For example, instead of programmatically declaring a member variable of a class, you click on the UML class diagram and add a property, instead of typing class Z extends X you drag a line.
Graphical languages are highly overated. Just look at what you are reading. It's letters, not pictures.
The demise of "programmers" have been predicted since there were computers. One of the early cries was:
"You are not going to need programmers with our tool. Instead of knowing all those numbers for computer instructions, you can use human readable symbols like 'ADD' or 'LOAD'. This new fancy tool is called an 'ASSEMBLER' and even managers can use it!"
Telepathy... I have not seen either a proof or a disproof that met my standards. I also have a lot of trouble with defining it. E.g.: If I were to have an implanted cell phone that operated by direct neural connection, and someone else had a corresponding model, would this be telepathy?
The absence of a plausible model than could be tested for telepathy is what is the big problem.
People thought that the idea of moving continents were stupid, until a mechanism was proposed and then earth crust plates were discovered.
The problem here is how the companies have their service plans written. In most cases (except Speakeasy I believe), it's expressly forbidden to share your connection with anyone!..
But this is a silly requirement that the customers will. If the cable companies take action there will be quite an outcry...
Considering how many trillions of dollars pharmaceutical companies spend designing drugs to relieve the suffering of others, I'm inclined to side in favour of their being able to take advantage of their discoveries.
Actually, according to some reports drug companies spend more on marketing existing drugs than on research. See this article
for instance.
It is us, the taxpayers, who still fund large amount of the basic research needed to create new drugs.
Why should they have to suddenly at some arbitrary date no longer be able to exploit their intellectual property?
Because "intellectual property" is not the same as physical property. An idea, once published, becomes known to everyone.
The copyright law was created to encourage creation of new ideas that would eventually benefit all of us. The public promised to give the creator certain rights, in exchange for making their ideas public.
If you have some precious "intellectual property" that you don't want to share, then do not publish it.
Of course, anything Disney does is worthless, unless they do publish it and let people see it...
Thanks for a great answer. I'm already familiar with Struts, I'll have to try Tapestry...
Re:What the big deal with Struts...
on
Struts Kick Start
·
· Score: 2
The learning curve can be a bit steep, but not as steep as Struts in many ways (I use Struts at my current job, and it was a massive pain for me to shift gears and work within the limitations of Struts).
So how about a quick comparison of Tapestry and Struts? What's easy to do with Tapestry that's hard with Struts?
I'd argue that C isn't useful at all to teaching the way hardware works, especially as time passes.
Then there is even less reasons to teach C. Especially to third graders. On the other hand the algorithm to draw a square: repeat 4 [fd 10; rt 90] is timeless:-)
Do you really think that teaching someone C now will be useful 10 years from now when they need a job? C is as useful as assembler - only if you want to know the details of how hardware works. And do you really expect the hardware to be just like today 10 years in the future?
Logo for third grade? How old were you? 10? I'd teach someone at that age Basic not Logo. In Middle School I'd move on to Visual Basic and or C.
Actually Logo is a quite powerful language. It's much better for teaching about structured programming and mathematics. Turtle graphics, which everyone starts with, is just a small part of Logo.
Check out StarLogo for some really cool massively parallel programming.
You should read about the history of bridge building in England during the 19th century.
Calling yourself a "software engineer", why not "computer programmer"?
I'm happy being called "computer programmer". In fact that's what I tell people when they ask me what I do. I'm in good company both Dijkstra and Knuth refer to themselves as programmers (not that I pretend to be at that level!).
But what programmers do is engineering. Here is a description of what engineering is from the journal of British Structural Engineering:
Structural engineering is the science and art of designing and making, with economy and elegance, building bridges, frameworks and other similar structures so that they can safely resist forces to which they maybe subjected.
This description can be easily adjusted to describe what computer programmers do.
Lisp/Java/C++/Python/blah blah blah... If you were really an engineer you would be more concerned with actually doing something than what kind of hammer you're using
But even a civil engineer will be familiar with the tools of his trade (i.e. hammers) and know all the applicable science (if it exists). I was just trying to point out that one place to get a good overview of what tool there are in software is while getting a degree in college.
Tell me, what programming language would you use to implement a motion compensation algorithm on a 2D multiresolution wavelet decomposition of a video stream? What would you program the error correction in for say a block erasures versus randomly dropped bits within a block? What language do you program a frequency masking compression scheme?
I don't know. I'm not familiar with the problem domain enough. But if I had to learn all this stuff my first version would be in Eiffel, which allows me to worry about clarity and correctness etc. If this version was too slow, then I would probably translate it to C. Of course, this all depends on the context in which the problem is being solved. Lisp could be the right tool.
