They probably won't be learning CS. Most people, including many around here, mistake CS for anything computer related.
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but if they incorporate some practical computer lesson and projects into the curriculum it may not be so bad. Things that are more general and practical in nature. Perhaps creating a web page that involves a little java script, maybe connecting a temperature sensor to a raspberry pi and writing a script to read it, etc. Are these CS or EE, not really, more computer/electronics literacy in my opinion.
I'm thinking of a class project that we did in 9th grade science class. We had a transparent plastic box and lid, the box had cm markings on the side. In the box was placed a terrain model with hills and valleys. We added water to the box until reaching a cm line and while looking straight down through the lid traced the water lines. We repeated this at the various cm lines. In effect we created a topographical map. Were we doing geography in the university geography class sense, no, but it was a very useful lesson in the general sense of scientific literacy(*). I think we could do a better job with such lesson with respect to computer and electronics literacy.
Again, I admit to being perhaps overly optimistic. I'm sure the US Gov't could royally botch any such attempt to improve computer and electronics literacy through simple practical lessons and projects.
(*) It was also an incredibly valuable lesson when I later learned land navigation with map and compass, route planning,... so many others were just stuck on how these lines on a topo map represented terrain features.
Math has been in the boring rote memorization exercise for decades in schools.
The best math teacher I ever had, including college and grad school, was from 7th grade. He went off curriculum on nearly every topic, always showing us real world practical applications of a topic/technique when the book and formal state-approved lesson plan failed to do so. It really made a difference.
From talking to older family members it seems that the US had a two track educational system in the 1940s and 50s too. One track vocationally oriented and one college prep oriented. Everyone took math classes of some sort for most/all of high school, even the kids on the vocational track. On the vocational track it was practical job site oriented math (which included some algebra and trig techniques) plus some financial literacy and home economics.
I think in this respect the non-college prep kids were better served back then.
400 civilian aircrafts flew over it each day until one of them was shut down.
I see your point, but the problem is that at some point this was going to happen. It is a war zone after all and I am surprised it hasn't happened more often. If a military can't get an ID an something they will shoot it down anways since chances are it is the enemy. It is a sad tragic thing since this can cause civilians to die.
Given 400 civilian aircraft a day chances are it is not an enemy aircraft. Also it was well above the 30,000 exclusion zone declared by the separatists. They knew there were civilian aircraft above that.
And yet again you uncritically take promotional language as true. As someone who actually uses one of the languages supposedly supported by Dragonegg, I would say it would behoove you to look beyond the advertising copy.
Interesting, so you knew non-C languages were supported when you claimed otherwise. From dragon egg's current status, it works very well with Fortran and works well with Ada when using gcc 4.6. http://dragonegg.llvm.org/
MacRuby (Apple is a contributor to the project) would be another example. http://macruby.org/
Me calling you a dumb fanboi is not angry name calling. It's a statement of fact, which you thankfully keep proving with every post.
As unreliable a "fact" as your "fact" of not being able to use non-C languages. Seriously, what gets you so outraged over the idea of being able to use either gcc or llvm, over the idea that llvm is usable with Fortran, Ruby, etc?
Development state doesn't matter? An incomplete frontend means I can't use LLVM for that language, so that makes LLVM specific to the frontends that actually do produce production-quality code: C-derived stuff and Haskell.
Actually the gcc front ends are available.
"dragonegg integrates the LLVM optimizers and code generator with the GCC parsers. This allows LLVM to compile Ada, Fortran, and other languages supported by the GCC compiler frontends, and access to C features not supported by Clang (such as OpenMP)."
http://llvm.org/
I think you should see someone for those projection issues.
Says the angry name calling man... seriously, re-evaluate.
LLVM has improved a lot, but in CPU-bound workloads such as cryptography, GCC still outperforms it by 15% or more.
"When it comes to the run-time performance of the compiled programs, GCC previously outperformed LLVM by about 10% on average. Newer results do indicate, however, that LLVM has now caught up with GCC in this area, and is now compiling binaries of approximately equal performance, except for programs using OpenMP" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Disregard my previous post, it's even worse than I thought. If I take your own source, it doesn't even back up its own introduction. According to that Wikipedia page the only frontend mentioned that is in better state than a vague 'state of development' is Haskell.
The development state of the various language front ends is irrelevant. Their existence proves the point that llvm is not specific to c or c-derived languages.
So yeah. You're a stupid fanboi who cannot but parrot marketing language.
