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  • Is LaTeX worth learning today?

    - by Ender
    I know that LaTeX is big in the world of academia, and was probably a big name in desktop publishing before the glory days of WordPerfect and Microsoft Office but as a Windows user that is interested in the power of LaTeX and the general smoothness of a LaTeX generated page is it really worth learning? In a couple of months I'll be starting my final year in Computer Science and LaTeX has been bounced around the campus by many of the Linux geeks. In reality, is there any need to use it today? What will I actually gain from it and will I enjoy using it? Finally, how does one use LaTeX on a Windows machine? What software do I really need? I've read a couple of guides but many of them seem like overkill. Please help break a LaTeX newbie into the world of professional academic publishing! EDIT: I've toyed with LaTeX for a while, and have even learned that it's pronounced "lay-tech", not "lay-tecks". I'll agree once again with the accepted answer in saying that MiKTeX is the best solution for Windows users.

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  • how to add a checkbox in a listview?

    - by Bugzy bug
    hello guys, i have a question, been stuck for a while, i dont know how can i add a checkbox in the list, for example if I have a list of items i want to be able to check them. my xml code is the following: <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/topLayout" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_centerHorizontal="true" android:layout_height="wrap_content"> </LinearLayout> <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/middleLayout" android:orientation="horizontal" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_width="fill_parent"> <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/leftMiddleLayout" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_below="@+id/topLayout" android:layout_above="@+id/bottomLayout" android:layout_width="60px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" > <ListView android:id="@+id/checkboxList" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" ></ListView> <CheckBox android:id="@+id/checkbox" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:checked="false" android:text="test"> </CheckBox> </LinearLayout> <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/rightMiddleLayout" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_below="@+id/topLayout" android:layout_above="@+id/bottomLayout" android:layout_width="280px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" > <ListView android:id="@+id/list" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" ></ListView> <TextView android:id="@+id/text" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content"/> </LinearLayout> </LinearLayout> <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/bottomLayout" android:layout_alignParentBottom="true" android:orientation="horizontal" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:paddingBottom="5pt" > <EditText android:id="@+id/insertNewItem" android:layout_width="220px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> <TextView android:layout_width="10px" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> <Button android:id="@+id/addItemButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:text="Add Item"/> </LinearLayout> if you have any ideas please let me know, its for my academic studies :(( Thank you!

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  • Can I select 0 columns in SQL Server?

    - by Woody Zenfell III
    I am hoping this question fares a little better than the similar Create a table without columns. Yes, I am asking about something that will strike most as pointlessly academic. It is easy to produce a SELECT result with 0 rows (but with columns), e.g. SELECT a = 1 WHERE 1 = 0. Is it possible to produce a SELECT result with 0 columns (but with rows)? e.g. something like SELECT NO COLUMNS FROM Foo. (This is not valid T-SQL.) I came across this because I wanted to insert several rows without specifying any column data for any of them. e.g. (SQL Server 2005) CREATE TABLE Bar (id INT NOT NULL IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY) INSERT INTO Bar SELECT NO COLUMNS FROM Foo -- Invalid column name 'NO'. -- An explicit value for the identity column in table 'Bar' can only be specified when a column list is used and IDENTITY_INSERT is ON. One can insert a single row without specifying any column data, e.g. INSERT INTO Foo DEFAULT VALUES. One can query for a count of rows (without retrieving actual column data from the table), e.g. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Foo. (But that result set, of course, has a column.) I tried things like INSERT INTO Bar () SELECT * FROM Foo -- Parameters supplied for object 'Bar' which is not a function. -- If the parameters are intended as a table hint, a WITH keyword is required. and INSERT INTO Bar DEFAULT VALUES SELECT * FROM Foo -- which is a standalone INSERT statement followed by a standalone SELECT statement. I can do what I need to do a different way, but the apparent lack of consistency in support for degenerate cases surprises me. I read through the relevant sections of BOL and didn't see anything. I was surprised to come up with nothing via Google either.

