List of oldest continuously inhabited cities - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_inhabited_cities <comment><USER3> What interests me the most is not so much the #1 oldest, but more those cities where the past is still visible, or the city is similar to the same one that stood there thousands of years ago.

Specifically, I find Yerevan very interesting. If someone from 2,000 years ago stood there today, they'd certainly realize it was the same city: the same Mount Ararat towering over the city, the same river Hrazdan running by the city, the name is pronounced very similar (pronounced Erebuni vs. now pronounced Erevan.) If you traveled a bit forward in time, to 400-something CE, then a modern inhabitant of Yerevan could even read the ancient writing in the city!

Compare that with cities like Puning, China (to quote Wikipedia: "The history of human settlement in Puning can be traced back to the Neolithic Age".) Rich history, but I guarantee that someone from 2,000 years ago would have no idea where they are. (That's certainly not all of China, though, many places haven't experienced that much change.)

Anyone know more of these cities, where it'd be obvious to the ancient inhabitants that it was the same city?

<comment><USER4> Born and raised Athenian here, oldest capital of Europe.

Downtown Athens and most of the suburbs are filled with ancient and byzantine ruins, despite the damage that wars, christians and muslims did.

I've watched plays in millennia old theaters. This is damn powerful.

<comment> y-c-o-m-b Slightly off topic, but playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey brought out an infatuation with Greece within me. I am truly envious of your Greek heritage and that you get to enjoy such a rich history, a relatively secular society, and gorgeous scenic areas. I am actually Persian and although we also have a rich history and scenic lands, I find Greece and Greek history far more appealing. Getting to explore many facets of ancient Greece in Assassin's Creed Odyssey has been an absolute treat.

EDIT: a word

<comment><USER5> Well heritage is a double edged sword. From one hand you do feel proud and blessed to live in a place so rich in history because it's everywhere around you. But in the same time it's kind of a burden that drags society in worshiping the past. A lot of fellow Greeks live on the premises that because our past was so glorious everyone else is dipshit and we shouldn't even bother finding our place in the modern world.

<comment><USER6> Mmm. I've only seen one country that doesn't collectively see its history with gold-tinted glasses — yet even here, there are people like my landlord, who has told me he didn't understand why the DDR fell despite being a student in it.

<comment><USER7> Having conversations with people in South Africa, Ghana, and Rwanda about their country's history felt a lot like talking to Germans.

Lots of nuance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Indian history hasn't been well researched because of various reasons. However, recent efforts are pushing back continuous settlement dates by multi- thousand of years. For instance: Varanasi is in above wiki link with 1200 BC as inhabited since. However [0] pushes it back to at least 4500 BC.

0: [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Varanasi- is...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Varanasi-is-as-old-as- Indus-valley-civilization-finds-IIT-KGP-study/articleshow/51146196.cms)

>>> The results that have come from a detailed geo-exploration (exploration conducted through GPS technology) conducted by seven IIT-Kgp departments, tracing the different stages through which civilization progressed, and how Varanasi has been able to maintain continuity as a living civilization, unlike comparable seats of human settlement in the world. The researchers have dug 100-metre-deep boring holes all over Varanasi to conclude that there is evidence of continuous settlement at least till 2000BC. There are enough indications that by the time the data collection is over, there would be enough to prove that this date can be pushed back to about 4500BC.The oldest part of this civilisation has been traced to the Gomati Sangam area of Varanasi, as indicated by the underground layers that have already been tested.

<comment><USER9> Why hasn't Indian history been better researched as you say? Curious about this.

<comment><USER10> I started studying Indian history and I immediately ran into problems.

The first one is language - in the region I am interested in (the southern parts of India) - primary sources appear in several different languages. It's not sufficient to have passing familiarity with a language - a ton of these ancient writers were poets trying to out-do each other with their skills at crafting verses. To research Indian history, one must learn several languages.

As someone who isn't trying to actively research history, secondary sources suffice for me. But then, one runs into the next big hurdle there. There have been very few authors writing about south Indian history post Independence. In 1928 (if I recall correctly), someone at the University of Madras wrote a PhD thesis on the Pallavas. I haven't been able to find any other material focused on the Pallavas published since then. Oh, and the 1928 PhD thesis - there's only a handful of those copies in the really large libraries around the world. A low quality scan of one of these copies has made it to the internet - <USER2> that remains my best source of information on the Pallava dynasty.

Then there are people like the Khalbaras - a bunch of rulers who came out of nowhere and ended up dominating 3 superpowers in that region. Yet, these guys didn't leave behind any historical record and only passing references to them as "the imprisoners of 3 crown princes" remain as tombstones and signposts for a group of rulers who would have to take down armies of war elephants multiple times to get to that point.

There are also open problems of Chronology in several important periods (for example, the era covered by the Sangam literature - Karikala and all those guys). This is basically a group of poems that record history in disconnected joints. (It's not known how much of this is real history and how much is invented by poets). We have the pieces of a puzzle, with possibly some fake pieces, but we don't know how you'd arrange them in a timeline.

And then, there's the wars. Anyone who studies Indian history will quickly realize that Gandhi is an extreme anomaly. In southern India, it was a matter of pride for a king to die in battle. Imagine a culture where the rulers have cultural incentives to be _suicidally_ belligerent (with War Elephants!!!). Now imagine a world where that is the cultural norm for over a thousand years. These rulers were warriors and the literature that they encouraged were mostly poets who wrote verses praising various military exploits. Several of these kingdoms emerge and disappear all the time - and they all chose different languages as the court language, several of them invented their own alphabets (looking at you Pallavas), they all straight up lied in several records. It's a lifetime's task to sort out 300 years of history for an area half the size of Germany.

Then, to make matters worse, almost all historical artifacts from south India were removed from the temples and forts that they have been found and made their way to various collectors and museums in Britan during the Britsh Raj. If you want to study south Indian history, a trip to a museum in London will give you a lot more than walking around endlessly in South India.

Then there's the lack of funding. It's absolutely embarrassing how little the various historians in India earn. Lately, I've been finding more books by historians in America (and even Japan) than those written by people in India.

Then you have the frauds like Sanjeev Sanyal who destroy history by mixing up well established history and his own opinions on history and using the authenticity of the accepted history to add credibility to his baseless opinions.

Studying Indian history is hard.

<comment><USER11> > Studying Indian history is hard.

But the way you write about it makes it sound fascinating, too! Could you recommend a couple good books in English?

<comment><USER10> > good books

Unfortunately, I don't know any that I can recommend as being a "good" book (which is again part of the problem).