The field of software needs to close their toolchests and learn how to solve real problems. A million monkeys with a million hammers will never even build a doghouse.
We are solving real problems. Just the fact that I'm sitting in my kitchen with my laptop, connected via wireless network to the internet is pretty amazing. Ten years ago I was using 2400 BPS dialup.
I may not know a lot about my field, I'm not an expert even though I'm working on a master's degree. But at least I recognize that fact and am willing to do something about it. I don't blame my tools for my inability.
That's great. The thing I like about computing field that there is always more stuff to learn.
Programming and the 'real-world' in general are about problem solving. No amount of letters behind your name (you know - BA,MS,PhD, etc.) are going to teach you that.
I agree.
Personally, I'm doing the school thing purely out of cynicism. Because people think that somehow it makes me smarter than I was to begin with.
Too bad. You should be enjoying it. School will teach you about stuff that you may not find yourself. How much you learn and use it is up to you.
School will not make you smarter, but it provides you with lots of raw material which to explore and on which to build further.
I still don't see any immense benefit over C++ with templates. Most engineering tasks involve little more than picking the best compromise from the massively combinatorial options available to you.
C++ sucks. Take a look at how genericity is implemented in Eiffel.:-)
Regarding Lisp though, don't be so fast to dismiss it. There are lots cool and important ideas there that shouldn't be ignored.
A codified education in Computer Science does not a software engineer make. Continued learning and reading -- and preferably a passion for what you are doing, which includes the desire to better one's knowledge and abilities -- does.
Those things, smart ass, come from working in the industry and learning outside of college. And before you try to say something like "you still need the fundamentals that only college gives you", nope, you don't. You would be shocked at how many self taught, started at the ground and worked their way up certified professional civil engineers there are out there.
Trust me, I know plenty of really smart people who were self-taught in computing and did extremely well.
College education does not make you smart, but it gives to material and tools to work with. If you know how to use them you'll turn be a much better
engineer.
The nice thing about civil engineering (or EE etc) is that we have established standards to which you can test people. Such standards do not exist in computing and in reality the field is too young to set them yet. Consequently it's harder to tell whether someone is good or not.
I've run into people with master's degree in CS, who didn't know a difference between a quicksort and a linked list.:-)
So, you can take your sheepskin and all of Daddy's money that went into paying for it, wrap your attitude inside of it, and shove it up your silk lined, college educated anus for all I care.
Ha, ha, ha. I am the Daddy...:-)
[...] while self taught folks who do what they do for the love of the game [...]
You know, those of us who are college educated can be in it for the love of the game too. That's why after 24 years in the business, I still code everyday.
(and who tend to run rings around the college guys, I might add)
I hate to tell you how many messes I had to clean up after guys like you. Come back in ten years and try to fix your own code...
You are NOT a surgeon. Getting a degree in Computer Science is like having a degree in Spanish.
True. I'm not.
Interesting analogy. But getting degree in Spanish would probably include learning more than just syntax of the language. For one thing you'd study the history and read the literature.
All I'm trying to say, that as a CS major you learn the history and the "literature" of computing.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly is the harm?
Graphical languages are highly overated. Just look at what you are reading. It's letters, not pictures.
The demise of "programmers" have been predicted since there were computers. One of the early cries was:
But the Congress can still repeal the law in question, and pass new laws that will make copyright acceptable to all of us. This will just take longer.
Start writing your Congress-critters. Companies can lobby, but we have the vote!
True, the force of gravity is little mysterious (in fact all the force really are - why is positive charge attracted to negative?).
However, unlike telepathy, gravity is easy to demonstrate with experiments that repeatable by anyone.
The absence of a plausible model than could be tested for telepathy is what is the big problem.
People thought that the idea of moving continents were stupid, until a mechanism was proposed and then earth crust plates were discovered.
But this is a silly requirement that the customers will. If the cable companies take action there will be quite an outcry...
Actually, according to some reports drug companies spend more on marketing existing drugs than on research. See this article for instance.
It is us, the taxpayers, who still fund large amount of the basic research needed to create new drugs.
Because "intellectual property" is not the same as physical property. An idea, once published, becomes known to everyone.
The copyright law was created to encourage creation of new ideas that would eventually benefit all of us. The public promised to give the creator certain rights, in exchange for making their ideas public.
If you have some precious "intellectual property" that you don't want to share, then do not publish it.
Of course, anything Disney does is worthless, unless they do publish it and let people see it...
So how about a quick comparison of Tapestry and Struts? What's easy to do with Tapestry that's hard with Struts?
