comment><USER14> Sure, I don't disagree. I learned a lot about working more efficiently after graduating and forcing myself to work strictly 9-5.

Fact is, when you have weekly assignments in 4 classes that each require many hours to complete, it's easy to find yourself in a cycle of coding until 3 am only to realize you have to do it again the next day to finish a math problem set.

My point is just that "hard to get in, easy to graduate" does not meet my experience at all.

<comment><USER15> It wasn't my experience either, but my wife certainly had that experience at the UK law school she went to - which was rather more prestigious then the relatively humble uni we both did our first degrees at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is the goal of these universities and colleges? What are they trying to produce in their graduates? People who are well prepared for careers? Social change?

University of Michigan has a top 20 education program (to pick an example). Their vision is...

> The vision of the U-M School of Education is to be a premier School of > Education devoted to developing civically engaged children, youth, and > adults for a diverse and inclusive society.

[http://www.soe.umich.edu/about/](http://www.soe.umich.edu/about/)

I recently read an interesting piece on Australia's top journalism program that wasn't all that hard but seemed to have an underlying purpose of social change... [https://quillette.com/2019/05/22/when-the-authorities- tell-y...](https://quillette.com/2019/05/22/when-the-authorities-tell-you-to- dissent/)

People tend to chase after their goals. If the goals have changed from what they used to be, shouldn't we expect the output to be changed as well?

</comment><comment><USER17> What we really need to do is stop basing a person's capability based on their college record at all. I completely understand why students want grade inflation, professors want it, and the universities want it. Too much is based on someone's GPA (and an extent their degree type). I've seen many places lump every applicant together regardless of where they went to college and say, "we only will hire someone with a 3.5 or above." That doesn't take into account, the difficulty of the college, the classes taken, or the personal circumstance of the individual. In instances like this, if you go to a harder college and have a lower gpa, you're at a disadvantage even if you are more qualified. That doesn't behoove anyone, and so grade inflation helps correct that. Now I'm not saying I'm in favor of it, you should get what you work for, but the world is rarely fair, so I at least understand why it occurs.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Though grades have always been lower in science, technology, engineering, > and math (STEM) subjects than in the arts and humanities, graduating from a > good school with a degree in any major did not use to be a cakewalk. Average > GPAs have risen by a full point or more since the late 1960s. > Collegeinflation.com shows that at Michigan State, for example, the > percentage of As doubled to about 30 percent of all grades from 1963 to 1973 > and then rose again by about 50 percent from 1983 to 2013. This is > consistent with other research on the widespread change in grading standards > nationwide.

To be fair, during that same time we have seen an increase in IQ to match[1]. In part this is attributed to better education, better nutrition and possibly the most important _removing lead from toys_. It's quite possible, that school is just as hard as it used to be, it's just we are smarter.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't make school more difficult to match OR potentially graduate individuals quicker.

[1] [https://www.123test.com/flynn-effect/](https://www.123test.com/flynn- effect/)

<comment><USER19> Advocates for "harder classes" also seem to be completely ignorant of the fact that students have far more learning resources than ever before and that the quality of education as it relates to conveyance of course material to students has increased since the 60s. Students have far more access to professors, TAs, and each other than they did in the stone ages.

<comment><USER20> Exactly - the alternative would be that students were doing worse or exactly the same despite having the huge benefits from new technology, teaching methods, resources etc.

That would be far more concerning.

As a personal example - KhanAcademy launched the year before I went to University and helped me a lot as it meant I could be fully confident of my calculus and linear algebra skills (we studied these topics in Further Maths but not multivariate calculus etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Grade inflation won't stop until signalling ceases to be a factor in education (likely never). Generally speaking, students see education as only a means to achieving career success. In any situation where grades are a determining factor, you will see grade inflation. Grades are simply the most visible signal of student intelligence, conscientiousness, and to a lesser extent conformity.

Course difficulty, on the other hand, is much more subtle and complicated to assess. You can look at a given school's grade inflation relative to other schools but that is confounded by differences in the relative merit of the students. Thus, we should predict that school difficulty sends a weaker signal than grades.

<comment><USER22> You could take the responsibility for grading away from the universities. We do that with school exams in the UK, there are a couple of exam boards that set papers for all schools.

<comment><USER21> If you did that then you might as well nationalize the universities because otherwise they'd shut down. There's simply no way universities will grant degrees to students who write exams that they did not administer.

Universities live and die by their reputations. The entire purpose of a university degree is so that the school can vouch for their student, putting the weight of their reputation behind the person so that they have an easier time securing employment.

I would also like to take issue with your choice of the word "responsibility" as it pertains to grading. Universities have the right to grade their students, as organizations made up of individuals in a free society. They will not relinquish their right to administer examinations without a fight.

Moreover, if you were to succeed, you would only replace the economic pressure to inflate grades with political pressure. In my experience, public schools are under far more pressure to do this than universities are. A major part of this pressure is manifested in the tendency to standardize exams, leading to hyper-focus on exam prep at the expense of general learning.

<comment><USER22> _If you did that then you might as well nationalize the universities because otherwise they 'd shut down._

Some would, others would thrive by delivering what their students want (a qualification and the jobs that follow on from that.) A graduate from the University of Waterloo would be considered the equal of one from Stanford given equal results. That isn't the case now.

I imagine most universities would hate it but anything that threatens their cosy financial situation is going to be opposed.

 _Universities have the right to grade their students, as organizations made up of individuals in a free society._

Would you support universities having the freedom to sell grades? $100,000 for a first class degree, $150,000 for a masters? No study needed.

They can be regulated just as any other organisation can be if society decided that's what they wanted to do.