There are a couple of really dry academic books that you can read if you're sufficiently motivated -

1\. The Cholas by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri [https://www.amazon.com/Colas-Most- Comprehensive-Written-Chol...](https://www.amazon.com/Colas-Most- Comprehensive-Written-Cholas/dp/B072Y356N1)

2\. Politics, Kingship and Poetry in Medieval South India by Whitney Cox [https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Kingship-Poetry-Medieval- Sou...](https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Kingship-Poetry-Medieval- South/dp/1107172373)

3\. South India under The Cholas by Y. Subbarayalu [https://www.amazon.com/South-India-Under-Cholas- Subbarayalu/...](https://www.amazon.com/South-India-Under-Cholas- Subbarayalu/dp/0198077351)

4\. A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar by K. A Nilakanta Sastri [https://www.amazon.com/History-South- India-Prehistoric-Vijay...](https://www.amazon.com/History-South-India- Prehistoric-Vijayanagar/dp/0195606868)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a Tunisian, I'm confused by why Carthage is not on the list. Yes, it was destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans, but the general vicinity has been continuously inhabited ever since.

Actually, a few other Tunisian cities are missing that trace their origins back to late B.C./early A.D., such as Monastir, Mahdia, and El Jem.

Any thoughts on this?

<comment><USER13> Marhabat. This particular list is pretty strict on the "continuous" criteria. I guess when the Romans plowed salt into it, continuity was broken, for the purposes of this list.

Carthage _does_ make this list. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_throughout_history)

It was the world's biggest city circa 300BC.

<comment><USER12> Marahba!

Yeah, it's either that, or the fact that Tunis (the new capital) was founded 10 miles away after the Umayyads took Carthage from the Byzantines (mentioned by u/scythe).

<comment><USER14> incidentally, the ancient harbor is now a part of the modern tunisian suburbs: [https://goo.gl/maps/bFty3LBqkJ5DTdG88](https://goo.gl/maps/bFty3LBqkJ5DTdG88)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Splitting these by continent is somewhat disingenuous since many of the oldest civilizations and settlements are at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe.

<comment><USER16> There are many awful lists like this on Wikipedia as it seems the criteria for them are a lot less strict than for articles.

I guess whoever creates the list can argue that each individual item is sourced, even though the selection of items and their organisation is original research [0], and thus should not be allowed.

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research)

<comment><USER17> I agree, I don't mind lists like "Largest countries" as that is fairly definitive but when you get into subjective lists of things that are hard to properly define, measure or record like "costliest hurricane damage"[1], "longest-living organisms"[2] or "deadliest animals"[3] then the articles become a joke.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricane_rec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricane_records)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest- living_organis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest- living_organisms#Animals)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans)

<comment> y-c-o-m-b How would you approach those things? Do we altogether avoid making those lists because they don't fit a strict criteria? I think they serve a very useful purpose and taken in the correct context, are incredibly informative. At the very least it stimulates curiosity which is a positive effect in itself.

<comment><USER18> An age old question.

[https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflicting_Wikipedia_philos...](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflicting_Wikipedia_philosophies)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had the opportunity to visit Byblos, Lebanon and spend a few hours walking around. It was fascinating to me how many different civilizations had left physical imprints: Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, European Crusaders.

I highly recommend a visit to any city on this list.

<comment><USER20> I'm from a town nearby. It's a shame how the ruins have been left filthy and unattended. A Phoenician king's tomb from multiple millenia BCE is littered with cans of soda and plastic bottles.

When I brought friends from Europe to see Lebanon, we saw, I kid you not, the tour guide throwing an empty plastic water bottle down the crater that held sarcophagi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I don't see any examples of on this list, except perhaps for Pula, emerging archaeological evidence indicates that in the Balkans region around 7000 years ago massive towns (cities?) began emerging with up to 40,000 people living in some settlements. The homes were arranged in tight lots next to one another, with evidence for some homes even being 2 story structures.

The inhabitants of these communities were the same Neolithic farmers who crossed from the Near East, over Anatolia into Greece and then up into the rest of Europe around 8000 years ago.

They not only introduced farming to Europe, but also herding and domesticated cows and sheep. There is some linguistic evidence that the word Taurus (representing the bull in the Zodiac) is a remnant of the language these people spoke, which would make sense as they were the ones to introduce the bull to the ancestors of the Proto-Indo-European speakers.

<comment><USER22> The famous Pelasgian civilization, that we don't know much about....

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess that the criterion for inclusion is "does anyone have a vested interest in including their own city and is persistent enough to fight their way through edit wars." That is, it's a fun list, but shouldn't be considered authoritative of anything.

E.g., Seoul shouldn't be there. The ancient capital of Wiryeseong was a separate city that was abandoned in the middle ages (in fact we aren't even sure exactly where it was), and the most likely location is on the other side of the river from Seoul's old city area: the (suspected) Wiryeseong area wasn't part of Seoul until 1963.

</comment><comment><USER24> What is most striking to me about this list is how you can use it to trace the broad sweep of human habitation on the planet. The oldest continuously inhabited cities date back 5000 years and the youngest (in Oceania) only a few hundred. So for 5000 years humanity lived on a planet with unexplored and unexploited regions. That's all done now. The entire planet is now completely overrun with homo sapiens, but that project wasn't completed until very recently. Sydney only goes back to 1788 and Canberra to 1913, almost within living memory. I don't think humanity is anywhere near coming to grips with this new reality.

<comment><USER25> I don't get that impression. The cities listed fall into two required criteria: documented history and civilization. This does not account for neolithic settlements of which some grew quite large for their respective lack of centralized management. This is qualified by the list mentions some cities were neolithic settlements before they qualified for the status of "city" and some cities existed far earlier than the history available, as far back as 7000 BCE the theorized start of civilization. This does not account for civilizations that may have appeared earlier but failed before historical documents were written.

People were all over the world at this time leaving in various states of habitation. The earliest surviving civilization was Mesopotamia at around 7000 BCE but the earliest known neolithic settlements were in the area of modern Czech Republic circa 45000 BCE. By the time civilian began to flourish there were neolithic settlements in many unrelated places of the world. People have been living in the northern polar region since well before the earliest neolithic settlements and did not civilize until recently and some remain uncivilized.

<comment><USER26> I think if you downgrade the definition of city to any grouping of animal skin tents, then the entire exercise loses meaning because those were everywhere.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, before 3-4000 years ago, the largest "city" in the world probably wasn't even 100,000 people. So you go back far enough anywhere and the cities were more like villages if that.

It's interesting that the biggest cities plateaued at about 1 million from about 100 BCE to 1800 CE, until the industrial revolution kicked in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In the '70s and '80s when Japan was booming there was a popular meme that they were advantaged by having their cities destroyed in the war so were able to rebuild them along more modern lines. I don't know if it's true but it seems plausible.

In Stranger in a Strange Land, Michael Valentine Smith talks about the Martian habit of abandoning places when the memories became too intense to tolerate.

