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Is there a LOGO interpreter that actually has a turtle?

- by Tim Post

This is not a repeat of the now infamous "How do I move the turtle in LOGO?" Recently, I had the following conversation with my five year old daughter: Daughter: Daddy, do you write programs? Me: Yes! Daughter: Daddy, what's a program? Me: A program is a set of instructions that a computer follows. Daughter: Daddy, can I write a program too? Me: Sure! This got me scrambling to think of a very basic language that a five year old could get some satisfaction from mastering rather quickly. I'm ashamed to admit that the first thing that came to mind was this: 10 INPUT "Tell me a secret" A$ 20 PRINT "Wow really? :" A$ 30 GOTO 10 That isn't going to hold a five year old's attention for very long and it requires too much of a lecture. However, moving a turtle around and drawing neat pictures might just work. Sadly, my search for a LOGO interpreter yielded noting but ad ridden sites, flight simulators and a whole bunch of other stuff that I really don't want. I'm hoping to find a cross platform (Java / Python) LOGO interpreter (dare I call it simulator?) with the following features: Can save / replay commands (stored programs) Has an actual turtle Sound effects are a plus Have you stumbled across something like this, if so, can you provide a link? I hate to ask a 'shopping' sort of question, but it seemed much better than "Is LOGO appropriate for a five year old?"

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Would a professional, self taught programmer benefit from reading an algorithms book?

- by user65483

I'm a 100% self taught, professional programmer (I've worked at a few web startups and made a few independent games). I've read quite a few of the "essential" books (Clean Code, The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, SICP, K&R). I'm considering reading Introduction to Algorithms. I've asked a few colleagues if reading it will improve my programming skills, and I got very mixed answers. A few said yes, a few said no, and a one said "only if you spend a lot of time implementing these algorithms" (I don't). So, I figured I'd ask Stack Exchange. Is it worth the time to read about algorithms if you're a professional programmer who seldom needs to use complex algorithms? For what it's worth, I have a strong mathematical background (have a 2 year degree in Mathematics; took Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Calc I-III).

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Who was your mentor? Where can I find mine?

- by aredkid

In many of articles I've read, finding a mentor is often suggested. One to who would guide, teach and more. (I wouldn't know the details, I don't have one, yet.) So, who was your mentor, if any? I have only had indirect mentors: professor at university, manager at work whom I've watched and learnt from the most. And otherwise, Twitter has been a great place to follow the professionals and discover more about the technologies that interest me. But I still wonder how I could find one because I can sense that I might be lacking in my experience. Ideas?

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Could someone break this nasty habit of mine please?

- by MimiEAM

I recently graduated in cs and was mostly unsatisfied since I realized that I received only a basic theoretical approach in a wide range of subjects (which is what college is supposed to do but still...) . Anyway I took the habit of spending a lot of time looking for implementations of concepts and upon finding those I will used them as guides to writing my own implementation of those concepts just for fun. But now I feel like the only way I can fully understand a new concept is by trying to implement from scratch no matter how unoptimized the result may be. Anyway this behavior lead me to choose by default the hard way, that is time consuming instead of using a nicely written library until I hit my head again a huge wall and then try to find a library that works for my purpose.... Does anyone else do that and why? It seems so weird why would anyone (including me) do that ? Is it a bad practice ? and if so how can i stop doing that ?

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School vs Self-Taught [duplicate]

- by Joan Venge

This question already has an answer here: Do I need a degree in Computer Science to get a junior Programming job? [closed] 8 answers Do you think university is a good learning environment or is it better to be autodidact? [closed] 3 answers Do you think formal education is necessary to gain strong programming skills? There are a lot of jobs that aren't programming but involves programming, such as tech artists in games, fx tds in film for example. I see similar patterns in the people I work where the best ones I have seen were self-taught, because of being artists primarily. But I also see that while the software, programming knowledge is varied and deep, hardware knowledge is very basic, including me, again due to lack of formal education. But I also work with a lot of programmers who possess both skills in general (software and hardware). Do you think it's necessary to have a formal education to have great programming skills? Would you think less of someone if he didn't have a degree in computer science, or software engineering, etc in terms of job opportunities? Would you trust him to do a software engineering job, i.e. writing a complex tool? Basically I feel the self-taught programmer doesn't know a lot of things, i.e. not knowing a particular pattern or a particular language, etc. But I find that the ability to think outside the box much more powerful. As "pure" programmers what's your take on it?