<comment><USER21> _A graduate from the University of Waterloo would be considered the equal of one from Stanford given equal results. That isn 't the case now._

As a student at Waterloo right now, I'd love for this to happen but I don't believe it would be the case. Even if examinations were standardized across all schools, employers would simply shift to some other metric, such as course grades.

Now that I think about it, how would it even be possible? The Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo offers over 300 undergrad (not including grad school!) courses alone! The vast majority of these courses are unique to the school. Are you suggesting we wipe that out and force a standardized curriculum? Or are you suggesting we have standardized examinations in:

* Algebraic Topology

* Analysis of Spatial Data in Health Research

* Calculus of Variations

* Control Theory

* Fluid Mechanics

* Game Theory

* Lebesgue Integration and Fourier Analysis

* Matroid Theory

* Professional Communications in Statistics and Actuarial Science

* Property and Casualty Pricing

* Quantitative Enterprise Risk Management

* Quantum Information Processing

* Real-Time Programming

* Semidefinite Optimization

* Software Requirements Specification and Analysis

I could go on and on and on... I think you get the point. Math profs are constantly creating new courses based on areas of active research. How are you going to standardize examinations for those things? Every university offers different things!

 _Would you support universities having the freedom to sell grades? $100,000 for a first class degree, $150,000 for a masters? No study needed._

For-profit "colleges" did just that, until they were shut down. What you've described is usually called academic fraud. If Stanford did that, their reputation would be obliterated overnight.

Look at the ongoing story over the admissions bribery scandal. It's a HUGE story and it's _only_ a case of fabricated athletic credentials for admissions, never mind fabricated degrees. I'm not worried about this problem at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The difficulty with combating grade inflation is that no one school can do it alone. One school doing it just disadvantages their students when these grades are compared.

A much more accurate system, IMHO, would be to switch over to a ranking/percentile order within the school, and use standardized tests for rough cross-school comparisons. Sure, it's not perfect, but it seems better than what we have now.

Also, it provides a great argument for instructors when students inevitably come-a-grade-grubbing. "I can't bump your score, because that would inexorably bump DOWN someone else's score, and that wouldn't be fair to the other students."

<comment><USER24> They tried the standardized tests thing in Ontario when I was in school, so I guess the 90s. All it led to was teachers teaching to the test.

<comment><USER25> I thought the AP tests were very good. I took 13 of them. The tests themselves were just good tests of knowledge and skills so teaching to the test meant teaching relevant content.

Standardized _aptitude_ tests were always bad because they're supposed to test basic skills but do so with lots of curveball tricks or specific formats... so teachers taught the specifics of the test

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Do grades matter? The point is demonstrating that you understand the content. MBA programs have pass/fail grading that oftentimes is not allowed to be released. If you fail a class, you should be able to take it again and if you pass, you then "know" the content and the first fail doesn't matter. The culture that makes failing unacceptable is certainly part of the reason inflation exists. The discussion seems very far away from "do you actually understand the course content".

<comment><USER19> To me, non pass/fail grades are pointless unless you're moving onto a higher degree, and professors are often silly about their requirements for passing a class.

I once took a discrete math class for CS majors. I aced it. Loved it. Classmates would ask me to explain concepts to them before exams if they were having trouble. There was only one other student in the class who had gotten an A on every exam leading up to the final. He had a problem that he didn't know about, though. He didn't turn in the homework.

Now, homework for this class was not a measure of skill. It was just a way for the professor to have an extra way to determine that you were participating. I warned him the class before the final that he was gonna fail if he didn't get the teacher to give him an extension on the homework, because I knew he wasn't turning it in (there was a requirement in the syllabus that you needed to turn in 70% of the homework to have a chance at passing). Hell, he was proud of the fact that he was smart enough to understand the course material without doing it. He didn't ask for the extension, and a year later, he was sitting in the same class for which he had already mastered the material.

<comment><USER27> I think your homework anecdote actually supports the argument of TFA.

in many classes, homework has devolved into another technique to inflate grades. in most of my college courses the homework was either very easy or graded for "completion". almost always a complete waste of my time, but it was usually worth too many points to skip entirely.

I had a couple professors who would "assign" difficult problem sets that weren't graded at all. it was usually a bad call to skip them, because the exams were actually hard. that's the only respectful approach, imo.

<comment><USER19> It wasn't used in this case to inflate grades, because your homework wasn't actually a part of your grade except that doing the work determined whether you passed or failed. If you turned it in, you might pass, but your grade was dependent on your test scores. If you didn't, you failed regardless of what you did on the test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can understand the author's sentiments, but at the same time, fear of grade inflation has let to administrators pressuring professors to have a "C" average <\-- i think this pressure is a far worse problem than grade inflation. Rather than aiming to get every student to the highest level, professors are pressured into using reverse-curving and other tactics (trick questions, ambiguous study guides) to artificially "deflate" students scores.

And that seems totally backwards. If i took my car to a mechanic, I expect them to fix my car 100%; so why do we expect professors to produce students with 75% achievement?

Professors are supposed to be in the business of teaching, not assessing.

<comment><USER29> > pressuring professors to have a "C" average <\-- i think this pressure is a > far worse problem than grade inflation. Rather than aiming to get every > student to the highest level, professors are pressured into using reverse- > curving and other tactics (trick questions, ambiguous study guides) to > artificially "deflate" students scores.

Depends on how you look at it. I went to a school that bell curved around a C for most core classes and most of the curving wasn't "deflating scores" but rather making the class hard enough that there was a wide distribution of scores which made identifying the people who understood the most material clear. Having everyone get A's may make you feel good, but then you are most likely holding people back as there is no way for them to work harder and stand out if it is so easy that everyone is getting A's. Also, that competitive environment tends to make everyone work harder so they learn more.

