The Classroom

Ben I.

12:02 AM

HNQ!! :)

thesecretmaster

2:54 AM

@BenI. Yay!

Buffy

1:16 PM

On the cusp. Rolling up the rep.

Must. beat. @BenI. this. month.

Ben I.

Bring it on!

user685252

Your answer to the variable question was a beauty :P

Buffy

@user685252 Thanks. I need to refine it a bit yet, though. You are a very mysterious visitor. Long term user, but never yet seen. Ghost in the machine???

@BenI. I have just enough headroom to make 10k today. Nice after a drought.

user685252

:-)

Buffy

@user685252 Pretty clearly a mathematician. Topology?

user685252

1:26 PM

Nah, just a novice.

Buffy

Homotopy ain't for novices ;)

user685252

:O

Ben I.

2:01 PM

I finally had a moment to answer the Scratch question. I'm so late to this party. :P

Yesterday, we tore apart our bedroom, and reorganized. The room is much, much better now. Much more space, much more functional, and a better arrangement overall The whole thing took longer than expected, though, and we didn't get to sleep until the bed was put back together at almost 1am.

Buffy

2:20 PM

Actually, I really dislike the variable=box model.

In fortran 4, in some circumstances, an integer literal was compiled as the address of a memory address (i.e. a box). Using "blank common" it was possible to change what was in that box. So that writing out a literal "3" might blast a 4 to the line printer.

Or should I say "chain printer." Yes, I'm that old.

Hmmm. Something odd, but wonderful. I went to edit an answer that had a url that wasn't quite complete (no protocol). I first checked the link and copied it. The unformed url was still highlighted in the answer and the correction was in my paste buffer. When I hit the edit button, I didn't get the edit form, but the correction was done. Is that magic here?

I suppose the poster may have updated it within a one minute window, though:

0

A: How to explain the concept of a variable to a 9-year old?

I remembered an exercise for children in the Etoys-System I read about some time ago. It does that not by explaining what a variable is but by introducing the need for variables. In the exercise children create a car in the Etoys-System (it's based on Squeak) that can drive around on the screen...

We don't get a lot of references to Squeak here. Sadly.

Buffy

2:57 PM

Woopie.

But now I have to pause the chase.

Ben I.

3:12 PM

@Buffy What, now?

Buffy

@BenI. 10K, but max for the day.

Ben I.

@Michael0x2a Are you still a student?

@Buffy Nice :)

BRB

Buffy

@BenI. At least I can stop checking every 10 seconds.

Ben I.

I haven't hit cap in a long time

Buffy

Me too. I did two days in a row once, I think. But it has been a while, even for getting close.

I have to thank the question posters, of course.

I'm thinking of suggesting Huffman coding as a suggestion to the cryptographic question. Not the same of course, but might be an easier introduction.

And compression in general.

ItamarG3

4:11 PM

The HNQ is just starting to attract low quality, IMO

as in, it has now started to attract such answers. It has many good ones as well

user1394672

4:32 PM

"For your daughter, she will probably be able to understand this but in future years she will have to relearn this at school and may become disinterested or disenfranchised entirely. I respect your drive to teach your daughter and I'm sure she is enjoying it but I would bare in mind that in a few years, this may not have been what was best for her. " - This came from the concept of a variable to a 9 year old question and it frustrated me so much I made this account!

Why would it be bad to teach your daughter something she finds interesting just because she might run in to it in school later? That seems nuts.

And how is it going to make her disenfranchised - someone is going to take away her right to vote because she knows what a variable is?

I know that's being pedantic and picking on him for a typo, but man, that riled me up.

ItamarG3

calm down XD. Let's face it: there are more controversial questions out there in SE.

user1394672

Haha that is probably true!

I've never read an answer that i really strongly disagreed with though - maybe I haven't been browsing the new ones enough to see them

of course, this was a comment not an answer.

ItamarG3

0

Q: Subjective list question?

The latest HNQ is, in my eyes, subjective: So, how would you explain the concept of a variable to a 9 year old (the actual question in the post, emphasis mine) This is quite subjective. I see the 20 answers it has accumulated in 23 hours as strong indication that viewers1, who might or mig...