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  • Resources related to data-mining and gaming on social networks

    - by darren
    Hi all I'm interested in the problem of patterning mining among players of social networking games. For example detecting cheaters of a game, given a company's user database. So far I have been following the usual recipe for a data mining project: construct a data warehouse that aggregates significant information select a classifier, and train it with a subsectio of records from the warehouse validate classifier with another test set lather, rinse, repeat Surprisingly, I've found very little in this area regarding literature, best practices, etc. I am hoping to crowdsource the information gathering problem here. Specifically what I'm looking for: What classifiers have worked will for this type of pattern mining (it seems highly temporal, users playing games, users receiving rewards, users transferring prizes etc). Are there any highly agreed upon attributes specific to social networking / gaming data? What is a practical amount of information that should be considered? One problem I've run into is data overload, where queries and data cleansing may take days to complete. Related to point above, what hardware resources are required to produce results? I've found it difficult to estimate the amount of computing power I will require for production use. It has become apparent that a white box in the corner does not have enough horse-power for such a project. Are companies generally resorting to cloud solutions? Are they buying clusters? Basically, any resources (theoretical, academic, or practical) about implementing a social networking / gaming pattern-mining program would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

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  • Computer science textbooks

    - by Barrett Conrad
    I would like to try the book question a little bit differently. My goal is to know what the community thinks are the quintessential computer science textbooks. <beginsadstory>I lost all of my computer science and math books from college in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I greatly miss having my familiar tomes to refer to when topics and problems come up, so I am looking to rebuild my library.<endsadstory> What are your recommendations for the best examples of academic caliber books for the field of computer science and its associated mathematics? I am looking for books on subjects like computational theory, programming languages, compilers, operating systems, algorithms and so on. Don't limit your suggestions to your textbooks only. If there is a book you have read that covers computer science or a related math in a formal way, but is not strictly a textbook, I would be love to hear about them as well. Finally, for the sake of creating a good reference for all of us, may I suggest posting one book per answer so they can be rated individually.

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  • Dashboard for collaborative science / data processing projects

    - by rescdsk
    Hi, Continuous Integration servers like Hudson are a pretty amazing addition to software development. I work in an academic research lab, and I'd love to apply similar principles to scientific data analysis. I want a dashboard-like view of which collections of data are fine, which ones are failing their tests (simple shell scripts, mostly), and so on. A lot like the Chromium dashboard (WARNING: page takes a long time to load). It takes work from at least 4 people, and maybe 10 or 12 hours of computer time, to bring our data (from behavioral studies) from its raw form to its final, easily-analyzed form. I've tried Hudson and buildbot, but neither is really appropriate to our workflow. We just want to run a bunch of tests on maybe fifty independent collections of subject data, and display the results nicely. SO! Does anyone have a recommendation of a way to generate this kind of report easily? Or, can you think of a good way to shoehorn this kind of workflow into a continuous integration server? Or, can you recommend a unit testing dashboard that could deal with tests that are little shell scripts rather than little functions? Thank you!

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  • Text editor capable of viewing invisibles?

    - by Timo
    A recent problem* left me wondering whether there is a text editor out there that lets you see every single character of the file, even if they are invisible? Specifically, I'm not looking for hex editing capabilities, I am interested in a text editor that'll show me all of the invisible characters (not just the common whitespace / line break characters). The BOM marker is just one example, others are e.g. mathematical invisibles or possibly unsupported characters. I'm not looking for a text editor that simply supports a large variety of text encoding / translations between encodings. All text editors I've come across treat the invisible characters correctly i.e. leave them invisible (or simply get removed in the translation as in the case of the BOM marker). I'm asking this mostly out of academic interests, so I'm not particular about any specific OS. I can easily test Linux and OSX solutions, but if you recommend a Windows editor, I would appreciate if you include descriptions of how the editor handles invisibles other than whitespace / line breaks. *The incident that lead me to this question: I wrote a perl script using TextWrangler and managed to change the encoding to UTF8 BOM, which inserts te BOM marker at the start of the file. Perl (or rather the operating system) promptly misses the #! and mayhem ensues. It then took me the better part of an afternoon to figure this out since most text editors do not show the BOM marker even with various "show invisibles" options turned on. Now I've learned my lesson and will use less immediately :-).

