I haven't bought a high end PC since 2003... Last machine I bought (in january) was a low-end laptop and I couldn't be happier. Saved much money too!:-D
What you're wanting is something that is very difficult for a computer but very easy for a human being. You want to be able to discern which parts of your text file constitute machine-readable instructions (which have to be spelt the way the machine expects them when it's running the compiler/interpreter) and which parts constitute human-readable messages (which have to be spelt the way a human would expect).
Bollocks, what you describe is absolutely possible, otherwise syntax highlighting would not be possible. In Java, everything between/* and */ and everything starting with// are comments and thus should be spellchecked. Everything between two ", should also be spellchecked since those are literal strings.
Of course, you're right that literal strings have no place in source code, but that was not the question.
It's not what he means. He talks about problems like getBussinessObjekt() instead of getBusinessObject(). Apart from that, you're 100% right and it should even be that way if you don't want to internationalize it.
As a non-native English speaker, working in a non-native english speaking team (mainly french speaking people) it is a real problem. The biggest problem happens when you search something and don't find it because you wrote it right and your coworker wrote it wrong. (Or the inverse, I don't claim to be perfect in English)
Sure, you might say, "Write your code in French", but that's not a solution. My mother tongue is Dutch, we have a German coworker, and you never know if the next guy will be Italian. There is also this team that has to maintain code written by Spanish people.... in Spanish.... and they don't know Spanish. Fun times, if you like to hear them curse....
In multilingual environments this problem increases drastically.
I have never bought a locked cellphone in my life. I just always bought the retail non-subsidized ones. I can change carrier whenever I want. I also happen to know that all "pre-paid" packs come with unlocked phones in my country.
I presume that phones you buy with a two year contract are locked, but I wouldn't know... Never bought such a thing, but I never heard of anyone having a problem either.
Luxembourg, Europe here.
I'm pretty sure that if you're getting locked phones, it's because you choose to take the subsidized ones. Not because you can't get unlocked ones and get separate service. It's more expensive at the start, but cheaper in the long run.
The EU ruled "bundling" illegal, because that is what it used to be: you don't get the service unless you buy a certain phone and you don't get the phone unless you take a certain service. If this is still done in France, you need to get some people together and start a lawsuit.
Odd, I loaded it up with Internet Explorer 6 and it says "The page cannot be displayed".... Hmmm, must be a problem with their detection.;-) [Edit: now it works...]
That said, while the site was still alive, they were most willing to give me the code to block firefox even when using firefox. Somehow it strikes me as odd that the site itself doesn't block firefox except on the page that says you're blocked.
Well, that's one of the reasons I think it's unfair I got a Flamebait mod on my original posts. I was being honest, and I stood for what I thought and thus quit.
Anyway, I can't go back to teaching. It's a government job an it is very had to get into it. It starts off with an exam on languages (which I barely passed, because I never learned one of the languages required), and then if you pass that you get to do an exam on the subject you're going to teach. For me that was computer science (in which I have a degree) and I passed ranked first. It were real computer science questions including complexity, data structures, etc... After that you have to do a sample lesson before an "uninformed" audience, which ended up being a the "computer sience" teachers in charge. I passed that too and was thus accepted.
Then you get to teach and do a training in parallel. That training, of which I expected to learn how to teach was as useless as it can be. Essentially the message was "you have to find your own way!". Great.... When you pass that (which I didn't because I quit), you get to have two in-class exam where everything must be perfect. Write a spelling mistake on the blackboard and you're bust. If you are bust you are discarded from teaching and can do the whole procedure again. Even if I'd apply again, I'm pretty sure that my name is known and I'd be disqualified just based on me quitting.
One of the reasons I quit was my personal integrity: I wanted to teach how computers work, programming, etc... What I ended up teaching was Word, Excel and Access (and a tiny bit of Pascal). I do not see why you'd need a computer scientist for that! A seasoned secretary would be better qualified!
