It's getting close to the time when I need to submit training and travel requests. I'm looking for conferences and classes in the coming 12 months that are geared toward improving coding and software development, best practices, system architecture, etc. They need to be in the US or Canada since I'll never get approval for anything else....
I work in a consulting services firm. We do most of our work in the Microsoft tech stack. Over the last 5 years I feel like my team as REALLY been inundated with new technologies. These days we need competencies in not just a few, but MANY technologies and it really helps to be deep in them too! I feel like we could all use a little hel...
I would like to find out from other's experience what is the best way to capture screencasts that include code and cuts to the program in action, and then present those screencasts online so that the code is still legible, and ideally making the most efficient use of display real estate. What capture tools work well for this? I've trie...
Ok, where do I go now? I have studied C, C++ Lisp Prolog Forth Erlang What programming language can help me find the core principles of the lost art, programming. ...
You are the newly appointed Dean of Computer Science at a school that has no Computer Science program. With all your year's of knowledge, you know a thing or two about what was worth learning, what was a waste of your time, and what you wish you knew sooner. For instance, Assembly language early on was ideal for me... but the lack of for...
MIT abandoned its legendary 6.001 (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) course and replaced it with 6.00, 6.01 and 6.02 in the new curriculum. They are AFAIK about Python and robots. What is your opinion about the loss of SICP and Scheme in computer science education? Is it a necessary step in the right direction or a bad m...
There is a previous question ("Is a masters degree overkill?"), which is about the types of jobs available and the value of a masters when trying to get a job. What I am curious about the impact of programming ability. I know you usually write a masters thesis on some topic, which I imagine forces you to specialize. Do your programm...
As part of a series of presentations and hands-on seminars we want to do in our University, we would like to simulate the participants joining an existing open-source project and contributing. This involves us writing some code beforehand on simple projects (think pre-alpha versions), to which students will start contributing (including ...
I am primarily a .NET developer, and in that sphere alone there are at any given time probably close to a dozen fascinating emerging technologies, some of them real game-changers, that I would love to delve into. Sadly, this appears to be beyond the limits of human capacity. I read an article by Rocky Lhotka (.NET legend, inventor of...
Can anyone suggest real-world problems where a recursive approach is the natural solution besides DFS? (I don't consider towers-of-Hanoi, fibonacci sequence, or factorial real-world problems. They are a bit contrived in my mind.) ...
The converse of my earlier question. Despite all signs at the time, Theory of Compuation and a Compilers class are the two where techniques learned there have been used again and again. Designing state machines as well as writing tokenizers and parsers have been key skills that have proven their worth. What have you found invaluable? ...
To all the people who know lambda calculus: What benefit has it bought you, regarding programming? Would you recommend that people learn it? ...
I've been in an ongoing debate with our IT HR folks about the minimum requirements for mid- and entry-level developer/programmer positions. I contend that with the right aptitude and attitude, good programmers and engineers can come from a variety of backgrounds, including the "school of hard knocks" route. My HR peeps want to throw aw...
Hello! I'm working in a higher school in Austria and I'm currently evaluation how acceleration sensors can be used to deepen fundamental understandings (physics, mathematics, electronics, software engineering, project management, user interface [iPhone]...) and achive better motivation of the students (for example by giving a far milest...
I have found the easiest way to learn a new language is to write something in it. Usually this works best when I find myself having to write a fairly involved application for my job, however sometimes you just want to pick up some new skills. So my question is what kind of "sample" applications would you write if your sole goal was to ...
DEFCON, and Microsoft's PDC seem pretty interesting to me. Any other really good ones out there? ...
I'm 30 years old, a programmer in DC, and I do not have a degree. I currently am taking community college classes, but I am bored out of my mind. I am actually thinking of switching to physics or some other field other than CS just to keep interested. I know Joel has mentioned several times that he would only hire someone who maintain...
I've always been a largely independent learner gleaning what I can from Wikipedia and various books. However, I fear that I may have biased my self-education by inadvertent omission of topics and concepts. My goal is to teach myself the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from a top university (doesn't matter which ...
In general I think I can convey most programming related concepts quite well. Yet, I still find it hard to summarise the relationship between Fields, Classes and Packages. How do You summarise "Fields", "Classes" and "Packages" and "Their Relationship" ? ...
To cut a long story short, I am a CS student that has received no formal Post-16 Maths education for years. Right now even my Algebra is extremely rusty and I have a couple of months to shape up my skills. I've got a couple of video lectures in my bookmarks, consisting of: Pre-Calculus Algebra Calculus Probability Introduction to Stati...