Not huge 500+ page tomes that try to cover everything.
Not books with 3+ page code segments (and certainly not with code that doesn't compile).
Skinny, easily totable books. A good example is Effective C++--256 pages (plus or minus a few for endpapers and colophon).
Books that can be read quickly, with comprehensive indices to find what you want, and bibliographies to other short books with details.
Why?
Because these are the shortcomings I perceive in the major market. (O'Reilly's books being among the biggest offenders, the pocket reference books aside.) A large book is harder to have open on your desk, harder to move back and forth in your laptop bag, and (more importantly) tends to suffer from lack of editing -- authors will repeat themselves and say the same things over and over again. (They also tend to repeat themselves.) Anyone who's done book-writing knows that it's much easier and better to edit down too much content than to try to generate filler.
There is a drawback to this, though. Imagine how much more Addison Wesley would have had to have charged for The Bible had it come in six, easily digestible segments. And I do make exceptions for things that are meant to be references.
It's kind of a false security feeling, since you could just encapsulate whatever request you want within HTTP -- for example, one system I know of does exactly that (name supplied upon request) by encapsulating all the objects it passes in XML inside of the HTTP request.
I'd forgotten all about the HP15C. That's back in the time of Fortran 3.
Well, I must be so old that my brain has forgotten FORTRAN 3. I always thought it went from II to IV to 77 to 8x (never released) to 90 to 95...when they changed it from FORTRAN to Fortran.
But I digress.
You make me feel young again.
It's not a good day unless I bring sunshine into someone's life.
I just turned on the 15c and found that it needs new batteries. At least it takes standard batteries, unlike the N size the 41 took.
I got my 15C for a HS graduation gift (it still works fine!), then later a 41C, and a used 28...
HP calculators had a long history of being at the front of good math, too. They got Velvel Kahan to come in and do their advanced math functions and numerical analysis (the HP advanced functions on the 15 book got me through some tricky numerical analysis!)
What a loss. And as the previous poster said, yes, I'm an inveterate FORTH programmer too...
I've had experience with the Linksys cheapy router/firewall combo (BEFSR41) and the Netgear RP114.
The Linksys unit worked fine until the power supply died, and I realized that it came with an offbrand voltage and offbrand connector, so I couldn't easily get a new one (and there is no such thing as Linksys tech support to speak of), nor could I easily cobble a new unit together. (Linksys has since changed to a more standard connector, from what I can see, so I can't even buy a new bottom-of-the-line unit and swap out the p/s). So I went and got a Netgear and never looked back -- very nice and P&P.
I tried the PC-based solution but since the unit sits in my bedroom, I wanted something really small and quiet that wouldn't disturb the missus.
Both units are reasonably easy to set up. One of the nice things about the RP114 is that it can be configured either through a GUI or through a telnet interface (although it is text-menu based -- ick!)
I've been using forth since I was introduced to it around 1977. I miss it horribly. In all the work I've been doing in the last 15+ years (scientific computing, dot-com world) I haven't seen any opportunities for a FORTH-speaker. Yet the language still lives. Where is it thriving? (Are they hiring in NYC?)
For Chuck: To what do you attribute FORTH's falling off of just about all programmers' radar screens?
Indeed. We call it "eating your own dog food". At my firm, we have a similar edict: everyone should be using our groupware tool (except the designers, who are on Macs; our tool is Windows Only...)
If I don't use the tool that I'm building, why should anyone else?
Of course, you shouldn't have to exclusively use your tool, OS, or whatever. Competitive intelligence, right?
Computer science (the body of knowledge, like computability, complexity, automata, etc.) is akin to physics.
Computer programming is a skill. It can be learned on the job, and many parts of the skill can be learned independently of computer science (to wit: all those folks who go to trade schools to become COBOL Charlies, who don't learn much about data structures, complexity, etc.)
As to the original question: what is the difference between computer engineering and computer science: I can say that most people in the "Real World(tm)" don't really know or care. Most HR people and recruiters with whom I've dealt don't have an idea what the difference is, and unless your CEng. program has some known significant digressions from CS programs (e.g. it's two years vs. four), there will be no practical difference. (I speak from my own experience on both sides of the interview desk, having interviewed dozens of people over the past few years for various positions.)
If you're trying to sell yourself to a particular position (e.g. you're trying to market yourself to a hardware group) you might be able to play up your CEng background, if you have one. For a generic entry-level programming position, there will be (in my humble estimation) no difference. So comb through what is there, and pick what you like. (Major in liberal arts and minor in CS!)
Disclaimer: I majored in physics and math. I only taught CS.
