I should write a chatbot for my courses but basically like the Eliza bot... No actual intelligence, it just repeats something like "have you tried reading the documentation?" or "what have you tried so far?" in response to whatever they say.
After almost threee decades I'm happy to have reconnected with the Computer Science professor who, in the early 1990s, introduced me to Lisp via Scheme. Throughout the rest of his teaching career, he continued exposing students to programming languages, paradigms, and ideas outside of the mainstream of computing.
I'm grateful to my professor and I wish every student a teacher like him.
Niklaus Wirth, computer scientist and father of the Pascal programming language, sadly passed away on January 1st this year, less than 2 months short of what would've been his 90th birthday today.
Somehow our uni printing backend turned my 6MB PDF into 10 GIGABYTES... How? I have no idea. I had my worst printing experience today and got home with only 80% of what I wanted to print out 💀 It works normally but today (after giving up on uploading and using a USB stick) I had my funds run out mid-printing, then after that had the color run out mid-printing and after that it said I have no funds even though I charged my account again! #print#printing#uni#studying#computerscience#tech
🆕 blog! “There should only ever be one way to express yourself”
I've been thinking about programming languages and their design. In her book about the divergence of the English and American languages, Lynne Murphy asks this question: wouldn’t it be great if language were logical and maximally efficient? If sentences had only as many …
I've been thinking about programming languages and their design.
In her book about the divergence of the English and American languages, Lynne Murphy asks this question:
wouldn’t it be great if language were logical and maximally efficient? If sentences had only as many syllables as strictly needed? If each word had a single, unique meaning? If there were no homophones, so we’d not be able to mix up dear and deer or two and too?
That got me thinking about the creativity which can be expressed in code - and whether its a good thing.
Let's take an incredibly simple and common operation - incrementing an integer variable by one. How would you do that? You've probably see these variations:
$i = $i + 1;
or
$i = $i++;
or
$i = 1 + $i;
or
$i = int( float_adder( float($i), 1.00 ) );
or
i1, i2 = i1^i2, (i1&i2) << 1
I'm sure you can come up with a few more esoteric methods.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Is that right? As described in What is Pythonic?, the Python language itself has multiple ways to accomplish one thing.
But, is it a good idea?
Back to Lynne Murphy again:
No, absolutely not. No way. Quit even thinking that. What are you, some kind of philistine? If Shakespeare hadn’t played with the number of syllables in his sentences, he would not have been able to communicate in iambic pentameter.
This isn't an original idea, but I needed to get it out of my brain. There are many different definitions of what "Open Source". We can have a lovely argument over a pint as to whether GPLv3 is too open or if a licence which hasn't been validated by the OSI counts. But, more fundamentally, […]
This isn't an original idea, but I needed to get it out of my brain.
There are many different definitions of what "Open Source". We can have a lovely argument over a pint as to whether GPLv3 is too open or if a licence which hasn't been validated by the OSI counts. But, more fundamentally, I think Open Source roughly falls into seven levels.
These aren't in any particular order of importance. And feel free to argue in the comments if you think I've radically misunderstood something.
The source is yours to do with as you please. You can distribute it, build on it, print it out, eat it, use it in a weapons system. There are no restriction.
There is ponderous legal language, but it all adds up to one thing - you have to comply with our requirements.
Perhaps they say "only redistribute with this licence" or maybe "you must make everything this touches open". Either way, you aren't quite as free to do what you want.
These are less often seen, but becoming more common. You are free to do anything you want with this code... unless you're someone we don't like.
Some code says you can't use it for military purposes, others restrict its usage if you're going to be racist with it, and some say it can only be used by a particular class of people.
These licences are controversial. Openness means this is for everybody. Sure, no one likes the thought of their code being in a bomb. But your agents of imperial oppression are my freedom fighters.
We're on GitHub! We actively want you to participate! Not only is the code open - but so is the community! Anyone with an IDE and an idea is welcome to pitch in!
We're open! But only certain people are allowed to contribute. All others will be shunned.
This is the model Google takes with Android - fully open, but good luck getting even a comma changed. There's also a popular open source project which requires its contributors to be religious!
There is something coming that you and I cannot understand. Deep in the darkest trenches of the Internet comes a new breed of hacker. Their social norms diverge from ours. They aren't beholden to the old ways and care not for our pettifogging traditions.
The are building a new form of Open Source. Something that reflects the needs and concerns of their generation, rather than the tired problems of ours. Old farts will harrumph and grumble about how it isn't proper Open Source - and moan that the youngling don't fear their elders any more.
But, make no mistake, the future is coming and it doesn't need your old-fashioned opinions.
I'm too scared to ask for a raise... I don't even know if it's valid to ask for a raise. Working there since like 1½ years as a working student (WERKSTUDENT in german) and all the starting offers I see from other ppl who would want to get IT students are like 25% higher than what I'm earning rn. When the hell is it valid to ask? xD #it#computerscience#development#developer#coding#programming#job#career
Locally correctable codes need barely any information to fix errors, but they’re extremely long. Now we know that the simplest versions can’t get any shorter.
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.