Thank you for that! A most interesting read, and something I've always recommended, except that in my version kids start with C and move directly to Assembly.
From there, as they say, the computer world is their oyster.
That's because, with products like Delphi, Pascal may seem to some much less an ancient teaching tool as a robust platform for client/server enterprise applications.
No other language I know of has the same instant gratification as BASIC. The strength of BASIC for me was if I wanted to draw a box, all I had to do was set the screen resolution and the coords of the box. That was it, two lines. I didn't have to load a bunch of libraries or write a bunch of arrays or design some placeholder interface to put the box into. I don't think any language will be able to take BASIC's mantle until it regains that level of simplicity and the ease of running and testing what would be to most other languages wholly incomplete or broken programs. There's a lot more opportunity in BASIC to just ask oneself 'what would happen if I did this?' without worrying about creating some huge framework just to test one concept.
Lucky you! I learned BASIC on a C=64. If I wanted to draw a box, all I had to do was... well, I had to break into the ML monitor and poke the graphics RAM by hand.
Crap. I remember the C=64 very fondly, but to this day I cannot help feel that it must have been somebody's practical joke to include such powerful combination of graphics and sound hardware--unequaled by most of its contemporary peers--yet absolutely no fscking interface to any of it from the BASIC interpreter.
On the other hand, precisely for this limitation, C=64 was the gateway drug that started many burgeoning game programmers on their path to 8-bit immortality.
I guess the point of the submitter is that, back in the day, the rudimentary input and output of BASIC programs was rather de rigueur at the time, while nowadays such interfaces seem archaic and obsolete. Therefore, writing a BASIC program may not fulfill the expectations of someone who has grown up using a GUI environment.
This is, of course, bullshit. Making a computer write "Hello World!" or your name across the screen repeatedly by your own device is as much fun, intoxicating and empowering today as it was 30 years ago.
Of course, those wishing to sit down and write a multi-player, 3-D rendered, high-performance game for the iPad after spending a week reading a "For Dummies" book; they will be thoroughly disappointed.
This is no different from how it was in the 1980s. Writing my name across the screen repeatedly was about the most interesting thing I could coax my C=64 to do after a perplexing read of the instruction manual.
Eventually, I had to learn some very complex concepts in order to advance further than that and really get control of the machine. Things such as interrupt vectors, bitmaps, movable object blocks, RAM/ROM addressing, data structures, flow control, memory maps, Boolean algebra, non-decimal number systems, etc. Sure, these may not be high-level abstractions, but they are nonetheless sophisticated, non-trivial concepts, and just as hard to master to the uninitiated.
Perhaps because of their decidedly low-level detail, they may be even harder to grasp than modern platforms, which are by their very nature, designed to match closer the way humans think and work.
Having the curiosity, interest, and aptitude to learn and master complex concepts is what distinguishes the amateur programmer from the casual user. These are traits inherent to the person, not the subject or the tools, and they are as present in today's generation as in past ones. Moreover, they transcend languages, cultures, and even platforms.
Wow! I almost made it to the end. I thought I was safe, the scroll-bar was almost touching the bottom border of the window. Just a few more posts to go, not a chance now... and then... someone had to spin an article on a lame new product from Best Buy as an Apple conspiracy. Great.
Thanks for the jolt back into reality. For a moment I had forgotten I was in Slashdot.
I'd be honest, I do not see a Steve Jobs comic working, either.
By the way, I do not think that comic was commissioned by Jobs or Apple. The article does not mention this, though it does mention that an actually authorized biography will be published next year by Walter Isaacson.
It may not be the potential damage to their hipster image they fear. Perhaps those comics don't sell because they are ridiculous and crap.
By looking at the sample artwork, I do not see anything remotely interesting, and the thought that they are portraying celebrities as super-heroes makes me cringe uncomfortably.
It looks like one of those lame comics that Google likes to put out. Who thinks lame, uninteresting art, and a writing tone and style reminiscent of pop-up books is every going to attract anyone?
"Channel surfing" is a common and repetitive task, especially with commercial networks. Constant adjustment of environment lights is not really as common.
Sure, it can come in handy if you'r trying to use them for a disco light show, but again, that is still not a mainstream use case.
My whole point wasn't that the technology is useless (though I do think it is a solution in look of a problem). My comment was in response to the parent: just because TV remotes became so popular to the point that local buttons on the set were eventually phased out, does not suggest that the same applies to wall-switches-cum-remotes. The former was a very obvious problem.
So you are one of the few, or as I said in my previous post, part of the "not many people."
