I don't know. In my experience, how students do with that book seems to depend far more heavily on their professor than anything else. Though it does leave them relatively unable to program.
I see your point, but teaching students basic set theory, first-order predicate calculus, and mathematical proofs under the banner of "computer science" wouldn't hurt.
And yes, these are in fact the first three topics covered in the core computer science course at my university. And the professor came in on the first day of lecture and told us, "The first half of this class will be the things your high school failed to teach you.".
Free is great. I've used Ubuntu and Fedora and I like them both, but you and I are not mainstream users. Most mainstream users don't understand that software can be free. Especially with the virus/malware scares every week, if it doesn't come in a box or preloaded on their PC, they won't use it. It's been drilled into their heads that downloading free things from the internet is bad for your computer or even illegal.
I heard a lot of stuff like this from my mom before I got her onto Ubuntu. Then in about a month she did a complete about-face and became a Linux fangirl. She's a social worker.
Installshield isn't the right way to install software and neither is.deb and LSB. The Right Way is.app packages as seen on OSX. To install an app, you drag its.app into/Applications; a corresponding process works for static and dynamic libraries. To uninstall, remove the.app archive. To run a.app, pass it as an executable to Finder or any shell.
My answer to that: here's Ubuntu Linux, it's very user friendly and has tech support. It uses the GNOME desktop environment. Go install this and come back when you've learned to use it.
Seriously, everyone. Just because something comes from Japan, or looks like it does, does not make it worth half a red cent. If we want to review statistics textbooks, can we please review real ones instead of going "OOOH! Pretty pictures!" at every dumbass mangaka who can stick trapezoids, circles, and triangles together (with rounded corners, wow!) to make a basically human shape?
Actually, now that I think of it I wonder if I should scrap Ubuntu and go with Gentoo. I'm quite familiar with using it on my old zombie desktop machine at home, and it seems that a Gentoo system compiled for small code size with a lightweight user environment would better extract the available speed and battery life from a netbook than Ubuntu, even if it means waiting around for emerges.
True. Still, I think the setup I'm building soon will look like what most people can best use. Step 1: A high-powered gaming and work machine dual-booting Linux and Windows XP (most people will only need XP). Step 2: A nice little Ubuntu netbook for portable browsing, email, and emulated gaming.
I've actually got what I thought was a perfectly good Macbook Pro from 2007, but the amount of hardware issues I've experienced in roughly 1.5 years with this thing, coupled with the rapidly falling prices of both netbooks and desktop PC parts, has convinced me that I get a better deal by specializing my rig into a low-power ultraportable and a stationary high-power media machine rather than trying to carry around a semi-portable multimedia laptop that guzzles battery too quickly to spend extended periods doing something that a netbook couldn't do far more efficiently.
"Anochi" means "I am (formally)" in Hebrew and comes from ancient Egyptian. But hey, the point was that slave rebellions often actually succeed due to sheer numbers and brute force. I'm with you on Sefer Shmot not having much archaeological evidence to support its story.
Actually attractiveness seems, to a large extent, to be correlated with cultural notions of what appears healthy or high-status. Europeans of the Renaissance often found chubby women attractive (it indicated a longer lifespan than exposed ribs, yes?), and old Semitic cultures considered a woman's hair so unbearably sexy it had to be covered for modesty (such a custom is still found in Judaism and Islam as a religious practice for the exact same reason). In modern Anglo-Saxon-derived cultures thin is in and hair is a mundane side concern relative to "T and A". I'm sure corresponding examples could be found for males.
Evolution invented a species capable of transmitting information memetically (ie: culture) because doing so allows populations to adapt an order of magnitude faster than transmitting adaptations genetically.
So "dating down" isn't bad for the species, because whatever a person thinks is attractive is their own personal projection of what's best for the species according to their genetic and memetic heritage, and evolution will select and pressure among the genes and memes in the eventual production of offspring.
In other news, I need to get back to studying for final exams.
Well netbooks are also great for old console and portable emulation in a small, energy-efficient form factor. I like the idea of carrying around a digitized library of NES, Genesis, Game Boy, Neo-Geo, arcade, SNES, Game Gear, GBC, Nintendo 64, and GBA games in the form factor of a large paperback novel.
