That they don't do it in exactly the way that a vocal percentage of posters here would want them to doesn't mean they're putting themselves in an unsuccessful position.
And that's the thing. Most of the OS whiners here won't be happy until Apple lets them run OS/X on whatever shitbox they have lying about, where it will crash because of unsupported roll-your-own drivers, and then they can complain about how awful it is. If the whiners want that kind of experience, they can use Linux (or Windows) today.
Assuming that you have a good team (not one where they trapped all of the old malcontents together so they'd be easy to herd), they'll know what to do. In general, your job is going to be making sure that the goals for your project are clear, that you have enough resources to do the job that is scoped, negotiating about limiting the scope when you don't have the resources, making sure that you have a detailed enough plan for the short term so you can see if people are achieving short term goals, re-assigning resources in case issues come up, renegotiating with superiors about more resources and scope reduction when you fall behind, etc. Very little of your time should be spent telling them what to do. You should tell them the goals and then let them decide how they're going to get meet them. Of course, if they tell you that they need hookers and blow first, you might ask them how that's going to help their productivity (for the hookers, at least).
Years ago, when I was working the swing shift at a 7-11 store, my boss -- a great old guy by the name of Dave Clarke, now passed -- told me that if you're going to write something down that you want to say to somebody, you sign it. In fact, you sign it and date it, so people know when you said it. If you don't have the nerve to do that, then maybe it shouldn't be said. Maybe you're just being a petulant little jerk.
Amen. Over the past twenty-five or so years, I've said quite a few words on the internet. I feel very proud that I've never hidden who I am. I've occasionally said less than enlightening things online and even been asked about them in one job interview (and, yes, I did get the job where that happened). The way I figure it, if I don't have the courage to stand behind my words, why should anyone take them to heart? As for the potential downside of limitation in employment, I figure that my good words have outweighed my bad and, if an employer can't see that, I probably don't want to be employed by them anyway.
I'd recommend setting up a standard VM image with all of the libraries, compilers, and other development tools they need. First of all, kids that age (gifted or not) are not going to want to take the time to install Eclipse, Dev Studio, or even MzScheme. And, no matter how much you might think so, you're not looking at turning them into little "industry-ready" programmers at this age. So the more time you spend doing ancillary tasks, the more time you have to lose them (plus VMs will save you a lot of time trying to figure out why any particular crap box you happen to be on isn't running right).
Second, give them projects that show immediate results (remember that you're trying to get them excited about programming, not showing them how tedious it can be). That means that you need projects that can be debugged in a single class period until the end, when you might be able to give them longer range assignments.
Give them simplified environments. Trying to get them to understand all of the intricacies of setting up an OpenGL environment just to draw a rectangle on the screen sucks. Write your own libraries beforehand that sets up windows, make it simple to open files, etc.
Make sure that the tasks you give them are compelling. A Fibonacci sieve might be a great algorithm and easy to teach, but chances are it will bore them to tears. You might do your first assignment that way. But after that, you better give them something interesting to do.
The previous note means you'll need to introduce some advanced features early. Arrays and structures should be in the first two lessons. Remember that a computer gains most of its power from (a) operating on complex data and (b) doing things repeatedly. If you introduce arrays, you can get them to program Life. Introducing structures will allow them to do some graphics processing, too. Put them together and you have an interesting graphical program that can be done in the first two sessions (and, if you're clever, you'll be able to show them some abstraction in a countAdjacentCells routine). Then you can show them the same thing on the web. Tell them that the web-based program does the same thing (but for the world), The fact that they can do something that is good enough to be put on the web should be (semi-)impressive.
Get them hooked early, make sure you don't make it too tedious, and build their confidence. That's all you should need.
And, let's not forget. Bjarne is an EXPERIENCED professional, he is NOT a CS major that has never seen the inside of a cubicle.
Bjarne is an EXPERIENCED professional whose only industrial work was inside a RESEARCH LAB. Not that his words should be discounted because of that, because he does have some salient words about software engineering.