If we earthlings were repulsed by places with too much history such old places would have a limited lifespan. While we'd lose out on the context of history, we'd escape some of the deep ruts of blind tradition and be less buried by sedimentary layers of "that's how we've always done it."

War is a terrible evil, but at least it tends to breaks up such ossified remains. If we defeat war, we should look for other mechanisms to till the soil to promote new growth.

<comment><USER29> For unknown reasons, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture used to burn down their settlements every 75-80 years: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Somewhere roundabout EC2 is the remains of some religious building, with an office built over it. Walk past the big glass windows, double-take then blag your way in politely and admire it. It's a serious chunk of stonework that's literally been built around. It's so peculiar to see the juxtaposition. I think it's related to henry 8th's destructions. Does anyone know it?

I did a search but couldn't find it, what I did find is quite interesting. Take a look at the top picture here [https://symbolsandsecrets.london/page/21/](https://symbolsandsecrets.london/page/21/)

Scroll down for some more of londinium and assorted london relics.

</comment><comment><USER31> Since Damascus is on the list, it's worth noting that some of the building techniques that possibly originated thousands of years ago are still in use in some remote Syrian villages.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roof_shapes#/media/Fil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roof_shapes#/media/File:Traditional_adobe_beehive_architecture_of_Syria.jpg)

[https://syrianvoicesmediationandart.wordpress.com/2016/04/04...](https://syrianvoicesmediationandart.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/syrian- beehive-dome-building-and-plans/comment-page-1/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Thats nice. What about the oldest school, though?

Garbarnmumg:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung)

28,000 years of teaching the next generation agriculture and animal husbandry.

</comment><comment><USER33> Reading through the comments I see people from all over the world offering insights about various places. Then I realised all the comments here are in English. There must be an equivalent for languages continuously spoken over time.

<comment> maze-le Languages change -- sometimes dramatically -- over the course of centuries. English wasn't even a thing until the 1100s or so (Middle English). It would be very hard to exchange thoughts and ideas with the people of this time -- not only because of the different cultural and technological contexts but also because of its pronunciation and phonology.

Its predecessor: Anglo Saxon is even more distant from it. Try to read the passages here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English#Beowulf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English#Beowulf)

Latin (as an artificially conserved language) has not changed that much since Roman times, but it isn't a language that is actively used in everyday life -- so you cannot claim it is: "continuously spoken over time".

Hebrew and Arabic could be interesting cases -- maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can chime in on these... But I assume ancient Hebrew and Arabic are also not mutually intelligible with the corresponding languages today.

<comment><USER34> Even for Latin, apparently Ecclesiastical (Church) Latin, which is more familiar to most people today, differs in pronunciation from Classical Latin. For example, Ecclesiastical Latin uses a soft 'c', where the ancient Romans would have used a hard 'c' \-- Cicero's name would have been pronounced like "keekero" in his day, whereas most people now think of him as "Sissero". Although the Roman empire was large and diverse enough that Latin probably had quite a variety of dialects and maybe Ecclesiastical Latin was one of them.

Hebrew is an unusual case because, like Latin, it was mostly a dead language that for centuries only continued to be used in religious and a few other contexts. It was revived in the 19th century. Because of its long period of cryostasis the parts that were preserved probably haven't changed that much, although necessarily it's expanded greatly into a living language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I like how Rome is listed as 753 BCE.

A lot of guess work on these dates

<comment><USER36> Best estimate, until the next archaeological discovery.

As long as we don't equate estimates with facts, we're good.

<comment><USER37> If you're suggesting that the 753 BC date is archaeological, you're incorrect. 753 BC is the legendary date. There's archaeological evidence of habitation on the hills of Rome earlier than that.

<comment><USER38> Yes but when did it become a "city" versus just a caveman camp?

<comment><USER39> When do you have a handful of sand? If you take 1 grain of sand and put it in your hand, that's not a handful. Same with 2, 3. How many grains of sand constitutes a handful?

<comment><USER3> In the example of a handful: the average "handful" is around 100-50mL. Say we define a "handful" as 50mL +/\- 1 order of magnitude. On the high end, you have Andre the Giant, who could easily fit a 12 oz beer in his hand no problem (354 mL.) On the low end, you have children; even kids with small hands can hold 5mL.

\---

Sure, there's some ambiguity, and of course there's not a hard number on it. But that doesn't mean you can't tell if something is a city. Nobody would argue that, for example, NYC isn't a city, or London or Amsterdam or whatnot.

As the world population grew, so did the definition of "city". 12,000 years ago, there were somewhere around ten million people in the entire world, so a definition of somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.1% of the world population (10,000 people) for a city seems reasonable, plus or minus one order of magnitude. I'll call it Owen's Law :) That holds for today: 0.1% of the world population is 7.8 million, plus or minus 1 order of magnitude - I'd say that's a fine definition for a city. In any case, it works very well today: at the large end you have cities like Chongqing with 30+ million in the municipality, and at the small end you have cities like Rotterdam with around 700k people in the city proper.

To check if my rule of thumb worked: At the year 1, assuming 200 million people in the world, that's setting a city around 200,000 people, plus or minus 1 order of magnitude. The largest city in the world was Rome, between 1MM-400k people; all the top 10 largest cities fell within the rule.

\- It holds at the year 1000 (world pop. ~300MM, largest city Córdoba with 400k, smaller cities like Nimes with 56k.)

\- It holds at the year 1500 (world pop. 500MM, largest city Constantinople 250k, smaller cities like Palermo, Florence, Madrid, Moscow with ~70k.)

\- It holds at 1800 (world pop. ~1 billion, largest cities Vienna and London ~1MM, smaller cities like Berlin, Lyon, Venice 150k.)

\- It holds at 1900 (world pop. 1.6 billion, largest city London 5.5MM, smaller cities Naples, Madrid, Amsterdam ~500k.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> With the world explored and mapped, it is hard to fathom new cities being built. Nevertheless, that will certainly happen in the future.

What will the catalyst be? Will it be nuclear war, which devastates and contaminates an area for decades? Will it be disease that makes existing urban areas less desirable to live in? Will it be economic opportunity, as we discover new uses for land or a new way to use land? Space Travel?

I see a small parallel to startups: it is easy but dangerous to say "there are no new ideas in that industry". Yet often some of the primary companies are those that survived the early "land grab" of customers.

</comment><comment><USER41> "Continuously" is a word that lets a lot of institutions claim to be the oldest or longest running thing. I feel like I've been to a dozen restaurants that make this claim.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow, this is a great example of a rather terrible wikipedia page. Grouping it by continent. No mention of the Middle East at all (Erbil anyone?). Oceania is just a list of every major city in AUS/NZ, even listing 1913s Canberra while omitting basically every other country in the region.