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  • Trying to access a specific option value to generate a popup window

    - by Isaac
    I am trying to use a click event to generate a popup window based off of the specific value chosen. I am having trouble with the if statement and trying to access each specific option value. Can any of you give me some hints? <select id="offices"> <option value="Choose an Office">Choose an Office</option> <option value="Residential Education (ResEd)" >Residential Education (ResEd)</option> <option value="Dean of Students">Dean of Students</option> <option value="Office of Student Affairs">Office of Student Affairs</option> <option value="Vice-Provost of Student Affairs">Vice-Provost of Student Affairs</option> </select> </div> function display(){ var officearray = [{ Office: "Residential Education (ResEd)", ID: "725-2800", Description: "The Office of Residential Education is responsible for developing the policies, programs, and staffing which support the intellectual, educational, and community-building activities in student residences. Second Floor. " }, { Office: "Dean of Students", ID: "723-7833", Description: "The Dean of Students office is composed of 13 individual administrative units that are concerned with the general welfare of both undergraduate and graduate students, in and out of the classroom. Second floor." }, { Office: "Office of Student Activities (OSA)", ID: "723-2733", Description: "Services for student organizations, student-initiated major events and programs, and fraternities and sororities. Second floor." }, { Office: "Vice-Provost of Student Affairs", ID: "725-0911", Description: "The Vice Provost for Student Affairs is responsible to the Provost for providing services and programs to undergraduate and graduate students in support of the academic mission of the University. Second floor." }] for(var i = 0; i < officearray.length; i++) { var o = document.getElementById("offices") var oString = o.options[o.selectedIndex].value; newwindow2 = window.open('', 'name', 'height=200, width=150') var tmp = newwindow2.document if (oString == officearray[i].Office) { tmp.writeln(officearray[i].Description) } } } document.getElementsByTagName('option').addEventListener("click",display,false)

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  • C - Complicated pointer declarations - help understanding

    - by Emmel
    In my burgeoning new self-education in the C language, I've come across a set of declarations that I do not understand how to read. I'd love for someone to break these down. I'll explain at the bottom where I got these examples from. 1. char (*(*x())[])() "x: function returning pointer to array[] of pointer to function returning char" - huh? 2. char (*(*x[3])())[5] "x: array[3] of pointer to function returning pointer to array[5] of char" - come again? 3. char **argv This I understand. "Pointer to pointer to char." But what I don't understand is -- what's the use case for a pointer to a pointer? Follow-up question: does anyone every use declarations this complex or is this just academic fun on the part of the authors of the examples I got this from? These examples are from section 5.12 of the K&R book. This is the first time I'm genuinely stumped by an explanation, in an otherwise well-written classic. Thanks.

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  • Using MD5 to generate an encryption key from password?

    - by Charles
    I'm writing a simple program for file encryption. Mostly as an academic exercise but possibly for future serious use. All of the heavy lifting is done with third-party libraries, but putting the pieces together in a secure manner is still quite a challenge for the non-cryptographer. Basically, I've got just about everything working the way I think it should. I'm using 128-bit AES for the encryption with a 128-bit key length. I want users to be able to enter in variable-length passwords, so I decided to hash the password with MD5 and then use the hash as the key. I figured this was acceptable--the key is always supposed to be a secret, so there's no reason to worry about collision attacks. Now that I've implemented this, I ran across a couple articles indicating that this is a bad idea. My question is: why? If a good password is chosen, the cipher is supposed to be strong enough on its own to never reveal the key except via an extraordinary (read: currently infeasible) brute-force effort, right? Should I be using something like PBKDF2 to generate the key or is that just overkill for all but the most extreme cryptographic applications?

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  • Makefile trickery using VPATH and include.

    - by roe
    Hi, I'm playing around with make files and the VPATH variable. Basically, I'm grabbing source files from a few different places (specified by the VPATH), and compile them into the current directory using simply a list of .o-files that I want. So far so good, now I'm generating dependency information into a file called '.depend' and including that. Gnumake will attempt to use the rules defined so far to create the included file if it doesn't exist, so that's ok. Basically, my makefile looks like this. VPATH=A/source:B/source:C/source objects=first.o second.o third.o executable: $(objects) .depend: $(objects:.o=.c) $(CC) -MM $^ > $@ include .depend Now for the real question, can I suppress the generation of the .depend file in any way? I'm currently working in a clearcase environment - sloooow, so I'd prefer to have it a bit more under control when to update the dependency information. It's more or less an academic exercise as I could just wrap the thing in a script which is touching the .depend file before executing make (thus making it more recent than any source file), but it'd interesting to know if I can somehow suppress it using 'pure' make. I cannot remove the dependency to the source files (i.e. using simply .depend:), as I'm depending on the $^ variable to do the VPATH resolution for me. If there'd be any way to only update dependencies as a result of updated #include directives, that'd be even better of course.. But I'm not holding my breath for that one.. :)

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  • Fast Lightweight Image Comparisson Metric Algorithm