The problem is that this book is out of date by the time it's printed. If you need reference I suggest Google or "man" command. :)
Then there is even less reasons to teach C. Especially to third graders. On the other hand the algorithm to draw a square: repeat 4 [fd 10; rt 90] is timeless :-)
Do you really think that teaching someone C now will be useful 10 years from now when they need a job? C is as useful as assembler - only if you want to know the details of how hardware works. And do you really expect the hardware to be just like today 10 years in the future?
Actually Logo is a quite powerful language. It's much better for teaching about structured programming and mathematics. Turtle graphics, which everyone starts with, is just a small part of Logo.
Check out StarLogo for some really cool massively parallel programming.
You should read about the history of bridge building in England during the 19th century.
Calling yourself a "software engineer", why not "computer programmer"?
I'm happy being called "computer programmer". In fact that's what I tell people when they ask me what I do. I'm in good company both Dijkstra and Knuth refer to themselves as programmers (not that I pretend to be at that level!).
But what programmers do is engineering. Here is a description of what engineering is from the journal of British Structural Engineering:
This description can be easily adjusted to describe what computer programmers do.Lisp/Java/C++/Python/blah blah blah... If you were really an engineer you would be more concerned with actually doing something than what kind of hammer you're using
But even a civil engineer will be familiar with the tools of his trade (i.e. hammers) and know all the applicable science (if it exists). I was just trying to point out that one place to get a good overview of what tool there are in software is while getting a degree in college.
Tell me, what programming language would you use to implement a motion compensation algorithm on a 2D multiresolution wavelet decomposition of a video stream? What would you program the error correction in for say a block erasures versus randomly dropped bits within a block? What language do you program a frequency masking compression scheme?
I don't know. I'm not familiar with the problem domain enough. But if I had to learn all this stuff my first version would be in Eiffel, which allows me to worry about clarity and correctness etc. If this version was too slow, then I would probably translate it to C. Of course, this all depends on the context in which the problem is being solved. Lisp could be the right tool.
The field of software needs to close their toolchests and learn how to solve real problems. A million monkeys with a million hammers will never even build a doghouse.
We are solving real problems. Just the fact that I'm sitting in my kitchen with my laptop, connected via wireless network to the internet is pretty amazing. Ten years ago I was using 2400 BPS dialup.
I may not know a lot about my field, I'm not an expert even though I'm working on a master's degree. But at least I recognize that fact and am willing to do something about it. I don't blame my tools for my inability.
That's great. The thing I like about computing field that there is always more stuff to learn.
I agree.
Personally, I'm doing the school thing purely out of cynicism. Because people think that somehow it makes me smarter than I was to begin with.
Too bad. You should be enjoying it. School will teach you about stuff that you may not find yourself. How much you learn and use it is up to you.
School will not make you smarter, but it provides you with lots of raw material which to explore and on which to build further.
C++ sucks. Take a look at how genericity is implemented in Eiffel. :-)
Regarding Lisp though, don't be so fast to dismiss it. There are lots cool and important ideas there that shouldn't be ignored.
A codified education in Computer Science does not a software engineer make. Continued learning and reading -- and preferably a passion for what you are doing, which includes the desire to better one's knowledge and abilities -- does.
I couldn't agree more.
Trust me, I know plenty of really smart people who were self-taught in computing and did extremely well.
College education does not make you smart, but it gives to material and tools to work with. If you know how to use them you'll turn be a much better engineer.
The nice thing about civil engineering (or EE etc) is that we have established standards to which you can test people. Such standards do not exist in computing and in reality the field is too young to set them yet. Consequently it's harder to tell whether someone is good or not.
I've run into people with master's degree in CS, who didn't know a difference between a quicksort and a linked list. :-)
So, you can take your sheepskin and all of Daddy's money that went into paying for it, wrap your attitude inside of it, and shove it up your silk lined, college educated anus for all I care.
Ha, ha, ha. I am the Daddy... :-)
[...] while self taught folks who do what they do for the love of the game [...]
You know, those of us who are college educated can be in it for the love of the game too. That's why after 24 years in the business, I still code everyday.
(and who tend to run rings around the college guys, I might add)
I hate to tell you how many messes I had to clean up after guys like you. Come back in ten years and try to fix your own code...
True. I'm not.
Interesting analogy. But getting degree in Spanish would probably include learning more than just syntax of the language. For one thing you'd study the history and read the literature.
All I'm trying to say, that as a CS major you learn the history and the "literature" of computing.
You are right. The best way to learn is to led by an experienced mentor(s), who can guide you to deeper understanding,
Such people are invaluable (and are not usually found teaching at universities).
However, even though computing is a farily young discipline there is quite a bit of knowledge that can be "transferred" by run of the mill teacher.