While I'm not saying there shouldn't be schools where it is easy to get A's and B's, I am 100% glad I went to one that pushed me as hard as they did as I learned a ton and I have gotten very good job offers since graduating.

<comment><USER28> It's very easy to provide opportunities for the best students to excel (eg, higher level courses, research opportunities).

But if somebody enrolls Stats 101, it should be the goal of the professor to get every student to _learn_ Stats 101, not to produce a majority of students with mediocre understanding

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The problem isn't grade inflation, it's that most of the value of a college degree is in being able to tell people that you have it. This has lead to degree inflation - jobs that used to require a high school degree are increasingly requiring a college one instead. People are spending more time in school for zero-sum positional advantages. Mucking about with the details of schooling is going to change little, we need a combination of reforms that reduce the importance of graduating from a "good" school with an earned degree. My suggestion:

1\. "Don't ask, don't tell" for degree status of job applicants.

2\. National exam-based standards for competency-based certificates.

3\. Remove federal guarantees for student loans.

4\. Expanded forgiveness programs for outstanding student loans.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article completely neglects the influence of lower acceptance rates of upper tier institutions. Between 1960-1970 Harvard and Stanford's acceptance rates were 4-6x larger than they are today. It does not seem reasonable to me to assume that all of the additional applicants nowadays are low-achieving students. Assuming a roughly equal distribution of capability within the applicant pool, it makes total sense that average achievement (and thus, grades) would rise over time.

Yes there may be professors or programs that are artificially awarding higher grades than deserved. But the more likely case is that the admitted pool of students is just a higher caliber with stronger educational background than 50 years ago. If you agree that grades are a metric of academic mastery, then it makes sense average grades are improving, and are not necessarily an indication that somehow school has gotten easier than back in the "good 'ol days".

<comment><USER32> Nice theory, but the facts don't support it.

While elite institutions use such arguments to justify their grade inflation, grade inflation is actually seen across all kinds of educational institutions. The system overall is less selective than it used to be. And grade inflation is proceeding far too quickly in recent years to be explained by a changing student body.

See [http://www.gradeinflation.com/](http://www.gradeinflation.com/) for data backing up what I claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Some grade inflation comes down to faculty that have become increasingly apathetic. When I was a TA in Canada 11 years ago the professor(s) that ran that class became so frustrated with students who needed a bump of X% (usually in the range of 3-10%) to keep their GPA average for medical school applications. One of the profs confided in me that he just gives them what they ask otherwise the students would waste a tremendous amount of the profs time going through assignments and exams to try to argue for extra marks.

<comment><USER34> In the US, students fill out course evaluations that are known to be driven by the grade that they expect to receive in the class. This creates a perverse incentive to raise grades. I saw this when I was teaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I mean I want to agree with this, but I also have to ask why? In what way are grades important to any kind of overall outcome?

<comment><USER36> In my data structures course, the final exam was about 50 pages of difficult, tricky problems. I completed maybe 8 of them and got a B+. The instructor told us that only one student in his career had completed the entire exam.

As an approach I think this makes a lot of sense. First it gives the very best students an opportunity to really show their stuff. For the others, it gives them the opportunity to pick and choose the problems to show that they've at least mastered some of the material (generally, there is often more presented than can realistically be mastered of the course of a semester (between and within each course)).

(nested parens are (the best))

<comment><USER37> I'd think that making an exam like that is a hellish amount of work. One might propose that students are definitely not going to remember all of that, so you can basically reuse stuff from previous years anyway, but that's not how the world works, sadly.

<comment><USER19> I think making an exam like that is silly. Except for research work and startups, you aren't ever going to go into a job and just decided to only tackle certain problems.

I had a history professor who gave a test in this manner: Below there are 3 columns of 14 items of interest, whether they be people or wars or treaties or whatever. You are allowed to cross out 2 columns, and then cross out 3 terms. Write what you know about the remaining terms. Your grade is out of 110 on a 100 point scale.

Now, I loved the test, because I excel at soft trivia tests... but did it really gauge what I understood about history?

Nope. It gauged my knowledge of history trivia for those terms. Understanding history is about understanding how these things connect together.

If I were a history professor, I would base the majority of students' grades on papers about the subjects we cover in class to discover whether they're actually thinking about history or if they're just trying to recite facts and figures.

<comment><USER36> Why should school exams mimic typical scenarios faced in work life.

In typical work scenarios you have more than 2 hours to tackle a problem, anyway.

This is computer science, and a data structures class to boot. Answering any of the questions required not only a deep understanding of the fundamental principles involved, but analytic skills (both in parsing the problem statement into a set of requirements and to identify problematic edge cases).

Any good class will teach more than they could possibly test on in two hours. So the alternative here is to keep students guessing about what will actually be on the exam? That's why, when I was a college instructor, I gave previous exams to my students (also: i thought not doing so would disadvantage less socially connected students; lots of old exams get passed around).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I must disagree with the rose colored view of the Ivy Leagues always requiring hard work (it has long been about connections and making excuses for old money and supersonic goal posts for any upstarts who threaten their demographics by making it an actual meritocracy)

But it is true that there are real incentive issues. GPA as a metric especially in High School is problematic in that it encourages students going with what they are already good at instead of where they may have room to grow and explore. I could see a case for keeping GPA "internal only" but that puts more emphasis on standardized tests which are already a teach to test black hole.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the opposite. The dual purpose of schools to both teach and grade should be separated into two separate types of institutions. Grades and pressure are detrimental to learning and only exist because schools double as certification authorities. If you think about it more closely, though, these are very different functions and there is no a priori reason why they should be done by a single institution.

How about we make schools about learning at your own tempo, because you _want_ the knowledge? Schools should strive to be excellent at teaching, enabling you to learn easily, not forcibly push it onto you, making you die from stress.

