still i would like to see a concrete example where OOP is better. I thought that OOP had advantages in larger projects with many kinds of data where it helped organize the code to make it more readable and editable. At that point you need to be careful how you use it to make it manageable. Not sure how small an example would could be before it started to show some benefits.
The encapsulation that guarantees invariants is the greatest benefit. This can be Done in another way by immutable structures and Functional programming. This way is in many ways better than OO but both are vastly superior to having publicly mutable structures modified by procedures.
Semantic organization where methods are defined near the data (the recepie is on the flour package) is a benefit for sure, but it's just a preference.
The problem with this project is crazy inflation in Ghana. We were actually really surprised about the prices for building material but the good news is that the community is coming together to provide the labor to make it happen. Very inspiring story of the guy who is behind this project. His grandmother (who is illiterate) insisted that he would go to the school regularly. This enabled him to get a scholarship for a statistics undergrad program in the US and he just graduated from UofU with a PhD in Public Health with emphasis on bio statistics. He has now returned to Ghana to rebuild the school (which is cancelled during rainy season as the roof is totally leaky and turns the school into a mud pool).
Absolutely right about the inflation in Ghana! A bag of cement has gone from ghc19 to ghc33 in about a year and the exchange rate is nuts! But as a Ghanaian I really appreciate your effort and what you are trying to achieve.
The satchel is really nice and I hope you ship to Ghana!
Can I make a few suggestions in order to reduce the construction cost for the school? Since there appears to be quite a bit of laterite in the area you could investigate hydraform blocks a bit further http://www.hydraform.com. The blocks use much less cement, are interlocking so construction is quicker and you need less mortar. Also the use of laterite should ensure a cooler interior.
ronbo, we work hard to find a measurable way to show our impact and I think you're right in pointing out that this isn't great. The way we calculated this was by dividing the entire cost of the project by the number of bricks needed to rebuild the school. The money we donate from each pack buys significantly more than 2 bricks, obviously, but this also includes concrete, roofing materials, labor, architectural plans, rebar, etc. We'll work on finding a better way of communicating this. We loved the idea of showing the impact by the number of bricks needed, but I think it falls short of showing the actual impact. Thanks for the feedback - very helpful!
My thought is that even if they are only detecting water and electricity throughput in each building and the temperature and light in each room, they can see hot-spots where too much energy or water is being used. If they have a model of the wiring, piping and heating conduits, then a defective part might be identified or at least a limited set of possibilities be found.
I think MS is one of the greenest IT companies in the world - folks here should give credit where its due. They have also been setting standards for energy conservation in co-lo facilities.
why are they in so much trouble? Seems like the market for alternative use proteins would use up this capacity. The dog and cat food market is huge, but has lower margins.
Our ISP (WPEngine) did a full scan and couldn't find anything fishy, and we can't figure out how to reproduce the issue (none of us sees the warning). Can you please email me if you still see it? So sorry for the hassle.
