These kids are 11-14 not 114 they will take to an IDE like a Duck to water, even better they can just type stuff and run it, cut out all that compiling, linking, running with a command line tool.
Even better they get a debugger so the can see what their code does.
For what it is worth I would go with a language that has either a GUI or a web output (I would even consider Flash/ActionScript because there are some really amazing things - like creating games - that can be achieved relativly simply).
I know a lot of people have said No to OO and No to Java, but that's what I would teach, it's what they will learn one day, it is free, covers all the bases and program One is only encumbered with one extra line - "class HelloWorld {" the rest is just static methods.
I often think I must be the only geek that never plays computer games so I generally have no opinion on the subject. But recently my son has got interested - he's 7 years old - and wants a Play Station for Christmas.
My issue is the cost of the games, things like Lego Indiana Jones if about £20-£30 depending on where you buy it. Now he is pretty good a gaming, and surely the Lego series are aimed at his age group, but at that age they get bored fairly quickly (he completed the Indiana Jones demo in less than a week (about 5 hours actual time). So he is going to need a pretty constant supply of games to keep him going.
There is no way I am paying £20-£30 per month to keep him in new games, in fact my initial response was to not get him a console at all - there are plenty of free games for the PC. Trouble is at 7 years old waiting for a PC to boot and solving basic issues with games failing to start etc is well beyond him, a console is much easier.
This is entertainment and we all have a budget (implicit or explicit). The games industry needs to realise that it is in the same market - in terms of house-hold budget - as Cinema, Subscrition TV, trips, toys, may be holidays. They may get a slice of that budget but it is only a slice and the more they push, the less I am inclined to give them.
Make 7-year-old priced games for 7-year-olds not adult quality, adult priced games!
But, if you believe the bible then god created angels with wings that can fly. I want to fly, has god limited my free will by not giving me wings? Most probably not, and if god took away the ability to even consider harming our children then even if we could think of it we would see it as the same as not being able to fly.
And who exactly is going to complain that god has limited our free will in this respect? And if god is omnipotent, then, free will or not, god is still complict for allowing this heanous thing to happen.
Thing is you are not going to change someone's mind from believer to none believer in one step. How about asking them why they worship and prase a god that condones the torture and murder of small children. If god is omnipotent he could stop this, he could have made it so that we are simply not able to have the thought of harming our own young.
Although if we are really made in god's image then presumably that's how his mind works - so why the worship?
I once heard an expression that went: "Arguing with an Engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud, sooner or later you realise that the pig is enjoying it!"
They should spend the money that they are spending on rolling out Digital TV on this. By the time they get Digital TV rolled out every where a lot of people will be watching TV over the internet anyway.
I'm not sure that your assertion is entirely correct. Many open source licenses only deal with the source code, they are silent on binaries. So an open source license may grant you the right to copy, modify and redistribute the source but in general they say nothing about binaries. Let's face it, most people are going to down load the binary which is not necessarily distrubuted under the open source license (it is not source code) and even if it is, I'm guessing that additional terms can be added to the binary over and above the source license.
Hallelujah brother, I couldn't have said it better, I have worked with J2EE for the last 9 years and still canâ(TM)t see why it is perceived as so special (I have also done ASP,.Net, PHP along with C, C++, Swing, VB, Fortran, and others as well over the years).
I may disagree with you about Faces - like EJB it seems a step too far, better to learn to write your own JSP tags and develop stuff that is clean, focused on what you need and that you understand.
It is always difficult (impossible?) to extrapolate from a single point. We don't know the shape of the curve or the direction to draw it in.
Add to that a lot of speculation about planetary formation and who can have any degree of certainty about where our solar system sits in the scheme of things.
We need to observe many more planetary systems before we have a clue.
Because they can't figure out how to make them leak oil
-which is a dig at the British car industry. Given that British cars were even better at leaking water than oil - there is real hope here for a rejuvination of the British computer industry.
One of the first things I ever programmed off my own initiative was a "striaght line curve" program. At the time making these from string with nails in a board was a bit of a fad. Replicating this on a Spectrum was easy becase is just needed a couple of loops and a line drawing command. Quick, simple but very effective.