    - by gav
    Hi All, I am developing an application for the Android platform which contains 1000+ image filters that have been 'evolved'. When a user selects a photo I want to present the most relevant filters first. This 'relevance' should be dependent on previous use cases. I have already developed tools that register when a filtered image is saved; this combination of filter and image can be seen as the training data for my system. The issue is that the comparison must occur between selecting an image and the next screen coming up. From a UI point of view I need the whole process to take less that 4 seconds; select an image- obtain a metric to use for similarity - check against use cases - return 6 closest matches. I figure with 4 seconds I can use animations and progress dialogs to keep the user happy. Due to platform contraints I am fairly limited in the computational expense of the algorithm. I have implemented a technique adapted from various online tutorials for running C code on the G1 and hence this language is available Specific Constraints; Qualcomm® MSM7201A™, 528 MHz Processor 320 x 480 Pixel bitmap in 32 bit ARGB ~ 2 seconds computational time for the native method to get the metric ~ 2 seconds to compare the metric of the current image with training data This is an academic project so all ideas are welcome, anything you can think of or have heard about would be of interest to me. My ideas; I want to keep the complexity down (O(n*m)?) by using pixel data only rather than a neighbourhood function I was looking at using the Colour historgram/Greyscale histogram/Texture/Entropy of the image, combining them to make the measure. There will be an obvious loss of information but I need the resultant metric to be substantially smaller than the memory footprint of the image (~0.512 MB) As I said, any ideas to direct my research would be fantastic. Kind regards, Gavin

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  • Why doesn't gcc remove this check of a non-volatile variable?

    - by Thomas
    This question is mostly academic. I ask out of curiosity, not because this poses an actual problem for me. Consider the following incorrect C program. #include <signal.h> #include <stdio.h> static int running = 1; void handler(int u) { running = 0; } int main() { signal(SIGTERM, handler); while (running) ; printf("Bye!\n"); return 0; } This program is incorrect because the handler interrupts the program flow, so running can be modified at any time and should therefore be declared volatile. But let's say the programmer forgot that. gcc 4.3.3, with the -O3 flag, compiles the loop body (after one initial check of the running flag) down to the infinite loop .L7: jmp .L7 which was to be expected. Now we put something trivial inside the while loop, like: while (running) putchar('.'); And suddenly, gcc does not optimize the loop condition anymore! The loop body's assembly now looks like this (again at -O3): .L7: movq stdout(%rip), %rsi movl $46, %edi call _IO_putc movl running(%rip), %eax testl %eax, %eax jne .L7 We see that running is re-loaded from memory each time through the loop; it is not even cached in a register. Apparently gcc now thinks that the value of running could have changed. So why does gcc suddenly decide that it needs to re-check the value of running in this case?

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  • Database design and foreign keys: Where should they be added in related tables?

    - by Carvell Fenton
    I have a relatively simple subset of tables in my database for tracking something called sessions. These are academic sessions (think offerings of a particular program). The tables to represent a sessions information are: sessions session_terms session_subjects session_mark_item_info session_marks All of these tables have their own primary keys, and are like a tree, in that sessions have terms, terms have subjects, subjects have mark items, etc. So each on would have at least its "parent's" foreign key. My question is, design wise is it a good idea to include the sessions primary key in the other tables as a foreign key to easily select related session items, or is that too much redundency? If I include the session foreign key (or all parent foreign keys from tables up the heirarchy) in all the tables, I can easily select all the marks for a session. As an example, something like SELECT mark FROM session_marks WHERE sessionID=... If I don't, then I would have to combine selects with something like WHERE something IN (SELECT... Which approach is "more correct" or efficient? Thanks in advance!

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  • Help me with the simplest program for "Trusted" application

    - by idazuwaika
    Hi, I hope anyone from the large community here can help me write the simplest "Trusted" program that I can expand from. I'm using Ubuntu Linux 9.04, with TPM emulator 0.60 from Mario Strasser (http://tpm-emulator.berlios.de/). I have installed the emulator and Trousers, and can successfully run programs from tpm-tools after running tpmd and tcsd daemons. I hope to start developing my application, but I have problems compiling the code below. #include <trousers/tss.h> #include <trousers/trousers.h> #include <stdio.h> TSS_HCONTEXT hContext; int main() { Tspi_Context_Create(&hContext); Tspi_Context_Close(hContext); return 0; } After trying to compile with g++ tpm.cpp -o tpmexe I receive errors undefined reference to 'Tspi_Context_Create' undefined reference to 'Tspi_Context_Close' What do I have to #include to successfully compile this? Is there anything that I miss? I'm familiar with C, but not exactly so with Linux/Unix programming environment. ps: I am a part time student in Master in Information Security programme. My involvement with programming has been largely for academic purposes.

