Exactly. The intro to programming class at Stanford (CS106A) is one of the most popular classes offered - something like 20% of the undergrad class takes it each year. And there really isn't that much attrition.
As you say, the reason it's so popular (besides the fact that it is a trendy subject right now) is that the course is very well designed and has excellent, engaging teachers. I'm sure it has attracted a lot more students to computer science than it has scared away.
Then again, the majority of undergrads have already taken AP Calculus, English Lit, Spanish/French, etc in high school, so it's silly to think they would not be able to "grasp" Java. Like it enough to pursue a CS degree? Maybe not. Understand it? Come on...
Yeah, yeah. I was alluding to the fact that the $1B settlement against Samsung was nothing compared to an injunction against sales of Samsung phones.
An extra billion is laughable to them (they have over $100B in the bank and are generating $30B in cash flow a year, it's insane). The chance to prevent their #1 competitor from selling any of their new smartphones is not.
Sure, they could have increased the price of the phone by $10 in Europe, but given they already include an AC adaptor and USB cable with every iPhone, that would have basically been a complete waste of money for 98% of the users.
And yes, they could have chosen NOT to include the AC adaptor and cable with the phone, just the microUSB adaptor, but that would have been much less convenient and more expensive for many users who would have just gone out and bought the Apple AC adaptor anyway.
Complain if you want but I think if you polled their customers a significant majority would say they made the right decision.
IPv6 is not a solution to this problem. If we allocate IPv6 addresses the way we have allocated IPv4 addresses, we'll run out of them in just a few more years.
You make some good points, but this one is just silly. I think 10^38 IP addresses will last more than a few years, even if given out excessively. That's about 2 IP addresses for each cell in the human body for the entire world population. It's a big number.
Eh, do you know how IPOs work? Want to guess who SOLD the most shares of Facebook in the IPO? Facebook! That's the "real" reasons why companies IPO - to raise capital by selling shares to the public. The fact that the existing private shares held by employees and investors can be sold later to make them a boatload of money is incidental (though important).
And in fact, *Facebook* the company was one of the few sellers who was able to get the full IPO price on the shares. Most of the employees had to wait until the blackout period ended. It was a huge success for Facebook, but not so much for many of the employees who started soon before the IPO.
And HUGE AMOUNTS OF CASH IN THE BANK is in fact an asset - one of the best. So Facebook massively increased their assets in the IPO (to the tune of $16B+) as well.
Exactly, and I'd extend that idea to a college degree in general, whatever the major.
I heard a bit of discussion on a radio talk show today about whether 4 years should even be the norm for a college degree any more. They seemed to think that "forcing" the students to pay all of that money and take all of those "useless" electives, etc was a waste of their time and money when they could focus on the education they needed to "get a job".
I just shook my head the whole time I listened at how badly they missed the point of college. It's not up to the teachers, administrators, parents, or anyone other than the STUDENT to get something useful out of it. If a student feels forced to be there, that student shouldn't be there, period, and reducing the number of years won't help. The students who want to learn, take advantage of all of the opportunities present at a university (academic, social, extracurricular, etc) will not only have a broader background in their chosen field, but a more well rounded experience in general. Problem solving, research, debate, fluent writing ability, etc are all things that can separate a mediocre programmer/software engineer from a truly excellent one.
And it also encourages you to be a more well-rounded person in general. If 20 years later you still don't understand why you had to take European history, economics or English literature and feel like they were a waste - well, you may have wasted more than a few credit hours in your life at that point. Personally, my biggest regret wasn't taking electives, it was that I couldn't fit more of them into my schedule.
All that being said - I know a few brilliant self-taught people who are not only great at their jobs, but are more well read, speak more languages, and could argue most college educated people under the table. But for the other 95% out there (well, the 95% of those who are at least somewhat self-motivated), some direction and motivation is probably a better option...
That's about as useful an answer to a small, possibly non-technical business that pays someone to host a website as if I were to tell you to stop complaining about your bandwidth and create your own fiber backbone. Despite this GoDaddy meltdown, having every podunk website host its own DNS would be a complete disaster.
Not that I disagree with your point in general, but I don't think TB is a great example, either;)
Something like 10% of the US population tests TB+ (and what, like 30% of the world overall?) - and without a doubt it is HIGHLY contagious via airborne transmission, so general hygiene isn't much help, and since it's bacterial the vaccine isn't nearly as effective as for something like smallpox. Luckily only a small fraction of those ever develop an actual infection.
If you look it up, those numbers haven't changed much, or have been slowly decreasing. What has increased, though, is antibiotic-resistant TB, which ironically means that it wasn't carelessness, but treatment that has caused the recent increase in serious TB cases...
Your assumption is you already have the item you want to remove. The quote was "doubly-linked to make it possible to add and remove elements from the list in constant time — O(1) — without the necessity to traverse the list looking for the element to remove".
