I started on with RedHat, which was a good start and introduction to Linux. I used it for a while, ditched the configuration tools because they were at the time buggy as all hell. I can't remember why I switched but it might have had something to do with them shipping beta GCC in a stable release--a colleague recommended I go to Debian.
Debian was okay but didn't "take". I felt like I was joining a political party by using it. Nothing about it particularly impressed me, and I used it for a short time before I upgraded my machine and decided to try something else.
Due to my experience with BSD, a friend suggested I try out Slackware. I did and haven't looked back. (At work I've used RedHat and Fedora for the past year on my workstation, but that's to get reacquainted with it now that I'm a sysadmin over a number of RH boxes. I'm going back to Slackware as soon as I get a free lunch hour.)
Slackware's clean and lean. The configuration files are where I want them, it never installs something I didn't ask for, it's stable, and I basically get good vibes from it.
I'm such a devotee that a friend bought me a Slackware cap for my birthday last year...:) And I actually wear it sometimes.
don't you canadians realize that down here in the USA we don't care what you think?
Yeah, it's been made pretty clear, especially by your current government. Actually, your government doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks... not Canadians, nor Europeans, nor even Americans.
Well, I don't think my karma's gonna be "Excellent" anymore...
[You can bet] If this were testicular cancer, it would be covered...
Actually, in Canada, screening for prostate cancer is not covered by Medicare and it's something men's groups have been trying to bring attention to for a while. (I don't know about testicular cancer.) Thanks for the kneejerk reaction though, it goes a long way for the sake of ignorance.
First, I don't agree with those who said "sink or swim", but I don't completely disagree either. I'd say the same about any discipline. I sucked at biology (I am really bad at memorizing stuff) so I got out of that. I have seen many people really struggle, and some of them made it, some of them didn't. Some of those who didn't might have if they'd had help. It's up to them to ask, it's up to you to offer, but frankly if they are willing to put in the effort, nobody loses from helping them out.
I can't really help with the OOP stuff, because when I took CSc our introductory stuff was on procedural programming using Pascal (I started a four-year CSc program in 1992). I would say anybody who hasn't spent their teenagerhood dicking around with computers and teaching themselves rudimentary programming will have some difficulties in any case, but there's nothing like a first-year course to get you up to speed! There are plenty of online tutorials, some of them might even be useful, and I have heard good things about the Eckels book mentioned by others here.
To prepare for tests: same as any other course! Do your assignments, ask questions in class, and stay on top of things. In a well-structured course the labs will follow the lectures fairly closely but there's generally no hope of the lab giving you first-hand experience at all of the theory you will be studying. The best thing to do with unpracticed theory is to ask questions. It's the only way I remember theory I don't use immediately--think of questions and ask them. If you can think of an intelligent question, and it's answered well, I personally have a much better chance at remembering the context.
Also, when you're actually taking the test, do everything they say: read it over first, check the number of pages, have a bottle of water or something, take a handkerchief if you have a cold (heh), do the stuff you're confident with first to build momentum and just do it, double-check, but don't double-think, your answers.
Taking notes is something I never mastered. But if you read the text in advance, if there is one, you only need to note the differences. But I found most profs handed out overheads or printouts or whatever. And in first-year CSc, I don't think you'll need much note-taking anyway--you need to do the lab work more than anything else.
How to productively complete a programming assignment? Do the absolute requirements and unless it's a multimedia course don't bother with fancies. It'll be marked by senior undergrads or grad students who will be bored with 100 assignments demonstrating recursion to solve a Fibonacci sequence. By the time you get to larger projects, hopefully you'll have a good idea of how to productively complete assignments, but at first it'll be your first skate on a frozen pond.
To write good, documented code, I would think any first-year program at a half-decent university would teach this. But, if they don't, I'd recommend starting by commenting every single line of code you write. It's better to start with too much than too little--you're less likely to get dinged for it and that way you'll get used to commenting code as part of the process. You might want to use tools like JavaDoc or Doxygen, but never EVER forget to document the code itself, because if somebody wants you to update legacy code later on, that might be all that's left.
So far as I can tell, this is what the ISO certainly should do, according to the letter and spirit of their policies. But I doubt it will have any effect on the situation except as a feel-good measure for those against the patent claim. I can't see how it will put any pressure on the dicks trying to claim patent rights; even if the ISO withdraws official standing, it will remain a de facto standard.