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  • Neural Networks or Human-computer interaction

    - by Shahin
    I will be entering my third year of university in my next academic year, once I've finished my placement year as a web developer, and I would like to hear some opinions on the two modules in the Title. I'm interested in both, however I want to pick one that will be relevant to my career and that I can apply to systems I develop. I'm doing an Internet Computing degree, it covers web development, networking, database work and programming. Though I have had myself set on becoming a web developer I'm not so sure about that any more so am trying not to limit myself to that area of development. I know HCI would help me as a web developer, but do you think it's worth it? Do you think Neural Network knowledge could help me realistically in a system I write in the future? Thanks. EDIT: Hi guys, I thought it would be useful to follow-up with what I decided to do and how it's worked out. I picked Artificial Neural Networks over HCI, and I've really enjoyed it. Having a peek into cognitive science and machine learning has ignited my interest for the subject area, and I will be hoping to take on a postgraduate project a few years from now when I can afford it. I have got a job which I am starting after my final exams (which are in a few days) and I was indeed asked if I had done a module in HCI or similar. It didn't seem to matter, as it isn't a front-end developer position! I would recommend taking the module if you have it as an option, as well as any module consisting of biological computation, it will open up more doors should you want to go onto postgraduate research in the future. Thanks again, Shahin

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  • Vehicle License Plate Detection

    - by Ash
    Hey all Basically for my final project at university, I'm developing a vehicle license plate detection application. Now I consider myself an intermediate programmer, however my mathematics knowledge lacks anything above secondary school, therefore producing detection formulae is basically impossible. I've spend a good amount of time looking up academic papers such as: http://www.scribd.com/doc/266575/Detecting-Vehicle-License-Plates-in-Images http://www.cic.unb.br/~mylene/PI_2010_2/ICIP10/pdfs/0003945.pdf http://www.eurasip.org/Proceedings/Eusipco/Eusipco2007/Papers/d3l-b05.pdf When it comes to the maths, I'm lost. Due to this testing various graphic images proved productive, for example: to However this approach is only catered to that particular image, and if the techniques were applied to different images, I'm sure a different, most likely poorer conversion would occur. I've read about a formula called the bottom hat morphology transform, which according to the first does the following: "Basically, the trans- formation keeps all the dark details of the picture, and eliminates everything else (including bigger dark regions and light regions)." Sadly I can't find much information on this, however the image within the documentation near the end of the report shows it's effectiveness. I'm aware this is complicated and vast, I'd just appreciate a little advice, even in terms of what transformation techniques I should focus on developing, or algorithm regarding edge detection or pixel detection. Few things I need to add Developing in C Sharp Confining the project to UK registration plates only I can basically choose the images to convert as a demonstration Thanks

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  • Fastest inline-assembly spinlock

    - by sigvardsen
    I'm writing a multithreaded application in c++, where performance is critical. I need to use a lot of locking while copying small structures between threads, for this I have chosen to use spinlocks. I have done some research and speed testing on this and I found that most implementations are roughly equally fast: Microsofts CRITICAL_SECTION, with SpinCount set to 1000, scores about 140 time units Implementing this algorithm with Microsofts InterlockedCompareExchange scores about 95 time units Ive also tried to use some inline assembly with __asm {} using something like this code and it scores about 70 time units, but I am not sure that a proper memory barrier has been created. Edit: The times given here are the time it takes for 2 threads to lock and unlock the spinlock 1,000,000 times. I know this isn't a lot of difference but as a spinlock is a heavily used object, one would think that programmers would have agreed on the fastest possible way to make a spinlock. Googling it leads to many different approaches however. I would think this aforementioned method would be the fastest if implemented using inline assembly and using the instruction CMPXCHG8B instead of comparing 32bit registers. Furthermore memory barriers must be taken into account, this could be done by LOCK CMPXHG8B (I think?), which guarantees "exclusive rights" to the shared memory between cores. At last [some suggests] that for busy waits should be accompanied by NOP:REP that would enable Hyper-threading processors to switch to another thread, but I am not sure whether this is true or not? From my performance-test of different spinlocks, it is seen that there is not much difference, but for purely academic purpose I would like to know which one is fastest. However as I have extremely limited experience in the assembly-language and with memory barriers, I would be happy if someone could write the assembly code for the last example I provided with LOCK CMPXCHG8B and proper memory barriers in the following template: __asm { spin_lock: ;locking code. spin_unlock: ;unlocking code. }

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  • Should uni provide "correct answer" after programming assignment is due?

