One on one dedicated mentoring is very beneficial but not a requirement. You can also obtain mentorship/advice just by visiting various communities and asking questions online as well.
Over the past decades, many developers are self taught. And online communities and resources have only improved over time.
>The entirety of these
gains accrued to workers with above-median experience at baseline; less-experienced workers
saw no significant change to weekly pay. Approximately one-quarter of the earnings gains can be
attributed to experienced workers making up for lost hours in Seattle with work outside the city
limits. We associate the minimum wage ordinance with an 8% reduction in job turnover rates as
well as a significant reduction in the rate of new entries into the workforce.
The literal translation of "kung fu" means skill through effort. In fact in some parts of China, the words "kung fu" is used to mean skill in general. To say a practitioner of some art has "no kung fu" means he or she is lacking in practice/skill. The more correct term for Chinese martial arts is "wu shu" -- "military/martial" and "art".
This idea of skill through practice is one of those values that I am very grateful for because it was sort of drilled into my head at an early age and has been enormous beneficial to me throughout my life. It's become more valuable now that I'm older and don't absorb new information as quickly or easily.
Pretty sure it's from The Gateless Gate (I recognize it, which means it's probably from there).
Zen tales tend to present a couple major challenges to the reader:
1) Going into them cold isn't exactly intended. The characters are usually named for a reason, and it's expected that the reader/hearer will already know some things about the historical persons in the story, possibly some other tales about them, from reading histories and lineages, and so on, providing more context than is apparent at first if you take the stories per se.
2) There's often at least one relatively easy-to-pick-out though rarely explicitly stated lesson in them, but also one or more metaphorical or allegorical readings, at least one of which will be a "canonical" reading, i.e. your teacher will expect you to come up with it after some consideration before moving on to the next koan/tale—they don't expect that every student, or even many, will come up with a totally new and valuable metaphorical/obscure insight to the koans they present them, as that's just not realistic and no-one would ever advance if that were the expectation.
An easy example of 2 is (from memory so this wording will suck compared to the real thing) the "what should I do now?" "have you eaten your rice" "yes" "then clean out your bowl" one from (IIRC) Gateless Gate—simple surface reading of first-things-first and the importance of routine-following, but one available deeper reading of this as a Zen "challenge" (many of the koans/tales are) where the question "have you eaten your rice?" is actually asking, as understood by both characters, "have you attained enlightenment?" or similar, and "then clean out your bowl" has to do with banishing hubris or something along those lines.
Point 2 especially fairly speculative and arrived at purely second hand—I've not practiced Zen Buddhism—though I'm confident enough in it to present it here. Take that for whatever it's worth.
[EDIT] further, the point of their contemplation is in taking the journey to the answers, in part for the value of the journey and (one supposes) in part to train in the kind of lateral thinking that's so vital to these "zen battles". So just having a list of "answers" alongside the text kind of defeats the purpose, though they're definitely not intended to be as obscure and hard to follow as they are if you go into them with no background on (basically) Buddhist historical trivia.
Funnily enough, I have a copy of 無門関 sitting right in front of me. Pretty sure it's case 15.
I'd add that a lot of the stories are challenges in the sense of asking "What kind of mind must the characters have to give these kinds of answers?" There's usually a sense in which the interaction feels most natural.
In a way they are like inside jokes. Once you get it, there's little question about the meaning, and usually there's no need for any philosophical sophistication. In my experience, a good bit of The Gateless Gate is uncouth humor.
My un-Zen-trained take on it is that Tõzan represents you/me/the student. The teacher stays punishment because the student has not actually done anything wrong, but the threat of punishment is mentioned in the abstract in order to concentrate the student's mind.
The teacher then gets angry because the student tries too hard to understand by questioning the teacher rather than trying to work out their own answer or accepting the state of things.
The correct "answer" to the question then (so far as there is one) is to place yourself in the story and either accept it as it is, or come up with an interpretation of the story (like this).
Asking to explain the question is different from asking to explain the answer. Because you asked your question, I could go back and think about why the OP posted that particular story. Thank you.
Additionally, compared with placebo, baloxavir treatment significantly reduced the following:
The duration of flu symptoms, by more than 1 day (median time, 53.7 hours vs 80.2 hours; P <.0001);
The duration of fever, by nearly 1 day (median time, 24.5 hours vs 42.0 hours; P <.0001);
The length of time viruses continued to be released from the body (median time of viral shedding, 24.0 hours vs 96.0 hours; P <.0001); and
The levels of virus in the nose and throat from 24 hours through 120 hours.
Relative to oseltamivir, baloxavir treatment resulted in similar median time to alleviation of symptoms (median, 53.5 hours for baloxavir vs 53.8 hours for oseltamivir; P = .7560) and similar time to resolution of fever reduction (median, 24.4 hours vs 24.0 hours; P = .9225), respectively.
However, baloxavir treatment was associated with significantly reduced viral shedding duration (24.0 hours vs 72.0 hours; P < .0001) and significantly lower levels of virus in the nose and throat at 24 hours and 72 hours.
"It is unclear why the time to alleviation of symptoms was similar in the baloxavir group and the oseltamivir group even though baloxavir showed greater antiviral activity," the authors write. "The findings suggest that the symptom benefit of antiviral agents may have a ceiling in self-limited influenza illness in adults, perhaps because viral replication levels are decreasing by the time of presentation and illness pathogenesis is linked to host proinflammatory responses."
Overall, baloxavir was well-tolerated and had a lower incidence of adverse events reported (20.7%) compared with placebo (24.6%) or oseltamivir (24.8%). The most common adverse events were diarrhea (3%), bronchitis (2.6%), nausea (1.3%), and sinusitis (1.1%).
"The antiviral effects that were observed with baloxavir in patients with uncomplicated influenza provide encouragement with respect to its potential value in treating complicated or severe influenza infections," the authors write.
Although this new drug may not treat people any better, the effect on flu incidence through the population could be profound! This is a big deal. The question though, is whether people can be convinced to use it when it doesn’t alleviate symptoms any better or faster. If it’s more expensive, likely they won’t unless they have children, work in healthcare, or otherwise care highly about their infectivity.
> a lower incidence of adverse events reported (20.7%) compared with placebo (24.6%)
Isn't that an odd result? Unless the drug is treating underlying viral issues that might not have been identified prior, it should be on par with placebo, no?
People may be attributing symptoms of a continuing cold to the drug.
> The knowledge about taking medication or the anxiety about medication effects and illness course can cause patients to monitor symptoms in more detail, resulting in an amplified perception of benign sensations and physical symptoms.
Over the past decades, many developers are self taught. And online communities and resources have only improved over time.