Comment Re:DP, Algorithms, OOP A&D, Threading, etc (Score 1) 396
Yes, you're right. I haven't worked with it much. But I remember it as being a pretty good design. I didn't say all DSLs were unnecessary, or bad.
Comment Re:DP, Algorithms, OOP A&D, Threading, etc (Score 1) 396
Sorry. I have to disagree with you completely. No user defined libraries... only rudimentary argument passing between scripts, needing to use the API to access list elements, no arrays. Come on! It's a horribly-designed language, even for animating link sets. You can't even smootly animate prims with it, without making them physical. And the main problem is, that there's nothing else you can use to automate anything in SL EXCEPT for LSL. Yes, people try to write complex things that LSL wasn't designed for, but it's not because they don't understand it's limitations, it's because it's the only option. So, if anything, you've just proven my point. They developed an in-house language, and it miserably failed to meet the needs of it's users. How is that a well-designed language, exactly?
The issue is, that the problem domain was NOT well-understood by the designers. They thought they understood what people would need to automate in SL, and they were VERY wrong. Had they used lua, python, perl, scheme.. hell, ANYTHING else, they'd have done a better job. This is a case where the designers thought they could write a language from scratch, and they failed miserably. Anyone who's designed a DSL from scratch knows that people will push the boundary of the original intention. It's the designer's job to anticipate what the users want and need. I still call this an epic fail at Linden Labs.
And, yeah, I've done a lot work with microcontrollers, and cut my programming baby teeth on 6502 assembly. I know about "programming in the small".
Comment Re:DP, Algorithms, OOP A&D, Threading, etc (Score 2, Interesting) 396
This is an excellent list. I was self-taught from the age of about 12, and thought I was an excellent programmer until I was about 25. Having earned BS and MS degrees in Astronomy and Mathematics, I'd written a fair number of programs, and had a decent command of about 7 languages. Then I went to graduate school for Computer Science. And I found out that my knowledge was SEVERELY lacking, both in breadth and in depth. How much of my missing knowledge was relevant to day-to-day programming tasks? Well, perhaps not surprisingly, not much. However, when I come across some issue where my CS education is useful, it's HUGELY useful, and enables me to tackle a problem in far less time, and most importantly, implement a correct solution. It also lets me know when I need to turn over a portion of a project to a specialist. In other words, I'm now more aware of the things that will become a time sink, and increase uncertainty if I attempt them. This ability to do "project triage" is one of the benefits of a well-rounded CS education.
I think that this is the main reason that you'll hear a lot of people say that a university CS education isn't very useful. For about 98% of the things you work on, it really doesn't make you any better than someone who's self-taught. But that remaining 2%... it can mean the difference between blowing months of time on a crappy solution to a problem, or knowing how to put a good one together in a few days time. So, on the whole, a Uni education can make you a far better programmer, even though you won't necessarily find yourself pulling tricks out of your Uni bag every day.
As an example I'll add my 2 cents about only one of the topics mentioned above: Programming Languages. There are many cases where programmers try to develop a "simple" scripting language for embedding in an application. This is one thing that very few people (even uni-educated) should attempt. Proper language design and parsing is VERY difficult, and there are at least a half-dozen well-designed scripting languages that can be literally dropped in to an application with almost no effort when compared to the complexity of rolling your own. And yet, we see time and time again, people attempting to write one from scratch. One of the worst examples I can think of off the top of my head is LSL (Linden Scripting Language), used in Second Life. It's an absolute nightmare of a language. And yet, it made it into a large-scale product like Second Life.
There ARE many cases where a domain-specific language (DSL) can be incredibly useful, especially when the language does not need to be a general-purpose one. In my experience, it's rare for a programmer (no matter how their skills were gained), to create a good DSL without a strong grasp of at least a dozen programming languages or so. University-educated programmers tend to be a better judge of whether they are up to the task of designing and/or implementing a language(at least, after they've tried their hand at it once or twice).
Comment OUCH! (Score 1) 293
If a sheet of glass 15 to 30 atoms thick breaks, I'd expect it to be extremely hazardous to clean up. The pieces would be incredibly sharp.
Music By Natural Selection 164
maccallr writes "The DarwinTunes experiment needs you! Using an evolutionary algorithm and the ears of you the general public, we've been evolving a four bar loop that started out as pretty dismal primordial auditory soup and now after >27k ratings and 200 generations is sounding pretty good. Given that the only ingredients are sine waves, we're impressed. We got some coverage in the New Scientist CultureLab blog but now things have gone quiet and we'd really appreciate some Slashdotter idle time. We recently upped the maximum 'genome size' and we think that the music is already benefiting from the change."
ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146
Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."
Hand Written Clock 86
a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."
The Struggle For Private Game Servers 125
A story at the BBC takes a look at the use of private game servers for games that tend not to allow them. While most gamers are happy to let companies like Blizzard and NCSoft administer the servers that host their MMORPGs, others want different rules, a cheaper way to play, or the technical challenge of setting up their own. A South African player called Hendrick put up his own WoW server because the game "wasn't available in the country at the time." A 21-year-old Swede created a server called Epilogue, which "had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game." The game companies make an effort to quash these servers when they can, though it's frequently more trouble that it's worth. An NCSoft representative referenced the "growing menace" of IP theft, and a Blizzard spokesperson said,"We also have a responsibility to our players to ensure the integrity and reliability of their World of Warcraft gaming experience and that responsibility compels us to protect our rights."
Black Screen of Death Not Microsoft's Fault 583
Barence follows up to the ongoing Black Screen of Death Saga by saying "Microsoft says reports of 'Black Screen of Death' errors aren't caused by Windows Updates, as claimed by a British security firm. The software giant claims November's Windows Updates didn't alter registry keys in the way described by Prevx, which said that the Microsoft Patches caused PCs to boot with just a black screen and a Windows Explorer window. Microsoft is now blaming the problem on malware. Prevx has issued a grovelling apology on its own blog."
Comment Flatland "sequel" (sort of) (Score 1) 630
Others have mentioned "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott, which I also strongly recommend.
"Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension" by Rudolf Rucker should be accessible to a high school student. It revisits Flatland, so that's probably a good book to read first.
"The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" by Leonard Mlodinow is an easy and entertaining read, and talks about how human intuition is often wrong when making probability estimates.
"Knotted Doughnuts" by Martin Gardner is a compilation of brain-teasers from Scientific American. Gardner has published several of these collections, but this is my favorite.
Comment Re:Languages (Score 2, Insightful) 559
Dvorak is optimized for writing English. Most coders - like most computer users in general - do not use English as their main language, and for us Dvorak is substantially worse than the qwerty layout in every way.
Most (not all) computer languages have keywords and library names and functions that ARE based on English. Furthermore, English is the most common language used in comments when contributors have different native languages. So, coders type an awful lot of English and near-English words. So, I dispute your assertion about English not being used by most coders.
Furthermore, I don't see why Dvorak is a horrible layout for other languages. I type a few other European languages with some regularity on a Dvorak keyboard, and while accents are a bit of a pain, it's no worse than qwerty. Qwerty is essentially random, so it's certainly not tuned for any particular language, except perhaps by accident. I can't say whether qwerty's really good for some non-European languages, but I doubt that it's substantially better than Dvorak.
If you ignore the letter keys, the only things that are moved so that greater or less reach is required are: -_ swapped with [{ , and += swapped with ]} . Whether this is good or bad depends on your coding style and what programming languages you use.
Long story short: you're a moron.
I've been using Dvorak for 10 years. It took me a couple of days to learn, and I exceeded my qwerty typing speed within two months. Almost all of what I type is code. I'm happy with the switch.