Not trying to diminish the work that went into it so far, but it is a great example to always keep in mind how wikipedia works, how its content is built and to never trust it as a source in itself.

<comment><USER43> And on the NZ side, it calls Bluff a city. It's a town (whose population peaked at 3000) near Invercargill, which is itself, only just a city.

[https://www.worldhistoryofbluff.org.nz](https://www.worldhistoryofbluff.org.nz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> In the UK there's a common derision of tourists from (sorry but) the USA who find themselves dumbfounded by the age of some rickety old pub from the eighteenth century they've tracked down. This Wikipedia page emphasises how little this old rock's got on the rest of the world.

Apart from Australasia.

Though seriously, I appreciate that Oceana's indigenous peoples are highly nomadic, but is it really the case that there's no continuous settlement there until European colonisation?

<comment><USER45> Yes I think the idea here is that the distances over seas to reach islands took many many years until Polynesians delevoped the necessary skills and tech were able to navigate them and settle the lands. I don't think any archeological evdince have been found otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So, Lisbon is older than Rome, TIL!

<comment><USER47> It is very common, in downtown Lisbon, when doing some escavations to renovate some building foundations to find traces/layers of older civilizations. A famous case was in the 90's when renovating the headquarters of Millenium Bank. The remains were preserved (under the building) and you can actually visit them nowadays[1].

[1] [https://www.lisbonlux.com/lisbon/nucleo- arqueologico.html](https://www.lisbonlux.com/lisbon/nucleo-arqueologico.html)

<comment><USER48> I found it to be a really interesting tour. I think it's free, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> There is some definite bias here. I can assure you that San Diego was inhabited by the native people long before 1789. They might not have called it San Diego, but they certainly had a concept of settlement.

1789 is more like their colonization year, not their settlement year.

</comment><comment><USER50> This list seems quite incomplete. Check for example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Early_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu#Early_history)

There are probably more cities like this.

</comment><comment><USER51> Jesus folks are getting owly. Yesterday I mentioned here, that in addition to inhabited cities there are very old nomadic populations, some very much older that the oldest continuously inhabited city.

And got totally smashed by bad feedback, and eventually flagged (?!) for saying this.

What gives? HN is normally such a tolerant place, full of curious people. Is this topic so emotionally toxic that no alternate dialog is tolerated? I'm honestly confused.

</comment><comment><USER52> I live in one of the cities mentioned on this page (Augsburg), I think it's pointless to argue of how much is still around from the old ages and if people respect it. The age of a city builds a certain character on a city, the quirks and things that go on for some reason that has been forgotten since before America was discovered.

Puts some perspective into "for an american, 200 years is a long time", doesn't it?

</comment><comment><USER53> If you ever go to Pula, make sure to visit the Arena ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula_Arena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula_Arena)) and pass by Zlatna Vrata ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_the_Sergii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_of_the_Sergii)) both are ~2000 year old

</comment><comment><USER54> Also interesting (from the "See also" section) -- List of oldest known surviving buildings[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_known_surviving...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_known_surviving_buildings)

</comment><comment><USER55> Stupid comment maybe but I wished there was a global list.

I was surprised though at the limited number of sites inhabited continuously since earlier than 2000BCE. I would believe that good natural sites (natural harbors with a river) would have been continuously inhabited since neolithic.

</comment><comment><USER56> TIL San Diego is the oldest city on the West Coast and the birthplace of California!

</comment><comment><USER57> Interesting that Marakkesh is listed as 1070CE. Marakkesh is where the 'gladiator' Maximus fights, and moves to Rome from, in the movie. That's during the reign of Commodus, which places it at around 190CE.

</comment><comment><USER58> This list seems hardly complete. There's no mention of Central Asia for instance.

<comment><USER59> I spotted Afghanistan which is pretty damn Central Asian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Cholula FTW! Oldest still inhabited city in the Americas and best hot sauce.

</comment><comment><USER61> We have a tendency to group all ancient cities together in our minds, but the difference between Luxor/Thebes(3200BC) and Rome(753BC) is about the same as between Rome and New York City(1624).

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm incredibly impressed to find that Tangier is ther third oldest continously inhabited city in Africa, I go through it almost every year to visit Morocco, such a beautiful country.

</comment><comment><USER63> This map is a nice visualization of the oldest cities: [https://i.redd.it/qc23w3nl85u31.png](https://i.redd.it/qc23w3nl85u31.png)

</comment><comment><USER64> Aztec and Taos in New Mexico have been inhabited since 1000ad. They are considered cities, despite how small they are

</comment><comment><USER65> What about London?

<comment><USER66> Wikipedia's date for that is 43 AD, there's a long list of European cities that stops a lifetime before that.

<comment> m-i-l > _" Wikipedia's date for that is 43 AD"_

There was a story a couple of weeks ago[0] about pottery dating from around 3600BCE being found at a site in Shoreditch (which was being excavated for the new Amazon HQ), suggesting London may have been inhabited considerably longer than previously thought.

[0] [https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/largest-group-early- neolithic-p...](https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/largest-group-early-neolithic- pottery-ever-found-london-dated-using-new-technique) & [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2178-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2178-z)

<comment><USER67> That wouldn't be "London city" that would be "a village which the latter settlement of London expanded to encompass"; which is significantly different. Not longest inhabited areas, but continuously inhabited city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I happened to be born in one of those cities. AMA :)

<comment><USER66> Have you lived in much younger cities? How does the weight of history in the old city compare? Do you prefer to live in a younger city, or an elder one, and why?

I grew up in New Orleans and every other US city I've lived in has felt kind of... unmoored... in a certain way, what history there is in much of the rest of the country has been thoroughly torn down, and it's not like there's much history in a 1940s building yet anyway.

<comment><USER69> Have you lived in any of the older cities on the East Coast? The Philadelphia and Boston areas have an enormous amount of history still present and visible, especially in the outskirts that haven't faced as much commercial pressure. Even downtown in both cities there's quite a lot that's been maintained from the colonial era.

<comment><USER70> I do feel that America makes a much bigger thing about recent history than the rest of the world - there feels far more history in Boston and New York than in Chester (my nearest historical towns), despite the latter being founded in AD79.

The local cafe I (used to) go to for lunch at weekends was built in 1583 (the building on that site had burnt down in a fire). There's some history at the start of the menu, and sure it's older than most of the houses in town, but it's no means unique and there are older buildings in town (not many as most burnt down in the 1583 fire)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> These cities are beautiful open air museums

</comment><comment><USER72> missing taos nm

</comment><comment><USER73> The list doesn't seem to be complete, Shiraz has been inhibited since 2000BC and it's not listed on the page.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Shiraz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Shiraz)</comment>


100 years ago, prohibition went into effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/100-years-ago-the-booziest-january-suddenly-dried-up.html <comment><USER2> I recently watched (and highly recommend) Ken Burns' fantastic documentary series on prohibition.