Actually the fanboi in this conversation is the person getting all emotional. You might want to re-evaluate who that is. I'm just a person who thinks the option to use gcc **or** an llvm based compiler would be nice. No one is saying gcc should be replaced, you need not get all emotional and defensive. I often like to use different compilers, especially different architecture targets, as a way to shake bugs out of code.
It's an active war zone, you can assume everything flying is hostile.
The separatists only declared an exclusion zone up to 30,000 feet. The plane was well above that. The separatists thereby acknowledged and agreed that everything in the air was not hostile.
That probably depends upon whether you consider the terms of use of the online service, grocery store loyalty card, casino player's card, etc to be transparent. Those terms of use that no one reads.
There is also consent by action. The casino does A/B testing by offering some a $40 steak dinner plus $40 in chips while it offers others $80 in chips. You clicked on the advertisement/offer, or you opened the envelope that arrived in your postal mail, etc.
Similarly the coupons a grocery store offers you are often part of an experiment. Hell, changing the items on the isle end caps are sometimes part of an experiment.
My marketing processor thought that grocery store loyalty cards were the greatest invention ever in the history of marketing. The data collected and opportunity for experiments enormous.
I bet you could not tell the difference between a civilian plane and a military plane flying at 30,000 feet over a war zone either.
I bet he can't tell them apart either, but I also bet he wouldn't fire a missile at it. *Firing a missile anyway* is the important thing here, not a failure to identify the aircraft.
That may be an upgrade if all you program in is a C-derivative.
"Originally implemented for C and C++, the language-agnostic design (and the success) of LLVM has since spawned a wide variety of front ends: languages with compilers that use LLVM include ActionScript, Ada, D, Fortran, OpenGL Shading Language, Haskell, Java bytecode, Julia, Objective-C, Swift, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and C#." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being [able] to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
"Update to to icc", that I would understand (for Intel platforms). "Upgrade to LLVM" sounds like this is not coming from a C++ programmer who really cares about the final binary...
Then your politics is blinding you. Having two unrelated compilers build your code is sometimes helpful in finding bugs in your code. Bug free is goal #1. Being slightly faster is an important but secondary consideration. As I said, it would be nice to have the option to compile with *either* gcc or llvm. Again, note "either", only your politics is creating the straw man of llvm replacing gcc.
Plus one compiler being faster than another is not a given, things change over time
The main problem is that Linus did not take copyright assignments, so it's practially impossible now to relicense the Linux kernel or upgrade it to GPLv3. Therefore, always remember to use "GPLv3 or later" when you release software. The "or later" is really important.
No, Linus did the right thing. "Or later" is very dangerous, its a blank check, its an unknown,... its a trap! We have no idea what some future GPL license may include. It may include things that we do not want. As some developers who are staying with gpl 2 intentionally have said about gpl 3.
That said, the above is off topic. Compiling the kernel with llvm does not change the license of the kernel. A BSD licensed compiler has no effect on GPL licensed source code. The resulting binary derives its license from its source, not the compiler used.
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being [able] to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
How could you _upgrade_ from GPLv3 to BSD? Sounds like the reverse.
Compiling with a BSD licensed compiler does not change the license of the software being compiled. Linux would remain gpl regardless of whether gcc or llvm is used.
For exploration, for technology development. Some things are too big, too risky or the return on investment too long for commercial space companies.
Contrary to some of its critics beliefs, some NASA spending does have a return on investment, a benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. society. Much like some investments in basic scientific research. The problem is that some politicians are just like wall street, they want to see the payback in a fiscal quarter or two -- well unless their district provides something to NASA. Sometimes budget cuts are a politician's way of saying "I didn't get my piece of the pie".
It should also be noted that we're making absolutely no attempt to "pay down" our debts.
And using cuts in temporary wartime spending to "pay for" new permanent spending, and calling the new spending "deficit neutral" since its "paid for". Political math is amazing.
If the humanities infrastructure suffers, no doubt there'll be fewer English majors, and more CS majors, so it'll be a good thing, right? Or did someone mean "humanity's infrastructure"?
If we get more CS majors then maybe we can update the voice recognition software to do a better job of picking between phonetically similar words using context.
The jobs could in fact be done by Americans with no degrees at all. This cultural indoctrination that you must have a degree must end...
In my 30 years of programming experience I have rarely seen a job advertisement that did not say 4-year degree or equivalent, equivalent as in on the job experience, as your experience suggests.