-8

Q: Having your question reopened

I wrote a question a few months ago that got marked as a duplicate by people, because I did not emphasize why it was unique. I wrote a nice argument about why it is unique and commented it several times to ask if it could be reopened, and nobody even responded. Stackexchange said that I can get ...

discussion support exact-duplicates

that's ironic.

Aurora0001

4:53 PM

@ItamarG3 Hmm, I think the issue is that the 'barrier' to knowing the answer is low, combined with the "listiness"

ItamarG3

Those are probably the main factors...

Aurora0001

Luckily the auto-protection kicked in

ItamarG3

I was about to protect it ~5 mins after it got protected. I was late by 5 mins XD

I decided to protect it (but the system did it before I could) because I had just reviewed 5 first posts on that question - 3 of them were not so good, to say the least

thesecretmaster

5:11 PM

@ItamarG3 Took a stab at answering your meta, with a policy idea.

ItamarG3

reading it atm

@thesecretmaster after reading your answer, I think that if you add some more detailed section, we can try to push for that to be a canonical reference and begin acting upon it as soon as consensus is reached...

thesecretmaster

What sorts of things do you think I should add?

ItamarG3

hmm. a detailed explanation of the steps of the policy. similar to tag burnination.

note: the accepted answer has a score of 2.

and it was accepted 5 mins ago

thesecretmaster

@ItamarG3 Added a timeline for posts.

Ben I.

@user1394672 Agreed

ItamarG3

5:30 PM

@thesecretmaster I agree with such a timeline.

about question protection - I think that 7+ hours is good, since after 6 hours the HNQ starts to look at the question age, which means that from that point, it's a linger in the HNQ list

Ben I.

@user1394672 People say dumb things all the time. (I agree with you entirely.) I'd love to say that I never let it get to me, but of course, that would be lying.

Buffy

5:56 PM

I'm not sure I understand what the poster was objecting to. It was attached to my answer but seems to reference the question more than my answer. I'd actually like to hear more about the objection. Maybe here.

Buffy

6:29 PM

@ItamarG3 I've given this an answer.

In which I seem to disagree with everything said so far.

Ben I.

@buffy We're considering adding compilers and/or machine learning to our program.

Buffy

I know about compilers, much less about machine learning. I once met a person who I thought at the time had phenomenal ideas about machine learning, but she didn't get hired. Judged to be "too intense" for the students, though they were pretty intense students.

That was back around 1985 when few advances had been made. It was always "10 years in the future."

Ben I.

I don't really know about compilers, but I might be learning it soon :D

thesecretmaster

@Buffy I think our answers are getting at the same thing: That answers are the problem, not questions.

Buffy

6:47 PM

Probably. I think that the site question we are discussing really has only two answers and a lot of me-too replies. A few of the answers are a bit off the wall and hard to classify, though. @BenI. has one canonical answer and I have the other.

Alas, the OP liked @BenI.'s better (doggy hanging head in shame.)

thesecretmaster

Delete/down vote the low quality ones, if you haven't already

I'd delete vote many of them if my vote wasn't binding

ItamarG3

voila. voted on 2 of them

Buffy

Help me understand the treatment of this:cseducators.stackexchange.com/a/4205/1293. How does community make a substantive edit that my not be in accord with the OP's intention? How does the first comment (not marked as a comment) get there? I assume mod magic, but I've never seen either before.

ItamarG3

it's an anonymous suggested edit that got approved.

I'll check the history.

found it.

thesecretmaster

cseducators.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/2513

ItamarG3

6:53 PM

yep, that's the one

thesecretmaster

I reviewed it, and it looks like it's just the OP editing from an unregistered account.

ItamarG3

Personally, it doesn't seem like the same person...

thesecretmaster

Why not?

Ben I.

@Buffy I think that the reason that I disagreed with your answer was because it didn't really pay attention to the context provided by Scratch, which is really what OP is trying to help his daughter understand. Scratch doesn't allow parameterization, and two names can't refer to the same instance of a thing.

ItamarG3

the added paragraph addresses something very different

Buffy

6:56 PM

I think it is a mistake to edit in such a way as to possibly change the intent of the writer. his/her name remains on the post, but there is no trail to suggest who's ideas are represented.

thesecretmaster

It says "edited by Community", which means that it was edited by an anonymous user

ItamarG3

the user was online an hour ago (on SO)

Buffy

@BenI. I have no problem with that and I was clearly giving a more general answer than required.