Giving the company an official name as if they are the 'only' registrar in europe is pretty shady. Are companies reaching a new low?
A similar thing happened in Canada. A while back I got a renewal notice from "The domain registry of Canada". It was printed on letterhead deviously designed to look like stationery of the federal government. I'm sure many people got sucked in by the presentation alone.
I got a notice similar to this one from my registrar. I'm sure a lot of those had to go out.
Sending targeted junk mail is one thing; trying to appear to be a government service is another. I find the practice repugnant.
If it sells poorly, will they do a search for the song on Gnutella and find a whole bunch of matches for it and point at it and say "look what the masses did with our online efforts made in innocent good faith?"
It's nice to see technology that really improves people's lives, instead of possibly giving slight and ambiguous gains to their productivity or make it that much easier to send 10-word messages to other people within urban areas. I like advancements in 3d vid cards and such as much as the next guy, but this is what technology's really all about. Helping the blind see again? Excellent. I'd give back the Internet if it would find us a cure for cancer.
Yeah, I agree. Ad dollars on television influence to some degree the programming, is this inevitable on Slashdot as well?
I'm curious to know more about what your comment on salon.com--how has content been affected? I read Salon regularly but all I've noticed is it seems to be more political commentary than it used to be, and seems less cutting-edge.
Subscriptions are fine, I can face reality, but I have one request: please don't let subscriptions affect posting in any way. If there's anything humanity's learned in the past century, it's that having money doesn't make you smarter. So getting +1 or a gold star on your post just cos you hate ads or love Slashdot enough doesn't make your views more worthwhile, and I don't think I'd stick around in a place where ideas aren't judged purely on their content.
I think what might come of this is a tighter ship splintering off into smaller, private Slashdot sites. For example, not to slag all the people who put thought into their posts, but a private Slashdot just including my friends and others by introduction would be great for me--less traffic, so I could actually read all the posts, and less noise, so I would bother.
Just a few random thoughts... I appreciate what Slashdot has been and hope it doesn't lose its shine.
Interesting article, but I'd like to see more specifics. I guess McGraw is (1) trying to sell his book and (2) talking to a wide audience as likely to include managers as developers, but what I really want are some meaty bits that, as a developer, I can directly act upon.
9. People are talking about "technical effect". What is this?
Patents in the UK and Europe are granted for technical inventions (eg: medicines, engines, circuit boards etc.). Innovations which are to be patentable must not only be novel and inventive, but are expected to have a "technical effect". Recent changes in the US mean that over there inventions, apart from being novel and not obvious, need only be "useful", but not technical. Consequently methods for teaching music or methods for undercutting a competitor's price, for example, are now patentable in the US, even though they would not be here because a novel teaching method or pricing strategy have no "technical" character even though they are useful.
Hope that helps. Every definition I found is similarly murky, but I think the meaning comes through.
Children involved in cheekiness, minor vandalism and causing nuisances, will be targeted under the scheme.
Cheekiness?
Causing nuisances?
Let me get this straight. For so much as talking back to your teacher, you could be stuck in this database? For loitering too long in the candy shop, you could be flagged in a national registry?
Society's still arguing about whether it's ethical to put CONVICTED PEDOPHILES in such a registry, for crying out loud!
We [geeks] all get this from time to time. Computer and software systems are getting more and more complex with every passing day, and it's difficult to keep up. More and more we have to specialize, and when we step outside our specialty, it can be an incredibly humbling experience.
Sometimes you're on a deadline and can't just walk away for more than a few minutes. What I find most consistently useful is to grab some other challenge and meet it. You get a context-switch, which changes your focus--when you look back at the stumper, you see it differently--and you get a super-vital confidence boost.
For example, recently I was rebuilding my Linux server. I'm not a server admin--this is more of a hobby--but nevertheless I expect myself to be able to build a relatively efficient, secure server. And migrating from Bind 8 to Bind 9 was driving me absolutely nutcakes, and I was starting to have serious self-loathing. So I built a PHP-MySQL app I'd been meaning to do for a while. It worked, I was happy, I was confident, and the whole Bind 9 thing wasn't bothering me anymore. So I went back to it.
And the context-switch allowed me to see something I hadn't seen before: the best thing for my server wasn't to run my own DNS, but to use ZoneEdit.;)
I'd say the context-switch is important, but the really essential thing is to build the confidence back up with a success, no matter how small. That's a technique I find myself using at work all the time.