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Business person turned into coder? How and why? Inspire the non-technical.

- by huisjames

I graduated with a Business degree. Two years later, I finally realized the power of programming - the power to "invent." I wish I realized this in high school. Nevertheless, I tried to self-teach C# but found it difficult. Then I pivoted to learn PHP two months ago and I have been able to build things I thought was beyond my abilities. Has anyone had the same experience? Or self-taught programming? What lessons did you learn?

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Any ideas about how to make Programming Techniques Class more interesting.

- by Eedoh

Hello. I already found similar question here on SO, but almost all the answers were more philosophical, then practical. I'd like You to share some of Your PRACTICAL ideas about how to make my course more interesting. It doesn't matter how much effort it takes from me. I even thought about trying to motivate them to pick some topic in the beginning of the course and to work on it as some kind of real, small, startup project that they could maybe financially exploit once it's finished. But I'm afraid that most of them will not get the project to the end, and that it could be boring to them working on one thing all year long. Also I thought about involving them in Torcs, but I'm afraid most of them wouldn't be up to the task. Btw, Torcs is Car Racing Simulation, but there's an API for developers so they can develop their own AI for the driver, and then race their cars against the other programmer's AI's. I'm not asking here for problem examples, as I asked a separate question about that. I need ideas about making my lectures more interesting and fun.

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Career Change Need Advice: Professional Web Developer

- by bikedorkseattle

I'm hoping to get some advice here on the steps I should take to make a career change into professional web development. I've been working in cancer research the last 14 years and I need a change. The job market is terrible, the pay is worse, and despite what one would think the atmosphere is generally un-collegial, even in your own group. Venture funding never returned after the dot com burst and with 3 to 5 wars our country is now in, NIH funding is only going to get worse. I know things are not going to get better for my field, sadly, and I know I need to move on. For probably just as long I have fiddled around with web development, I even run a fairly popular site with close to 1 million/month pageviews that pulls a decent income, but not stable enough to live off of right now. My skills are ok for being self taught. I enjoy the fast paced nature of the web and the tools the community creates and how eager people are to help and share knowledge; it's what science should be. I have been trying to find an entry level developer job doing standard HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL/JS/jQuery type work. A good 50%+ of the jobs want someone with a CS degree, and most want 5 years experience. Having no professional experience and no formal education, I know I'm at a huge disadvantage. I am now considering my options on how to move forward professionally. The way I see it I have basically 3 options. Build up my portfolio of work as much as I can and continue to learn as much as I can on my own. Try to contribute on some open source project when time allows. Network like crazy and go to meetups. Be confident and pray a lot in private. OR While doing above, do some certification programs in PHP and Java, possibly others. Get a Zend Certification. OR Spend a few years getting a CS degree while doing 1. I've already done the work fulltime go to school thing and it doesn't excite me one bit. I didn't have the greatest college experience and am not too eager to return, but I have a family to feed. Is the degree really necessary or is it more of a right of passage type thing in most instances? I appreciate everyones input. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

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Doing practice jobsearch/technical interviews?

- by Beekguk

I graduated college last year & I've never gone through the interview process - my current programming position evolved out of projects I did in school, but in a few months I'm making a clean break and moving across the country so I'm going to have to face a "grown-up" jobsearch. I'm kind of scared of technical interviews - I think I'm pretty good at my job and my hobby programming projects ... but what if it turns out I'm part of that group that thinks they're qualified, but really just cause despair at the state of education in the hearts of interviewers? So, I'm thinking of doing a "practice" job hunt in my current city to get an idea of what it's like and what kind of experience/expertise employers are really looking for. Is this a dick move ethically (applying to/interviewing for jobs I can't take)? If so, is there another good way to prepare for technical interviews, especially those little trick puzzle-type questions?