Suggesting changes the curriculum is only possible when you're a multi-year teacher and how big are the odds that you actually want to change those when you have plenty of courses prepared for the curriculum that is in active use? The whole system is built to churn out teachers that do not think alternatively. It promotes inertia.
Also keep in mind that the "bust" part would be about three years after starting the teaching job. You probably know as well as me how much chances I'd have in the job market in IT after three years of teaching Word, Excel and Access....
So, I stood for my ideals and quit.
Being a teacher is one of the most sought after jobs in my country and most people don't even manage to get through the first tests.... Just that you know.
On top of that my wife is in education (kindergarden, but whatever) so you can understand how pissed off she was.
No, I'm not more happy in my current job: I took the first thing that came along because one needs to pay bills.
Yes, I'm bitter... I love explaining the things I'm passionate about, but that is not what being a teacher is about. I learned it the hard way.
What I think is behind the new tags is that the average Joe that wants to make a webpage can handle HTML fine, but CSS is too hard. Classes, inheritance, boxing, all that stuff requires you to know quite a bit. In comparision HTML 4.1 was easier. I don't agree with the sentiment since I think XHTML+CSS is better for the job.
Not only that, but his question was quite focussed. It can be replied in a slashdot post, or perhaps half page handwritten. It would be useful as an exam question (given you explain first what a Star Trek teleporter is) It also requires to make a synthesis: measing you have to take single facts, and put them together to something "new". I didn't mention it but I was actually a teacher in training, and one of the things that was made clear to us: to about 60% of grading on pure knowledge questions, 30% of analysis questions and for the really good students you add another 10% on synthesis questions.
A report writing assignment is something different. It involves research on the subject (acquiring knowledge), analysing requirements and then managing to make a synthesis.
It's one thing you learn quickly as a teacher: the questions you write will not be understood by everyone whatever you do. You forget things, assume things are known but are not known by the students even if they should know them by now. In one exam question, I asked to write procedure (this was a Pascal programming class for 17yo-18yo) to output the two roots of a second degree equasion given a, b and c in ax^2+bx+c=0. They had seen second degree equations in math, I checked, but do you think they were able to do that? Don't answer that question... *sigh* What I should have done is give the formula to calculate the roots, but I didn't even think twice that they could not know it by now. My error here was assuming that they were able to think over different disciplines and thus applying math knowledge to programming.
Uhm, no.... I have 25 days of paid vacation which is within the average for European countries. Now let's see how many a teacher has: 1 week in the fall, 2 weeks Christmas, 1 week for Carnival, 2 weeks for Easter, 1 week for Pentecost and then 2 full months in the summer, that'd be 8 weeks. Sum is: 13 weeks, or translated in days (at 5 days/week): 65 days. In my country teachers get fully paid during summer vacation and have a 13nd month. As a programmer, I don't even have a 13nd month.
I must admit that the country where I live has probably the best paid teachers in Europe.
Actually, I left because I realised I was part of the problem. I didn't let it pass at first either, but then I decided to leave but was "gently asked" by the direction of the school to stay until the end of the year because they would be unable to fill my position. I wanted to leave within the terms of my contract, which was pretty much immediately.
Children need an iron fist, playing nice with them doesn't work. I cannot provide an iron fist. It's weird, but my view of learning is: you don't want to learn, don't waste your time here and go somewhere else. Alas, that view only works in College. The 12yo-18yo must be there and couldn't care less, so you have to force them. That, or provide edutainment, but that is extremely draining and I have yet to see a teacher who does that in every one of his classes.
But as I said, it's not my problem anymore and I don't want ever to see the inside of a school again. Ever!
I just miss the 1000€/month in my salary I now earn less.... That about the only thing that sucks about being again a programmer. I don't miss the two months of vacation, oddly enough.
It wasn't that easy... The "good" ones cut out the irrelevant stuff and the bad ones didn't bother even with that.