Of course you can write code to be efficient with a list if you are not searching the list, and if you have a reference to a node without any context to the traversal, a doubly linked list is a good idea. But your explanation was a specific use case while already using the list for a different purpose, not anything that answered my question in the general case, which was ADD or REMOVE without TRAVERSING. (And yes, obviously adding to the beginning or end can be O(1) in either case so that's not really relevant).
But anyway, it's a dumb statement (the OP not yours) since it seems pretty obvious where a doubly linked list would be useful. If that's the kind of thing the SC programmers were worried about I'm amazed it ever shipped...
All of these lists were doubly-linked to make it possible to add and remove elements from the list in constant time — O(1) — without the necessity to traverse the list looking for the element to remove — O(N).
Please explain how a doubly linked list now makes add & remove O(1). The rest of us shlums have been relying on hashtables when we needed O(1) and assumed linked lists of any variety were always going to be O(n) at best...
Neither Smallpox transmission nor eradication had nothing to do with hygiene. It was highly contagious through airborne transmission, and was eradicated through vaccination.
And most of the problem with parasites is due the hygiene of the carrier, not the victim. Touching one doorknob or ATM keypad that happened to be used by someone who didn't wash their hands and getting infected sounds like shit luck to me...
Yeah, this is true. It's like someone who learns 1 chord on their guitar deciding that's going to somehow help them start the next break-out Platinum selling band, and they won't shut up about it.
I can't tell you how many times I have heard marketing or project managers insist something they are requesting is simple to implement because they managed to copy down a Fibonacci function from "Javascript for Dummies".
iSuppli is not stupid, they are one of the leading teardown analysts whose goal is to estimate the BOM cost *to the company*. They quote the prices on large component orders (which is pretty standard research data for them). They are NOT going to the local Radio Shack and trying to build an iPad or Kindle from off the shelf parts.
And as for the bits you quote - the Fire uses an infrared touch screen, which is less common than capacitive or resistive, so your comparison doesn't really make sense. You need to compare Apples to Apples, Fires to Fires;)
To be fair, most companies keep selling the old one until the new product is actually available though. Some even continue to sell the old model afterwards as a budget model.
Not when the entire production run of the "budget" model was sold at a loss...
Slashdot Mirror
True, but I'm sure you'll agree a lot of those people are already "professional" programmers anyway.
Exactly. The intro to programming class at Stanford (CS106A) is one of the most popular classes offered - something like 20% of the undergrad class takes it each year. And there really isn't that much attrition.
As you say, the reason it's so popular (besides the fact that it is a trendy subject right now) is that the course is very well designed and has excellent, engaging teachers. I'm sure it has attracted a lot more students to computer science than it has scared away.
Then again, the majority of undergrads have already taken AP Calculus, English Lit, Spanish/French, etc in high school, so it's silly to think they would not be able to "grasp" Java. Like it enough to pursue a CS degree? Maybe not. Understand it? Come on...
Yeah, yeah. I was alluding to the fact that the $1B settlement against Samsung was nothing compared to an injunction against sales of Samsung phones.
An extra billion is laughable to them (they have over $100B in the bank and are generating $30B in cash flow a year, it's insane). The chance to prevent their #1 competitor from selling any of their new smartphones is not.
Oblig.
No, but they sell it *cheap*.
http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MD099ZM/A/apple-iphone-micro-usb-adapter
Sure, they could have increased the price of the phone by $10 in Europe, but given they already include an AC adaptor and USB cable with every iPhone, that would have basically been a complete waste of money for 98% of the users.
And yes, they could have chosen NOT to include the AC adaptor and cable with the phone, just the microUSB adaptor, but that would have been much less convenient and more expensive for many users who would have just gone out and bought the Apple AC adaptor anyway.
Complain if you want but I think if you polled their customers a significant majority would say they made the right decision.
No money, true. No benefit - well, I'm sure Apple considers "squash all competition" a benefit to them. They really have no need of money, anyway.
IPv6 is not a solution to this problem. If we allocate IPv6 addresses the way we have allocated IPv4 addresses, we'll run out of them in just a few more years.
You make some good points, but this one is just silly. I think 10^38 IP addresses will last more than a few years, even if given out excessively. That's about 2 IP addresses for each cell in the human body for the entire world population. It's a big number.
Eh, do you know how IPOs work? Want to guess who SOLD the most shares of Facebook in the IPO? Facebook! That's the "real" reasons why companies IPO - to raise capital by selling shares to the public. The fact that the existing private shares held by employees and investors can be sold later to make them a boatload of money is incidental (though important).
And in fact, *Facebook* the company was one of the few sellers who was able to get the full IPO price on the shares. Most of the employees had to wait until the blackout period ended. It was a huge success for Facebook, but not so much for many of the employees who started soon before the IPO.
And HUGE AMOUNTS OF CASH IN THE BANK is in fact an asset - one of the best. So Facebook massively increased their assets in the IPO (to the tune of $16B+) as well.
Exactly, and I'd extend that idea to a college degree in general, whatever the major.
I heard a bit of discussion on a radio talk show today about whether 4 years should even be the norm for a college degree any more. They seemed to think that "forcing" the students to pay all of that money and take all of those "useless" electives, etc was a waste of their time and money when they could focus on the education they needed to "get a job".
