Do you, or have you ever, used a graphical user interface? If you use #Windows, #macOS, or any version of #Linux with a window manager or desktop environment, you can thank Dr. Clarence "Skip" Ellis.
Dr. Ellis worked at Xerox PARC, the research organization that developed the modern GUI. Icons, windows, the mouse, Ethernet-based networking, laser printing - all of these (and more) came out of PARC. Dr. Ellis led the team that created Officetalk, the first program to use icons and the Internet. He got his start at 15 years old showing a local tech company how to reuse punch cards, which was a game-changer back in 1958.
Oh, and he was also the first black man to earn a PhD in Computer Science.
Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of the Pascal programming language, author of "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs", and more, passed away on January 1.
Wirth's law, named after him, is an adage which states that software gets slower more rapidly than hardware gets faster.
I would appreciate it if people could help me get more federated on my new instance. Please boost this post if any of the following tags apply to you so I can follow!
A team of computer manufacturers, users, & university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
Throughout her career, Hopper made significant contributions to computer science, including the development of the concept of machine-independent programming languages, which greatly facilitated software development. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers.
Beating neural approaches to sentence classification for out-of-domain datasets with ... nearest neighbour over gzip (finding the ratio between the compressed size of the documents combined vs. smallest compressed size of the inputs being compared).
This is both hilariously simple, and somewhat damning of how the other methods do in this context.
Fascinating article from IEEE Spectrum that discusses the carbon footprint of software and how we can both measure and improve it: https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-software
The benefit is not only less carbon, but following some of the principles that are outlined can decrease costs and improve efficiency.
The article references tools such as Firefox Profiler and Ecograder as well as an open source Sustainable Software Engineering course.
Very tentative steps to #decolonize#computerscience have inevitably been met with attacks in our right wing press.
What could computing have to do with colonialism, both in its legacy and as it still exists today? Off the top of my head, here are some very material, empirical questions which I think CS undergraduates should and would be interested in finding answers to:
Help! I have a student in my computer science class whose JAWS screenreader won’t read any output from the cmd prompt or Power Shell. (It works in my instance of JAWS as well as other students’). Relevant speech history is: ‘Unavailable’ ‘0’ ‘0’ instead of ‘hello world’. Has anyone else experienced this or do you have any tips? Is the answer to reinstall JAWS? They’re so frustrated and I don’t want them to hate computers 😢
Rust 101 is a #university course that introduces #rustlang to computer science students, and is available for anyone who wants to teach Rust. Don't hesitate to contact us if you'd like some help setting up the course for your students!
I am currently trying to study anything #technology so that I know what part of the #tech field (specifically #computerscience or just #coding in general) I want to be in, so if anyone can give me advice on where I can find good free classes or research into these subjects I would really appreciate it!
» #introduction «
hello world! new to mastodon so please be patient if i mess stuff up
my name is leah, i'm in my final year studying #computerscience at 22 👵. i'm #autistic, #trans, and other stuff that scares republicans (she/her or pup/pups).
outside of tech i love reading #comics and #manga 📚, and indie #gaming (rain world, hollow knight, celeste!) 🎮 in my free time.
i have special interests that come and go, right now i am reading #riichi book one and learning how to play #mahjong 🀄!
#introductions I've never been any good at Twitter so I'm unlikely to be any good at Mastodon, but I'm happy to be here. Happy to diversify a little. I hope I picked the right server to join.
It is going to take some getting used to not having to thread things, I can tell you that right now for free.
Call me superficial, but what first got me really excited about electronics were the boards and components, like mysterious jewelry from another world— and especially the little bespoke dev boards with interesting colors and patterns— and those inviting arrays of protoboard holes that seemed to whisper “modify me! make something cool!” Here are some beautiful components for you to enjoy. #electronics#arduino#lightBlueBean#segmentDisplay#computerscience#roaches#oled#atmega328p
You will use spatial optimisation to solve the mystery of how birds use geomagnetic field to find their way. Come work with me, @jedalong, Charlotte van der Lijn & Ciaran Beggan.
What was it like to work at Xerox PARC at its peak?
This guide for newcomers to the lab, published 40 years ago in 1983, introduces the computing and social environment of PARC. Lots of quirky systems and obscure lore.
I just read this article from Moshe Vardi in the latest issue of CACM and I encourage everyone in computing to read it. As computing researchers and professionals, we have a responsibility to society, and in Moshe's article, I think this about sums up the current state: "we once considered computing as the 'Rebels', but it turns out that computing is the 'Empire'"
Today in 1972, Beatrice Worsley died. Born in Mexico in 1921, she was the first female computer scientist in Canada.
She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1 & taught at the University of Toronto for over 20 years.
Someone with a Ph.D.[1] in Computer Science (or something similar) who is interested in a job at a German university (ruhr area)?
The focus would be on teaching (fluent German required) and running the department's IT systems.
Initially limited to three years, but transition to permanent is planned.
Quite a lot of independence, I'd say the colleagues are ok (but might be biased 😇).
If interested, please drop me a DM for more information.
[1]: Or on the track getting the Phd in the next months