<comment><USER40> great point. the dual purpose should be more separated.

that said, grades are useful for self assessment imo

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> My dad was a high school teacher for several years after his stint in the army. He was told by the Principal, etc to pass students, even if they were failing. For two reasons really, you don't have to deal with parents, and it makes the school look better on paper.

So I wouldn't say this is just a college problem.

</comment><comment><USER42> We can only stop grade inflation if we do something that the denizens of reason dot com would not like: make public college free. The logic in the rise of grade inflation is very simple: students (or their parents) pay a fortune for a degree and they want something for it, no matter their performance. Only the most flagrant burnouts get failed out of college today because if we restored grading to a normal distribution people would stop sending their kids to college at the same rate, and colleges would lose tuition revenue.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't think grades convey a meaningful comparison of two or more candidates for jobs or any other activity where credentials come into play. In part due to grade inflation and also due to not being descriptive enough.

There is nothing wrong with comparatively ranking individuals for selection, but what does a 0.25 GPA difference really mean? It doesn't tell you anything that helps you understand the candidate.

Instead of GPAs why not use cumulative scoring of major subjects to show total capability. For example, in math you learn to count, do basic arithmetic, algebra, etc. For each topic you earn a point on completing the concept which goes toward your total score. By the end of highschool you might have a score of 1000 points, by the end of a somewhat math heavy major you might have 2000, nd by the end of a math intensive PhD you might have 3000-4000 points. Then, when you're looking for talent you can focus on scores for the skillsets you need.

<comment><USER25> Because then you'll encourage students to acquire maximum points in minimal time / effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> To make a somewhat cynical argument, it is unreasonable to expect universities to be unbiased sources of information while their students are each paying them $200k for the degree.

To have any hope of degrees actually meaning anything, grades and diplomas need to be awarded by a standardized, neutral third party.

<comment><USER40> I think this was the original purpose of standardized testing in the US

it's impossible to fairly grade students even in one class, so I don't see any way a multi school entity could fairly grade

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The scope and workload required to earn a grade weren't standardized, but even people who gave lip service to this fact didn't resist the temptation to use them for purposes of ranking and comparison as if they were. The very people bemoaning grade inflation are the people who used grades most irresponsibly, and their main objection is that they want to continue being irresponsible even though the system has started to route around them.

Tough.

It looks like the system now uses standardized tests and extracurricular competitions for cross-classroom comparisons and uses grades primarily to assess obedience. To my way of thinking, that's the right direction, in that it actually measures people against each other rather than measuring the arbitrary grading scales of the professors involved.

</comment><comment><USER46> This "It is still very hard to get into elite schools, but it's not at all difficult to graduate." needs more nuance.

My daughter could tell you it isn't easy, at all, to graduate from CMU SCS. It will kick your ass no matter how smart you are. That said, of the entrances to _any_ program that's highly selective on a relevant basis, wouldn't you expect almost all of them to graduate with a good GPA?

There a lot more diversity of ability at programs with 30% acceptance than 3%. Grading on a curve might work there, and be a factor in motivating students to work harder.

But is that the best approach? Would ending legacy and donor admission concessions do more for academic rigor?

</comment><comment><USER47> It certainly won't stop just because we wish it away. Note the passive voice in "This nonsense should cease." Who, exactly, should do this?

Some junior professor, who's up for tenure based on research output, and teaching prizes based on being liked... in his shoes, would you decide to spontaneously give mostly B & Cs next year, and spend weeks fighting unhappy students?

Thinking about how we'd like the idea system to work is just daydreaming. You've got to think about the incentives facing all the people involved. And at the moment, these seem to point towards inflation.

<comment><USER48> > Note the passive voice in "This nonsense should cease."

That is not actually passive voice: note that "cease" is not inflected into the past participle, and it is modified with a modal "should" instead of an auxiliary (almost invariably "be"). In grammatical construction, this sentence is identical to "You should go," which I think you should recognize as not being passive either.

<comment><USER47> Good catch, I did in fact get a B in grammar.

Is there a term for this? "This nonsense should cease" does differ from "you should go" in that it demands an action on an inanimate thing, while avoiding saying who acts.

<comment><USER48> Don't feel too bad, most people can't detect passive voice correctly. Hell, Strunk's Elements of Style, when discussing the avoidance of passive voice, has four examples of clunky writing that can be rewritten to use the active voice, except three of them are _already_ in active voice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm trying to find anything in this piece that moves it past a Grumpy-Old-Man- Complains-That's-Not-How-They-Did-It-In-My-Day argument. I'm not seeing it. No logical or imperial arguments.

Grade inflation does mean an "A" doesn't mean what it used to.

But is that bad? (Or good?)

Letter grades are an arbitrary measure and are most generally used to compare recent graduates. For that gradual inflation is not a problem. (And, if you were comparing between generations for some reason you could apply an appropriate adjustment, though it's pretty unclear why you'd be doing that for anything serious.)

There also seems to be a strong implication that we used to have a stronger "fail 'em out if they can't handle it" approach to education and that we should return to that. I don't know if we actually used to (didn't seem that way to me in my day -- the mid-to-late '80s) but even so, I doubt this is an effective educational strategy for a large proportion of students, which leads to an inefficient educational system. (That is, it ends up providing an effective educating fewer students at a larger cost than other approaches.)

So, low-quality arguments. Not surprising though... they let anyone write opinion pieces these days! <\-- this is a joke

<comment><USER50> Grade inflation would be less of a problem if GPA didn't saturate --- but it does. The trouble is that if you squeeze everyone on to the top end of the scale, you diminish the ability to use GPA to distinguish talent levels. You turn school into a pass/fail system. Since not everyone is in fact equally talented, we end up losing information. Economic misallocation of resources makes us all poorer. There's real value in putting the smartest people on the hardest problems, and it's hard to do that when everyone graduates at that "the smartest people" level.

