The Whiteboard - 2013-08-02 (page 2 of 2)

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9:47 PM

woo I'm writing lisp in groovy!

(in intelliJ idea... I'm just all over the map today)

user55340

0

Q: High school student-What to do?

So, (this is my first post here, so excuse if I didn't get the point of this Q&A website) I'm in a pretty frustrating situation.I'm 15 and two years ago I started programming with Python(with large breaks, to explore other interests), and now I can do with it everything that I set my mind to (an ...

learning python books student

user55340

> what I want to ask, is advise. What should I do? What should I study? What is the best way? I have started watching some MIT lectures online (they use Python, what a coinsidence), am I on the right track? I have a Kindle(it was a present), any free ebooks to put to it? How can I get the most out of the available recourses(Internet)?

user55340

sigh

user55340

There is an answer however... (not in the question yet, for him...)

user55340

> But, I live in Greece, and most programming books are anavailable, so do courses.

user55340

9:54 PM

He needs... A tutor!

and which girl should I take to the prom? And what should I wear? Are hairless mole rats creepy or what? ...

user20683

@MichaelT Programming book are unavailable...damn, the financial crisis there is worse than I thought

10:14 PM

Unfortunately this doesn't fit here, but feel free to join The Whiteboard where discussions like this are completely welcome. My two cents if you really want to get ahead early on, have a read of the SICP which isn't free that I can see, and epsa.org/forms/uploadFiles/3B6300000000.filename.booksingle.pdf which is available free online so you may wish to start there. They are both seriously high level books, but you'll be miles ahead with them. — Jimmy Hoffa 1 min ago

I wish somebody handed me the SICP when I was his age

user20683

@JimmyHoffa then you've be Mark Gravell level or beyond.

So, here is ok?

@Antoni4040 This is where discussion is more than welcome

The site itself is focused on Q&A so unless a question can have a clearly correct answer they don't really work well because you end up with a bunch of answers that are all equally correct and then people in the future come to it and don't know which of the answers to actually follow

But nobody googles to find the chat...at least I sure hope not, I'd have to go back and redact a significant amount...

Oh s**t, SICP is great. I started reading it yesterday, there is a free online edition(I hope we are talking about the same book XD)

user20683

@Antoni4040 The idea with Stack Exchange is to set up Q&A that is very direct and beneficial to those who google it in the future.

user20683

10:19 PM

@Antoni4040 There is only the one...(thank God)

@Antoni4040 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and yeah, it is a phenomenal book.

user20683

If you can grok that book, you will be yards and miles above the competition.

Goal No.1 set.

I'll also learn Lisp, wchich is useful.

user20683

@Antoni4040 you'll learn a Lisp, Scheme isn't hugely used for Production.

user20683

Moving into Clojure, Javascript, or Common Lisp would be the next step.

user20683

10:22 PM

or the most direct anyway

What about C?

Is the K&R the best option?

user20683

@Antoni4040 C is an entirely different beast

user20683

no

user20683

K&R is nostalgia

user20683

it's an okay book at this point but it's very old and teaches an old style of C

user20683

10:24 PM

King's C Programming: A Modern Approach or Steven Cochan's book are better bets

user20683

In the interests of full disclosure, I own the former and am friends with the author.

user20683

Cochan's book is likely cheaper

user20683

C's not a bad second base as it were

user20683

There's a cheap OS/Architecture book from MIT that's good too

user20683

might read that when learning C so you understand the use cases for it

10:26 PM

Is 70$ cheap?

XD

user20683

@Antoni4040 it's not terrible for a technical reference

user20683

C in a nutshell's not bad either and the e-book is fairly cheap

user20683

I tend to like O'Reilly because they treat you like an adult who has some idea of what you're doing without assuming that you do.

I found K&R for free.

Is your friend sensible about piracy? Because this is the only way for me...

And I don't like it at all.

user20683

@Antoni4040 take care to avoid discussion of that subject here

10:29 PM

I tried to put it nicely, sorry

user20683

you'll have a hard time finding a copy

user20683

there's no e-book that I'm aware of

user20683

let me see

user20683

good free tutorials...

Any lectures maybe?

MIT has a lot.

Does it have about C?

That would be nice.

user20683

10:31 PM

@Antoni4040 not necessarily

user20683

here

user20683

2486

A: List of freely available programming books

Meta-Lists 25 Free Computer Science Ebooks Book Training - On Video Cheat Sheets (Free) CodePlex List of Free E-Books Free Tech Books Galileo Computing (German) How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming Microsoft Press: Free E-Books MindView Inc O'Reilly's Open Books ...

user20683

There's also Zed Shaw's Learn C the Hard Way

user20683

it's very straight forward

Thank you for the effort.

I think I've seen it before.