Reading the paper on HtDP, and one of the funniest conclusions is that female students seem to prefer the HtDP approach over traditional SICP or "Welcome to Java" classes by a factor of 4.
Maybe the lack of girls in Computer Science has just been because the teaching has sucked.
Dijkstra's course is a horrible idea. It's like showing students formal languages as the basis of an introductory English Writing course. Teaching formal methods from the start just turns students off, because practical and non-trivial programs simply don't have formal proofs of correctness (halting problem and similar issues).
3. No professional organization. This is a huge one. To the outside world, no one knows what a good software developer does. Just as most of us know nothing of what makes a good lawyer. We treat lawyers like a black box. Here's what I need done... now go. This is how businesses treat software. It is professional organizations that mantain the quality of people. They take care of ensuring people are trained properly and things work as follows. You don't need to know anything about accounting. However, if you're a business and need some complex accounting done, you get a CA not just some guy with a few accounting degrees. It is also why most professional organizations employ themselves. CAs join firms like PWC, KPMG... Lawyers do their own thing. Software developers work for a business. Which yes... makes you just another worker bee.
The problem is that nerds are far too Libertarian, with a capital L. Forming a professional association to them would be tantamount to forming a union, and that would be sacrilege!
That sounds like a very cultural thing. Whether it's considered more appropriate to, when given a bad offer, politely turn down the entire job or counter-offer and start negotiating varies widely.
At least in the USA I've heard it varies by company and by position, but in general IF AND ONLY IF you are provably a very desirable potential employee negotiating tends to net workers results just better enough to justify doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's more to the world than object-oriented *, you know.
I don't know. In my experience, how students do with that book seems to depend far more heavily on their professor than anything else. Though it does leave them relatively unable to program.
I see your point, but teaching students basic set theory, first-order predicate calculus, and mathematical proofs under the banner of "computer science" wouldn't hurt.
And yes, these are in fact the first three topics covered in the core computer science course at my university. And the professor came in on the first day of lecture and told us, "The first half of this class will be the things your high school failed to teach you.".
And you are thinking of Great Cthulhu.
And unfortunately both of those groups have begun rapidly losing numbers to the Assassins...
Ow. Why... man in white hood... tell my girlfriend... she's awesome...
AAHAHAHRHRHRHRGHHGGF.
Free is great. I've used Ubuntu and Fedora and I like them both, but you and I are not mainstream users. Most mainstream users don't understand that software can be free. Especially with the virus/malware scares every week, if it doesn't come in a box or preloaded on their PC, they won't use it. It's been drilled into their heads that downloading free things from the internet is bad for your computer or even illegal.
I heard a lot of stuff like this from my mom before I got her onto Ubuntu. Then in about a month she did a complete about-face and became a Linux fangirl. She's a social worker.
Installshield isn't the right way to install software and neither is .deb and LSB. The Right Way is .app packages as seen on OSX. To install an app, you drag its .app into /Applications; a corresponding process works for static and dynamic libraries. To uninstall, remove the .app archive. To run a .app, pass it as an executable to Finder or any shell.
My answer to that: here's Ubuntu Linux, it's very user friendly and has tech support. It uses the GNOME desktop environment. Go install this and come back when you've learned to use it.
Seriously, everyone. Just because something comes from Japan, or looks like it does, does not make it worth half a red cent. If we want to review statistics textbooks, can we please review real ones instead of going "OOOH! Pretty pictures!" at every dumbass mangaka who can stick trapezoids, circles, and triangles together (with rounded corners, wow!) to make a basically human shape?
Actually, now that I think of it I wonder if I should scrap Ubuntu and go with Gentoo. I'm quite familiar with using it on my old zombie desktop machine at home, and it seems that a Gentoo system compiled for small code size with a lightweight user environment would better extract the available speed and battery life from a netbook than Ubuntu, even if it means waiting around for emerges.
True. Still, I think the setup I'm building soon will look like what most people can best use. Step 1: A high-powered gaming and work machine dual-booting Linux and Windows XP (most people will only need XP). Step 2: A nice little Ubuntu netbook for portable browsing, email, and emulated gaming.