Ben I.

I've come largely around to your philosophy about presenting higher-level ideas first, but I don't want to fall into the trap of explaining a more advanced idea than is needed, particularly at such a young age

ItamarG3

@ItamarG3 which means that they can log into their account.

Ben I.

6:57 PM

Today has been a fun and active day!

ItamarG3

@thesecretmaster all in all, I don't think it was the op who made the anonymous edit.

Ben I.

That edit confuses the heck out of me. Who wrote it?

Buffy

What the devil is an anonymous user anyway? Just someone not registered? And they can edit with no trail?

ItamarG3

I say it was just a somebody, and TSM says it was the answerer. now all we need is a downvote argument and we're back in business (i.e. about 2 months ago XD)

Ben I.

"TSM"?

thesecretmaster

7:00 PM

Me

Ben I.

Hahahahaha I'm dumb.

ItamarG3

@Buffy go incognito, go to the question, click "suggest an improvement" and see the anonymous magic happen

@thesecretmaster it's a me, marrrio

So, @thesecretmaster are you in an FTC team? or an FRC one?

Buffy

@ItamarG3 My UI has no such link/button/action.

thesecretmaster

@ItamarG3 FTC. We had a qualifier a few weeks ago, where we placed 17/30

ItamarG3

Huh? FTC build season ends that early?

Buffy

7:02 PM

@ItamarG3 Ah, go incognito = log out?

thesecretmaster

There's another qualifier later on.

@Buffy Yeah, or some browsers have an "incognito"/"private" mode

ItamarG3

@Buffy ctrl+shift+n on chrome

thesecretmaster

ItamarG3

"inPrivate" on microsoft edge.

Buffy

ok. private browsing on Safari, I think.

ItamarG3

7:03 PM

ah yes. "improve this answer".

suggest an improvement is in a51

Buffy

No cookie mode. Or monster, I guess.

ItamarG3

How can the build and quali overlap? :

@thesecretmaster - firstinspires.org/robotics/ftc/season-timeline

Buffy

How is the site protected against vandalism in that mode?

thesecretmaster

@ItamarG3 You can compete in an earlier or later qualifier

@Buffy They're all suggested edits, so they need to be reviewed by a user with 1k reputation

Buffy

FTC, FRC?

@thesecretmaster ok

thesecretmaster

7:08 PM

@Buffy FIRST Tech Challege or FIRST Robotics Competition -- They're robotics competitions that I participate in, and I think @ItamarG3 participates/participated as well

Buffy

@thesecretmaster Thanks.

One of you should propose a pithy site question on one of them.

thesecretmaster

I think one of us did. Lemme see if I can find it

3

Q: Teaching coding paradigms and concepts with specific context

Teaching programming is a great part of mentoring FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) teams. For teaching how to program a robot (Specifically, a RoboRIO), I first (unintended pun: FIRST) need to teach various paradigms (OOP, Generics etc.). There is a need to find ways to teach necessary but genera...

java frc robotics first

Buffy

@BenI. But the mirror problem is pushing the explanation to a lower level that itself isn't understood. Try to teach at one level as much as possible. If a language is well defined it should not be necessary to explain things in terms of its implementation on a lower stratum.

Buffy

7:30 PM

For example, see my comment here: cseducators.stackexchange.com/a/4224/1293

ItamarG3

7:43 PM

@thesecretmaster participated. Currently FRC mentor. Mainly programming, but also 3d printing and mechanics mentor.

of this lovely team

Ben I.

8:01 PM

@ItamarG3 Are you considering becoming a CS teacher as a career?

I have a feeling you'd be very good at it.

CS Educators Meta

8:23 PM

2

Q: Subjective list question?

The latest HNQ is, in my eyes, subjective: So, how would you explain the concept of a variable to a 9 year old (the actual question in the post, emphasis mine) This is quite subjective. I see the 20 answers it has accumulated in 23 hours as strong indication that viewers1, who might or mig...

discussion subjective

Buffy

9:06 PM

@BenI. Thanks for helping me get my fourth gold badge. Been a big day.

Populist

Ben I.

9:19 PM

'Gratz. That's some sort of hidden badge!

Buffy

No, just lots of votes on an already accepted answer (yours).

Ben I.

But I can't even search for it as a possibility in my own badge list.