I learned so much about that era that wasn't really covered much in school (i.e. prohibition gave rise to the first federal income tax, women's suffrage was very closely tied to the prohibition movement, bootleggers were delivering shipments to congressmen at their offices in the capitol, etc.)

It was an incredible look into America's failed attempt to govern morality. It reminded a lot of how we see cannabis today.

<comment><USER3> On a lighter note, HBO's Boardwalk Empire is an excellent period piece as well

<comment><USER4> I really liked the first season, which gave a wide view of the intersection between political machines, the wealthy, mobsters, ethnic communities, WWI veterans, reform groups, etc that made up the prohibition era in a much more interesting way than a lot of treatments of the time, which tend to focus on the mobsters to the exclusion of all else.

Sadly after the first season, it pretty quickly degenerated into "all mobsters, all the time" show. Even the FBI guy joined the mob.

<comment><USER5> That was my take as well. I really liked it as a period piece, but after S1 it seemed like the showrunners kept some characters merely because they liked the _actors_. Michael Shannon was wasted in later seasons, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And the government still didn't learn and made the same mistakes with the "War on Drugs"

Less charitably, the War on Drugs has always been about race.

[http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug- war](http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war)

If alcohol was thought to be only used by whatever the disliked race/nationality of the day was it would have never been legalized.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's the Iron Law of Prohibition: If a type of substance is outlawed, only the most potent forms of that substance will be available for sale on the black market.

During alcohol prohibition, nobody smuggled light beer. They smuggled overproof gin and rum.

During opioid prohibition (now) incredibly dangerous form of the substance, such as fentanyl, drive out the less dangerous forms. Of course fentanyl isn't very dangerous in the hands of a skilled pharmacist / chemist who knows how to measure and dilute it to make safer doses. But, due to prohibition penalties, people with those skills don't work with it, leaving the field to clowns who dilute it with stuff like powdered baby formula.

Oh, and yeah, prohibition means we get to read news about criminals with names like El Chapo.

Can the world learn from the US's experience with alcohol prohibition? Some European jurisdictions, viz. Portugal, have shown good success decriminalizing drugs.

<comment><USER8> Same happened to weed. Before the recent burst of weed legalization (i.e. before California, MA, etc legalized it in 2016) the only "high shelf" weed you could find in dealers or dispensers were >30% THC weed that was practically impossible for me to smoke as a light weight. Today we have more options e.g. 1:1 THC:CBD flowers with ~10% THC which is a lot easier to smoke for people like me who don't want to get very high.

Imagine trying to drink one bottle of beer after a long day, but all you have is overproof rum. Prohibition sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >> _America (and a few other places) actually did have a War On Booze, they just gave up because it 's too socially normalised_

> _They might 've given up because alcohol prohibition increased the crime and > alcohol poisoning rates; because it was killing more people than it was > saving._

> _They might 've given up because the state prohibition laws had exceptions > for religious and medical purposes and so were explicitly unequal ("de jure > discriminatory")_

They might've repealed the Amendment authorizing alcohol prohibition when they realized they were unintentionally ensuring tax-free funding for organized crime. The whole Gangsters vs G-men thing was a direct product of prohibition.

Where US Marshalls (Justice branch) and Secret Service (Executive branch) had been more or less sufficient, we then needed another new 'bureau' to handle interstate organized crime headed up by a German guy; amidst Irish Rabbis (during prohibition)

Where we had had men drinking in saloons and not going home to their families, we then had men and women drinking in illegal literally underground speakeasies (on like every other corner of New York) breathing leaded gasoline (which, apparently, noone ever went to jail for)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_(miniseries)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_\(miniseries\)) episodes: "A Nation of Drunkards", "A Nation of Scofflaws", "A Nation of Hypocrites"

<comment><USER9> Sorry - to clarify, it's perfectly acceptable to be Irish and a Rabbi.

Portugal's reduction in drug deaths per million rate is something we could all aspire to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ways around it were unbelievably ingenius: "medicinal" whiskey, boats 3 miles offshore, irish rabbis who distributed sacramental wine to their "congregations", the concentrated grape extract shipped (with a packet of yeast) to NYC from California.

It may have been the first law widely mocked and ignored since the anti- smuggling laws of the 1700s.

<comment><USER11> I remember (but can no longer find) an article on the history of mince pies, which claimed that since foods were exempt from prohibition, people were making mince pies that were so soaked with brandy that they were around 14% ABV.

<comment><USER10> "I love pie" they said as they clinked their plates together

[https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mince-pie-the-real- ame...](https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mince-pie-the-real-american- pie/Content?oid=1267308)

Was unaware of that particular deception, but there were so many others... entire factories that reprocessed "industrial" alcohol to make it drinkable, pharmacies that dispensed whiskey, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And it turns out USA has not learned anything from this very expensive lesson. The war on drugs, anti immigrant policies, war on vaping everything is like a little replica of this prohibition.

</comment><comment><USER13> The fact that a constitutional amendment was needed to prohibit alcohol, but is no longer needed to prohibit a long list of substances, is evidence that our constitutional protections have been watered down. Such prohibition is a great stretch to fit within the enumerated powers and should be reserved to the states by the 9th and 10th amendments. The laboratories of democracy should be allowed to experiment with chemicals, within their borders, as their own legislatures see fit.

<comment><USER14> I always thought the prohibition amendment was about enforcing a nationwide ban, but individual states could (and did, no?) prohibit the personal consumption of alcohol as they saw fit before then? Is this not the same with other substances, and that's why some states have now legalized weed whereas others have not, because there's no nationwide law against these substances?

As an outside observer with an interest (but no formal education!) I find U.S. state/federal laws really confusing, and I'm sure I have all of the above mixed up. Would love to hear you expand your comment with some examples of how the constitutional protections are different now compared to then, and as you say watered down.

<comment><USER15> The states can legalize marijuana, meaning that the state police and courts no longer prosecute it.

But currently the federal government can still come in and make arrests, although they typically choose not to enforce the law, because doing so would be politically unpopular. Plus it's not like there are FBI agents walking the beat trying to make low-level drug busts.

The most confusing is Washington D.C., a federal territory, which has been granted limited home rule. They voted in a referendum to legalize and regulate marijuana, but then were prohibited by Congress from spending any money to actually draft the necessary regulations. The result is that marijuana is illegal to buy or sell but legal to possess or use, except in many public parks which are technically part of the federal National Park system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time my grandma complains about how things are today, I remind her that when she was born, alcohol was illegal, cannabis was legal, and the country was about to elect a president that went onto to illegally detain mostly US citizens of (mostly) Japanese origin in prison camps and take their property.