    - by Michael Mao
    Hi all: This is my very first subjective question. And I think it is programming related - the assignment is to be written in a programming language. I am not for "getting the full marks out of a subject". I am actually not for a "correct answer", but for a "better solution", so that I can compare, and can improve. I reckon it is good that I practice programming first and check the solution later to pick up the things I've done wrong/bad. Without a "benchmark" to against, this would be much harder. Unfortunately as far as I know, not all programming subjects taught in uni would kindly provide the students with a "correct answer" in the end, after the assignment is due. One bad metaphor for this is like someone asks you a question which they don't have a clear answer themselves and hope to take advantage of your answer as the basis for their answer. Personally, I feel having a assignment solution provided by the academic staff is essential to students. I do appreciate this, and I feel I might not be the only one. I am a very proactive student in uni. I learn more, I practice more, an assignment for me is more like a challenge to achieve "the best solution I can come up with", not something "I have to pass"... The cause of this question is that for the past few days I have crafted 500+ lines of Perl code, for a tiny assignment. I feel pain when I look at my solution(not finished yet) and I feel like I am an idiot doing some crap code. I know there must be a much better solution. And I reckon it is better for the lecturer in this subject to get me one, rather than asking for an answer here, even I would shamelessly add the link to my solution apart from the assignment requirements. I know in SO, there are a lot of tutors/lecturers for programming subjects/courses. I'd like to hear your words on this question.

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  • How can I help fellow students struggling in programming classes?

    - by David Barry
    I'm a computer science student finishing up my second semester of programming classes. I've enjoyed them quite a bit, and learned a lot, but it seems other students are struggling with the concepts and assignments more than I am. When an assignment is due, the inevitable group email comes out the day or two before with people needing some help either with a specific part of the problem, or sometimes people just seem to have a hard time knowing where to start. I'd really like to be able to help out, but I have a hard time thinking of the right way to give them help without giving them the answer. When I'm having trouble understanding a concept, a code snippet can go along way to helping me, but at the same time if it makes a lot of sense, it can be difficult to think of another way to go about it. Plus the Academic Integrity section of each assignment is always looming overhead warning against sharing code with others. I've tried using pseudo code to help give others an idea on program flow, leaving them to figure out how to implement certain aspects of it, but I didn't get too much feedback and don't know how much it actually helped them out, or if it just confused them further. So I'm basically looking to see if anyone has experience with this, or good ways that I can help out other students to nudge them in the right direction or help them think about the problem in the right way.

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  • Will a Ph. D. in Computer Science help?

    - by Francisco Garcia
    I am close to my 30s and still learning about programming and software engineering. Like most people who like their profession I truly believe that I should aim to improve and keep updated. One of the things I do is reading technical papers from professional publications (IEEE and ACM) but I admit there are very good bloggers out there too. Lately I started to think (should I say realize?) that Ph. D people actually are expected to expand constantly their knowledge, but little is expected from lower classes once they know enough This made me think that maybe having a Ph. D will help to have more... respect? but I also believe that I am already getting old for that. Futhermore I see many master and doctor programs that does not seem to add any value over hard experience and self learning. I belive that a degree in computer science, althought not necessary, can lay out a good base for programming work. However: What can a Ph. D. degree give you that you cannot learn on your own? (if you are not into something VERY specific and want to work in a non academic environment)

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  • Is there really such a thing as "being good at math"?