<comment><USER49> You're assuming grades mainly exist to solve an industry problem. But why should that be true? If I'm running a school I'll use grades to further my own school's educational goals and trust the various industries and other post- graduation institutions to figure out how to determine who best fits their purposes for themselves.

There certainly _is_ a real value in putting the smartest (well, most able actually, but I know what you mean) people on the hardest problems. So better to use a system designed for the specific purpose rather than try to repurpose something made for a different purpose.

<comment><USER50> I would argue that ability in industry is extraordinarily strongly correlated with ability to earn high grades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _" At the same time, schools have become more liberal about accepting applicants based on unorthodox qualifications, from athletic ability to nonacademic accomplishments, disadvantageous backgrounds, and demonstrated social "awareness.""_

At this point I stopped reading the article. I'm concerned this author(a polisci/economics professor)'s definition of 'hard' is functionally equivalent to 'only for the wealthy whites' again, as the specific time period he cites as the beginning of college becoming too easy (1960s) coincides exactly with desegregation (board vs brown was mid 1950s) AND _he specifically cites disadvantaged backgrounds as part of that reason_. If I'm mistaken and the author later addresses this, let me know and I'll actually finish the piece.

I am in general in agreement that grade inflation is a problem, drop out rates should rapidly increase to help stem degree inflation in our populace, as this is associated currently with saddling our future with increasingly difficult hurdles, which will eventually bite us in the form of lagging social security, population shrinkage, and economic instability. However, the arguments being used are immediately suspect to me.

<comment><USER52> I honestly can't tell if:

a) you've failed to parse the prose you quote and think that it's complaining outright about universities allowing in applicants from "disadvantaged backgrounds", when in fact it is complaining about allowing in applicants _specifically because_ they are from disadvantaged backgrounds who would not meet previous merit-based admissions criteria, or

b) you genuinely mean to imply that advocating for the ideal of meritocracy is not merely flawed but somehow equivalent to supporting a policy of explicit racial segregation and class-based admissions, or

c) something else entirely

I'm downvoting, primarily because the ambiguity about what you're trying to say makes this comment impossible to substantively engage with.

<comment><USER51> I'm arguing that it's suspicious to me that someone would say that things only started getting bad around the time where black people were allowed into white-only instutitions and had access to white-only environmnents, and before that time it was completely fair and should be returned to. That that was the point where I paused and decided maybe this person doesn't actually have much of merit to say and queried HN as to if the author has any actual, substantial points.

<comment><USER53> There were a lot of things going on in the world in the '60s. Whatever you think of TFA, it's simply arguing for more rigor in education. Unless you think racial minorities are less capable of rigorous study, there's no reason to assume the article is racially coded.

<comment><USER51> I didn't say that racial minorities were less capable of rigorous study, merely that the article did not actually functionally advocate for rigor with that statement, but instead is equating meritocracy with a time period that didn't have meritocracy because people were excluded based on race. Which is concerning.

<comment><USER53> The article isn't making any such equivalence. It doesn't so much as imply a pre-60s meritocracy. The fact that two things are contemporary doesn't suggest a causal relationship. Perhaps if the article mentioned desegregation, one could reasonably infer that the article was alluding to a causal relationship, but it doesn't even do that. The article (and indeed the specific sentences you referenced) is very explicit about the problem (decline of academic standards) and it offers an explanation (the rise in value of nonacademic standards).

If your subtext depends on ignoring everything about the original claims (fixating solely on a date), you're being libelous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Grades are fundamentally stupid. Grade inflation is as close as we can come, realistically, to getting rid of them, so I'm in favor in most situations.

</comment><comment><USER50> The college system has become so dysfunctional and so diluted as a signal of intellect and diligence that I've been advocating hiring engineers right out of high school instead. Employees hired this way would get the benefit of a career that's four to six years longer and that starts without debt. Whatever skills CS programs impart could be taught internally.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is this a global phenomenon?

In the UK we had an unemployment problem when Margaret Thatcher was around, one solution to that was to lower the entry barriers for further education. University became remarkably easy to get into, however, the economics of this were such that teaching was different.

In the sciences it was much more profitable for a university to run access courses with 10x the amount of 'customers'. However, you would not have students getting one to one tuition time and having experiments taking up ten foot of a workbench. It was more a matter of multiple choice questions with none of the staff personally mentoring the students.

Some of the older courses were impossible to get a first in. The course I did had historically only ever given out one first, just getting a pass was a heroic achievement.

Due to the elitist nature of how it worked back then a given institution had a certain amount of reputation that went with it so an employer would know that getting a third from a highly reputable university was of merit, not to be compared with a higher grade issued by a mere 'polytechnic'.

I did not think the elitism was bad back then. The reason being that if the state had invested so much money in you then there was an expectation to pay it back. But that all changes when the onus of payment falls on the students and the bank of mum and dad.

Perhaps that is the nub of the problem. When you have students paying for their education you need to have a certain amount of grade inflation to make the investment worthwhile to them.

I would be interested to know if countries that do have state funded free tertiary education can keep a grip of grade inflation. I know that some professional degrees, e.g. in medicine, are not internationally comparable. So, if Western countries don't recognise East European or other degrees in the same way, there should be no need to grade inflate.

</comment><comment><USER56> _There are many ways to achieve success and fulfillment that do not involve attending an elite college. Instead of encouraging people to pursue options well-matched to their abilities, however, we tell young people that their self-worth hinges entirely on the brand name on their college diploma._

Oh, please. They make it sound like going to a top school is simply about ego enhancement. It's more like about enhancing your net worth in the long run.

Grade inflation is probably about two forces colliding:

1\. Schools being used primarily for credentialing rather than for educating per se.