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Groovy/Grails course content

- by Don

Hi, Some Java developers have asked if I could give them a 2-day primer on Grails development. I'm assuming they're familiar with: Java language and libraries Java web development, e.g. Servlets, JSPs Spring Hibernate Client-side development, CSS, HTML, JavaScript I'm further assuming they have no experience with Groovy or Grails. AFAIK, the app that they'll be building is a new project, so there's no need to cover topics like using GORM with a legacy database. I'm trying to decide how I should structure the course, e.g. what topics to cover and how much time to spend on each. I reckon about 1/2 - 3/4 days on Groovy and the rest of the time on Grails would be adequate. I'll probably use the Groovy console to demonstrate the Groovy language concepts and a simple Grails app for explaining the conventions and structure of a Grails project. If anyone has a list of Groovy/Grails topics that I should cover, or even an outline of a similar course that they've given/taken, I'd be very grateful. Naturally, I will credit for any resources that I use during the course.

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Looking for a very subtle unit testing example

- by Stéphane Bruckert

In the context of Continuous Integration, I need to teach unit testing to a 20-people audience of programmers. Everything will be all right, but I am still trying to find the perfect unit testing example. More than writing tests like a robot, I want to show that unit testing can help prevent very subtle errors. I am thinking of the following scenario to happen when doing a live TDD demo: the test cases would already be written, we would have to write methods together, most of us would naturally have forgotten to handle a specific case for a method, everyone would then be surprised, when seeing that all tests don't pass, the failing test would make us think more and realize that we forgot an important case. My question will probably finish as "too broad" or "not clear what you are asking", but we never know, one of you might have a great idea. Your answer can use Java and JUnit, though any other language will be fine since only the idea will matter.

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How to use short breaks at work effectively for self-development?

- by Alaudo

At the moment my daily work as a developer requires me to have short 10-20 min breaks after every 2-3 hours. It would be nice if I could use those effectively to improve my expertise in programming or CS in general. I tried several things: Reading jokes online gets boring very soon. Trying to solve some (even the most simple) tasks from different code contests requires more time, as long as I have some idea of an algorithm the time is over. Reading a randomly picked Wikipedia-article about Computer Science: depending upon the article sometimes it requires more time and is not an easy reading for a break. So, I ended up reading StackOverflow questions and answers with most votes: that is entertaining and educative. Do you have any other suggestions?

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Opinion for my recruitment portal idea [closed]

- by user1498503

I am creating a recruitment portal for IT professionals. In this, recruiters while creating a job post would be asked to create a skills requirement matrix. Essential Skills : asp.net MVC Entity Framework Desired Skills : SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 On the other hand job seekers would also have their own skills matrix Jobseeker #1 Core Skills : asp.net MVC Entity Framework MangoDB Secondary Skills : SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 Jobseeker #2 Core Skills : asp.net Web forms Secondary Skills : SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 So when both job seekers apply for the same job. Would it be a good idea for both of them to see each other's skills matrix for comparison?Also no personal details and CVs are shared. I think comparisons would help job seekers to understand what their areas of improvement are and could motivate to fill the skills gap. Your opinion would be appreciated. Regards

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Computer Lab School for Orphans

- by Brendon

I am helping out an NGO, called Orphans Found Fund, here in Arusha Tanzania setup a computer lab to teach students about Ubuntu and open source applications. I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 on all the systems. What I'm wondering about is how to tweak the systems so that the kids cannot: Delete or alter system files Alter the system settings Add or remove applications Exceed a time limit (like an Internet Cafe) Also as the administrator I would like to monitor the usage for another system to make sure that abuse of network is not taking place. Any advice is much appreciated. Brendon

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Associative array challenges, or examples?

- by Aerovistae

I understand well when and how to use an associative array, but I'm trying to teach a friend to program and I'm having some trouble with this particular concept. I need a good set of problems whose solutions are best implemented through the use of maps/hashes/associative arrays/dictionaries. I googled all over and couldn't find any. I was hoping someone might know of some, or perhaps get a community wiki sort of answer. That way I can say, here's our problem, and here's how we could effectively solve it through the use of an associative array... It's one of those cases where when I'm programming and I run into a situation that calls for a dictionary, I recognize it, but I can't seem to make up any such situations to use for a demonstration.

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Interesting Topics in Comp. Sci. for New Students?