The point is that controlling wall switches remotely is not a common use case, and cannot really be compared to the early TV remote introduction, since the TV remote offers plenty of more convenience than mere power switching.
The TV remote solved a very obvious problem; the light bulb remote, not so much.
Wow, how insightful. Would you mind telling me which additional functions can I have my light bulbs do that would be so much more convenient to do repeatedly from the couch.
As far as I know, not many people use remote control "clickers" to just power their television sets on or off.
That may be true, but the whole purpose of most of these comments is to point out, in a very pedantic, nerdy way, that "Map Reduce" is just a specification not an implementation, and by doing so discredit the comments of the ex-googler when he compared it to Hadoop.
It seems clear that he was comparing the actual implementations.
But the guy is not talking about the research paper, he's probably talking about Google's implementation of those concepts, which wouldn't be surprising if it were called simply, "MapReduce."
You are missing the point. There is nothing magical about 75 mph. After all, speed is relative to the observer. It is a matter of the limited time in which our brains can react to unexpected events, under duress, in order to maintain control of a complex machine.
This limit may have been 75 mph back in the days of dirt roads and manual transmissions. However, the limit may be higher nowadays when cars are easier to handle and roads are much clearer and homogenous. More importantly, the factors that lead to events that require a very short reaction time have been mitigated by our advancements in driving mechanics and technology, and our changes to the environment that improve driving conditions.
That 75 mph number may be relative to conditions and contingent to technology, but the minimum time required to react in a stressful situation is still hard-wired in our brains. According to the article, so is the limit of significant human empathic and emotional connections that we can maintain.
Ah, the response of a typical Slashdot dweller, I suppose.
It is not a matter of memorizing screen names or trivial facts about others--the human mind is substantially adept at that. The point is establishing personal relationships with those people, emotional and psychological bonds, and interacting with them socially in a significant way.
Posting a message to a chat-room with hundreds of people is not the same as interacting with each one personally, individually; even if you managed to remember all their screen names.
Slashdot Mirror
Not yet...
*Whoosh!*
Sorry, it was a stupid joke.
Wow, what a coincidence. It looks just like your old sig at the bottom of your comment.
Thank you for that! A most interesting read, and something I've always recommended, except that in my version kids start with C and move directly to Assembly.
From there, as they say, the computer world is their oyster.
-dZ.
That's because, with products like Delphi, Pascal may seem to some much less an ancient teaching tool as a robust platform for client/server enterprise applications.
-dZ.
Lucky you! I learned BASIC on a C=64. If I wanted to draw a box, all I had to do was... well, I had to break into the ML monitor and poke the graphics RAM by hand.
Crap. I remember the C=64 very fondly, but to this day I cannot help feel that it must have been somebody's practical joke to include such powerful combination of graphics and sound hardware--unequaled by most of its contemporary peers--yet absolutely no fscking interface to any of it from the BASIC interpreter.
On the other hand, precisely for this limitation, C=64 was the gateway drug that started many burgeoning game programmers on their path to 8-bit immortality.
-dZ.
I guess the point of the submitter is that, back in the day, the rudimentary input and output of BASIC programs was rather de rigueur at the time, while nowadays such interfaces seem archaic and obsolete. Therefore, writing a BASIC program may not fulfill the expectations of someone who has grown up using a GUI environment.
This is, of course, bullshit. Making a computer write "Hello World!" or your name across the screen repeatedly by your own device is as much fun, intoxicating and empowering today as it was 30 years ago.
Of course, those wishing to sit down and write a multi-player, 3-D rendered, high-performance game for the iPad after spending a week reading a "For Dummies" book; they will be thoroughly disappointed.
This is no different from how it was in the 1980s. Writing my name across the screen repeatedly was about the most interesting thing I could coax my C=64 to do after a perplexing read of the instruction manual.
Eventually, I had to learn some very complex concepts in order to advance further than that and really get control of the machine. Things such as interrupt vectors, bitmaps, movable object blocks, RAM/ROM addressing, data structures, flow control, memory maps, Boolean algebra, non-decimal number systems, etc. Sure, these may not be high-level abstractions, but they are nonetheless sophisticated, non-trivial concepts, and just as hard to master to the uninitiated.
Perhaps because of their decidedly low-level detail, they may be even harder to grasp than modern platforms, which are by their very nature, designed to match closer the way humans think and work.
Having the curiosity, interest, and aptitude to learn and master complex concepts is what distinguishes the amateur programmer from the casual user. These are traits inherent to the person, not the subject or the tools, and they are as present in today's generation as in past ones. Moreover, they transcend languages, cultures, and even platforms.
