Accidentally in Code

Programming

Education, Facebook, Google Wave, Presentation, Programming, Social Networking, Twitter, Visualization

Holiday Science Lecture Presentation: Art, Life and Programming

Here’s the slidedeck! Because I’m presenting in French I’ve kept text to a minimum: Art, Life and Programming View more documents from Cate Huston. Posts with detailed notes about what I’ll be covering and the videos (which won’t work from Slideshare – boo!): Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Art Part 3: Life Part 4: Programming

December 27, 2009
→: Holiday Science Lecture Presentation: Art, Life and Programming
Education, Presentation, Programming, Visualization

Art, Life and Programming: Programming

Earlier, we talked about how programmers weren’t perhaps what you expect. Code isn’t either. Programmers used to program using series of 1’s and 0’s punched into cards (crikey!) but that’s not the case any more. Program code has got more and more high level, and some languages are actually quite readable by humans! Some programming…

December 27, 2009
→: Art, Life and Programming: Programming
Education, Programming, Reflections

Delegating

As a student, you don’t really learn how to delegate. It’s one of those crucial life skills that doesn’t seem to make it onto the curriculum, and when we think about it – how would it? There are opportunities, but you have to go out and find them. Volunteer to team lead on a group…

December 7, 2009
→: Delegating
Programming, Reflections

Duck Typing Applied to People

The other day, my boyfriend and I have a conversation along the lines of the following: Boyf: Why does X keep talking about how she’s a cricketer*? Me: I know, she’s never even thrown a cricket ball. Boyf: Seriously? Then she’s not a cricketer. Me: She self-identifies as a cricketer, I guess she is. Boyf:…

December 4, 2009
→: Duck Typing Applied to People
Education, Presentation, Programming

Thinking Like a Programmer

I see this problem continually in the first years I TA – they’re so overwhelmed by syntax they don’t know how to start to write the program. VB (in Excel) is especially mean about this, as if a line of code won’t compile it won’t let you go to the next one. So, having given…

December 3, 2009
→: Thinking Like a Programmer
Education, Google Wave, Presentation, Programming

An Introduction to Processing

Find the slides for this below. If you’re interested, there will be a session tonight in Wave at 7pm, but there will be another one later this week as well. As ever – feedback welcome! An Introduction to Processing View more presentations from Cate Huston.

December 3, 2009
→: An Introduction to Processing
Programming, Social Networking, Thesis, Twitter

The Refactoring

Lately I’ve been working on something that I’m calling The Refactoring. Not that long ago, I wrote about my Twitter Conversation Networks (read the rationale behind them) and I was blown away by the popularity and the amazing feedback that I got. So I tried to incorporate it all in. Here’s the thing, though, it…

December 2, 2009
→: The Refactoring
Education, Programming

Explaining Pass by Reference and Pass by Value

Yesterday I had to teach the distinction between pass-by-reference and pass-by-value to my first year non-CS students. There are second and third year CS students that don’t grasp this concept. But there you go. And so I explained it, to a sea of blank faces. They understood what I was saying (I think) but it…

November 26, 2009
→: Explaining Pass by Reference and Pass by Value
Education, Programming

Missed Opportunity

I’m spending a lot more time teaching other people to code than I am actually coding at the moment. Whilst I like teaching, this is not at all in line with how I want to be spending my time. I TA a mandatory computer course in the management school, and I have a friend taking…

November 21, 2009
→: Missed Opportunity