2\. Increased awareness of "diversity" issues, for lack of a better term.

What you see is that members of some in group -- in this case upper class cis het white males -- generally get scored better than members of various out groups, such as women, people of color and LGBTQ. There are various factor as to why that is, but part of the problem is straight up prejudice. There is plenty of evidence that if an in group member does x, it gets credit and when an out group member does the exact same thing, it doesn't get the same credit.

So there is a legitimate argument to be made that if your grades at a college most strongly correlate to a particular demographic rather than performance - especially if that demographic is the known and long standing in group that controls everything -- then those grades aren't really measuring performance per se to begin with. Thus they are merely a credentialing mechanism being used to exclude out group members and perpetuate historical injustices.

The problem is that passing out As like candy doesn't actually fix prejudice and social exclusion. It merely serves to erode the value of the signal that grades are supposed to provide.

I don't know what the solution is. But I suspect that's a large part of the mechanism driving such trends.

</comment><comment><USER57> The primary disagreement I have with "school doesn't matter" folks is that I see more value in formal education than just getting ready to start a career. I was forced to learn about things that I never would've otherwise, and along the way increasing my ability to perform critical thinking was instilled.

I'm far from a "pedigree snob". I started at a community college and am the biggest proponent of that path for most people. It's a huge benefit to be employable, and a career such as being an electrician grants that in spades. Too many go to college hoping to sit at a desk afterwards, do very little, and be paid 6 figures just because you have some degree. It doesn't happen anymore without networking / family connections.

It's critical to be skill-based, if you can pull that off without an education, great. But there's no downside to having an employable skillset and formal education. I see a lot of people that are against formal education try to make it a split decision. Not all employable folks have a formal education, and not all with a formal education are employable. I'm employable because of my skillset, work ethic and education. Some folks look down on me because I didn't go to a top university (I did go to a community college first, and had no outside funding/help). Wouldn't change a thing and would recommend my path to anyone. Community college is a must, and overall, choose your major wisely based on skills that people pay for.

A good employee with skills can easily get through 2-4 years of school, so there's no real excuse to not have it under the belt. I've seen plenty of folks that are already successful go back and finish up their bachelors. It also never expires unlike all the certs that companies try to sell.

It does grant some degree of credibility. It has to, as starting and completing anything does. All that said, I'm opposed to pedigree snobs and anti formal education folks alike.

</comment><comment><USER58> The answer should actually be preparation & transparency. If a school prepares its curriculum well in advance and tells every interested party "this is what we expect and this is how we measure the success of learning" then there can hardly be any grade inflation. Either the school sets ridiculously low targets or it fails to be transparent.

Note that missing success in learning can be caused both by the students and the teachers (or school). Grades are a way to measure that success and do not necessarily reflect on one or another.

</comment><comment><USER59> This article touches on some very real issues: grade inflation and the fact that you really can just major-shop until you find one that doesn't really require any effort. However, the author comes off as an extremist by pretending that employers don't pay any attention to things like the degree someone actually got. Someone with an engineering degree from an Ivy League school or Wharton undergrad absolutely remains more impressive than someone with the equivalent GPA in Grade Inflation Studies from the same school.

</comment><comment><USER60> How about we wrap around the alphabet to introduce a new grade 'Z' that's ostensibly as hard to get as A's used to be?

<comment><USER61> The new grade will be called AAAAAAAAAA++++++ VERY SMOOTH TRANSACTION WOULD ADMIT AGAIN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Back when school was hard we built the space shuttle. Now they it's easy we built facebook. I agree.

<comment><USER63> This is perhaps the falsest dichotomy I've ever read. Not only are there still plenty of smart and capable people still graduating regardless of grade inflation, but the people who built the shuttle are still around! The reasons we can't build a better version are far more political than anything else. Certainly education in a non-factor.

<comment><USER40> maybe it's mostly false, but there certainly has been an attitude change towards high risk projects (imo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> In a way, calling it "grade inflation" is backwards. The problem isn't that grades are going up, the problem is that the top end of grades to distinguish is coming down. For a given skill that may be graded, assume for the sake of argument that it is evenly distributed (fairly reasonable assumption) and that the test is exactly accurate and precise (unreasonable, but makes the argument easier and doesn't materially change the result). A grade represents an assessment of the placement of the student between some bottom, represented by some standard deviation, and caps everyone below that to the minimum grade, and likewise on the top, everyone who blows out the top of the test gets lumped into one bin at the top.

It is not particularly a problem that the arbitrary meaning of A or C is wandering around. Many of use have played Japanese video games that give a grade-based rank for your performance on some level. At times I've been a bit surprised to get an A the first time I tried the level... only for me to discover that there's also S, SS, SSS, and SSS+ actually above it. This scale may feel weird for cultural reasons, but it still distinguishes various skills just fine. There are some administrative problems in converting between the various "A" grades, but that's already a problem anyhow and presumably at least mostly solve to the satisfaction of the relevant entities.

The problem is that the ability to distinguish at the top end is being erased as the top end of the tests get pulled down over time. This makes the tests less useful for their own stated purpose. If one imagines for the sake of argument a academic test whose minimum is -2 standard deviations and the top end is -1 stddev, it's not a _terribly_ useful test. As academia goes, it's strictly a subset of the utility of a test that measures from -3 stddev to +3.

(I qualify "academic" because there's plenty of practical, non-academic uses for such a test, but in academia that's not very useful.)

There's nothing particular immoral about moving the "A" setpoint around. The problem is that with insensitive tests, we lose the ability to distinguish between someone who just barely topped out the test, and someone who is 2 stddev above it, and in academia, that's a pretty serious loss, for all kinds of reasons.