I just shook my head the whole time I listened at how badly they missed the point of college. It's not up to the teachers, administrators, parents, or anyone other than the STUDENT to get something useful out of it. If a student feels forced to be there, that student shouldn't be there, period, and reducing the number of years won't help. The students who want to learn, take advantage of all of the opportunities present at a university (academic, social, extracurricular, etc) will not only have a broader background in their chosen field, but a more well rounded experience in general. Problem solving, research, debate, fluent writing ability, etc are all things that can separate a mediocre programmer/software engineer from a truly excellent one.
And it also encourages you to be a more well-rounded person in general. If 20 years later you still don't understand why you had to take European history, economics or English literature and feel like they were a waste - well, you may have wasted more than a few credit hours in your life at that point. Personally, my biggest regret wasn't taking electives, it was that I couldn't fit more of them into my schedule.
All that being said - I know a few brilliant self-taught people who are not only great at their jobs, but are more well read, speak more languages, and could argue most college educated people under the table. But for the other 95% out there (well, the 95% of those who are at least somewhat self-motivated), some direction and motivation is probably a better option...
IMO any company who has hired a full time HR employee (let alone a "head") is not really a startup any more ;)
Enhance!
That's about as useful an answer to a small, possibly non-technical business that pays someone to host a website as if I were to tell you to stop complaining about your bandwidth and create your own fiber backbone. Despite this GoDaddy meltdown, having every podunk website host its own DNS would be a complete disaster.
Not that I disagree with your point in general, but I don't think TB is a great example, either ;)
Something like 10% of the US population tests TB+ (and what, like 30% of the world overall?) - and without a doubt it is HIGHLY contagious via airborne transmission, so general hygiene isn't much help, and since it's bacterial the vaccine isn't nearly as effective as for something like smallpox. Luckily only a small fraction of those ever develop an actual infection.
If you look it up, those numbers haven't changed much, or have been slowly decreasing. What has increased, though, is antibiotic-resistant TB, which ironically means that it wasn't carelessness, but treatment that has caused the recent increase in serious TB cases...
Your assumption is you already have the item you want to remove. The quote was "doubly-linked to make it possible to add and remove elements from the list in constant time — O(1) — without the necessity to traverse the list looking for the element to remove".
Of course you can write code to be efficient with a list if you are not searching the list, and if you have a reference to a node without any context to the traversal, a doubly linked list is a good idea. But your explanation was a specific use case while already using the list for a different purpose, not anything that answered my question in the general case, which was ADD or REMOVE without TRAVERSING. (And yes, obviously adding to the beginning or end can be O(1) in either case so that's not really relevant).
But anyway, it's a dumb statement (the OP not yours) since it seems pretty obvious where a doubly linked list would be useful. If that's the kind of thing the SC programmers were worried about I'm amazed it ever shipped...
All of these lists were doubly-linked to make it possible to add and remove elements from the list in constant time — O(1) — without the necessity to traverse the list looking for the element to remove — O(N).
Please explain how a doubly linked list now makes add & remove O(1). The rest of us shlums have been relying on hashtables when we needed O(1) and assumed linked lists of any variety were always going to be O(n) at best...
Neither Smallpox transmission nor eradication had nothing to do with hygiene. It was highly contagious through airborne transmission, and was eradicated through vaccination.
And most of the problem with parasites is due the hygiene of the carrier, not the victim. Touching one doorknob or ATM keypad that happened to be used by someone who didn't wash their hands and getting infected sounds like shit luck to me...
Not only that, but TFA basically says the woman has had the parasite since before she ever moved to CA...
Yeah, this is true. It's like someone who learns 1 chord on their guitar deciding that's going to somehow help them start the next break-out Platinum selling band, and they won't shut up about it.
I can't tell you how many times I have heard marketing or project managers insist something they are requesting is simple to implement because they managed to copy down a Fibonacci function from "Javascript for Dummies".
I see BadAnalogyGuy has an apprentice.
No, many of them are little less careful and lose things less replaceable with their garage shenanigans...
...they did the same thing that millions of people around the world do every day in their homes, garages, and workplaces - but in space!
He'd be fine with giving anyone access to the content, as long as it's only accessible on an Apple product.
Yeah, I think you're right, the Kindle Touch was infrared, not the Fire.
iSuppli is not stupid, they are one of the leading teardown analysts whose goal is to estimate the BOM cost *to the company*. They quote the prices on large component orders (which is pretty standard research data for them). They are NOT going to the local Radio Shack and trying to build an iPad or Kindle from off the shelf parts.
And as for the bits you quote - the Fire uses an infrared touch screen, which is less common than capacitive or resistive, so your comparison doesn't really make sense. You need to compare Apples to Apples, Fires to Fires ;)
To be fair, most companies keep selling the old one until the new product is actually available though. Some even continue to sell the old model afterwards as a budget model.
Not when the entire production run of the "budget" model was sold at a loss...