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

SEARCH KEYWORD -- SCHOOL

  The significance of coding competition to actual work

Some friends asked this question: In secondary schools we participate in the NOI, in university we participate in ACM/ICPC, TopCoder.What's the significance of coding competition to actual work? I participated in the NOI from 1994 to 1996, ACM/ICPC from 1999 to 2000 and TopCoder in 2002 for six months. Later I paid little attention to coding competition, so I may not understand the changes in recent years and race mode . The capabilities we can get by participating the competition can be summari...

   ACM,Programming,Facebook,TopCoder     2013-02-28 20:38:23

  Funny Linux commands

1. sl You will see a train moving from the right to left on the screen. Install : $ sudo apt-get install sl Run : $ sl It has options like -aiFe: -a An accident seems to happen. You'll feel pity for people who cry for help.-l shows little one.-F It flies.-e Allow interrupt by Ctrl+C. We can also make fun of other people by setting an alias like below: $alias ls=sl When the user types ls, he will see the train instead of the file list. 2. fortune Output one statement, it can be a joke, or famous...

   Linux,funny command,figlet,sl     2013-06-08 21:30:26

  A return to good code

Stop doing this:public boolean foo() { if (true) {   return true;   }  else {   return false;   }}It always amazes me when I dig into an open source project, and I see code written by supposed experts, and reviewed by seasoned professionals, and nobody slaps the wrists of the developer who shoves return statements right in the middle of a method.Tell me, how hard is it to do this:public boolean foo() {   boolean flag = true;  ...

   Java,Code,Method,Return,Condition     2011-03-23 01:24:47

  Surprising applications of math

The comments in the previous post touched on surprising applications of math, so I thought I’d expand this theme into it’s own post. Below I’ll give a couple general examples of surprising applications and then I’ll give a couple more personal applications I found surprising.Number theory has traditionally been the purest of pure mathematics. People study number theory for the joy of doing so, not to make money. At least that was largely true until the ...

   Math,Number theory,Algorithms,Differential euqation     2011-11-18 09:24:19

  We’re working our young people too hard

Yesterday, I shared an anecdote involving a school I once attended with a list. This anecdote eventually became the basis for a blog post. Traffic was fairly normal for the first few hours until it found its way onto hackernews.Then it exploded.The comments on both the original blog post and the post on hackernews filled almost immediately with opinionated hackers, teachers and students sharing similar experiences, discussing the problem and figuring out what should be done about it.Repeate...

   Education,Science,Teacher,Student,Exam     2011-11-17 08:38:01

  Taking Precautions to Avoid Shady VPN Providers

VPNs or virtual private networks are virtual tunnels that obscure your IP address, routing your internet traffic through a server located in a country of your choice, in an encrypted and anonymous way. Using a VPN allows you to: secure your sensitive data from hackers obscure the IP address so you can see content not available in your country avoid websites you routinely surf (e.g., Facebook) noticing a different IP address when you are traveling, and asking you to verify your identity bypass t...

   VPN,NETWORKING     2019-02-19 07:26:26

  What Makes A Great Programmer?

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year 2000, Dr. Pargas was standing at the front of our data structures class talking about some data structure-y topic while an SSH session was projected on the wall in front of us. Someone asked a question, and he said something along the lines of "Well, if you want to be a real computer scientist you need to start using vi". I think he was smiling as he said it, and in hindsight his statement wasn't even slightly true, but being young and ...

   Tips.Programmer,Great,Great programmer     2011-06-08 03:08:04

  What Makes A Great Programmer?

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the year 2000, Dr. Pargas was standing at the front of our data structures class talking about some data structure-y topic while an SSH session was projected on the wall in front of us. Someone asked a question, and he said something along the lines of "Well, if you want to be a real computer scientist you need to start using vi". I think he was smiling as he said it, and in hindsight his statement wasn't even slightly true, but being young and ...

   Programmer,Great programmer,Character     2012-02-15 06:14:04

  Solving easy problems the hard way

There’s a charming little brain teaser that’s going around the Interwebs. It’s got various forms, but they all look something like this: This problem can be solved by pre-school children in 5-10 minutes, by programer – in 1 hour, by people with higher education … well, check it yourself!  8809=6 7111=0 2172=0 6666=4 1111=0 3213=0 7662=2 9313=1 0000=4 2222=0 3333=0 5555=0 8193=3 8096=5 7777=0 9999=4 7756=1 6855=3 9881=5 5531=0 2581=? SPOILER AL...

   Problem solving     2012-04-05 23:40:35

  What I learned from Google - You Get Fifteen Years

four years ago I was in Mountain View, California, interviewing for a position with Google. It was an odd sort of interview.  Lots of puzzles, math-like challenges, and code.  Lots, and lots, and lots of code. What struck me at Google wasn’t the challenges.  Nor was it the office environment, the cafeteria, or the mini-swimming pool, all of which were impressive. No, what struck me were the people. All of the people I met — and I mean all of them — had this ...

   Career,Technology,Programmer,Transform,Lifetime     2011-12-06 02:27:04

RECENT