Point is: find something that really grabs his attention that gives quick results. May be better to build a robot, little C programmable micro controllers are really cheap and a few lines of code can make an LED Flash. Swap the LED for a couple of motor controllers and a few more lines of code can make a robot go forwards, backwards and turn. The you can add sensors etc. The point is that it gives very quick results that can be built upon easily.
But it's about RECORDING. A chair maker can make a chair, and then make another exactly the same, and then another and another. In fact the chair maker can make the same thing for the rest of their lives and still make a living.
A song writer cannot keep writing the same song.
Before recordings, an artist could go round the country performing the same material over and over, and getting paid, over and over. But once you have a recording, you can listen as much as you want for one payment.
Does any one have any idea of the split between innovations that came from "progressive development" versus "eureka moments"? I am genuinely interested if any one has analysed this because I always get the feeling that the really mould-breaking steps forward come from a single bright idea or accident, rather than by diligent work over long periods.
For example most new drugs are created via formalised, long, diligent process. We need this but it seems to me that no single drug in a long time has had earth-shattering consequences - may be since penecilin - which was a eureka! type thing.
The point being that searching out new innovations pretty much seems to fail to get the real big ones (the web, relativity, penecilin...). And I guess that the big innovations are big because they came from no-where. If they took 20-30 years to evolve then they would not be a step change.
So are there any stats about the percentage of innovations that are from lone workers as opposed to those that come from established researchers with marketing budgets and access to conferences, etc.
Well said, although factories only ever produce new things and garages only ever fix existing things. Most businesses of any size have old and new. all most all that I have worked for have had this single toolset debate, but abondoned it when they relaised that they have to maintian their old apps and by the time they get round to replacing them, the current 'flavour of the month/year/decade' toolset will have moved on.
I always tend to think that the best approach is a gravitational one - set the process up so that it is easy to gravitate towards a choosen platform, but with enough effort (justification, energy, etc) alternatives can be chosen.
And then there is the need to consider bought in packages. The best deal wins irrespective of platform, no one ever said "we are only buying an accounting package that is written in Perl on MySQL because that is how we developed our website".
It's always struck me as being a bit like a stack over flow.
I like to have more than one task to work on, get stuck on one thing, just leave it and go to another, the solution to the first will come because the brain has been diverted and forced to think of other things.
However it's about chioce. If you are not stuck on a task your task flow builds up a number of things on your "stack". An interruption forces itself on to the stack, too many close together starts to push other things off the stack and then the inital task flow breaks down.
Good point, how often have you had to turn down the car radio to concentrate on a map, or when going through an unknown town?
Watch someone drivign while talking on a phone, they always slow down, they don't know they are slowing down, but they do, the driving activty has been pushed into the background.
Nothing like half the problem, not even a few percent of the problem, for starters they better not put it in a places that is likely to be invaded or attacked. Baghdad Museum housed things of this age an older.
The real problem is not scientific, it is political. Vast amounts of data have been lost over the last millenium and the things that get preserved are done so by institutions such as Churches that are wealthy and can survey the vaguaries of pollitical whim (even they loose a lot
when some dictator changes his mind).
1400 years is a very long time. Whole civilistations have risen and disappeared in less, I'm sure none of those could ever imagine their society ending.
You are still thinking about a single mulit-function device, and yet experience throughout human history generally seems to indicate that we prefer to use single pupose, dedicated tools. My phone has a calendar, mp3 player etc, but I still have a diary and a separate mp3 player.
Where I think this is going is that the computers will become "invisible" and we will have the "computer-less office" (i.e. one where you cant see the computers). Want to take notes, write them in your note book book (automatically backed up and shareable). Need to make an appointment, write it in your diary but then view it on your phone, over the web, send it to your friends.
Multi-purpose tools will always be a hassle, let me do what comes naturally and let the "computers" be clever enough to not get in the way.
Not only did Sun buy MySQL, Oracle is after BEA (Weblogic, amongst other things). Now, from a Java perspective, Sun used to be the langauge provider, Oracle seemed to have become the de-facto database to run heavy weight Java applications against and IBM Websphere, or BEA Weblogic was the app server.