But everything he says about choice of languages to use to teach undergrads should be taken with a VERY large grain of salt. C++ is not a good choice. Frankly, the language he shaped was a mess that took at least three versions to become close to usable (as those of us who struggled through the cfront days can attest to) and that he allowed to become a bloated, overgrown monstrosity. Listening to Bjarne on the choice of language to teach undergrads is like listening to Sarah Palin on the finer points of foreign policy. So he's found an academic sinecure to flog his broken language from. Big whoop.
If he were brutally honest about pedagogic languages for undergrads, he'd actually start them on C so they could learn imperative programming with pointers, then onto Ruby or Python for object orientation, and then to Haskell or OCaml for functional programming (note that, being brutally honest, I refrained from touting my favorite language, something that he seems intellectually incapable of doing). He obviously is so biased with respect to his own language that he's willing to screw up his university's undergrad's education to promote it. Yet another case of ego trumping quality in academia. He's no better than Bertrand Meyer was with his continual flogging of Eiffel (which is still a better language than C++).
Meanwhile, the manufacturers who play nice with Linux are reaping the benefits of the Linux-running hardware tinkerer's credit cards.
Yeah. I hear they're up to $293.84 by now. Rumor has it that they'd be up past $300 by now, but someone got behind on their rent to their mom for use of the basement.
I would suggest using this repeal to also damage our foes. Afghanistan warlords...
Haven't you heard? The Afghan warlords have always been our friends! That's why we're paying them (just like we did with the Sunni warlords in Iraq). I don't believe you want to be spreading unpatriotic rumors, comrade!
A friend who is a beautiful blond, 20 years old and has the world by the tail was just prescribed Lithium as a way of coping with her emotional issues.
You are a fucking moron. If your friend was prescribed lithium, it is probably because he or she is displaying symptoms of bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mental disease with a physiological basis. People do not generally get better from it by "looking at the world in a different way" or "dealing with it without drugs". In this case, drugs are not an "escape" but a necessity. Your desire to stigmatize this person (and/or her physician) by stating that proper medication is an escape is heinous. But don't tell me, you probably think that insulin is "poison", too. I repeat - you are a fucking moron. And a dick, too.
That's true, but there are different types of antibiotics, and different ways to get yourself into trouble using them.
Yes, but most antibiotics are of a few basic classes and most antibiotics used in veterinary practice are produced by the same drug companies and are pretty much the same as those used in humans (oddly enough, mammals are similar to each other). As such, even wider use would seem to be unwise. However, you are also correct in stating that there are few resistant strains escaping from feedlots. That's really a bit of a puzzle, given that MRSA and other strain resistant bacteria seem to show up quite regularly in other environments that would seem to be much cleaner. Maybe the other bugs eat them or something.
In any case, I still don't think that it's a good idea to hand out antibiotics willy-nilly. I just don't think that the populace has a good idea about how to use them.
I guess the OJ break-in was simply a work of "performance art", too.
Yes, I know that these folks didn't do anything illegal, but the "I'm an artiste" defense has got to be one of the dumber ones I've heard. Damn, if you are an artist, stand up for your art and have Amazon really come after you before you cave. Especially if you are actually an artist.
Of this fifty-six percent, are they talking about central administration? Or are the including local administration like Principals (who often have responsibilities for direct parent/student interaction)? Are they including non-administrative staff (i.e., school secretaries, nurses, counselors, janitorial, etc.), by lumping together everything that isn't in-class instruction and building maintenance into an overall "administration" category? There are a lot of ways to fudge these numbers and, with the percentage so high, I get the distinct impression that some games have been played. Show me primary sources (not Inc., which as a business-oriented publication has an axe to grind) and maybe I'll believe.
Most of it goes to administration, with 14 administrators raking in at least $150,000 per year.
Numbers, taken out of context, are worthless. How many students are these administrators responsible for? Are these salaries out of line (cost-adjusted) for the duties they perform when compared with other school systems? Are they commensurate with or less than the salaries they could be making in private enterprise doing similar tasks? The fact that you are simply stating these numbers without any additional information displays more a desire to generate conflict than to provide knowledge.