Hope that helps... wish there was some way you could let us know how it's going!
Slashdot Mirror
Officially, I'm annoyed, but your rehash of an old joke made me laugh. Good juan.
Love to... at least on Fridays during the summer... but I work at a University and such things are frowned upon here.
If I had the golf shirt...
I started on with RedHat, which was a good start and introduction to Linux. I used it for a while, ditched the configuration tools because they were at the time buggy as all hell. I can't remember why I switched but it might have had something to do with them shipping beta GCC in a stable release--a colleague recommended I go to Debian.
:) And I actually wear it sometimes.
Debian was okay but didn't "take". I felt like I was joining a political party by using it. Nothing about it particularly impressed me, and I used it for a short time before I upgraded my machine and decided to try something else.
Due to my experience with BSD, a friend suggested I try out Slackware. I did and haven't looked back. (At work I've used RedHat and Fedora for the past year on my workstation, but that's to get reacquainted with it now that I'm a sysadmin over a number of RH boxes. I'm going back to Slackware as soon as I get a free lunch hour.)
Slackware's clean and lean. The configuration files are where I want them, it never installs something I didn't ask for, it's stable, and I basically get good vibes from it.
I'm such a devotee that a friend bought me a Slackware cap for my birthday last year...
Yeah, it's been made pretty clear, especially by your current government. Actually, your government doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks... not Canadians, nor Europeans, nor even Americans.
Well, I don't think my karma's gonna be "Excellent" anymore...
I'm a Canadian! :)
Actually, in Canada, screening for prostate cancer is not covered by Medicare and it's something men's groups have been trying to bring attention to for a while. (I don't know about testicular cancer.) Thanks for the kneejerk reaction though, it goes a long way for the sake of ignorance.
Will it still put me to sleep if I play it really, really loud?
How can I assume?
Your airwaves moan constantly
of public schools' shame.
I fear the question
would wind up on "Ask Slashdot".
And then you would bitch.
(For those who don't know: haiku is three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, in that order.)
First, I don't agree with those who said "sink or swim", but I don't completely disagree either. I'd say the same about any discipline. I sucked at biology (I am really bad at memorizing stuff) so I got out of that. I have seen many people really struggle, and some of them made it, some of them didn't. Some of those who didn't might have if they'd had help. It's up to them to ask, it's up to you to offer, but frankly if they are willing to put in the effort, nobody loses from helping them out.
I can't really help with the OOP stuff, because when I took CSc our introductory stuff was on procedural programming using Pascal (I started a four-year CSc program in 1992). I would say anybody who hasn't spent their teenagerhood dicking around with computers and teaching themselves rudimentary programming will have some difficulties in any case, but there's nothing like a first-year course to get you up to speed! There are plenty of online tutorials, some of them might even be useful, and I have heard good things about the Eckels book mentioned by others here.
To prepare for tests: same as any other course! Do your assignments, ask questions in class, and stay on top of things. In a well-structured course the labs will follow the lectures fairly closely but there's generally no hope of the lab giving you first-hand experience at all of the theory you will be studying. The best thing to do with unpracticed theory is to ask questions. It's the only way I remember theory I don't use immediately--think of questions and ask them. If you can think of an intelligent question, and it's answered well, I personally have a much better chance at remembering the context.
Also, when you're actually taking the test, do everything they say: read it over first, check the number of pages, have a bottle of water or something, take a handkerchief if you have a cold (heh), do the stuff you're confident with first to build momentum and just do it, double-check, but don't double-think, your answers.
Taking notes is something I never mastered. But if you read the text in advance, if there is one, you only need to note the differences. But I found most profs handed out overheads or printouts or whatever. And in first-year CSc, I don't think you'll need much note-taking anyway--you need to do the lab work more than anything else.
How to productively complete a programming assignment? Do the absolute requirements and unless it's a multimedia course don't bother with fancies. It'll be marked by senior undergrads or grad students who will be bored with 100 assignments demonstrating recursion to solve a Fibonacci sequence. By the time you get to larger projects, hopefully you'll have a good idea of how to productively complete assignments, but at first it'll be your first skate on a frozen pond.