I just wonder if these guys are all about to explode the Java App server space (watch out for shrapnel), and try to drive customers down either: Sun - Glassfish, MySQL Oracle - Weblogic, Oracle database IBM - Websphere, PostgreSQL
What is more concerning is that it seems likely that such fragmentation will cause non-technical management to run for cover under.NET
BTW whilst Sun has Solaris and IBM has AIX they all have Linux on which to run, and I guess that Oracle just isn't bothered about getting into hardware.
No matter how little you drink or what super foods you eat, it is impossible to become the next Darwin or Einstien if you do not have the natural aptitude. Some scientists produce numerous highly regarded papers in the same way that some Directors or Actors produced highly regarded films. I'm guessing that scientists who produce great stuff don't particularly like drinking and have found a scientific niche in which they really flourish.
It must be more about early development, environment, colleagues, etc as about how much beer. If the study indicated that the parents of great scientists did not drink/smoke/etc., then the study may have more meaning.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better they get a debugger so the can see what their code does.
For what it is worth I would go with a language that has either a GUI or a web output (I would even consider Flash/ActionScript because there are some really amazing things - like creating games - that can be achieved relativly simply).
I know a lot of people have said No to OO and No to Java, but that's what I would teach, it's what they will learn one day, it is free, covers all the bases and program One is only encumbered with one extra line - "class HelloWorld {" the rest is just static methods.
My issue is the cost of the games, things like Lego Indiana Jones if about £20-£30 depending on where you buy it. Now he is pretty good a gaming, and surely the Lego series are aimed at his age group, but at that age they get bored fairly quickly (he completed the Indiana Jones demo in less than a week (about 5 hours actual time). So he is going to need a pretty constant supply of games to keep him going.
There is no way I am paying £20-£30 per month to keep him in new games, in fact my initial response was to not get him a console at all - there are plenty of free games for the PC. Trouble is at 7 years old waiting for a PC to boot and solving basic issues with games failing to start etc is well beyond him, a console is much easier.
This is entertainment and we all have a budget (implicit or explicit). The games industry needs to realise that it is in the same market - in terms of house-hold budget - as Cinema, Subscrition TV, trips, toys, may be holidays. They may get a slice of that budget but it is only a slice and the more they push, the less I am inclined to give them.
Make 7-year-old priced games for 7-year-olds not adult quality, adult priced games!
But come on...
X ROU Killing Time
O Steely Glint
On my way ...
I think we should dispatch the nearest LSU
And who exactly is going to complain that god has limited our free will in this respect? And if god is omnipotent, then, free will or not, god is still complict for allowing this heanous thing to happen.
Although if we are really made in god's image then presumably that's how his mind works - so why the worship?
Now if Slashdotter = Engineer^Engineer ...
They should spend the money that they are spending on rolling out Digital TV on this. By the time they get Digital TV rolled out every where a lot of people will be watching TV over the internet anyway.
I'm not sure that your assertion is entirely correct. Many open source licenses only deal with the source code, they are silent on binaries. So an open source license may grant you the right to copy, modify and redistribute the source but in general they say nothing about binaries. Let's face it, most people are going to down load the binary which is not necessarily distrubuted under the open source license (it is not source code) and even if it is, I'm guessing that additional terms can be added to the binary over and above the source license.
I may disagree with you about Faces - like EJB it seems a step too far, better to learn to write your own JSP tags and develop stuff that is clean, focused on what you need and that you understand.
Add to that a lot of speculation about planetary formation and who can have any degree of certainty about where our solar system sits in the scheme of things.
We need to observe many more planetary systems before we have a clue.
But the car is in the garage at night
I look forward to the debate hitting the House of Lords:
Leader of the House: "Next motion - changes in copyright law to proscribe peer-to-peer file sharing."
Lord Knob: "Hold on one moment, we're the peers! We share files all the time. Law rejected!"
Lady Felch: "I've got a file! And a drill, in the garage next to my Range Rover, do you want to borrow it?"
House: "Snore, Snore, Snore!"
There fixed that for you
Yeah but he was flat-chested and had awful legs
Why are the Brits no good at making computers?