You also make a statement that "most of it goes to administration". Of course, since you don't provide actual budget percentages, it would be hard to gauge the veracity of this statement, as well. However, this would seem to be extremely unlikely. Most urban school systems operate with around a 15% overhead (which is commensurate with "well run" private enterprises of the same size. But given the tone of your post, I assume that this statement is hyperbole, too.
The reason for the introduction of the public school system was that private enterprise manifestly could not provide universal education (which, for better or worse, was and is deemed a public good). I don't think that things have changed so much that you could guarantee that universal education could be maintained without government interference of some kind (at least a law stating that all citizens must have some level of education).
So which is it, Mr. Libertarian nutjob? Should government do away with any requirement for education of its citizenry? Or should it just let private industry fail to provide the necessary service to achieve it? If the first, what is your solution to the sizable number of people whose parents don't deem education worthwhile enough to invest in? If the second, what has changed between the late 19'th century and today that makes you believe that private enterprise can achieve universal education? Or do you just want a return to "separate but (un-)equal" school systems using a tiered system of private and (due to money migrating away to private schools) crappy, underfunded public schools?
A-effing-men. The use of non-standard analysis makes a lot of proofs much easier and it's just as rigorous as other approaches. And, having read Rudin's texts, I agree with your assessment of his methods, as well. I, too, am not an expert - just an avid amateur - but I think that the way that analysis is taught has more to do with inertia and sadism than with efficiency of learning.
I don't know what subjects you studied, but it couldn't have been science.
Dear fucktard...
You. Are. WRONG.
Lets look at a standard HS Biology textbook from 1976 (I use this as an example because I was there). Contents include cellular anatomy, basic classification and gross anatomy, and a very slight bit of genetics, not going much beyond recessive and dominant traits.
Now lets look at today's text. My daughter's textbook starts with the biochemical basis of life, moves into genetics and the mapping of genes into proteins and what those do (they're learning about receptor sites, channel proteins, etc.), then goes into a much more detailed description of cellular metabolism (including the Krebs cycle). And this is only the first three months of an eight-to-nine month curriculum.
This is the standard text used in our (fairly) run-of-the-mill urban school district. Not only have the topics covered been expanded, but the emphasis on what is presented has shifted greatly due to what we have learned between then and now and how our understanding of the unifying principals have evolved.
Your comment demonstrates nothing but your ignorance.
I'm a Project Manager who recently decided that I want/need to get my dev skills more up-to-date, as more projects are looking for their PM's to be hands-on with the development.
Is this actually true? Maybe it's because I tend to know about larger shops, but this doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can see. Having been both a development manager and a project manager, I'd say that having the PM also responsible for development tasks is a quick way to not have a very good outcome for either. However, I've always thought that our industry was one where management has been considered so unimportant that it was often left to untrained, part-time personnel.
That being said, some of the questions were a bit "questionable", vaguely worded, and/or open to interpretation. Still, a well-educated person should have been able to get at least 75%.
Well, to start with, tuples are instances of types defined by Cartesian products over a domain of primitive elements. The standard relational model (which tells how related tuples can be combined) is entirely set-based. SQL is one of the very few set-oriented languages (I think that SETL was another) around and, if you really want to use SQL effectively, you better think about it in that way. That was off the top of my head. However as only a lowly electrical engineer (OK, computer engineer), I'm sure that professional CS types can do a lot better...
I've been using RCS/CVS/SVN since God was a young child
Jeez! What a youngster! I was using SCCS before then. And before that, there was the God-awful card image librarian (so old, even I forget the name) program on OS/360. I'm sure we have at least one or two 7090 users around here that can tell even worse stories.
Slashdot Mirror
That they don't do it in exactly the way that a vocal percentage of posters here would want them to doesn't mean they're putting themselves in an unsuccessful position.
And that's the thing. Most of the OS whiners here won't be happy until Apple lets them run OS/X on whatever shitbox they have lying about, where it will crash because of unsupported roll-your-own drivers, and then they can complain about how awful it is. If the whiners want that kind of experience, they can use Linux (or Windows) today.