To write good, documented code, I would think any first-year program at a half-decent university would teach this. But, if they don't, I'd recommend starting by commenting every single line of code you write. It's better to start with too much than too little--you're less likely to get dinged for it and that way you'll get used to commenting code as part of the process. You might want to use tools like JavaDoc or Doxygen, but never EVER forget to document the code itself, because if somebody wants you to update legacy code later on, that might be all that's left.
Good luck with your booklet! :)
So far as I can tell, this is what the ISO certainly should do, according to the letter and spirit of their policies. But I doubt it will have any effect on the situation except as a feel-good measure for those against the patent claim. I can't see how it will put any pressure on the dicks trying to claim patent rights; even if the ISO withdraws official standing, it will remain a de facto standard.
A similar thing happened in Canada. A while back I got a renewal notice from "The domain registry of Canada". It was printed on letterhead deviously designed to look like stationery of the federal government. I'm sure many people got sucked in by the presentation alone.
I got a notice similar to this one from my registrar. I'm sure a lot of those had to go out.
Sending targeted junk mail is one thing; trying to appear to be a government service is another. I find the practice repugnant.
dlek.
Probably.
...you can download an mp3 pronouncing her name.
It's nice to see technology that really improves people's lives, instead of possibly giving slight and ambiguous gains to their productivity or make it that much easier to send 10-word messages to other people within urban areas. I like advancements in 3d vid cards and such as much as the next guy, but this is what technology's really all about. Helping the blind see again? Excellent. I'd give back the Internet if it would find us a cure for cancer.
Yes, the online community does so well at spelling. Arf!
dlek.
I'm curious to know more about what your comment on salon.com--how has content been affected? I read Salon regularly but all I've noticed is it seems to be more political commentary than it used to be, and seems less cutting-edge.
I think what might come of this is a tighter ship splintering off into smaller, private Slashdot sites. For example, not to slag all the people who put thought into their posts, but a private Slashdot just including my friends and others by introduction would be great for me--less traffic, so I could actually read all the posts, and less noise, so I would bother.
Just a few random thoughts... I appreciate what Slashdot has been and hope it doesn't lose its shine.
Interesting article, but I'd like to see more specifics. I guess McGraw is (1) trying to sell his book and (2) talking to a wide audience as likely to include managers as developers, but what I really want are some meaty bits that, as a developer, I can directly act upon.
The FreeBSD site has some secure programming guidelines which are worth a gander.
I'm somewhat surprised--but either way it brings the unresolved question of disclosure bubbling to the froth again.
So the guy doesn't have the time to type in answers to the questions. It's not easy to type when one of your arms is a chainsaw, you know.
<grin>
-dlek.
From a FAQ at the UK Patent Office:
Hope that helps. Every definition I found is similarly murky, but I think the meaning comes through.
-dlek
From the article:
Cheekiness?
Causing nuisances?
Let me get this straight. For so much as talking back to your teacher, you could be stuck in this database? For loitering too long in the candy shop, you could be flagged in a national registry?
Society's still arguing about whether it's ethical to put CONVICTED PEDOPHILES in such a registry, for crying out loud!
Man, the world's getting creepy...
We [geeks] all get this from time to time. Computer and software systems are getting more and more complex with every passing day, and it's difficult to keep up. More and more we have to specialize, and when we step outside our specialty, it can be an incredibly humbling experience.
Sometimes you're on a deadline and can't just walk away for more than a few minutes. What I find most consistently useful is to grab some other challenge and meet it. You get a context-switch, which changes your focus--when you look back at the stumper, you see it differently--and you get a super-vital confidence boost.
For example, recently I was rebuilding my Linux server. I'm not a server admin--this is more of a hobby--but nevertheless I expect myself to be able to build a relatively efficient, secure server. And migrating from Bind 8 to Bind 9 was driving me absolutely nutcakes, and I was starting to have serious self-loathing. So I built a PHP-MySQL app I'd been meaning to do for a while. It worked, I was happy, I was confident, and the whole Bind 9 thing wasn't bothering me anymore. So I went back to it.
And the context-switch allowed me to see something I hadn't seen before: the best thing for my server wasn't to run my own DNS, but to use ZoneEdit. ;)
I'd say the context-switch is important, but the really essential thing is to build the confidence back up with a success, no matter how small. That's a technique I find myself using at work all the time.
Hope that helps... wish there was some way you could let us know how it's going!
-dlek.