-dZ.
What "Android name in the consumer's mind"?
People see TV commercials, posters, and other material promoting marks and models of handsets, such as Droid, EVO, Galaxy, etc., not Android.
The same is true for the competition: consumers purchase iPhones and iPods, not "iOS devices."
-dZ.
The "full gambit"? I guess Android does require a sacrifice in order to gain an advantage.
-dZ.
Java is related Javascript, as much related is.
Wow! I almost made it to the end. I thought I was safe, the scroll-bar was almost touching the bottom border of the window. Just a few more posts to go, not a chance now... and then... someone had to spin an article on a lame new product from Best Buy as an Apple conspiracy. Great.
Thanks for the jolt back into reality. For a moment I had forgotten I was in Slashdot.
-dZ.
Or Firefox burritos. How about Firefox waffle irons and dishwasher liquid?
-dZ.
Really? Have you considered that all those NeXT innovations power Apple's devices and services, including their online and app stores.
dZ.
I'd be honest, I do not see a Steve Jobs comic working, either.
By the way, I do not think that comic was commissioned by Jobs or Apple. The article does not mention this, though it does mention that an actually authorized biography will be published next year by Walter Isaacson.
-dZ.
It may not be the potential damage to their hipster image they fear. Perhaps those comics don't sell because they are ridiculous and crap.
By looking at the sample artwork, I do not see anything remotely interesting, and the thought that they are portraying celebrities as super-heroes makes me cringe uncomfortably.
It looks like one of those lame comics that Google likes to put out. Who thinks lame, uninteresting art, and a writing tone and style reminiscent of pop-up books is every going to attract anyone?
-dZ.
"Channel surfing" is a common and repetitive task, especially with commercial networks. Constant adjustment of environment lights is not really as common.
Sure, it can come in handy if you'r trying to use them for a disco light show, but again, that is still not a mainstream use case.
My whole point wasn't that the technology is useless (though I do think it is a solution in look of a problem). My comment was in response to the parent: just because TV remotes became so popular to the point that local buttons on the set were eventually phased out, does not suggest that the same applies to wall-switches-cum-remotes. The former was a very obvious problem.
dZ.
So you are one of the few, or as I said in my previous post, part of the "not many people."
The point is that controlling wall switches remotely is not a common use case, and cannot really be compared to the early TV remote introduction, since the TV remote offers plenty of more convenience than mere power switching.
The TV remote solved a very obvious problem; the light bulb remote, not so much.
dZ.
Wow, how insightful. Would you mind telling me which additional functions can I have my light bulbs do that would be so much more convenient to do repeatedly from the couch.
As far as I know, not many people use remote control "clickers" to just power their television sets on or off.
dZ.
That may be true, but the whole purpose of most of these comments is to point out, in a very pedantic, nerdy way, that "Map Reduce" is just a specification not an implementation, and by doing so discredit the comments of the ex-googler when he compared it to Hadoop.
It seems clear that he was comparing the actual implementations.
-dZ.
But the guy is not talking about the research paper, he's probably talking about Google's implementation of those concepts, which wouldn't be surprising if it were called simply, "MapReduce."
-dZ.
You can has chinese cheezburger.
-dZ.
I am Juan MacCloud from the clan MacCloud. I am El Hilandero... There can be only Juan.
You are missing the point. There is nothing magical about 75 mph. After all, speed is relative to the observer. It is a matter of the limited time in which our brains can react to unexpected events, under duress, in order to maintain control of a complex machine.
This limit may have been 75 mph back in the days of dirt roads and manual transmissions. However, the limit may be higher nowadays when cars are easier to handle and roads are much clearer and homogenous. More importantly, the factors that lead to events that require a very short reaction time have been mitigated by our advancements in driving mechanics and technology, and our changes to the environment that improve driving conditions.
That 75 mph number may be relative to conditions and contingent to technology, but the minimum time required to react in a stressful situation is still hard-wired in our brains. According to the article, so is the limit of significant human empathic and emotional connections that we can maintain.
-dZ.
Ah, the response of a typical Slashdot dweller, I suppose.
It is not a matter of memorizing screen names or trivial facts about others--the human mind is substantially adept at that. The point is establishing personal relationships with those people, emotional and psychological bonds, and interacting with them socially in a significant way.
Posting a message to a chat-room with hundreds of people is not the same as interacting with each one personally, individually; even if you managed to remember all their screen names.
-dZ.
They're slightly more stoned than a punk switch, and less reliable than a blues switch.
-dZ.