Because they can't figure out how to make them leak oil
-which is a dig at the British car industry. Given that British cars were even better at leaking water than oil - there is real hope here for a rejuvination of the British computer industry.
One of the first things I ever programmed off my own initiative was a "striaght line curve" program. At the time making these from string with nails in a board was a bit of a fad. Replicating this on a Spectrum was easy becase is just needed a couple of loops and a line drawing command. Quick, simple but very effective.
Point is: find something that really grabs his attention that gives quick results. May be better to build a robot, little C programmable micro controllers are really cheap and a few lines of code can make an LED Flash. Swap the LED for a couple of motor controllers and a few more lines of code can make a robot go forwards, backwards and turn. The you can add sensors etc. The point is that it gives very quick results that can be built upon easily.
Before recordings, an artist could go round the country performing the same material over and over, and getting paid, over and over. But once you have a recording, you can listen as much as you want for one payment.
For example most new drugs are created via formalised, long, diligent process. We need this but it seems to me that no single drug in a long time has had earth-shattering consequences - may be since penecilin - which was a eureka! type thing.
The point being that searching out new innovations pretty much seems to fail to get the real big ones (the web, relativity, penecilin ...). And I guess that the big innovations are big because they came from no-where. If they took 20-30 years to evolve then they would not be a step change.
So are there any stats about the percentage of innovations that are from lone workers as opposed to those that come from established researchers with marketing budgets and access to conferences, etc.
I always tend to think that the best approach is a gravitational one - set the process up so that it is easy to gravitate towards a choosen platform, but with enough effort (justification, energy, etc) alternatives can be chosen.
And then there is the need to consider bought in packages. The best deal wins irrespective of platform, no one ever said "we are only buying an accounting package that is written in Perl on MySQL because that is how we developed our website".
I like to have more than one task to work on, get stuck on one thing, just leave it and go to another, the solution to the first will come because the brain has been diverted and forced to think of other things.
However it's about chioce. If you are not stuck on a task your task flow builds up a number of things on your "stack". An interruption forces itself on to the stack, too many close together starts to push other things off the stack and then the inital task flow breaks down.
Watch someone drivign while talking on a phone, they always slow down, they don't know they are slowing down, but they do, the driving activty has been pushed into the background.
The real problem is not scientific, it is political. Vast amounts of data have been lost over the last millenium and the things that get preserved are done so by institutions such as Churches that are wealthy and can survey the vaguaries of pollitical whim (even they loose a lot when some dictator changes his mind).
1400 years is a very long time. Whole civilistations have risen and disappeared in less, I'm sure none of those could ever imagine their society ending.
Where I think this is going is that the computers will become "invisible" and we will have the "computer-less office" (i.e. one where you cant see the computers). Want to take notes, write them in your note book book (automatically backed up and shareable). Need to make an appointment, write it in your diary but then view it on your phone, over the web, send it to your friends.
Multi-purpose tools will always be a hassle, let me do what comes naturally and let the "computers" be clever enough to not get in the way.
Not only did Sun buy MySQL, Oracle is after BEA (Weblogic, amongst other things). Now, from a Java perspective, Sun used to be the langauge provider, Oracle seemed to have become the de-facto database to run heavy weight Java applications against and IBM Websphere, or BEA Weblogic was the app server.
.NET
I just wonder if these guys are all about to explode the Java App server space (watch out for shrapnel), and try to drive customers down either:
Sun - Glassfish, MySQL
Oracle - Weblogic, Oracle database
IBM - Websphere, PostgreSQL
What is more concerning is that it seems likely that such fragmentation will cause non-technical management to run for cover under
BTW whilst Sun has Solaris and IBM has AIX they all have Linux on which to run, and I guess that Oracle just isn't bothered about getting into hardware.
No matter how little you drink or what super foods you eat, it is impossible to become the next Darwin or Einstien if you do not have the natural aptitude. Some scientists produce numerous highly regarded papers in the same way that some Directors or Actors produced highly regarded films. I'm guessing that scientists who produce great stuff don't particularly like drinking and have found a scientific niche in which they really flourish.
It must be more about early development, environment, colleagues, etc as about how much beer. If the study indicated that the parents of great scientists did not drink/smoke/etc., then the study may have more meaning.