What arguments can I use to encourage a beginner Web Designer that jQuery library is worth learning and using? For someone that is proficient in HTML and CSS, with some PHP expertise but with little JavaScript, jQuery appears like a huge risk and a maintenance nightmare. Presentation articles like these ones published by “Smashing Magaz...
We have a couple senior (i.e. older) developers on our team that have no interest in improving. They write solid code, but they don't want to add unit tests or improve their efficiency. They are old-school C programmers using .NET, but everything they write is purely procedural. When confronted about their development speed (most code...
This semester, I will be a TA for an introductory computer science course at my university. As part of TA training, I'll be doing something called Microteaching, which is where I teach for 5-7 minutes in front of a small audience (4-5 people) and I am reviewed on my teaching style. Among being critiqued on my personal things like confide...
Should I teach CSS layout directly to new learners or should I first teach how to make layout with tables, then div+CSS? And what should I teach between HTML or XHTML? Both are same so should I start directly with XHTML 1.0 Strict? ...
I know there's been a few questions asked similar, and plenty of advice that might lead one to doing more reading, trying out things on ones own, getting involved in groups and such. However, I've been having particular success, in a different field, with a Mentor delivering his services over Skype, and particularly now, with Skype's ab...
I would like to learn a functional programming language to see a different programming paradigm. My background in programming: Java (I have just passed the SCJP exam), some ruby and very limited Rails. I use bash for basic sysadmin tasks. I use Ubuntu 9.04. As a second goal I would like to use fp to show kids (14-18 years olds) how mat...
I will be hosting weekly a couple hours session at university aimed at teaching some of our better students web-programming. These people are pretty proficient at computers and some are good at web. What web-technologies would you teach in 2010 for a semi-advanced students team? What would you include? And what would you omit to teach? ...
Currently a group I am a part of uses SVN. We are looking at moving to git. I have used git personally (and am actually using git-svn to bridge back to the main SVN repository), so I am convinced of its benefits. One concern is that git is more complex than SVN. We have some brand new folk who will need to learn version control from th...
I am re-reading Code Complete (Second Edition) since I read it in College. I got to the Second Chapter about the importance of metaphors and was curious what metaphor is/was most helpful to you in understanding software design/construction? I was looking for metaphors focused on Polymorphism, Inheritance, Encapsulation and Design Patter...
Well, the title's pretty much it: if I sat a non-techie/my mum/twelve-year old boy/cocker spaniel in front of you and asked you to explain actors to them, where would you start? I ask because my master's project involves them to a pretty large degree, and every other day someone asks me to tell them what I'm doing. When I'm talking to ot...
Hi, Im trying to teach python to a Law student (happens to be my fiancee).She has been insisting on me teaching her about it. One problem: She doesn't know anything about programming. I was thinking on starting with dive into python, but i'm worried most not about the python part, but the "she does not know anything about programming"...
I was wondering if it's a good idea to teach object oriented programming to my son? I was never really good at math as a kid, but I think since I've started programming it's given me a greater ability to understand math by being better able to visualise relationships between abstract models. I thought it might give him a better advantage...
I'm running a day for 30 kids aged 11-18 about computer game programming. They have all opted to do it, but they have no experience at all of programming. My main aim is for them to learn a few things: programming is hard/challenging programming is something they can learn to do being a computer games programmer != playing games all da...
I am preparing a short tutorial for level 1 uni students learning JavaScript basics. The task is to validate a phone number. The number must not contain non-digits and must be 14 digits long or less. The following code excerpt is what I came up with and I would like to make it as readable as possible. if ( //set of rules for invalid...
I am teaching a course "Introduction to Computer Programming" to the first year math students. One has to assume that this is the first exposure of students to computer programming. Here are the main goals of my teaching: Students should learn and understand the basics of Python. Eventually they need to master sufficiently many Python ...
I am teaching Python to undergraduate math majors. I am interested in the optimal order in which students should be introduced to various Python concepts. In my view, at each stage the students should be able to solve a non-trivial programming problem using only the tools available at that time. Each new tool should enable a simpler solu...
I'm investigating languages and IDEs for a project involving teaching high-school students (around grade 11). It will teach basics of programming as an introduction to computer science (e.g., including how numbers/strings/characters are represented, using procedures and arrays, control flow, a little bit of algorithms, only very basic I/...
I am about to give a TDD workshop. I have the theoretical part pretty much sorted out, but I wish to avoid typical Tic-tac-toe, Currency or god forbid Calculator exercise. Any suggestions for a good TDD exercise that can be ideally finished in a couple of hours? It would be great if you could list the most important test cases (includi...
Original Question I was invited to the kindergarten group of my elder daughter to talk and answer the kids' questions about my profession. There are 26 kids of age 4-6 in the group, plus 3 teachers who are fairly scared of anything related to programming and IT themselves, but bold enough to learn new tricks. I would have about 20-30 mi...
My friend would like for me to guide her into learning programming. She's already proven enormous aptitude for thinking like a programmer but is scared of the idea of programming since in her mind it's relegated to some magical realm accessible only to smart people and trained computer scientists (ironically, I am neither but that's besi...