...since Jobs lost significant weight as a result of his surgery (an obligatory side effect for the type of surgery he had)
What was it? An attempted ego-ectomy? If so, I don't think it worked.
I second this. The Buffalo units have a reasonably good UI and are easy to manage, but they are hideously slow.
To paraphrase the late George Mallory, "Because they're there."
You don't have to. You are redundant.
There is a lot of truth in this.
Assuming that you have a good team (not one where they trapped all of the old malcontents together so they'd be easy to herd), they'll know what to do. In general, your job is going to be making sure that the goals for your project are clear, that you have enough resources to do the job that is scoped, negotiating about limiting the scope when you don't have the resources, making sure that you have a detailed enough plan for the short term so you can see if people are achieving short term goals, re-assigning resources in case issues come up, renegotiating with superiors about more resources and scope reduction when you fall behind, etc. Very little of your time should be spent telling them what to do. You should tell them the goals and then let them decide how they're going to get meet them. Of course, if they tell you that they need hookers and blow first, you might ask them how that's going to help their productivity (for the hookers, at least).
Years ago, when I was working the swing shift at a 7-11 store, my boss -- a great old guy by the name of Dave Clarke, now passed -- told me that if you're going to write something down that you want to say to somebody, you sign it. In fact, you sign it and date it, so people know when you said it. If you don't have the nerve to do that, then maybe it shouldn't be said. Maybe you're just being a petulant little jerk.
Amen. Over the past twenty-five or so years, I've said quite a few words on the internet. I feel very proud that I've never hidden who I am. I've occasionally said less than enlightening things online and even been asked about them in one job interview (and, yes, I did get the job where that happened). The way I figure it, if I don't have the courage to stand behind my words, why should anyone take them to heart? As for the potential downside of limitation in employment, I figure that my good words have outweighed my bad and, if an employer can't see that, I probably don't want to be employed by them anyway.
I'd recommend setting up a standard VM image with all of the libraries, compilers, and other development tools they need. First of all, kids that age (gifted or not) are not going to want to take the time to install Eclipse, Dev Studio, or even MzScheme. And, no matter how much you might think so, you're not looking at turning them into little "industry-ready" programmers at this age. So the more time you spend doing ancillary tasks, the more time you have to lose them (plus VMs will save you a lot of time trying to figure out why any particular crap box you happen to be on isn't running right).
Second, give them projects that show immediate results (remember that you're trying to get them excited about programming, not showing them how tedious it can be). That means that you need projects that can be debugged in a single class period until the end, when you might be able to give them longer range assignments.
Give them simplified environments. Trying to get them to understand all of the intricacies of setting up an OpenGL environment just to draw a rectangle on the screen sucks. Write your own libraries beforehand that sets up windows, make it simple to open files, etc.
Make sure that the tasks you give them are compelling. A Fibonacci sieve might be a great algorithm and easy to teach, but chances are it will bore them to tears. You might do your first assignment that way. But after that, you better give them something interesting to do.
The previous note means you'll need to introduce some advanced features early. Arrays and structures should be in the first two lessons. Remember that a computer gains most of its power from (a) operating on complex data and (b) doing things repeatedly. If you introduce arrays, you can get them to program Life. Introducing structures will allow them to do some graphics processing, too. Put them together and you have an interesting graphical program that can be done in the first two sessions (and, if you're clever, you'll be able to show them some abstraction in a countAdjacentCells routine). Then you can show them the same thing on the web. Tell them that the web-based program does the same thing (but for the world), The fact that they can do something that is good enough to be put on the web should be (semi-)impressive.
Get them hooked early, make sure you don't make it too tedious, and build their confidence. That's all you should need.
...the ultimate damning evidence of Obama's lack of enpivbtenment!
Hey! Wait a minute! Obama has always been enpivbtened!
And, let's not forget. Bjarne is an EXPERIENCED professional, he is NOT a CS major that has never seen the inside of a cubicle.
Bjarne is an EXPERIENCED professional whose only industrial work was inside a RESEARCH LAB. Not that his words should be discounted because of that, because he does have some salient words about software engineering.
