I ran into a very old saying yesterday: A fish rots from the head down.

Quite the contrary! The idea is that today’s curricula and methods of instruction have changed a lot over two centuries. Here in the US, it is not uncommon for secondary arts teachers and programs to be dropped whenever schools are feeling a budget crunch. Now we see similar things going on in major universities. Often ones with more administrators than professors.

In the high school I attended, and later in one that I taught in, the separate building for the sports program was as large as the rest of the school. I thought those were fairly clear statements of what the district’s priorities were. ‘Education’ is a very broad word that can mean many things in many places.

A musician friend of mine, when asked “Why are there no Mozarts or Beethovens any more?” replies “We went through your schools.”

As they always teach over at Electoral College.

For language learning, I’ve always 1) come up with a simple project plan that’s not too beyond my ability. Build a simple core that could branch off in several directions to make it more and more useful. I started one 10 years ago I’m still enjoying building on… and never needed to use objects … OR frameworks … to do anything.

It’s good to know the basic, vanilla stuff really well. Say you’re getting into text arrays, knowing basics of splice, slice, split, pop/push, indexOf, sort are a lot more useful than, say, typedArray. MDN is useful for details, but is very completist. And if you run into something new that you know you need to remember, try to use it ASAP, and as often as you can.

Lately I noticed the Digital Ocean tutorial series - it’s very good, very well-written. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorial-series/how-to-code-in-javascript

For a reference book with the essencials in one place, a hard copy of "Javascript - The good parts’ by Crockford. Lots of expert examples, indexed, pick it up anytime … it’ll never get old! (Then pick up the essentials added in ES6.)

I think the last time I installed Mint (21.2) it DID create a swapfile. Don’t use it, so commented that out in /ETC/FSTAB.

When I started with Linux, I was happy to learn that I didn’t need a bunch of separate partitions, and have installed all-in-one (except for boot of course!) since. Whatever works fine for you (-and- is easiest) is the right way! (What you’re doing was once common practice, and serves just as well. No disadvantage in staying with the familiar.)

After I got up to 8GB memory, stopped using swap … easier on the hard drive -and- the SSD. (I move most data to the HD … including TimeShift … except what I use regularly.)

I use Mint as well; for me this keeps things as simple as possible. When I install a new OS version (always with the same XFCE DE) I do put THAT on a new partition (rather than try the upgrade route and risk damaging my daily driver) using the same UserName. A new Home is created within the install partition (does nothing but hold the User folder.)

To keep from having to reconfig -almost everthing- in the new OS all over again I evolved a system. First I verify that the new install boots properly, I then use a Live USB to copy the old User .config file (and the apps and their support folders I keep in user) to the new User folder. Saves hours of reconfiguring most things. The new up-to-date OS mostly resembles and works like the old one … without the upgrade risks.