</comment><comment><USER17> The most harmful thing prohibition did was normalize flouting the law, I'd argue it also introduced in popular American culture the concept that an individual could judge the law and decide whether it was just or not.

<comment><USER18> I don't see that normalization as particularly harmful, given that the law is so often merely a tool of state oppression.

<comment><USER19> Why do Americans even think that? Wouldn't it be better to just live in a country where the law is not used to oppress people?

<comment><USER20> It's a defense-in-depth strategy: a written constitution with enunerated rights to avoid bad laws; divide power to isolate and extinguish bad laws; and allow citizens routes to evade enforcement in case we still end up with bad laws.

Systems always fail. Handle the failures with something better than SIGABRT.

<comment><USER19> That thinking might have made sense 300 years ago, but not today.

<comment><USER20> Can you explain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Somewhat related, today flavored electronic cigarettes including mint flavor were prohibited in the US.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm so old as to remembering reading a New York Times newspaper touting the need for Prohibition on their front page.

</comment><comment><USER23> And we still have draconian laws limiting and baring access to far too many drugs.

Governents use the bad apples (addicts) to punish/control the rest of us.

</comment><comment><USER24> this page freezes up my device...

could someone please paste the text?

<comment><USER25> [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/1393](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/1393)</comment></comment>


What a Russian Smile Means - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/61/coordinates/what-a-russian-smile-means <comment><USER2> It's not just Russians who don't smile without reason. The French work this way too, hence what is often called 'the undertaker face'.

If you get a smile from a French person (or a Russian) it's because you have earned it.

From "French or Foe" by Polly Platt ([http://www.pollyplatt.com/pages/frenchfoe.htm](http://www.pollyplatt.com/pages/frenchfoe.htm))

        Learn The Six Codes, including the Magic Words, for dealing with the French:
            1.      Don't smile!
            2.      Flirt!
            3.      Use the Ten Magic Words!
            4.      Add "Monsieur" or "Madame" after "bonjour," "au revoir," etc.
            5.      Shake hands!
            6.      Watch out at the door!</comment>


The First Jobs of 10 Wealthy Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.mint.com/blog/investing/the-first-jobs-of-10-wealthy-entrepreneurs/ <comment><USER2> My first job was at the San Carlos Airport(SQL). I worked in an aircraft avionics shop and made $6.75/hr. At the time I was also taking flying lessons so it was a pretty good deal getting paid to be around airplanes and occasionally getting a ride.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first summer job earned me $6/hour, programming Access databases. I didn't get too much work done because I was a newb, but it was a fun learning experience.

It wasn't until college that I had menial jobs like washing dishes and cooking at restaurants.</comment>


Researchers Develop Faster Way to Replace Bad Data with Accurate Information - <AUTHOR> https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/03/faster-way-to-replace-bad-data/ <comment><AUTHOR> The paper _Modeling and Analysis of Conflicting Information Propagation in a Finite Time Horizon_ : [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9046791](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9046791)</comment>


The tech industry push to get coding into American classrooms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/education-partovi-computer-science-coding-apple-microsoft.html <comment><USER2> I think a lot of the times what is missing in this conversation is the need to first get teachers in the classroom that know how to code and want to teach it. Unfortunately a teachers salary is much, much lower than what someone who does know how to code can make elsewhere.

I understand that there are a lot of online tools that make learning/teaching coding easier but I do believe the person teaching it still needs to have a decent understanding. Kids ask tons of questions on how to accomplish certain things and if the teacher doesn't really know how to code, they won't be able to help those students who will then lose interest.

<comment><USER3> This is a really good point. I was thinking a while ago about the role of teachers in this context and why they're so necessary, especially in this day and age where there are online tutorials for everything.

I was taught how to code from early on (6th grade), and most of my learning of programming (which I would distinguish from computer science) happened as we worked on projects/built things.

I can't tell you how many times I saw other students get stuck on bugs along the way during development and get really frustrated with programming (I saw this when I was a student, and later when I taught others how to code).

What always helped was having teachers/instructors who could easily help students work through those roadblocks so they didn't get stuck and holed up on one thing. Not really the traditional teacher that just stays up and lectures at students but rather one that also spends time getting in there and working alongside them to some extent.

Traditional classrooms/lectures are structured from the ancient days where students went to listen to a professor speak and jot down whatever the lecturer orated. But now, especially with programming, the emphasis is more on building, and so that changes what the instructor really does in the classroom (just "lecturing" vs "facilitating" and "supporting").

Probably a long-winded way of the same point you just made, but I just thought I'd elaborate since it's interesting to me. Some of my friends say that these online courses are 100% independently viable but I am not convinced that they are a suitable replacement for teachers (though I recognize it really depends on the students and how independently motivated or how prone to getting burned out they are...).

Just my 2cents...

<comment><USER2> I agree with everything you said. I am also not convinced that "these online courses are 100% independently viable" especially for the younger kids. I didn't think this a year ago but my opinion has really changed since having the opportunity to teach kids in person in a class. I use online tools in the class and they are awesome but would have lost 90% of the kids if they didn't have someone there to guide/explain things in more detail.

I was also pleasantly surprised how often kids asked "how can I make it do this" which was something outside of what the online tutorial taught. The tutorials were great at sparking their interest but can't really accommodate all of the edge cases especially for those more creative thinkers. I also learned that most of the kids got bored fairly quickly following step-by-step tutorials. They wanted to hack and play around with what they were learning. So I changed the tutorials to be much smaller with very small steps and at the end of each mini tutorial, I encouraged them to hack and try different things based on what they learned.

Maybe with a live online teacher available this would be less of an issue but even with that you lose the personal interaction the kids have with each other and the teacher. Things like showing each other what they created and working directly with the teacher/other kids to expand on that. I think a lot of younger kids really do need that interaction and in-person feedback and I am not sure how that can be re-created online.

<comment><USER3> To your last point about a live online teacher, I think it would also just be really frustrating for the teacher to be in that position. Debugging code can be difficult at times, and to do so online where you can't just be with the student in person makes it even harder.

To your broader point though, I think that resources like StackOverflow, and even some smaller communities (e.g. subreddits) are a great way to supplement online courses (by getting questions answered/dealing with roadblocks). The only issue is response time (a dedicated instructor who was with you in person could ideally resolve it quickly whereas some SO answers can take days, weeks, or even longer, depending on how obscure/unclear it is).

I agree though - programming after all is like playing with infinitely many legos; it can be overwhelming but ultimately you need to just get your hands dirty and fiddle... otherwise you won't learn correctly...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Odd that as a child growing up in the 80s every kid in my public school (in rural Kansas no less), as well as the surrounding schools I encountered, was taught programming in 6th-8th grades and also was required to take at least one high school course. Of course this was also a time when computers shipped with BASIC, users were confronted with a blinking cursor command prompt upon startup, and the very idea of a "computer" meant "tool to do things."

