Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Computer science

  How Speeding The "Most Important Algorithm Of Our Lifetime" Could Change This Modern World

Math breakthroughs don't often capture the headlines--but MIT researchers have just made one that could lead to all sorts of amazing technological breakthroughs that in just a few years will touch every hour of your life. Last week at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) a new way of calculating Fast Fourier Transforms was presented by a group of MIT researchers. It's possible that under cert...

   FFT,Speed-up,Fast fourier transform     2012-03-20 07:47:04

  10 notorious computer virus

The history of computer virus is the same as computer history. With more and more powerful computers, virus also are smarter and harder to be detected and killed. They have big impact on data security and system usability. We introduce 10 notorious computer virus in the history. 1. Creeper In 1971, the Creeper virus, an experimental self-replicating program, is written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies. Creeper infected DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating sy...

   Computer virus,History,Security     2013-07-16 21:09:22

  Why Only Designers Can Create New Programming Languages

Attempts to verify the utility of languages stifle innovation. Christopher Mims 03/06/2012 30 Comments Compared to the versions that are hacked together late at night under insane deadline pressure, the programming languages to come out of academia are failures. Well, not all of them. History can speak for itself. Via UC Irvine computer scientist Cristina Videira Lopes, who deserves credit for any insight you might get from this post, which is a ...

   Designer,Programming language,Create,Great     2012-03-19 13:22:15

  A completely new approach to surveillance - should you be worried?

Paranoia is not necessarily a bad thing - assuming someone is really out there to get you. True or not, the paranoid have had issues they need to control explode as the internet developed, they also got specific tools to make their secrets (or their life, not everybody has a dark secret) more secure and under control. Unfortunately to them, and to the amazement of science and science fiction fans worldwide, a new way of obtaining secrets has appeared and it’s something very few expected. ...

   security     2014-08-11 05:41:58

  The Wasteful Legacy of Programming as Language

A few years ago I visited a friend who is a graduate student in linguistics. After some time he asked me if I was aware of the work by Chomsky on formal languages. I told him that yes, Chomsky work was a basis for much of the developments in theoretical computer science. More than that, I was glad to learn that there was something technical that I could share and discuss with other people in linguistics. At the time I found this was just a great coincidence. It was only recently, though, t...

   Programming language,Human language,Chomsky     2011-11-28 10:36:34

  Some lovely software design quotes

  Every time when I read technical books, I like reading the quote of a famous person at the start of a chapter(if any), usually they are very interesting. Here is a collection of famous quotes. Life’s too short to build something nobody wants – Ash Maurya, Running Lean author Give someone a program, you frustrate them for a day; teach them how to program, you frustrate them for a lifetime. – David Leinweber There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is...

   Quote,Software design     2012-10-13 09:13:34

  How NOT to teach a computer language

For the past year or so my wife has been taking online classes to get a computer science degree. For most of her classes she’s done great, she’s been flying through HTML and SQL, even up to the point where she can handle multilevel joins and optimizing through indexes. That was until she hit her vb.net class. I had no idea why she was having problems with a language has easy as vb.net so I started helping her out and find out why she was having so many problems. I’ve also ad...

   Programming,Teach,Book,Grade,Method,Computer     2011-11-06 14:52:13

  Today in history : Steve Wozniak invented Apple I in 1975

The original Apple Computer, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a personal computer invented by Steve Wozniak ion 29th June, 1975. Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. Features:CPU : MCStek 6502CPU Speed : 1MHzBus Speed : 1MHzMemory : 8KbResolution : 60.05 Hz, 40*24 charactersPower : 58WPrice : $666.66The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66, because Wozniak "liked repeating digits" and because they originally sold it to a lo...

   Apple I,History,Steve Wozniak     2012-06-29 06:00:08

  Coding skill and the decline of stagnation

I am a decent programmer. I know a decent amount of computer science theory, I can type correct code fairly easy. I don’t let my classes expand too much. But I still struggle some with math, and I have a tendency to have too many cross-dependencies in my code. I used to think I was an awesome programmer. One of the best. After I made a game in the first programming lesson in school, I got told to don’t bother showing up for the rest. I was the one who taught all my friends wh...

   Coding style,SOPA,Stagnation,Decline     2012-01-14 12:05:10

  Before Python

This morning I had a chat with the students at Google's CAPE program. Since I wrote up what I wanted to say I figured I might as well blog it here. Warning: this is pretty unedited (or else it would never be published :-). I'm posting it in my "personal" blog instead of the "Python history" blog because it mostly touches on my career before Python. Here goes.Have you ever written a computer program? Using which language?HTMLJavascriptJavaPythonC++COther - which?[It turned out the students ha...

   Python,History,Programming language,B     2012-01-18 08:08:53

RECENT