... I've been programming for 30 years as a profession and I have never had a degree, and I'll never submit to the immoral status quo by getting one. I have both the theory, the experience, and the necessary practical skills under my belt, and all without a single degree.
Some of the best programmers I know never finished college. However they are **extremely** rare. They will read and figure out college level material over a broad set of topics on their own time on their own initiative, a broad set of topics comparable to those found in a typical degree program. However most of the self taught do not seem to be that self motivated, they may study some topics that are of interest to them but they will not have the broad understanding that the former or the formally trained typically have. Many of the formally trained are no more intelligent nor any more self motivated, but they had external motivations compelling them to study things that they had little interest in. The odd thing about many of the less interesting topics is that they often have unforeseen application to problems you eventually encounter and/or they are actually more important than you knew.
That said, there are also many in college who really have no interest in programming and are just there to get their "ticket punched", to get a piece of paper. They did not enter the program because of any inherent interest in programming and engineering, rather someone told them it was a good career path. Such individuals do not turn out to be the better programmers either. In contrast those with an inherent interest in programming often go far beyond the work required for class and use the incredible resources found at a university to study things that otherwise would have been beyond their resources.
So if a person has the time and resources to attend college they would do a great disservice to themselves to skip it due to some political position. You get out of college what you put in, and you will have access to resources and people you probably could not find anywhere else. And that includes likeminded peers. Its one thing to collaborate on code over the internet, its another thing to sit side by side staring at the same screen trying to puzzle something out and walking around campus bouncing ideas around. Plus there is also ready access to individuals studying other necessary disciplines. The density of useful knowledge and experience is quite high among fellow students at a university, its just a matter of finding people with genuine interests in their respective fields rather than the ticket punchers.
Slashdot Mirror
They probably won't be learning CS. Most people, including many around here, mistake CS for anything computer related.
... so many others were just stuck on how these lines on a topo map represented terrain features.
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but if they incorporate some practical computer lesson and projects into the curriculum it may not be so bad. Things that are more general and practical in nature. Perhaps creating a web page that involves a little java script, maybe connecting a temperature sensor to a raspberry pi and writing a script to read it, etc. Are these CS or EE, not really, more computer/electronics literacy in my opinion.
I'm thinking of a class project that we did in 9th grade science class. We had a transparent plastic box and lid, the box had cm markings on the side. In the box was placed a terrain model with hills and valleys. We added water to the box until reaching a cm line and while looking straight down through the lid traced the water lines. We repeated this at the various cm lines. In effect we created a topographical map. Were we doing geography in the university geography class sense, no, but it was a very useful lesson in the general sense of scientific literacy(*). I think we could do a better job with such lesson with respect to computer and electronics literacy.
Again, I admit to being perhaps overly optimistic. I'm sure the US Gov't could royally botch any such attempt to improve computer and electronics literacy through simple practical lessons and projects.
(*) It was also an incredibly valuable lesson when I later learned land navigation with map and compass, route planning,
Math has been in the boring rote memorization exercise for decades in schools.
The best math teacher I ever had, including college and grad school, was from 7th grade. He went off curriculum on nearly every topic, always showing us real world practical applications of a topic/technique when the book and formal state-approved lesson plan failed to do so. It really made a difference.
Count on school to turn highly interesting, mentally-stimulating subjects (like math) into boring rote memorization exercises.
I can see it now, quizzes on operator precedence for all the C language operators.
From talking to older family members it seems that the US had a two track educational system in the 1940s and 50s too. One track vocationally oriented and one college prep oriented. Everyone took math classes of some sort for most/all of high school, even the kids on the vocational track. On the vocational track it was practical job site oriented math (which included some algebra and trig techniques) plus some financial literacy and home economics.
I think in this respect the non-college prep kids were better served back then.
This is common knowledge, right?
MM = 1,000 + 1,000 = 2,000. And it would have been common knowledge about 2,000 years ago, not so much today. :-)
400 civilian aircrafts flew over it each day until one of them was shut down.
I see your point, but the problem is that at some point this was going to happen. It is a war zone after all and I am surprised it hasn't happened more often. If a military can't get an ID an something they will shoot it down anways since chances are it is the enemy. It is a sad tragic thing since this can cause civilians to die.
Given 400 civilian aircraft a day chances are it is not an enemy aircraft. Also it was well above the 30,000 exclusion zone declared by the separatists. They knew there were civilian aircraft above that.