Now, the question of _what you do_ with the grade I think is best considered separately. You start with a clear view of the true situation, and then figure out how you want to deal with it. You don't help yourself on _any_ level by starting from a foundation of lies.

For similar reasons, I often remind my fellow developers, never lie to the database. If you want to, for example, give someone a discount on service, you don't do that by going in to the consumption database and telling it that they used only 10 GB instead of 20. You do it by making sure your billing database has a field for "special discount" and putting it there. You don't want to lie to your databases, because that number isn't just used for billing, it's used for all sorts of other things, things you don't even have a complete list of, all of them assuming the database is telling the truth, and you don't know what will break. Don't lie in the grades; tell the truth, and figure out how to deal with the truth.

You may also note as a result of this that I'm actually in a bit of disagreement with the professor. Making school harder isn't necessarily a solution to any problem; the thing that needs to be done is to re-open that top-end again. That's similar in some ways, but will be different in others.

</comment><comment><USER65> > Ironically, these tough standards make rigorous schools less attractive to > many good students. I have spoken to admits who chose an elite university > because they knew that there, they were unlikely to earn less than a B, > while at Caltech they would have to work hard just to graduate.

John V.C. Nye's jeremiad against grade inflation is very good and well written. However, it screams 'get off my lawn'. He is, no doubt, a very accomplished person[0]. But I believe that he blind to the concerns and needs of the current generation of students. Cheifly, the issue of tuition at Caltech has radically changed the calculus of grades and of failing students.

The tuition with room and board at Caltech in 1982, the year after he graduated from there, was $9481 for the school year [1]. In 2019 dollars that is $26,654.02 [2]. This year the tuition with room and board is $67,887 [3], roughly 2.5x over Dr. Nye's 'financial risk' at the time he went to Caltech.

Say you failed out after two years at Caltech fully on student loans and then need to pay back those loans. Current rates and fees come to about 6%. So, those two years ($135,774) at 6% comes out to ~$680 per month, just to keep the principal at the same amount and not to add to it. At a wage of $15/hr for the non-degreeed job you can then take, you have about $1750/mo left over, after the debt is taken out.

Look, I'm not going to try to say that you can or cannot make it on ~$1750/mo in Pasadena. But I think we all know that such a monthly income is not going to be anywhere close to easy to live on. It will take some tight budgeting. You can make up a lot of scenarios about how this 20 year old person can 'make it work', but it'll take moving very far away from Pasadena (as it likely would have in 1981, as well). To actually pay that down will take a LOT of work.

Failing out of Caltech has never been a good option, despite the consternations of old men who like to tell the young men what is what. However, these days, the risks of failure at Caltech come with a much heavier financial burden than they did nearly 40 years ago.

[0][https://economics.gmu.edu/people/jnye](https://economics.gmu.edu/people/jnye)

[1][https://caltechcampuspubs.library.caltech.edu/110/1/1981-198...](https://caltechcampuspubs.library.caltech.edu/110/1/1981-1982.pdf)

[2][https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

[3][https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and- fees](https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/tuition-and-fees)

</comment><comment><USER66> Eh.

(1) I'm more sympathetic to schools that don't graduate everyone - which is part of what the article is arguing for, explicitly - back in the old days when you could pay for college with a couple of summers worth of full time work. Today, it's a crushing debt that will stay with students for decades. The school pretty much owes it to the students to ensure they graduate. That's not an argument for making the school _easier_ , but that the school should be going to whatever ends needed to ensure that the students _do_ get an excellent education. The question isn't "how do I give out a curve?" it's "how do I make sure every single person in this room gets an A-level knowledge of the material?"

(2) I majored in a hard science in undergrad (bio major, chem and lit double- minor). Our hardest class was OChem, where the professor would brag that only 4 people per semester would get A's. In OChem 1 I was #6 in the class and got a B; in OChem 2 I was #2 in the class and got an A. I don't see that it did anyone any favors: the actual class knowledge distribution was reasonably bimodal around "people who were clawing over every single point to try and be one of the A's" and "people trying not to get an F". Instead of a grade that reflected their mastery of the knowledge, most of us got lumped into the middle of an artificial bell. But it was orgo: its reputation for killer difficulty gave the professor free reign to grade how he wanted.

(3) Do we care about inter-major inflation? Are we worried about the relative difficulty of getting an A in Lit vs. getting an A in biochemistry? Which of the reasoning in favor of "difficult grades" exempts inter-major comparisons? Why don't we care that an A in literature is a joke to get compared to a B in physics? How would we make an A in business as hard to get as an A in chemistry? Who would actually benefit?

(4) Much of the criticism of inflation comes from credentialism. Universities were never anything _but_ credential-producers; the only thing that's changed is that enough of the public now attends that that's visible to "the masses."

(5) What's the value of a university education? If the answer is " the intrinsic satisfaction of learning", grades are irrelevant. If the answer is "social signaling", then grade inflation is already working as intended. If the answer is "job training," then grades of any arbitrary difficulty will still generally be a poor proxy for how one will function in an actual job environment. What's the defense for the value of grading?

(6) I appreciate that we implicitly deny the idea that students might be getting better. Average scores on med student board exams have been climbing YoY for a while, as new and better study aids keep getting released. The average med student now knows, objectively, more and better than his predecessors did. is it shocking that something similar may occur in other fields? If it is, damn, that's a more amazing failure of the educational industry than any amount of inflation.

</comment><comment><USER67> Article is grade A evidence of a failed education. School is not suppose to be "hard" or "easy". Learning, which is completely subjective, does not have an objective difficulty associated with it rather an estimated or average investment in time and other resources.

</comment><comment><USER68> Counterpoint: My parents didn't pay $50,000 a year for me to get Cs.