Slashdot Mirror
...are short. Say, around 250-270 pages.
Not huge 500+ page tomes that try to cover everything.
Not books with 3+ page code segments (and certainly not with code that doesn't compile).
Skinny, easily totable books. A good example is Effective C++--256 pages (plus or minus a few for endpapers and colophon).
Books that can be read quickly, with comprehensive indices to find what you want, and bibliographies to other short books with details.
Why?
Because these are the shortcomings I perceive in the major market. (O'Reilly's books being among the biggest offenders, the pocket reference books aside.) A large book is harder to have open on your desk, harder to move back and forth in your laptop bag, and (more importantly) tends to suffer from lack of editing -- authors will repeat themselves and say the same things over and over again. (They also tend to repeat themselves.) Anyone who's done book-writing knows that it's much easier and better to edit down too much content than to try to generate filler.
There is a drawback to this, though. Imagine how much more Addison Wesley would have had to have charged for The Bible had it come in six, easily digestible segments. And I do make exceptions for things that are meant to be references.
It's kind of a false security feeling, since you could just encapsulate whatever request you want within HTTP -- for example, one system I know of does exactly that (name supplied upon request) by encapsulating all the objects it passes in XML inside of the HTTP request.
Well, I must be so old that my brain has forgotten FORTRAN 3. I always thought it went from II to IV to 77 to 8x (never released) to 90 to 95...when they changed it from FORTRAN to Fortran.
But I digress.
It's not a good day unless I bring sunshine into someone's life.
I just turned on the 15c and found that it needs new batteries. At least it takes standard batteries, unlike the N size the 41 took.
Wow.
That's almost as good as reading the two-page spreads for the 48 in the old Educalc (of blessed memory) catalogs...
I got my 15C for a HS graduation gift (it still works fine!), then later a 41C, and a used 28...
HP calculators had a long history of being at the front of good math, too. They got Velvel Kahan to come in and do their advanced math functions and numerical analysis (the HP advanced functions on the 15 book got me through some tricky numerical analysis!)
What a loss. And as the previous poster said, yes, I'm an inveterate FORTH programmer too...
I've had experience with the Linksys cheapy router/firewall combo (BEFSR41) and the Netgear RP114.
The Linksys unit worked fine until the power supply died, and I realized that it came with an offbrand voltage and offbrand connector, so I couldn't easily get a new one (and there is no such thing as Linksys tech support to speak of), nor could I easily cobble a new unit together. (Linksys has since changed to a more standard connector, from what I can see, so I can't even buy a new bottom-of-the-line unit and swap out the p/s). So I went and got a Netgear and never looked back -- very nice and P&P.
I tried the PC-based solution but since the unit sits in my bedroom, I wanted something really small and quiet that wouldn't disturb the missus.
Both units are reasonably easy to set up. One of the nice things about the RP114 is that it can be configured either through a GUI or through a telnet interface (although it is text-menu based -- ick!)
For Chuck: To what do you attribute FORTH's falling off of just about all programmers' radar screens?
Umm...because one is an instantiation of the other?
//jbaltz
--
Spread spectrum meets NAT.
Still, it looks new and interesting, but it still depends on a lot of out-of-band information, and I'd hate to be in charge of their BGP tables.
//jbaltz
--
If I don't use the tool that I'm building, why should anyone else?
Of course, you shouldn't have to exclusively use your tool, OS, or whatever. Competitive intelligence, right?
//jbaltz
--
(Apologies to Brad Templeton.)
//jbaltz
--
Computer science (the body of knowledge, like computability, complexity, automata, etc.) is akin to physics.
Computer programming is a skill. It can be learned on the job, and many parts of the skill can be learned independently of computer science (to wit: all those folks who go to trade schools to become COBOL Charlies, who don't learn much about data structures, complexity, etc.)
As to the original question: what is the difference between computer engineering and computer science: I can say that most people in the "Real World(tm)" don't really know or care. Most HR people and recruiters with whom I've dealt don't have an idea what the difference is, and unless your CEng. program has some known significant digressions from CS programs (e.g. it's two years vs. four), there will be no practical difference. (I speak from my own experience on both sides of the interview desk, having interviewed dozens of people over the past few years for various positions.)
If you're trying to sell yourself to a particular position (e.g. you're trying to market yourself to a hardware group) you might be able to play up your CEng background, if you have one. For a generic entry-level programming position, there will be (in my humble estimation) no difference. So comb through what is there, and pick what you like. (Major in liberal arts and minor in CS!)
Disclaimer: I majored in physics and math. I only taught CS.
//jbaltz
--