I've actually got what I thought was a perfectly good Macbook Pro from 2007, but the amount of hardware issues I've experienced in roughly 1.5 years with this thing, coupled with the rapidly falling prices of both netbooks and desktop PC parts, has convinced me that I get a better deal by specializing my rig into a low-power ultraportable and a stationary high-power media machine rather than trying to carry around a semi-portable multimedia laptop that guzzles battery too quickly to spend extended periods doing something that a netbook couldn't do far more efficiently.
And the new stuff sure as hell won't be Apple.
Great, let's get on with that Butlerian Jihad. I've got some good spice supplies for afters!
"Anochi" means "I am (formally)" in Hebrew and comes from ancient Egyptian. But hey, the point was that slave rebellions often actually succeed due to sheer numbers and brute force. I'm with you on Sefer Shmot not having much archaeological evidence to support its story.
Actually attractiveness seems, to a large extent, to be correlated with cultural notions of what appears healthy or high-status. Europeans of the Renaissance often found chubby women attractive (it indicated a longer lifespan than exposed ribs, yes?), and old Semitic cultures considered a woman's hair so unbearably sexy it had to be covered for modesty (such a custom is still found in Judaism and Islam as a religious practice for the exact same reason). In modern Anglo-Saxon-derived cultures thin is in and hair is a mundane side concern relative to "T and A". I'm sure corresponding examples could be found for males.
Evolution invented a species capable of transmitting information memetically (ie: culture) because doing so allows populations to adapt an order of magnitude faster than transmitting adaptations genetically.
So "dating down" isn't bad for the species, because whatever a person thinks is attractive is their own personal projection of what's best for the species according to their genetic and memetic heritage, and evolution will select and pressure among the genes and memes in the eventual production of offspring.
In other news, I need to get back to studying for final exams.
Well netbooks are also great for old console and portable emulation in a small, energy-efficient form factor. I like the idea of carrying around a digitized library of NES, Genesis, Game Boy, Neo-Geo, arcade, SNES, Game Gear, GBC, Nintendo 64, and GBA games in the form factor of a large paperback novel.
Only one man dares give me the raspberry: Lonestar!
No, evil people started that war.
How is contract law related to ownership?
But do you understand "chofshi"?
Reading the paper on HtDP, and one of the funniest conclusions is that female students seem to prefer the HtDP approach over traditional SICP or "Welcome to Java" classes by a factor of 4.
Maybe the lack of girls in Computer Science has just been because the teaching has sucked.
Dijkstra's course is a horrible idea. It's like showing students formal languages as the basis of an introductory English Writing course. Teaching formal methods from the start just turns students off, because practical and non-trivial programs simply don't have formal proofs of correctness (halting problem and similar issues).
But I want the right to be a slim, bike-riding programmer with a scotch!
Oh wait, that's called a computer scientist.
OH God my eyes. My poor eyes. I'm rolling on the floor laughing at my impending blindness.
3. No professional organization. This is a huge one. To the outside world, no one knows what a good software developer does. Just as most of us know nothing of what makes a good lawyer. We treat lawyers like a black box. Here's what I need done... now go. This is how businesses treat software. It is professional organizations that mantain the quality of people. They take care of ensuring people are trained properly and things work as follows. You don't need to know anything about accounting. However, if you're a business and need some complex accounting done, you get a CA not just some guy with a few accounting degrees. It is also why most professional organizations employ themselves. CAs join firms like PWC, KPMG... Lawyers do their own thing. Software developers work for a business. Which yes... makes you just another worker bee.
The problem is that nerds are far too Libertarian, with a capital L. Forming a professional association to them would be tantamount to forming a union, and that would be sacrilege!
That sounds like a very cultural thing. Whether it's considered more appropriate to, when given a bad offer, politely turn down the entire job or counter-offer and start negotiating varies widely.
At least in the USA I've heard it varies by company and by position, but in general IF AND ONLY IF you are provably a very desirable potential employee negotiating tends to net workers results just better enough to justify doing it.