So I’d like to clarify something about the previous post: When I said the problem was linguistic, I did not mean that the solution to the sample question was linguistic. It’s still a programming question (and, in fact, deeply prejudiced towards a particular language), but the point is people without a certain kind of linguistic framework can’t be taught to solve it.
Throws LacunaException
I found this old Jeff Atwood post (yes, it’s because it was linked from so-called “Hacker News,” okay?) about the apparent intractability of teaching programming, based on an academic paper. The upshot is that 1) some (and perhaps a majority of) people are simply incapable of coming to grips with programming and 2) these people seem to derive almost no benefit of any kind from programming coursework.
An example of a question that can be used to determine if someone will get anything out of studying program is presented:
Read the following statements and tick the box next to the correct answer.int a = 10; int b = 20; a = b;
The new values of a and b are:
- [ ] a = 20 b = 0
- [ ] a = 20 b = 20
- [ ] a = 0 b = 10
- [ ] a = 10 b = 10
- [ ] a = 30 b = 20
- [ ] a = 30 b = 0
- [ ] a = 10 b = 30
- [ ] a = 0 b = 30
- [ ] a = 10 b = 20
- [ ] a = 20 b = 10
So people throw out a whole lot of explanations for this in comments and inevitably devolves into “teachers suck” because everyone on the internet is such a fucking precious snowflake, but I’m not going to get sidetracked by that, because then I’ll just get depressed and never get to the point.
Which is: the reason this information confuses people is that they think that variable assignment is confusing because it’s a mathematical abstraction, but this isn’t true. Variable assignment, and a number of similar concepts that you need to wrap your head around in programming are confusing because they are linguistic abstractions, and linguistic prejudices are confusing and difficult to override (or, as is apparent here, even identify) because they develop than people tend to think they would, and so much work goes into preserving them. Understanding computers requires one to assume intuitively (although not consciously) that meaning is pretty arbitrary, which is arguably the single most important step to understanding (again, often in a pre/non/sub-conscious way) how to interact with the rules whereby meaning is generated.
Emitter
So I decided that my existing side-projects were all too mercenary and that I needed to do something goofy. The goofy thing I decided to do centers around generating random text using Markov Chains. I’m learning Javscript as I go, and when I was ready to have it generate text from the probability table I wasn’t somewhere where I could connect to the internet, so I didn’t know how to generate random numbers. Just to test the generator I arbitrarily set it to retrieve the first word from the list of possible words. For various implementation reasons, this will give you the input text, unless certain kinds of repetition occurs.
As an input text, I used the last two paragraphs here, because I thought it would be funny, and a little meta. After all this explanation, this will probably be a little disappointing, but the point is I got this:
and I thought it was totally hilarious.
Fusion
Here, brought to you by conversations I had with my dad and computer glitches, are location markers for diners in Northampton, MA on a map of Paris.
Personal Assistant
Here’s Yoshi helping my pack up after a day at Temboo.
The Stupid Past, The Stupid Future
I gave up on reading Great Expectations. The sanctimony overcame the quirky humor, and I couldn’t be bothered to keep track of what was going on any more. Now I’m reading Wuthering Heights, mostly because of Hark, a Vagrant. It’s way better, although every single character is totally fucking loathsome. Almost as bad as Austen, in that regard.
Speaking of loathsome, the previously observed race to the bottom of the Facebook-UI-emulation barrel continues apace with Gmail and WordPress’ control panel being the latest things that I use to become completely fucking horrible. It’s enough to make me hope that rich fucks do in the global economy completely so I’ll be too poor to see it get any worse.
Adobe Unblur
So Adobe has unveiled some fancy photo un-bluring technology. This allows you to take a worthless piece of shit, and through the application of substantial complicated computer effort, make it the way it would have been in the first place if you weren’t an idiot. In other words, Adobe has figured out how to apply the release process of Photoshop to your pictures.
Why I Hate My Industry
So Apple has announced a fancy new phone, but it’s not as fancy as people wanted it to be.
From this BBC story, marketing jagoff Gregory Roekens:
But in terms of style, it was underwhelming. People were expecting iPhone 5, but instead it’s almost fixing the weaknesses the previous phones had.
I’m glad that we can all agree that the way forward for tech companies is to follow the worst possible practices in order to impress morons and marketers. Also, Siri is. . . a pretty crazy new feature, and if you’re pshing it because you want a fancier case, you’re a fucking idiot (again.)
Wall-terfall
In a recent phone conversation with a friend I was chided gently (or, to be fair, tacitly) for not involving myself in a conversation that he begun via the medium of facebook. Of course, the obvious response to something like this is to adapt the disdainful tone of the habitual Facebook-abstainer, but I think it may be worth considering what I don’t like about it, especially as its popularity has allowed its design principles to cast their baleful influence far and wide.
Leaving the whole content issue aside, the “wall” format that FB copped off of Twitter a few years ago is hell on conversations. The stream of detritus that it represents encourages only the briefest and more cursory interactions, and furthermore encourages monitoring to such an extent that taking time out to string more than a glib aside together prevents its use as intended. Topics are not to be stepped into, they are to be waved at as they go by.
I think that there’s a real false sense here that seeing everything go by constitutes a grasp on the world. The fact that the internet has made everyone a bogoexpert on every subject in existence has been fairly widely noted, and this sort of info-consolidation encourages that no end. Nobody bothers to remember that actually knowing about a particular thing and using it as a lens is the best option a human being has available for real comprehension.
Wikipedia Continues Efforts to be Totally Useless to Computer People
Not long ago some exuberant Wikipedian got rid of the articles for a bunch of non-mainstream computer languages. Now someone has nominated and incredibly famous Perl hacker for deletion. The new motto of the Wikipedia editor is “If I have flung my poop far, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants, whose articles I then nominated for deletion.”