- by SoulBeaver

I hope this is the right forum to ask this question. Last friday I was in a discussion with my professors about the students' lack of motivation and interest in the field of Computer Science. All of the students are enrolled, but through questionnaires and other questions that my professor posed it was revealed that over 90% of all enrolled students are just in it for the reward of getting a job sometime in the future (since it's a growing field with high job potential) I asked my professor for the permission to take over the first couple of lectures and try and motivate, interest and inspire students for the field of Computer Science and programming in particular (this is the Intro to Programming course). This request was granted and I now have a week to come up with a lecture topic for my professor's five groups. My main goal isn't to teach, I just want to get students to be as interested in the field as I am. I want to show them what's possible, what awesome magical things have been done in the field, the future we are heading towards using programming and Comp. Sci. Therefore, I would like to pose this question: I have a few topics, materials and sample projects that I would like to talk about: -- Grace Hopper (It is my hope to interest the female programmers in the class. There are never more than two or three per group and they, more than males, are prone to jumping ship and abandoning Comp. Sci.) -- The Singularity Institute -- Alan Turing -- Robotics -- Programming not as a chore or a must, but the idea that we are, at our core, the nexus to which anything anybody does in the digital world is connected to. We are the problem solvers; we assemble all the parts together and we are the ones that, essentially, make the vision a reality. -- Give them an idea for a programming project which, through the help of the professor, could be significant to every student (I want students to not only feel interested in the topic, but they should feel important, that what they do here makes a difference) Do you have interesting topics worthy of discussion, something I can tell the students which they can get interested about? How would you approach the lecture? If you had 90 minutes worth of time to try and get students interested in the project, what would you do?

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Is there a LOGO interpreter that actually has a turtle?

- by Tim Post

This is not a repeat of the now infamous "How do I move the turtle in LOGO?" Recently, I had the following conversation with my five year old daughter: Daughter: Daddy, do you write programs? Me: Yes! Daughter: Daddy, what's a program? Me: A program is a set of instructions that a computer follows. Daughter: Daddy, can I write a program too? Me: Sure! This got me scrambling to think of a very basic language that a five year old could get some satisfaction from mastering rather quickly. I'm ashamed to admit that the first thing that came to mind was this: 10 INPUT "Tell me a secret" A$ 20 PRINT "Wow really? :" A$ 30 GOTO 10 That isn't going to hold a five year old's attention for very long and it requires too much of a lecture. However, moving a turtle around and drawing neat pictures might just work. Sadly, my search for a LOGO interpreter yielded noting but ad ridden sites, flight simulators and a whole bunch of other stuff that I really don't want. I'm hoping to find a cross platform (Java / Python) LOGO interpreter (dare I call it simulator?) with the following features: Can save / replay commands (stored programs) Has an actual turtle Sound effects are a plus Have you stumbled across something like this, if so, can you provide a link? I hate to ask a 'shopping' sort of question, but it seemed much better than "Is LOGO appropriate for a five year old?"

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Is self learning Computer Science/programming over a college degree worth it? [on hold]

- by user106576

I am currently in college and I just want to skip to learning and gaining experience in what I came here to do, but unfortunately the first two years of college is general classes that everyone takes. I have a couple of friends that are also in Computer Science and we were planning on starting a small company/self employment. Would dropping out and gaining experience and a portfolio qualify for smaller companies if I look for a job there? What programs should I learn, and which ones should I learn before others to better understand the programs that are harder?

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Why is math taught "backwards"? [closed]

- by Yorirou

A friend of mine showed me a pretty practical Java example. It was a riddle. I got excited and quickly solved the problem. After it, he showed me the mathematical explanation of my solution (he proved why is it good), and it was completely clear for me. This seems like natural approach for me: solve problems, and generalize. This is very familiar to me, I do it all the time when I am programming: I write a function. When I have to write a similar function, I generalize the problem, grab the generic parts, and refactor them to a function, and solve the original problems as a specialization of the general function. At the university (or at least where I study), things work backwards. The professors shows just the highest possible level of the solutions ("cryptic" mathematical formulas). My problem is that this is too abstract for me. There is no connection of my previous knowledge (== reality in my sense), so even if I can understand it, I can't really learn it properly. Others are learning these formulas word-by-word, and get good grades, since they can write exactly the same to the test, but this is not an option for me. I am a curious person, I can learn interesting things, but I can't learn just text. My brain is for storing toughts, not strings. There are proofs for the theories, but they are also really hard to understand because of this, and in most of the cases they are omitted. What is the reason for this? I don't understand why is it a good idea to show the really high level of abstraction and then leave the practical connections (or some important ideas / practical motivations) out?

