RE: Making empirical data code available
I don't know of a public service that attaches DOIs to arbitrary datasets (shame), but I use archive.org for publishing datasets (e.g. http://www.archive.org/details/beatboxset1) - it is a US library-oriented service whose explicit mission is to preserve digital data for a very long time. Well -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
RE: Making empirical data code available
Ooops - half sent message. Let's just say I am saying nothing at the moment. L. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
RE: Making empirical data code available
- permanently accessible URLs or other references (e.g. DOIs). For this This is certainly the ideal. Let's not fall into the trap of not doing anything until the ideal system is in place. I was just talking to my friendly local DOI guru and this is definitely possible now using datacite and UK repositories, though some negotiation with them may be necessary. L. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
Re: Magic features of programming languages
PDP-8 had auto-increment locations down in low memory in similar style. I suppose the device addressing through memory on lots of machines counts as magic too, L. Sent from my iPad On 22 May 2011, at 06:39, Thomas Green green...@ntlworld.com wrote: Kevlin Henney wrote: To really demonstrate autoboxing you need to allow the compiler to convert from int to Integer: Integer x = 1000; Integer y = 1000; However, if you are after interesting counterintuitive corner cases, change the constant to 100: Integer x = 100; Integer y = 100; A direct equality comparison will now compare true because, by default, the JVM caches the Integer objects for values from -128 to +127 (the range can be extended as an optimisation). In other words, your corner case has a corner case. Magic. Back in the sixties, the autocode for the Atlas machine at Harwell had a fine piece of magic. As an outsider, I could book for an occasional week there, and while I was there I could run programs twice a day iirc. I once spent two of those 7 days trying to find out why my program wouldn't work, panicking desperately about meeting my target, before discovering that of its 128 registers (called B-lines), the one I had chosen to use was fitted with a hardware conversion to return log-2 of any quantity stored in it. All the higher-numbered B-lines silently did special things, apparently. Great if you knew about them. Tough otherwise. (For those of you who came late to the party and missed the early days, an 'autocode' was a slightly-Englished version of machine code. Bit like a penny-farthing - if you stayed on, people admired you, but when you fell off it really showed.) Thomas -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
RE: Average, Best and Worst: Cost and Time to Produce Software Code
+ in all seriousness, who cares what naïve people think about anything? Quite often they are controlling the purse strings. (though who has a purse with strings these days? Surely it at least has a zip) L. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
Re: models of creativity in programming
On 23 Mar 2010, at 17:31, guzd...@cc.gatech.edu wrote: Also relevant to this discussion is Richard Gabriel’s proposal for a Masters of Fine Arts in Software: http://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html I really like that idea a lot and agree with much of what he says. I've been wanting to start doing Design style regular crit sessions for students developing programs but the class sizes simply mitigate against it, An earlier message was suggesting that expertise + knowledge (is this skill??) was much the same as creativity and I have sympathy with this point, but you do see highly creative solutions to problems developed by people with no expertise or knowledge. Maybe this is just dumb luck of course and there may be aspect of that in it too. However I would also add failure into the mix - creativity is a lot to do with failing and keeping going. You can do this with music and paint and literature and software, it's a bit harder to do it (or to be allowed to do it anyway) with bridges and aeroplanes and medicines. (Note I am not denying the creative aspects of building bridges etc.) You know what they say about overnight success taking a lot of years of hard work. I also suspect that none of as are likely to agree on this topic. L. -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
RE: Intuitiveness of programming languages/paradigms
The people who don't learn are not motivated and not enthusiastic That is an incredibly complacent attitude, pedagogically. I'm not suprised to hear it, I'm afraid. *sigh* You aren't listening are you? L.
Re: Something for the long weekend
Well of course the expression 111 Is 100% made up of 1s... L. Sent from my iPhone On 28 Aug 2009, at 19:39, Derek M Jones de...@knosof.co.uk wrote: Frank, What about thinking up symmetric expressions, e.g., (p)++|++(q) or: l-o-l Anybody got some more eye twisters? or trying to figure out how how to write the expression containing the highest percentage of any character. For instance, a ( or ) each make up 3/7 of the following expression. (((a))) I know of one expression that is made up of 2/3 of one particular character. Can anybody do better? All of the above are syntactically correct (well at last after adding a semicolon and and enclosing function definition and it is possible to create declarations for the variables to make them acceptable to a strictly conforming C/C++ translator. -- Derek M. Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:de...@knosof.co.uk Source code analysis http://www.knosof.co.uk