<comment><USER69> I'm having trouble understanding your point. Surely if you got Cs that would be on you. Are you suggesting you should be given As because you pay $50,000 a year? Or that because your parents were making a large investment in your education you made sure to work hard to earn good grades?

<comment><USER70> > Are you suggesting you should be given As because you pay $50,000 a year

To spell it out: Parents will take their dearest offspring to another similar college where he gets an A instead of a C if grades at a particular college are not inflated. This is a result of competition for business among colleges.

(The only places that are exempt are places so extremely selective that admission/graduation alone is a strong enough signal, i.e. Caltech)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Idk my experience is that in college, a lot of the TF are legitimately clueless. I think that college needs to be more of a support environment for self education rather than this sort of place where you literally repeat what you are told.

Society would be better off if people were guided to autodidacticism.

<comment><USER72> > _Society would be better off if people were guided to autodidacticism...._

I don't know man?

Might be fine if you're majoring in something harmless like music, or art. But for the safety of society at large you just can't implement such a naive system for majors like nuclear engineering or virology. It'd just be irresponsible to the point of being outright dangerous.

<comment><USER73> Do people learn anything from lectures about safety at school? Everyone takes computer ethics. Everyone knows about Therac-25. Where are we 30 years later? Engineers still implement open-loop control systems. Programmers still write programs with integer overflows. Speed to market beats safety every time (hello, MCAS). So was it really worth thousands of dollars for someone to tell you about that in a class? A few people dying is always a lower priority than a higher share price, it seems. So might as well not waste money on education, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I believe a lot of this grade inflation can be attributed to the social engineering goal of getting more women in college/university (but not the women per se).

As one example, my school was extremely rigorous and a difficult grader, most students in STEM or business programs. In the late 80s/early 90s a big push was made to even out a biased m/f ratio. They did this by greatly expanding the arts/humanities programs. They now have 55/45 overall m/f with over 60% female in the arts college.

Unfortunately, humanities are well known for grading biased towards A/B and now this university has one of the largest amounts of grade inflation of any private school since 2000.

Above may be anecdotal, but I believe much of the grade inflation is due to similar changes in focus away from rigorous subjects with right/wrong type answers (ie STEM) to those where interpretations are open and grades are more for participation and completion of assignments. That women seem to be more attracted to those subjects has allowed instutions to expand enrollment, balance overall populations and make a lot more money.

</comment><comment><USER75> The essay is very light on evidence. Pathological cases (such as buying grades) aside, maybe grades have generally increased because teaching has gotten better? I certainly wouldn't posit this as an absolute truth but research into teaching methods _has_ gotten better. 50 years ago teaching wasn't the least bit scientific. Modern research into teaching methods _is_ a proper science, even if it's hindered by many false starts and slow adoption. Modern technology also offers vast potential for better teaching and learning.

I'm not sure how useful grades are when everybody gets an A. But if the reason is a phenomenal teacher (and better teachers reproducibly produce better performing students [e.g. 1]) then maybe grades are simply an unhelpful metric. "Stopping grade inflation" isn't just not a solution, but actively counter-productive. "Grading on a curve" when every student has mastered the curriculum (which, in higher education, is entirely achievable) is bogus.

[1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jae.2539](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jae.2539)

<comment><USER76> Now we have two claims that are light on evidence (evidence that good teachers get better results is not evidence that this is the actual reason for increasing grades.)

<comment><USER75> Teaching research is unfortunately fairly balkanised and my brief stint in the science of teaching was in German, so I could, for the most part, only offer references to German text books. However, it's established that active learning increases student performance significantly [1], and systematic active learning was only introduced into curricula fairly recently (and not yet pervasively). Where this was done this has by necessity caused an at least partial "grade inflation" but I'll admit that its adoption is far from satisfactory so (as my comment already noted!) it _might_ not be sufficient to explain grade inflation.

[1] [https://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410.full](https://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410.full)</comment></comment></comment>


The Importance of Step Two (to Building a Great Company) - <AUTHOR> http://startupsrule.com/?p=15

<comment><AUTHOR> There is tremendous value in taking the first step to anything–especially starting a great company.

Being confident enough to go out and meet anyone, to share opinions, to think differently, to solve your own problems and to shape your reality is both admirable and necessary to change the world for the better.

That being said, starting a great company is not a one step process. Your problem which you bravely solved may be shared by many people around the world, but a great company will never grow and survive around you–it will do so around that which makes other people's lives better.

I don't know every step to making a great company, but I'm pretty sure that Step Two is to look beyond your own needs and develop a deep interest in how your actions will affect others. I guess this fits somewhere in between "building for a market of one" and scaling your solution after discovering product/market fit.

Today, it's easier than ever to hear what the people you affect are saying, but no one teaches you how to listen. It's also easier than ever to publish content and put it in front of others, but no one teaches you how to think about the ways in which readers will perceive it and respond.

I think that the best way to approach Step Two is to assume that everyone can see straight through you. If you interact with them only to inflate your own status, they will eventually pick up on it. If you publish content to broadcast your own needs without serving theirs, they will figure it out and abandon you.

"You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time." - Bob Marley

People are smart–they can tell when someone spends extra time thinking about what they need. You're smart too, but you're not smart enough to fake that.

Great companies spend more time thinking about the problems of others than they do their own. Those companies understand the best ways to solve our problems even before we do because they've spent so much time thinking about it. We love that feeling, and we pay for it.

So, whether you were part of the founding team of your company or not, be the first person on your team to take Step Two. Spend extra time to make everything you produce more helpful to everyone else, and ignore those on your team who will tell you that you are wasting time.

Your thanks will not come from them, but from the smart, real people whose lives you improve while building your great company.

Question for comments: Does what I wrote resonate with you? If so, please tell me what you're thinking about now.</comment>