But everything he says about choice of languages to use to teach undergrads should be taken with a VERY large grain of salt. C++ is not a good choice. Frankly, the language he shaped was a mess that took at least three versions to become close to usable (as those of us who struggled through the cfront days can attest to) and that he allowed to become a bloated, overgrown monstrosity. Listening to Bjarne on the choice of language to teach undergrads is like listening to Sarah Palin on the finer points of foreign policy. So he's found an academic sinecure to flog his broken language from. Big whoop.
If he were brutally honest about pedagogic languages for undergrads, he'd actually start them on C so they could learn imperative programming with pointers, then onto Ruby or Python for object orientation, and then to Haskell or OCaml for functional programming (note that, being brutally honest, I refrained from touting my favorite language, something that he seems intellectually incapable of doing). He obviously is so biased with respect to his own language that he's willing to screw up his university's undergrad's education to promote it. Yet another case of ego trumping quality in academia. He's no better than Bertrand Meyer was with his continual flogging of Eiffel (which is still a better language than C++).
Meanwhile, the manufacturers who play nice with Linux are reaping the benefits of the Linux-running hardware tinkerer's credit cards.
Yeah. I hear they're up to $293.84 by now. Rumor has it that they'd be up past $300 by now, but someone got behind on their rent to their mom for use of the basement.
I would suggest using this repeal to also damage our foes. Afghanistan warlords...
Haven't you heard? The Afghan warlords have always been our friends! That's why we're paying them (just like we did with the Sunni warlords in Iraq). I don't believe you want to be spreading unpatriotic rumors, comrade!
A friend who is a beautiful blond, 20 years old and has the world by the tail was just prescribed Lithium as a way of coping with her emotional issues.
You are a fucking moron. If your friend was prescribed lithium, it is probably because he or she is displaying symptoms of bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is a mental disease with a physiological basis. People do not generally get better from it by "looking at the world in a different way" or "dealing with it without drugs". In this case, drugs are not an "escape" but a necessity. Your desire to stigmatize this person (and/or her physician) by stating that proper medication is an escape is heinous. But don't tell me, you probably think that insulin is "poison", too. I repeat - you are a fucking moron. And a dick, too.
That's true, but there are different types of antibiotics, and different ways to get yourself into trouble using them.
Yes, but most antibiotics are of a few basic classes and most antibiotics used in veterinary practice are produced by the same drug companies and are pretty much the same as those used in humans (oddly enough, mammals are similar to each other). As such, even wider use would seem to be unwise. However, you are also correct in stating that there are few resistant strains escaping from feedlots. That's really a bit of a puzzle, given that MRSA and other strain resistant bacteria seem to show up quite regularly in other environments that would seem to be much cleaner. Maybe the other bugs eat them or something.
In any case, I still don't think that it's a good idea to hand out antibiotics willy-nilly. I just don't think that the populace has a good idea about how to use them.
I guess the OJ break-in was simply a work of "performance art", too.
Yes, I know that these folks didn't do anything illegal, but the "I'm an artiste" defense has got to be one of the dumber ones I've heard. Damn, if you are an artist, stand up for your art and have Amazon really come after you before you cave. Especially if you are actually an artist.
Of this fifty-six percent, are they talking about central administration? Or are the including local administration like Principals (who often have responsibilities for direct parent/student interaction)? Are they including non-administrative staff (i.e., school secretaries, nurses, counselors, janitorial, etc.), by lumping together everything that isn't in-class instruction and building maintenance into an overall "administration" category? There are a lot of ways to fudge these numbers and, with the percentage so high, I get the distinct impression that some games have been played. Show me primary sources (not Inc., which as a business-oriented publication has an axe to grind) and maybe I'll believe.
Most of it goes to administration, with 14 administrators raking in at least $150,000 per year.
Numbers, taken out of context, are worthless. How many students are these administrators responsible for? Are these salaries out of line (cost-adjusted) for the duties they perform when compared with other school systems? Are they commensurate with or less than the salaries they could be making in private enterprise doing similar tasks? The fact that you are simply stating these numbers without any additional information displays more a desire to generate conflict than to provide knowledge.
