89634683
submission
peetm writes:
I have to put together a 3 hour (max) workshop for novice programmers — people with mostly no formal training and who are probably flying by the seat of their pants (and quite possibly dangerous in doing so).
I want to encourage them to think more as a professional developer would. Ideally, I would to give them some sort of practicals to do to articlate and demonstrate this, rather than just 'present' stuff on best practice. I need some help.
If you were putting this together, what would you say and include?
80582261
submission
peetm writes:
I have an above averagely bright nephew, aged 10, who’s into maths and whose birthday is coming up soon. I’d like to get him a suitable present – most likely one that’s mathematically centred. At Christmas we sat together while I helped him build a few very simple Python programs that ‘animated’ some simple but interesting maths, e.g., we built a factorial function, investigated the Collatz conjecture (3n + 1 problem) and talked about, but didn’t implement Eratosthenes’ Sieve – one step too far for him at the moment perhaps. I’ve looked about for books that might blend computing + maths, but haven’t really found anything appropriate for a 10 year old. I should be indebted to anyone who might suggest either a suitable maths book, or one that brings in some facet of computing. Or, if not a book, then some other present that might pique his interest.
59256155
submission
peetm writes:
Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine asks ..
"... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. I wonder if you would be so kind to advise me on this. Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ..."
This ex-student is now taking an M.Sc. in CS (pure), and whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favourites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful to her boyfriend.
And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject.
32002767
submission
peetm writes:
Twin brothers from England face US civil charges for allegedly defrauding investors out of $1.2m (£745,000) through a bogus stock-picking robot.
The twins; Alexander and Thomas Hunter; were just 16 years old when they devised the scam which fooled around 75,000 people, according to US officials.
