Taken as abstract 'tokens' representing 'value', I'm not sure that the form makes a huge amount of difference per se. Whatever form it takes, there will be (as always), a self-selecting few who will influence that value much more than the rest of us.
However, looking around me, I do wonder that the more we make money "abstract", the easier it is for us to spend money we don't have. I just think that maybe our brains aren't quite wired to truly make the connection between pure numbers and "value" - "how many bits and bytes are worth a loaf of bread?".

And I really feel for those people who for whatever reason, are excluded from participating. For example, a friend of mine had a stroke a couple of years ago. His recovery has been made that much more difficult because he lost his memory of every single PIN number, can't write his own signature, and for a long time was unable to make himself understood over the telephone. The more we push financial services towards password protected computer systems and remote access, the more people there are going to be who find accessing their cash very difficult if they have a disability that makes the "user interface" impossible for them to negociate.

Something that's rarely spoken of is that huge amounts of financial services are run on computer systems running some form of COBOL code. If you never heard of COBOL, that's not suprising - it's a computer language from decades past that virtually no-one is taught any more, isn't at all cool and trendy, and is god-awful to write. The number of COBOL programmers needed to maintain things properly is dwindling, and no-one wants to wholesale move to another platform because of the consequences if that were to go wrong.
IMHO, sooner or later, this utter reliance on software that is too complex to ever be 100% bug-free, written before the maintenance guy was even born, is going to have some big consequences for the world economy!

Most important: Don't try to learn them all at once!

My method (for any bit of software) is something like...

• Recce the software, play with it for a few days, to get a feel for which things I most want quick access to. For example, with Sketchup, it quickly became clear that the navigation shortcuts and axis locking were going to be indispensable.

• Are there any of those commands that I already have a 'muscle memory' for? If so, assign accordingly. For example, I use the single quote for turning guides on and off because I use other graphics software where that key shows/hides the snapping grid - so I just found my fingers going there without even thinking about it, because the function is analogous. Don't fight the reflexes you already have, work with them!

• Each session, pick a particular operation that this project is going to need a lot of, and try to learn just one or two new keys. For me, that's the key (pun intended!) - I learn the shortcuts on an actual job that needs doing - having a "dummy" session purely to learn new shortcuts rarely work well for me.

• Make sure the shortcuts are backed up somewhere! Stick that file on a memory stick that I always carry, so that I can make the software work how I like with just a quick file load, or restore settings if something goes wrong with a new install.

More importantly, the switch will only do anything for code which is already written to be multithreaded. It's just allowing some tinkering with how those threads get allocated to the different cores.

As a sometimes C++ coder, believe me, there are millions of programmers out there who would give their right arm for a "magic bullet" that transformed single-threaded into multi-threaded code automatically and safely - it's one of the toughest problems in programming!!

@slbaumgartner said:

I'd like a built-in user-configurable tabbed window for tool sets.

Ideally - arrange all windows, dialogues, toolbars, visibility settings, snap settings - give this a name - assign to shortcut key. And now (for example)...
Shortcut 1 - I want to make a new component without any distractions.
Shortcut 2 - Now I want to paint/texture things with the prettiest view possible.
Shortcut 3 - I'd like to manage all my custom materials and components.
Shortcut 4 - Show the boss/customer what I'm up to right now.

Much as I love SU, the user experience (especially once you have a few plugins installed) is too much like trying to keep your kitchenware, DIY tools, stationery, clothes, toiletries, car spares etc. etc. all in one drawer that you have to rummage through every time the task at hand changes. Nor do we put all "sharp pointy things" in one category (cutlery for the dinner table, lawnmower, surgical instruments) or all "red things" in another (tomato, stop sign, blood sample).

Of course, SU is not alone in this respect - way too much software is "tool oriented" rather than "task oriented". SU's customisable toolbars are a promising step, but different tasks not only require different toolbars - often they require a different arrangement of the windows, different camera and style settings, different use of inferencing and snapping, maybe a different component/material folder visible...etc...

PS: And please can we sort DC's out!? I want to be able to say - "stick an M4 bolt here, it should be 20mm long, with a countersunk head" - at no point am I thinking "can I please have yet another duplicate component definition that no longer relates to all the other instances of this generic thing that should only need describing once!!".