Nowadays the modern conception of "computer" is more akin to "consumer appliance," a more interactive television experience. For the majority of people learning to program a computer makes no more sense to them than learning how to make television shows... and the very same tech companies that drove the industry into the consumer appliance category now bemoans the fact that everyone appears to be consumers rather than producers.

<comment><USER5> > For the majority of people learning to program a computer makes no more > sense to them than learning how to make television shows

Why doesn't it make sense for everyone to learn how to make television shows? The three basic areas of active literacy in modern society are writing, coding, and video production. It seems like knowing all three should be a basic requirement for graduating high school.

<comment><USER6> > the three basic areas of active literacy in modern society are writing, > coding, and video production.

Uhm... source? Why writing, coding, and video production and not writing, coding, and photography? Or podcasting? It's unclear whether you randomly made this up on the spot, or if you're actually quoting academic taxonomies.

FWIW, Wikipedia says:

 _" Literacy is traditionally understood as the ability to read, write, and use arithmetic. The modern term's meaning has been expanded to include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture. The concept of literacy is expanding in OECD countries to include skills to access knowledge through technology and ability to assess complex contexts."_

Video production does not seem to have a prominent position, and while computers/technology are brought up, coding is not.

<comment><USER5> Those are the three primary mediums for selling ideas in modern society. Podcasting is a niche phenomenon, and even the most popular podcasts have only a few million subscribers. And while photography clearly can be used to create change in society, it doesn't do so anywhere near as often as the other mediums.

<comment><USER7> Video production is definitely one of the primary mediums for the communication of ideas, because of how versatile it is. A podcast is basically a video, without the visual aspect. The visuals accompanying video provides another dimension through which an idea may be conveyed. Photographs are just snapshots of a video. A photograph can represent multiple ideas, and provide an idea of the story's plot. Video, in comparison, provides a running narrative and dynamicism vs the staticness of photography.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like some post hoc rationalization. I could similarly state that a video is just a piece of interactive multimedia , without the interactive aspect - not sure what that brings to the table regarding the definition of literacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper? If this trend of making everyone into a programmer continues, I wonder what user interfaces will evolve into.

As a side note, recently I've been having more and more unexpected but amusing conversations with my non-programmer friends about things like 'APIs and SDKs'. The business worker has taken over the technical vernacular, and it's leading to some strange contortions of reality.

<comment><USER9> >Anyone ever read "The inmates are running the asylum" by Cooper?

Ha, good one - at least the book title. (The full title is: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.) I'd read about that book by him (Alan Cooper [1]), but haven't read it yet. But I did buy and read another of his books, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, some years ago. I thought it was good. It's about user interface design that makes sense for humans. I still remember one point where he said that in a scrollbar, having both the arrows at one end, instead of at opposite ends, makes it more easy to use. IIRC, I mentioned this on HN a while ago in some context, and someone replied that such a scrollbar exists in some GUI toolkit or OS.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper)

[https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper](https://www.cooper.com/people/alan_cooper)

The story of how he created Visual Basic and then how Microsoft bought it from him, is also interesting.

A few excerpts from the Wikipedia article about him (linked above):

[After he left college, he founded one of the first microcomputer software companies.]

[In 1975, as the first microcomputers became available, Alan Cooper founded his first company, Structured Systems Group (SSG), in Oakland, California. SSG's software accounting product, General Ledger, was sold through ads in popular magazines such as Byte and Interface Age. This software was, according to the historical account in Fire in the Valley (by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine), "probably the first serious business software for microcomputers.]

[During the 1980s, Alan Cooper authored several business applications including Microphone II for Windows and an early, critical-path project management program called SuperProject. Cooper sold SuperProject to Computer Associates in 1984, where it achieved success in the business-to-business marketplace.]

[In 1988, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language (code-named "Ruby") that allowed Windows users to build "Finder"-like shells. He called it "a shell construction set." After he demonstrated Ruby to Bill Gates, Microsoft purchased it. At the time, Gates commented that the innovation would have a "profound effect" on their entire product line. Microsoft decided not to release the product as a shell for users, but rather to transform it into a professional development tool from their QuickBASIC programming language called Visual Basic, which was widely used for business application development for Windows computers.]

[Cooper's dynamically installable control facility, which became famous as the "VBX" interface, was a well-known component of "Ruby". This innovation allowed any 3rd party developer to write a widget (control) as a DLL, put it in the Visual Basic directory, and Visual Basic would find it, communicate with it, and present it to the user as a seamless part of the program. The widget would appear in the tool palette and appropriate menus, and users could incorporate it into their Visual Basic applications. The invention of the "VBX" interface created an entire new marketplace for vendors of these "dynamically installable controls." As a result of Cooper's work, many new software companies were able to deliver Windows software to market in the 1990s.]

I'd worked on a few commercial VB projects earlier, and had read about how the VBX innovation (mentioned above) spawned a whole new industry of companies creating third-party controls/widgets. Delphi was probably also made possible because of VB (though there was a chance it could have been invented even if VB had not).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do think there's a lot of value in teaching logic and algorithms as a system for thought. Coding might be a more direct way to get to it than, say, calculus, which is what is generally used.

But teaching kids java and databases is probably not the right approach, and is definitely only happening because Oracle wants to stay relevant.

<comment><USER9> Yes, logic and reasoning from facts/propositions to conclusions, should be taught to all, IMO - and this applied even before computers were invented. I see a lot of people these days (who are otherwise educated, even) unable to formulate basic logical arguments, and hence either make illogical arguments and deductions, or just go by emotions only, neither of which is good for the world. There is a place for both the head and the heard, and neither should rule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think kids would better served learning how to solve problems and staying curious.

I had given my niece this board game robot turtles that was post on here several years back. Its a great game, but it really requires a parent to get involved.

I remember I got started back in the mid 80s with writing maze games in BASIC. When I was a little older, I bought all those little electronics books printed on graph paper that they sold at Radio Shack. Then I would make simple circuits and learn to solder.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would be extremely surprised, and very sad if in 10 years computers still need programmers for 90% of what they need them for today.

Soon we will consider any programming just as arcane as machine code is today.

<comment><USER9> Not likely, IMO. You may be believing too much that AI will take over everything.

<comment><USER12> At least I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure data is in sync between objects, databases, remote APIs etc, and doing similar things that feel ripe for automation.

I think future developers will be focused on UI design and algorithms, and not have to worry too much about passing around data etc. Most of this doesn't even require AI, just like automatic reference counting doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Roger Schank would disagree, I think:

"'Everyone should learn to code' is the new way of saying we need to create compliant factory workers and that the real purpose of school is to make sure that we are training people for the 'factory jobs' of the future."...