    - by thezhaba
    Aside from gifted individuals able to perform complex calculations in their head, I'm wondering if proficiency in mathematics, namely calculus and algebra, has really got to do with one's natural inclination towards sciences, if you can put it that way. A number of students in my calculus course pick up material in seemingly no time whereas I, personally, have to spend time thinking about and understanding most concepts. Even then, if a question that requires a bit more 'imagination' comes up I don't always recognize the concepts behind it, as is the case with calculus proofs, for instance. Nevertheless, I refuse to believe that I'm simply not made for it. I do very well in programming and software engineering courses where a lot of students struggle. At first I could not grasp what they found to be so difficult, but eventually I realized that having previous programming experience is a great asset -- once I've seen and made practical use of the programming concepts learning about them in depth in an academic setting became much easier as I have then already seen their use "in the wild". I suppose I'm hoping that something similar happens with mathematics -- perhaps once the practical idea behind a concept (which authors of textbooks sure do a great job of concealing..) is evident, understanding the seemingly dry and symbolic ideas and proofs would be more obvious? I'm really not sure. All I'm sure of is I'd like to get better at calculus, but I don't yet understand why some of us pick it up easily while others have to spend considerable amounts of time on it and still not have complete understanding if an unusual problem is given.

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  • Finding the width of a directed acyclic graph... with only the ability to find parents

    - by Platinum Azure
    Hi guys, I'm trying to find the width of a directed acyclic graph... as represented by an arbitrarily ordered list of nodes, without even an adjacency list. The graph/list is for a parallel GNU Make-like workflow manager that uses files as its criteria for execution order. Each node has a list of source files and target files. We have a hash table in place so that, given a file name, the node which produces it can be determined. In this way, we can figure out a node's parents by examining the nodes which generate each of its source files using this table. That is the ONLY ability I have at this point, without changing the code severely. The code has been in public use for a while, and the last thing we want to do is to change the structure significantly and have a bad release. And no, we don't have time to test rigorously (I am in an academic environment). Ideally we're hoping we can do this without doing anything more dangerous than adding fields to the node. I'll be posting a community-wiki answer outlining my current approach and its flaws. If anyone wants to edit that, or use it as a starting point, feel free. If there's anything I can do to clarify things, I can answer questions or post code if needed. Thanks! EDIT: For anyone who cares, this will be in C. Yes, I know my pseudocode is in some horribly botched Python look-alike. I'm sort of hoping the language doesn't really matter.

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  • How do you use stl's functions like for_each?

    - by thomas-gies
    I started using stl containers because they came in very handy when I needed functionality of a list, set and map and had nothing else available in my programming environment. I did not care much about the ideas behind it. STL documentations were only interesting up to the point where it came to functions, etc. Then I skipped reading and just used the containers. But yesterday, still being relaxed from my holidays, I just gave it a try and wanted to go a bit more the stl way. So I used the transform function (can I have a little bit of applause for me, thank you). From an academic point of view it really looked interesting and it worked. But the thing that boroughs me is that if you intensify the use of those functions, you need 10ks of helper classes for mostly everything you want to do in your code. The hole logic of the program is sliced in tiny pieces. This slicing is not the result of god coding habits. It's just a technical need. Something, that makes my life probably harder not easier. And I learned the hard way, that you should always choose the simplest approach that solves the problem at hand. And I can't see what, for example, the for_each function is doing for me that justifies the use of a helper class over several simple lines of code that sit inside a normal loop so that everybody can see what is going on. I would like to know, what you are thinking about my concerns? Did you see it like I do when you started working this way and have changed your mind when you got used to it? Are there benefits that I overlooked? Or do you just ignore this stuff as I did (and will go an doing it, probably). Thanks. PS: I know that there is a real for_each loop in boost. But I ignore it here since it is just a convenient way for my usual loops with iterators I guess.

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  • Three most critical programming concepts

    - by Todd
    I know this has probably been asked in one form or fashion but I wanted to pose it once again within the context of my situation (and probably others here @ SO). I made a career change to Software Engineering some time ago without having an undergrad or grad degree in CS. I've supplemented my undergrad and grad studies in business with programming courses (VB, Java,C, C#) but never performed academic coursework in the other related disciplines (algorithms, design patterns, discrete math, etc.)...just mostly self-study. I know there are several of you who have either performed interviews and/or made hiring decisions. Given recent trends in demand, what would you say are the three most essential Comp Sci concepts that a developer should have a solid grasp of outside of language syntax? For example, I've seen blog posts of the "Absolute minimum X that every programmer must know" variety...that's what I'm looking for. Again if it's truly a redundancy please feel free to close; my feelings won't be hurt. (Closest ones I could find were http://stackoverflow.com/questions/164048/basic-programming-algorithmic-concepts- which was geared towards a true beginner, and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/648595/essential-areas-of-knowledge-which I didn't feel was concrete enough). Thanks in advance all! T.

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