And yet again you uncritically take promotional language as true. As someone who actually uses one of the languages supposedly supported by Dragonegg, I would say it would behoove you to look beyond the advertising copy.
Interesting, so you knew non-C languages were supported when you claimed otherwise. From dragon egg's current status, it works very well with Fortran and works well with Ada when using gcc 4.6. http://dragonegg.llvm.org/
Some benchmarks from 2011, so working with Fortran isn't a recent achievement. http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/piper...
MacRuby (Apple is a contributor to the project) would be another example. http://macruby.org/
Me calling you a dumb fanboi is not angry name calling. It's a statement of fact, which you thankfully keep proving with every post.
As unreliable a "fact" as your "fact" of not being able to use non-C languages. Seriously, what gets you so outraged over the idea of being able to use either gcc or llvm, over the idea that llvm is usable with Fortran, Ruby, etc?
That probably depends upon whether you consider the terms of use
I use depends, you insensitive clod.
We know, we have your supermarket data. :-)
Development state doesn't matter? An incomplete frontend means I can't use LLVM for that language, so that makes LLVM specific to the frontends that actually do produce production-quality code: C-derived stuff and Haskell.
Actually the gcc front ends are available.
"dragonegg integrates the LLVM optimizers and code generator with the GCC parsers. This allows LLVM to compile Ada, Fortran, and other languages supported by the GCC compiler frontends, and access to C features not supported by Clang (such as OpenMP)." http://llvm.org/
I think you should see someone for those projection issues.
Says the angry name calling man ... seriously, re-evaluate.
LLVM has improved a lot, but in CPU-bound workloads such as cryptography, GCC still outperforms it by 15% or more.
"When it comes to the run-time performance of the compiled programs, GCC previously outperformed LLVM by about 10% on average. Newer results do indicate, however, that LLVM has now caught up with GCC in this area, and is now compiling binaries of approximately equal performance, except for programs using OpenMP"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Disregard my previous post, it's even worse than I thought. If I take your own source, it doesn't even back up its own introduction. According to that Wikipedia page the only frontend mentioned that is in better state than a vague 'state of development' is Haskell.
The development state of the various language front ends is irrelevant. Their existence proves the point that llvm is not specific to c or c-derived languages.
So yeah. You're a stupid fanboi who cannot but parrot marketing language.
Actually the fanboi in this conversation is the person getting all emotional. You might want to re-evaluate who that is. I'm just a person who thinks the option to use gcc **or** an llvm based compiler would be nice. No one is saying gcc should be replaced, you need not get all emotional and defensive. I often like to use different compilers, especially different architecture targets, as a way to shake bugs out of code.
It's an active war zone, you can assume everything flying is hostile.
The separatists only declared an exclusion zone up to 30,000 feet. The plane was well above that. The separatists thereby acknowledged and agreed that everything in the air was not hostile.
That probably depends upon whether you consider the terms of use of the online service, grocery store loyalty card, casino player's card, etc to be transparent. Those terms of use that no one reads.
There is also consent by action. The casino does A/B testing by offering some a $40 steak dinner plus $40 in chips while it offers others $80 in chips. You clicked on the advertisement/offer, or you opened the envelope that arrived in your postal mail, etc.
Similarly the coupons a grocery store offers you are often part of an experiment. Hell, changing the items on the isle end caps are sometimes part of an experiment.
My marketing processor thought that grocery store loyalty cards were the greatest invention ever in the history of marketing. The data collected and opportunity for experiments enormous.
The resulting binary derives its license from its source, not the compiler used.
Until you build something that doesn't allow you to license the runtime libraries without bringing the entire executable under the same license.
That's not the compiler, and that doesn't happen with bsd licensed tools/libs.
I bet you could not tell the difference between a civilian plane and a military plane flying at 30,000 feet over a war zone either.
I bet he can't tell them apart either, but I also bet he wouldn't fire a missile at it. *Firing a missile anyway* is the important thing here, not a failure to identify the aircraft.
That may be an upgrade if all you program in is a C-derivative.
"Originally implemented for C and C++, the language-agnostic design (and the success) of LLVM has since spawned a wide variety of front ends: languages with compilers that use LLVM include ActionScript, Ada, D, Fortran, OpenGL Shading Language, Haskell, Java bytecode, Julia, Objective-C, Swift, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and C#."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being [able] to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
"Update to to icc", that I would understand (for Intel platforms). "Upgrade to LLVM" sounds like this is not coming from a C++ programmer who really cares about the final binary ...