"I was amused when President Obama said that everyone should learn to code, since while I am guessing that Cook can code, I am pretty sure Obama cannot, so why does he care? And, what does he actually know about coding?"

from [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-code-new-way- create-...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-code-new-way-create- modern-day-factory-workers-roger-schank)

It's a short but interesting article about the evolution of Schank's thoughts about teaching programming.

</comment><comment><USER13> School should teach students to read, write, do basic math and think and discuss both logically and rhetorically. Once a student is educated in that sense, (s)he is prepared to learn coding.

Otheriwise, coding becomes like all those other courses that the student took but never used. The basics will always be useful.

<comment><USER14> Maybe coding will help students do those tasks better. I'd say coding would certainly help with basic math and logical thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >The tech industry push to get coding into American classrooms

And so they did for like 10 to 20 years. Maybe they need to change the strategy?

<comment><USER16> Now that Trump threatens the free flow of cheap immigrant labor, now the giant tech corporations care about American children. Funny how that works.

<comment><USER17> Eh they've been pushing this for a little while. I consider it more like hedging their bets:

H1B labor + "everyone can code" = WIN!

No H1B labor + "everyone can code" = WIN!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I desperately need to acquire expertise in a domain of programming that is not accessible via high school courses, and YouTube videos, or a fear I may not have a job (or a decent paying job) in 10 years.

Does anyone else worry about that?

<comment><USER19> Not really, to be honest. I mean, right now I do what should be "accessible via high school courses"\--I do devops/infrastructure development and automation. I call it "e-plumbing" and I'm not even joking. But I have zero worry about competition for a few reasons:

1) There is enough subject matter expertise in the infrastructure/devops sub- field that being able to synthesize approaches out of all of it is really, really hard and is in many ways gated on experience. Understanding all of the products AWS throws at you and when to apply them versus using vendor- independent solutions versus using a different cloud provider entirely is a problem that high school and YouTube won't really prepare you for.

2) Being able to cohesively apply that subject matter expertise requires a framework that takes a lot of theoretical knowledge that takes a while to both learn and to understand the importance of. People shit on college all the time but I would be _significantly worse at my job_ if not for the rigorous algorithmic courses forced upon me at college (it's one of those "do you know what you don't know?" things).

3) The baseline computer science background, programming chops, and breadth of experience that make me good at applying code to #1 and #2 means I have other options if I want to get out of infrastructure work. That's how I ended up here--I went from college to doing bog-standard Java work at TripAdvisor to leading a mobile team two years later because "you're smart, you'll figure out what you don't know" to devops/infrastructure work, where I'd never touched AWS or Ruby and yet picked both up on the fly. A few years later, I consult to pay the bills and work on other stuff that I find fun.

4) The demand of the industry is not going away any time soon; there will be a need for seniors to guide and manage even that theoretical legion of juniors. I'm much more worried about those juniors than I am today's juniors or seniors.

<comment><USER20> I am a JavaScript developer. I also have 0 worry about competition in the job market. It isn't that I am a rockstar programmer, that JavaScript developers are hard to find, or even that demand is low. Unfortunately, it is that most JavaScript developers suck. Absolutely horrid.

The primary culprit is a lack of education (formal or mentor-ship) on how web technologies work and I have almost never encountered somebody who did well with these technologies due simply to their university education. If you are hoping your mastery of Java or C# is good enough to quickly jump into JavaScript or some other web technology will be sorely disappointed.

<comment><USER19> It's funny that you say that, because I've been getting into ES6/TS lately (mostly to implement my own stuff) and that's basically been my reaction: "this stuff is pretty straightforward, why is so much code so bad?". Then I realize that I've had to understand, if not implement, those web technologies to do the work I've already been doing (and, years back, I wrote a JavaScript runtime as an experiment, so the language's guts aren't foreign), and I'm just picking up the other end of the rope now.

The amount of implicitly-carried _junk_ we all know about to be good at our jobs instead of just tolerable is pretty amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The motive of cheaper employees is self-limiting as long as they're skipping over getting kids good at using and administrating computers and jumping right to programming.

Yes, kids these days are good at installing apps onto their phones. Until they learn how to figure out how to change their wifi ssid and password without a manual (then move onto programming) there is never going to be an explosion in the number of qualified software engineers. Unless "coding" really means "shitting out cookiecutter webapps."

</comment><comment><USER22> It should be a requirement, just like math is. But don't get upset when we're not pumping out software developers any more than we pump out mathematicians.

<comment><USER23> Why should it be a requirement? Should plumbing be a requirement? What about electrical engineering, economics, cooking, or basketweaving?

Maybe a better approach is to have it as a required elective offering, and let interested students find it if they want to?

<comment><USER9> Yes, I don't agree with the viewpoint that learning programming (per se) should be a requirement, even though software is so pervasive in modern life and will be more so in future. Instead, IMO, the concepts, importance and influence (on the world) of both computer hardware and software should be made known to students, via an intro level course, and then they should be given the option to learn more about those topics, if they wish. They should also be told that as time goes on, being computer-illiterate is more and more likely to be a handicap in the world, even for day-to-day living. But still, programming is not a requirement for living in the world. Instead, computer literacy, which nowadays should involve more topics than it did earlier, should be made a required course, including things like the basics of how hardware and operating systems and software work (not in too much depth, but enough), plus networking, the Internet, the importance of things like computer security (password management, URLs, malware prevention basics, backups, and many more).</comment></comment></comment>


It's Sergey's world and we're all just living in it - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/sergey-brin-show/

<comment><USER2> I feel the article comments are a bit unfair. It demonstrated Google+ (& Hangouts) very well.

Simple concept of real-time video streaming using a web enabled Glasses looks easy, but its hard to do.

And, a good PR is always a big win.

</comment><comment><USER3> I still feel like all they showed was just a glorified webcam.

Whoopteedoo.

<comment><USER4> I was hoping the glasses would actually do something during the demo process, like begin identifying buildings (perhaps specifically targeting the Moscone building as the destination) while in the sky based on gps + visual matching of a 3D map, etc etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disappointed as well: feels like a cheap POV vebcam. I was expecting the terminator style semi-transparent stats in the visual: velocity, altitude etc.</comment>


Arka Kapı Mag: Bimonthly Cyber Security Mag. From Turkey for Hackers by Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://leanpub.com/arkakapimagazine <comment><AUTHOR> We are proud to announce the global release of Arka Kapı Mag, a bimonthly cyber security magazine that incorporates posts from an open community. We are aiming to be an open blog for all! That means everybody is welcome to publish and become an author! for more information and updates visit our web page and follow us on twitter www.arkakapimag.com @arkakapimag</comment>