Besides, it's hard to find genuinely "hard" assignments. On top of that, my "area of expertise" was computers and you can pretty much come up with anything about computers and there will be a wikipedia article. Example: I'd ask what the differences are between lossless and lossy compression and give examples of both. I'd call that relatively focussed. Yet wikipedia covers both and it's trivial to copy paste the relevant articles.
Assignment about Sweden? Well, back in the day, I'd be forced to go to the library and get together what I could. That was pretty much what I tried to say with my post.
Try to come up with a subject that cannot be found in wikipedia with a few clicks and that is feasible for a 15yo to understand.... I doubt they even understood what compression was....
The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was.
I was unlucky enough to be a teacher for 1.5 years. Pretty much all assignments I gave (home, or just in class) ended up to be copy/pastes of wikipedia or another website. Usually they didn't even bother to format their Word file so that I wouldn't even see it.
Luckily, I had lost faith in the profession already, so I let it slip. If I had to get down hard on them for that, no-one in my classes would have passed. They didn't care, so why would I care....
Blame it on me being a poor teacher... Don't worry, that's exactly what I do, so you won't even offend me.
Oh, I see where the wind is coming from. I insulted a translator in his trade. So, I take that back.... You did know what "mouille" meant, but you chose not to tell the slashdot readers. For whatever reason....
The French on your site still is very pompous, but hey, that's just me.
No, you said just "wet", implying indeed vaginal secretions but not stating that there is even a word that is exactly what you meant in French. So, you're pissed because I attacked your French? My excuses for that, I just thought that you didn't know what "la mouille" means. I still think you didn't know....
Oh, and there is also a difference between having to Google and actually knowing without Googling... You did know that, didn't you?
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't bought a high end PC since 2003... Last machine I bought (in january) was a low-end laptop and I couldn't be happier. Saved much money too! :-D
What you're wanting is something that is very difficult for a computer but very easy for a human being. You want to be able to discern which parts of your text file constitute machine-readable instructions (which have to be spelt the way the machine expects them when it's running the compiler/interpreter) and which parts constitute human-readable messages (which have to be spelt the way a human would expect).
Bollocks, what you describe is absolutely possible, otherwise syntax highlighting would not be possible. In Java, everything between /* and */ and everything starting with // are comments and thus should be spellchecked. Everything between two ", should also be spellchecked since those are literal strings.
Of course, you're right that literal strings have no place in source code, but that was not the question.
It's not what he means. He talks about problems like getBussinessObjekt() instead of getBusinessObject(). Apart from that, you're 100% right and it should even be that way if you don't want to internationalize it.
As a non-native English speaker, working in a non-native english speaking team (mainly french speaking people) it is a real problem. The biggest problem happens when you search something and don't find it because you wrote it right and your coworker wrote it wrong. (Or the inverse, I don't claim to be perfect in English)
Sure, you might say, "Write your code in French", but that's not a solution. My mother tongue is Dutch, we have a German coworker, and you never know if the next guy will be Italian. There is also this team that has to maintain code written by Spanish people.... in Spanish.... and they don't know Spanish. Fun times, if you like to hear them curse....
In multilingual environments this problem increases drastically.
I have never bought a locked cellphone in my life. I just always bought the retail non-subsidized ones. I can change carrier whenever I want. I also happen to know that all "pre-paid" packs come with unlocked phones in my country.
I presume that phones you buy with a two year contract are locked, but I wouldn't know... Never bought such a thing, but I never heard of anyone having a problem either.
Luxembourg, Europe here.
I'm pretty sure that if you're getting locked phones, it's because you choose to take the subsidized ones. Not because you can't get unlocked ones and get separate service. It's more expensive at the start, but cheaper in the long run.
The EU ruled "bundling" illegal, because that is what it used to be: you don't get the service unless you buy a certain phone and you don't get the phone unless you take a certain service. If this is still done in France, you need to get some people together and start a lawsuit.
Odd, I loaded it up with Internet Explorer 6 and it says "The page cannot be displayed".... Hmmm, must be a problem with their detection. ;-) [Edit: now it works...]