Then your politics is blinding you. Having two unrelated compilers build your code is sometimes helpful in finding bugs in your code. Bug free is goal #1. Being slightly faster is an important but secondary consideration. As I said, it would be nice to have the option to compile with *either* gcc or llvm. Again, note "either", only your politics is creating the straw man of llvm replacing gcc.
Plus one compiler being faster than another is not a given, things change over time
The main problem is that Linus did not take copyright assignments, so it's practially impossible now to relicense the Linux kernel or upgrade it to GPLv3. Therefore, always remember to use "GPLv3 or later" when you release software. The "or later" is really important.
No, Linus did the right thing. "Or later" is very dangerous, its a blank check, its an unknown, ... its a trap! We have no idea what some future GPL license may include. It may include things that we do not want. As some developers who are staying with gpl 2 intentionally have said about gpl 3.
That said, the above is off topic. Compiling the kernel with llvm does not change the license of the kernel. A BSD licensed compiler has no effect on GPL licensed source code. The resulting binary derives its license from its source, not the compiler used.
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being [able] to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
How could you _upgrade_ from GPLv3 to BSD? Sounds like the reverse.
Compiling with a BSD licensed compiler does not change the license of the software being compiled. Linux would remain gpl regardless of whether gcc or llvm is used.
why should we fund NASA at all?
For exploration, for technology development. Some things are too big, too risky or the return on investment too long for commercial space companies.
Contrary to some of its critics beliefs, some NASA spending does have a return on investment, a benefit to the U.S. economy and U.S. society. Much like some investments in basic scientific research. The problem is that some politicians are just like wall street, they want to see the payback in a fiscal quarter or two -- well unless their district provides something to NASA. Sometimes budget cuts are a politician's way of saying "I didn't get my piece of the pie".
It should also be noted that we're making absolutely no attempt to "pay down" our debts.
And using cuts in temporary wartime spending to "pay for" new permanent spending, and calling the new spending "deficit neutral" since its "paid for". Political math is amazing.
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being above to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
That should have been "being able". One day I will have to start proofreading.
Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler.
Or upgrade to llvm. Being above to compile with either gcc or llvm would be a nice option.
If the humanities infrastructure suffers, no doubt there'll be fewer English majors, and more CS majors, so it'll be a good thing, right? Or did someone mean "humanity's infrastructure"?
If we get more CS majors then maybe we can update the voice recognition software to do a better job of picking between phonetically similar words using context.
The jobs could in fact be done by Americans with no degrees at all. This cultural indoctrination that you must have a degree must end ...
In my 30 years of programming experience I have rarely seen a job advertisement that did not say 4-year degree or equivalent, equivalent as in on the job experience, as your experience suggests.
... I've been programming for 30 years as a profession and I have never had a degree, and I'll never submit to the immoral status quo by getting one. I have both the theory, the experience, and the necessary practical skills under my belt, and all without a single degree.
Some of the best programmers I know never finished college. However they are **extremely** rare. They will read and figure out college level material over a broad set of topics on their own time on their own initiative, a broad set of topics comparable to those found in a typical degree program. However most of the self taught do not seem to be that self motivated, they may study some topics that are of interest to them but they will not have the broad understanding that the former or the formally trained typically have. Many of the formally trained are no more intelligent nor any more self motivated, but they had external motivations compelling them to study things that they had little interest in. The odd thing about many of the less interesting topics is that they often have unforeseen application to problems you eventually encounter and/or they are actually more important than you knew.
That said, there are also many in college who really have no interest in programming and are just there to get their "ticket punched", to get a piece of paper. They did not enter the program because of any inherent interest in programming and engineering, rather someone told them it was a good career path. Such individuals do not turn out to be the better programmers either. In contrast those with an inherent interest in programming often go far beyond the work required for class and use the incredible resources found at a university to study things that otherwise would have been beyond their resources.
So if a person has the time and resources to attend college they would do a great disservice to themselves to skip it due to some political position. You get out of college what you put in, and you will have access to resources and people you probably could not find anywhere else. And that includes likeminded peers. Its one thing to collaborate on code over the internet, its another thing to sit side by side staring at the same screen trying to puzzle something out and walking around campus bouncing ideas around. Plus there is also ready access to individuals studying other necessary disciplines. The density of useful knowledge and experience is quite high among fellow students at a university, its just a matter of finding people with genuine interests in their respective fields rather than the ticket punchers.