Sadly, burkhard's expreience sums up our own. We got one in at work for our software development team to look into - after a few hours playing with the provided examples, it went into a drawer, never to be seen again, without so much as a line of 'integration code' being written.
Even in the videos, you can see how slowly everyone does everything. It looks like it ought to be intuitive, but everyone's opinion here was the same - you seem to need to develop some kind of special motor skills that don't come very naturally (hopefully before your arms drop off from fatigue!). The idea is really sweet, but the actual experience of every single one of us was "gimme my mouse back!".
One has to wonder wonder just just how much practice the demonstrator's had, and how many takes it took to make their marketing videos!

As you say "pushing the boundaries", and surely the technology will improve.
However, consider this...
'Gestural' technology is not as new as all that. The Theremin (wave your hands in the air musical instrument) is getting on for a century old. Moog had a good stab at popularising it, it was used by many composers (lots of cool sci-fi movie soundtracks especially!), and they're cheap as chips to make. Yet, theremin players are rare as hen's teeth - and ones that can play in tune and expressively rarer still!

@piratebrian
How I wish I had noticed your guide before! I've spent the last few months commissioning a new CNC router at work, and have really struggled piecing together a work-flow for migrating our existing CAD. Your time and energy spent putting together such a clear guide are much appreciated. Thankyou very much indeed!

IIRC, it's not so much using a proxy variable that makes it work - it's the use of the 'current()' function.

As an example, consider you made a DC where the equations only allowed a component to be an exact number of feet long - very common for models of kitchen units, building supplies etc. When you resize it, things happen something like this...

• You resize your component by whatever method - which changes, say, LenX. We didn't bother snapping to anything because we know the component only allows valid sizes.
• The calculations are done by sub-components inside the DC to calculate their sizes - this causes a new value of LenX to be calculated, conforming to the 'whole units' constraint.
• But if LenX just got calculated to a new value, different than the one supplied by the scale tool, that means that the DC just got resized again.
• If SU were allowed to see that change as another re-scaling, it could set all the calculations running again - and with a very complex DC, this might just go on and on forever, with every calculation triggering yet another re-scale.

The 'current()' function is used to resolve this problem - it's guaranteed to read the value either before the calculations start, or after they have all finished (which one, or both, I can't quite remember). It ensures that you receive a nice stable value, and that the maths has a proper beginning, middle and end, with each resize only calculated once.

PS) Technically, that's probably nothing like what really happens! But I found that keeping that idea in my mind really helped me get my first few DCs working.

Ah, Mr. Faust, your work seems strangely familiar...

...come on, own up!...

...you work for Bradford Metropolitan District Council's department for planning and development, don't you? That housing estate opposite my house is more cramped than the Victorian 'slums' that were there 150 years ago - you should be ashamed of yourself!

@dale said:

The thrust of opposition has quite often been the "What should happen if these new GMO species run amok"

Naturally, it is right to be concerned about this, but I must admit, I feel that the over-emphasis on the 'zombie mutant take-over' probably suits the big corporations rather nicely. There is actually very little independent evidence either way on that one, and being able to produce more food with less resources is a wish as old as agriculture itself. Nor is there any particular reason to assume that GMO foodstuffs should be harmful - at least, no more harmful than the fat and sugar soaked diet that the food industry seems to prefer that we eat already. Caution is wise, of course - but I feel that, sadly, the only opposition to GMO that gets heard (shhh, you can hear it if you're very quiet) is always of the "zombie apocalypse" kind - making it very easy for the corporations to shoot down; "just a bunch of luddite tree-hugger loonies".

Meanwhile some very real issues about the state of global food production go unmentioned. The science itself is neither good nor evil - as ever, it is who is is control of it and what they use it for that are the problem.
Whether GMO is safe or not, it is clear that the likes of Monsanto are very keen on cartels and (preferably) monopolies. This is not good economically, nor scientifically - in both senses we could be looking at essentially a mono-culture. Once every farmer is growing one of the same few varieties of crops, what happens if a new pest or plague evolves that can defeat the GMO "firewall" - that's it, the whole lot goes, and we'll have reduced biodiversity such that finding new replacement varieties will be all the harder.
And once all the other sources of seed and feedstock are driven out of business, what reason it there for the few that are left to keep the price reasonable?
Well, you could always breed your own, I suppose - except that every seed and every grain of pollen contains patented DNA fragments - and the folks from the "not a legal entity" mentioned by Roundup will be calling to round you up and get very legal indeed.

I would not deny the Roundup team their opportunity to speak, it's a valuable part of democracy, after all. And of course, the same should be true for those who hold alternative opinions on the subject...
The case against Glyphosate.