That said, while the site was still alive, they were most willing to give me the code to block firefox even when using firefox. Somehow it strikes me as odd that the site itself doesn't block firefox except on the page that says you're blocked.
Because we can have a Vista-bashfest? No, really.... I'm serious....
or even 'suns',
What exactly do you think that "sol" means?
Don't the Chinese use centimeters like everyone else? ;-)
Well, that's one of the reasons I think it's unfair I got a Flamebait mod on my original posts. I was being honest, and I stood for what I thought and thus quit.
Anyway, I can't go back to teaching. It's a government job an it is very had to get into it. It starts off with an exam on languages (which I barely passed, because I never learned one of the languages required), and then if you pass that you get to do an exam on the subject you're going to teach. For me that was computer science (in which I have a degree) and I passed ranked first. It were real computer science questions including complexity, data structures, etc... After that you have to do a sample lesson before an "uninformed" audience, which ended up being a the "computer sience" teachers in charge. I passed that too and was thus accepted.
Then you get to teach and do a training in parallel. That training, of which I expected to learn how to teach was as useless as it can be. Essentially the message was "you have to find your own way!". Great.... When you pass that (which I didn't because I quit), you get to have two in-class exam where everything must be perfect. Write a spelling mistake on the blackboard and you're bust. If you are bust you are discarded from teaching and can do the whole procedure again. Even if I'd apply again, I'm pretty sure that my name is known and I'd be disqualified just based on me quitting.
One of the reasons I quit was my personal integrity: I wanted to teach how computers work, programming, etc... What I ended up teaching was Word, Excel and Access (and a tiny bit of Pascal). I do not see why you'd need a computer scientist for that! A seasoned secretary would be better qualified!
Suggesting changes the curriculum is only possible when you're a multi-year teacher and how big are the odds that you actually want to change those when you have plenty of courses prepared for the curriculum that is in active use? The whole system is built to churn out teachers that do not think alternatively. It promotes inertia.
Also keep in mind that the "bust" part would be about three years after starting the teaching job. You probably know as well as me how much chances I'd have in the job market in IT after three years of teaching Word, Excel and Access....
So, I stood for my ideals and quit.
Being a teacher is one of the most sought after jobs in my country and most people don't even manage to get through the first tests.... Just that you know.
On top of that my wife is in education (kindergarden, but whatever) so you can understand how pissed off she was.
No, I'm not more happy in my current job: I took the first thing that came along because one needs to pay bills.
Yes, I'm bitter... I love explaining the things I'm passionate about, but that is not what being a teacher is about. I learned it the hard way.
Would've made getting through history and geography a lot easier...
You do honour to your slashdot username....
What I think is behind the new tags is that the average Joe that wants to make a webpage can handle HTML fine, but CSS is too hard. Classes, inheritance, boxing, all that stuff requires you to know quite a bit. In comparision HTML 4.1 was easier. I don't agree with the sentiment since I think XHTML+CSS is better for the job.
Try using HTML entities next time. Those have been in the spec for a long time ;-) > for > and < for <....
Not only that, but his question was quite focussed. It can be replied in a slashdot post, or perhaps half page handwritten. It would be useful as an exam question (given you explain first what a Star Trek teleporter is) It also requires to make a synthesis: measing you have to take single facts, and put them together to something "new". I didn't mention it but I was actually a teacher in training, and one of the things that was made clear to us: to about 60% of grading on pure knowledge questions, 30% of analysis questions and for the really good students you add another 10% on synthesis questions.
A report writing assignment is something different. It involves research on the subject (acquiring knowledge), analysing requirements and then managing to make a synthesis.