You also make a statement that "most of it goes to administration". Of course, since you don't provide actual budget percentages, it would be hard to gauge the veracity of this statement, as well. However, this would seem to be extremely unlikely. Most urban school systems operate with around a 15% overhead (which is commensurate with "well run" private enterprises of the same size. But given the tone of your post, I assume that this statement is hyperbole, too.
The reason for the introduction of the public school system was that private enterprise manifestly could not provide universal education (which, for better or worse, was and is deemed a public good). I don't think that things have changed so much that you could guarantee that universal education could be maintained without government interference of some kind (at least a law stating that all citizens must have some level of education).
So which is it, Mr. Libertarian nutjob? Should government do away with any requirement for education of its citizenry? Or should it just let private industry fail to provide the necessary service to achieve it? If the first, what is your solution to the sizable number of people whose parents don't deem education worthwhile enough to invest in? If the second, what has changed between the late 19'th century and today that makes you believe that private enterprise can achieve universal education? Or do you just want a return to "separate but (un-)equal" school systems using a tiered system of private and (due to money migrating away to private schools) crappy, underfunded public schools?
A-effing-men. The use of non-standard analysis makes a lot of proofs much easier and it's just as rigorous as other approaches. And, having read Rudin's texts, I agree with your assessment of his methods, as well. I, too, am not an expert - just an avid amateur - but I think that the way that analysis is taught has more to do with inertia and sadism than with efficiency of learning.
We can go further. Most of today's governors are hard to distinguish from dozens or even hundreds of politicians whose candidacies badly fizzled.
Sarah Palin explained!
I don't know what subjects you studied, but it couldn't have been science.
Dear fucktard...
You. Are. WRONG.
Lets look at a standard HS Biology textbook from 1976 (I use this as an example because I was there). Contents include cellular anatomy, basic classification and gross anatomy, and a very slight bit of genetics, not going much beyond recessive and dominant traits.
Now lets look at today's text. My daughter's textbook starts with the biochemical basis of life, moves into genetics and the mapping of genes into proteins and what those do (they're learning about receptor sites, channel proteins, etc.), then goes into a much more detailed description of cellular metabolism (including the Krebs cycle). And this is only the first three months of an eight-to-nine month curriculum.
This is the standard text used in our (fairly) run-of-the-mill urban school district. Not only have the topics covered been expanded, but the emphasis on what is presented has shifted greatly due to what we have learned between then and now and how our understanding of the unifying principals have evolved.
Your comment demonstrates nothing but your ignorance.
"...it seems somewhat tragic that JFS or even XFS didn't gain the traction that ext3 did to pull us through the 'classic' era...
I always had high hopes for Reiser FS... it was a real killer.
I'm a Project Manager who recently decided that I want/need to get my dev skills more up-to-date, as more projects are looking for their PM's to be hands-on with the development.
Is this actually true? Maybe it's because I tend to know about larger shops, but this doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can see. Having been both a development manager and a project manager, I'd say that having the PM also responsible for development tasks is a quick way to not have a very good outcome for either. However, I've always thought that our industry was one where management has been considered so unimportant that it was often left to untrained, part-time personnel.
Wuss. I got 100% and I graduated 27 years ago.
That being said, some of the questions were a bit "questionable", vaguely worded, and/or open to interpretation. Still, a well-educated person should have been able to get at least 75%.
Well, to start with, tuples are instances of types defined by Cartesian products over a domain of primitive elements. The standard relational model (which tells how related tuples can be combined) is entirely set-based. SQL is one of the very few set-oriented languages (I think that SETL was another) around and, if you really want to use SQL effectively, you better think about it in that way. That was off the top of my head. However as only a lowly electrical engineer (OK, computer engineer), I'm sure that professional CS types can do a lot better...
I've been using RCS/CVS/SVN since God was a young child
Jeez! What a youngster! I was using SCCS before then. And before that, there was the God-awful card image librarian (so old, even I forget the name) program on OS/360. I'm sure we have at least one or two 7090 users around here that can tell even worse stories.