Have actually used it?

user20683

10:33 PM

@Antoni4040 I went through part of it

It doesn't seem very descriptive.

Although it might work?

user20683

About half of the tutorial give or take

user20683

hard to say, only you know how you learn

Let me see.

I learned Python from a tutorial.

@Antoni4040 at this point though don't get hung up on any given languages or being "useful" you have years of doing that ahead which is really the easy part anyway. Right now you should focus on the broader scope of fundamentals, algorithmic thinking, commonalities across large swaths of languages and their paradigms etc

10:36 PM

Thats EXACTLY what worries me and what I want to learn

That's why the SICP and the Concepts, Models, and Techniques books I linked are great; the SICP happens to teach scheme and the other one I believe uses a language called Oz, both are not really about the language though

user20683

You typically learn C from a "learning standpoint" to learn memory management and low-level tasks like bit switching and byte streams.

What's that Oz?

user20683

@Antoni4040 it's a language, I don't recall what family

@Antoni4040 Totally random multi-paradigm language, some say it's neat but I dont' think anyone anywhere uses it

user20683

10:37 PM

Smalltalk maybe

@WorldEngineer nah not even, it's full of ML and other things

user20683

ah

I wonder why the author used that...

I would use a more well-known language.

But, I'm not an author.

user20683

@Antoni4040 because concepts transcend languages

user20683

5 years ago, Objective-C was the semi-obscure programming language used to do systems programming for Mac OS X

10:40 PM

Of course, but if you happen to know the language, you feel more comfortable.

user20683

fair enough, I guess but given that you never stop learning in this field, it makes little difference once you get to a certain point.

And now is used in all Apple gadgets?

@WorldEngineer it's very multi-paradigm, it can look like python, c, ML, java...

user20683

yep

which is why I think he used it for that book

@Antoni4040 He likely used it because in the book he goes over concepts in practically every type of language you can find out there, so he can't use a common language because none of the common ones have such a superset of features

10:41 PM

Anyway, I'll check them out. SICP most.

and again he's not trying to teach a language, he's trying to teach the fundamental concepts of all the languages

Which are more important.

I got it.

What about websites?

user20683

@Antoni4040 as in building?

Are there any good websites that I should be aware of?

Except from SO

user20683

@Antoni4040 Jeff Erickson has some good notes on Algorithms. The math involved isn't terrible but it's a bit steep if you've never seen it before.

10:44 PM

> This book uses a single formalism for presenting all computation models and programs, namely the Oz language and its computation model. To be precise, the computation models of this book are all carefully-chosen subsets of Oz. Why did we choose Oz? The main reason is that it supports the kernel language approach well. Another reason is the existence of the Mozart Programming System.

from the book

Interesting, I don't even know what the kernel language approach is heh

@WorldEngineer ...some are referring to the concepts book as the new SICP, so you could almost say there's two, it's definitely big enough... :)

Just a reminder, my maths knowledge is not so advance(much better that average, though)

And these notes seem to have a lot of math.

user20683

@Antoni4040 that they do

user20683

like I said, not something to do right away

I should probably learn math as well.

user20683

at least some

user20683

10:54 PM

knowing how to do proofs well is good for formal work

A lot, if I want to study AI, for example.

user20683

@Antoni4040 that's mostly statistics on the processing end and Linear Algebra on the front end

The thing with Programming is that it works as a tool for other things.

user20683

@Antoni4040 and that knowledge right there is gold

So, you can't only know about programming.

user20683

10:57 PM

@Antoni4040 right

user20683

for instance, knowing about geography and cartography can open up a career in GIS (google maps and the stuff like that)

user20683

or knowing about biology could open up a career doing modeling of cell growth or cancer or whatever

Physics for games and science projects.

user20683

right

user20683

it all depends on what you find most interesting but having good, solid fundamentals and the coding skills to back those up means you'll likely never be hungry.

11:00 PM

These lectures from MIT look very nice.

user20683

they are, I watched some of the Algorithms ones

user20683

The math lectures by Gil Strang are excellent

And they have low resolution, great for my connection speed.

Finally, I'm working on a project.

For my father.

It's like Excel, but with more tools for his job.

Should I upload it to GitHub?

I've heard it's good for learning, that others can help you.

user20683

@Antoni4040 depends on whether you want it to be open source or not

As I said, I love open-source.

It's the best thing for a student.

user20683

11:03 PM

then stick up there and put a link in your profile here

user20683

promotion other than that is generally prohibited on the site proper.

Found a .mobi version of SICP, works perfectly.

user20683

@Antoni4040 two last pieces of advice: Always be humble and never lose your enthuiasm.

Thanks a lot for your help, it will prove useful.

Bye

user20683

@Antoni4040 ciao

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