It's one thing you learn quickly as a teacher: the questions you write will not be understood by everyone whatever you do. You forget things, assume things are known but are not known by the students even if they should know them by now. In one exam question, I asked to write procedure (this was a Pascal programming class for 17yo-18yo) to output the two roots of a second degree equasion given a, b and c in ax^2+bx+c=0. They had seen second degree equations in math, I checked, but do you think they were able to do that? Don't answer that question... *sigh* What I should have done is give the formula to calculate the roots, but I didn't even think twice that they could not know it by now. My error here was assuming that they were able to think over different disciplines and thus applying math knowledge to programming.
Uhm, no.... I have 25 days of paid vacation which is within the average for European countries. Now let's see how many a teacher has: 1 week in the fall, 2 weeks Christmas, 1 week for Carnival, 2 weeks for Easter, 1 week for Pentecost and then 2 full months in the summer, that'd be 8 weeks. Sum is: 13 weeks, or translated in days (at 5 days/week): 65 days. In my country teachers get fully paid during summer vacation and have a 13nd month. As a programmer, I don't even have a 13nd month.
I must admit that the country where I live has probably the best paid teachers in Europe.
Actually, I left because I realised I was part of the problem. I didn't let it pass at first either, but then I decided to leave but was "gently asked" by the direction of the school to stay until the end of the year because they would be unable to fill my position. I wanted to leave within the terms of my contract, which was pretty much immediately.
Children need an iron fist, playing nice with them doesn't work. I cannot provide an iron fist. It's weird, but my view of learning is: you don't want to learn, don't waste your time here and go somewhere else. Alas, that view only works in College. The 12yo-18yo must be there and couldn't care less, so you have to force them. That, or provide edutainment, but that is extremely draining and I have yet to see a teacher who does that in every one of his classes.
But as I said, it's not my problem anymore and I don't want ever to see the inside of a school again. Ever!
I just miss the 1000€/month in my salary I now earn less.... That about the only thing that sucks about being again a programmer. I don't miss the two months of vacation, oddly enough.
Well, okay, if you read the original statement, I did say I was a bad teacher.
QED
It wasn't that easy... The "good" ones cut out the irrelevant stuff and the bad ones didn't bother even with that.
Besides, it's hard to find genuinely "hard" assignments. On top of that, my "area of expertise" was computers and you can pretty much come up with anything about computers and there will be a wikipedia article. Example: I'd ask what the differences are between lossless and lossy compression and give examples of both. I'd call that relatively focussed. Yet wikipedia covers both and it's trivial to copy paste the relevant articles.
Assignment about Sweden? Well, back in the day, I'd be forced to go to the library and get together what I could. That was pretty much what I tried to say with my post.
Try to come up with a subject that cannot be found in wikipedia with a few clicks and that is feasible for a 15yo to understand.... I doubt they even understood what compression was....
The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was.
I was unlucky enough to be a teacher for 1.5 years. Pretty much all assignments I gave (home, or just in class) ended up to be copy/pastes of wikipedia or another website. Usually they didn't even bother to format their Word file so that I wouldn't even see it.
Luckily, I had lost faith in the profession already, so I let it slip. If I had to get down hard on them for that, no-one in my classes would have passed. They didn't care, so why would I care....
Blame it on me being a poor teacher... Don't worry, that's exactly what I do, so you won't even offend me.
most of Africa is a business no-go zone
Oh, really?.
One minor thing: neither beer nor wine need distilling. Only strong liquors need that.
Doesn't change your point, but I just needed to point it out.
Your link is broken... Not that I advise anyone to follow it.... Not a good idea.
Oh, I see where the wind is coming from. I insulted a translator in his trade. So, I take that back.... You did know what "mouille" meant, but you chose not to tell the slashdot readers. For whatever reason....
The French on your site still is very pompous, but hey, that's just me.
No, you said just "wet", implying indeed vaginal secretions but not stating that there is even a word that is exactly what you meant in French. So, you're pissed because I attacked your French? My excuses for that, I just thought that you didn't know what "la mouille" means. I still think you didn't know....
Oh, and there is also a difference between having to Google and actually knowing without Googling... You did know that, didn't you?