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Where can I learn image processing? [on hold]

- by Little Child

I am learning image processing on my own and I have managed to teach myself a fair few things like: Making images grayscale using 3 different methods Applying a 'pixellate' filter Applying a 'pointillize' filter Make images out of lines Now, I want to take my knowledge further but I do not know how. Adding more information: I am interested in making software like Photoshop or Gimp (although it won't be half as powerful as these 2). So, I want to learn to apply various creative effects to an image. Can someone please suggest resources for this??

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Learning the basics

- by Kevin

I am a Linux server administrator first and foremost... Having said that, I have been asked by a former high school teacher of mine to teach students a bit about programming. Like any Linux administrator, I know my fair share of Python and Bash. The problem is that I know NOTHING about the lower level stuff like "machine code" and compilation. The main purpose of this series is to teach programming, not computer science, so I don't need a graduate degree's level of knowledge for this, they will be learning Python first and foremost. However, I would like to learn enough to at least broach the subject with them, any ideas where I can learn that kind of stuff relatively quickly?

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How to market R at your institute?

- by ran2

Okay, I admit there are lots of threads R vs. something. The strengths of R are obvious to most people here. Still though advertising R in an environment that has been preferring various kinds of other software for quite some time is not easy. Moreover, even in the limited time I´ve been dealing with R, it improved so dramatically that I would mention things among its strengths that I would not have listed when I started my personal R-evolution. So, what I am trying to do here is to collect the most recent and striking arguments that can be put in nutshell and be presented easily. What I got on my list so far is: the Springer useR series ggplot2 and its documentation open source CRAN Rapache rcpp rsocket What can you add to this list? SO threads are also very welcome as answers. EDIT: so far, though indeed very helpful, most answers are arguments (pros) why one would want to use R. Do you have some specific hints that I could include in some kind of overview presentation? EDIT2: I wanted to add this link about R's future to the list...

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Who are the most influential computer scientists today? [closed]

- by Banana

Possible Duplicate: Which individuals are having the greatest impact on software developers today? Computer science has changed dramatically during the last decades, and new fields that recently arose in the scientific community are completely different with respect to classical cs related topics (for example, social network analysis). I'd like to have an overview of the most influential computer scientists in activity, or at least, who have been working during the last 10/15 years, possibly listed according to their specific field of study.

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Why Java as a First Language?

- by dsimcha

Why is Java so popular as a first language to teach beginners? To me it seems like a terrible choice: It's statically typed. Static typing isn't useful unless you care a lot about either performance or scaling to large projects. It requires tons of boilerplate to get the simplest code up and running. Try explaining "Hello, world" to someone who's never programmed before. It only handles the middle levels of abstraction well and is single-paradigm, thus leaving out a lot of important concepts. You can't program at a very low level (pointers, manual memory management) or a very high level, (metaprogramming, macros) in it. In general, Java's biggest strength (i.e. the reason people use it despite the shortcomings of the language per se) is its libraries and tool support, which is probably the least important attribute for a beginner language. In fact, while useful in the real world these may negatives from a pedagogical perspective as they can discourage learning to write code from scratch.

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Topics for covering in-depth programming knowledge

- by black_belt

I pursued my bachelors' degree in business administration, but my interest in Information Technology led me to acquire some knowledge of PHP programming and MySQL database. I find programming so interesting that I haven't applied for any job since my graduation. Currently I am staying home and just trying to acquire in-depth knowledge of PHP programming. So far I have developed couple of websites and web applications including Inventory+ Point of Sale Software and an Accounting system for small organizations. I aim to have knowledge that a Computer Science graduate should have, and for that I want to read books but I have no idea where to start from. Could you please suggest me some books and topics that I should study on? Thanks a lot :)

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