So close

Wait

meta.stackexchange.com/revisions/99341/59

When did that happen?

What. there was not announcement.

@RoryAlsop I assume you knew because mod and stuff, but I would expect there to be an announcement. Don't know why he left so I can't be sure if there should be one... Ah well. He was a good CM. I think.

@ItamarG3 Yep - there was a huge announcement and discussion for days, not just on meta.SE, but on Twitter as well

One example discussion meta.stackexchange.com/q/303005/154443

There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. chronicle.com/article/How-to-Escape-Grading-Jail/241830

I found it most interesting, not for what the author says, but for some of the other things linked to, like Contract Grading, etc. Worth a look.

There is an interesting article in the New York Post.nypost.com/2017/12/04/…

The money quote: "Toddlers with just a few toys were more creative and focus than tots with more choices,...". If find a similar effect in teaching programming to novices. Teaching them a small but complete subset of a complex language is better than giving them lots of language features early on.

My early subset for Java is not a subset of C, but uses OO concepts instead, de-emphasizing variables but emphasizing polymorphism and composition of objects. Certainly it avoids arrays.

I'm really bummed about Pops.

@Buffy I'm not free to avoid arrays in my curriculum, they're part of the AP subset. (And they're quite heavily tested)

Your dad?

@BenI. We contribute content to a commercial site, of course. The top level decisions are about the business.

Haha no :) Pops was a Community Moderator

Ok

@BenI. You don't need to avoid arrays altogether. They are just not part of the early (complete) toolkit.

Also, I don't teach them until year 2.

Like matrices are to algebra.

For me, arrays would come late in the first course (college level). But by then the students are already comfortable programming in a Turing Complete language and can think in terms of decomposition/composition.

Decompose the problem, compose the objects.

Are they mods?

@skullpatrol They are the super-mods. Regular mods are volunteers. They are company employees.

Pops, in particular, was important to the early development of this site.

I see.

@Buffy I will never get paid for my work here, and neither will you. But I still believe that my contributions here matter.

@Buffy are you around?

Si Si

Oui, Ja, Da

Cooking, so back and forth.

@BenI. I can guess what you want

Oh?

A new answer about Oracle question.

Oracle question?

Oh! No

I am trying to understand lambda reductions.

$lambda$

I always forget whether that works in here.

I will use \ then to represent lambda.

If \xy.x represents true, and \xy.y represents false, then I have been told that (\b.b \xy.x \xy.y) is a not function, because the expression (\b.b \xy.x \xy.y) \xy.x results in \xy.y, and the expression (\b.b \xy.x \xy.y) \xy.y results in \xy.x.

Sorry, not much help. My functional background isn't that strong and is really all in ML, though i'm sure anything can be done there.

But I am having trouble seeing how those reductions are being done.

I'm going to guess that @EllenSpertus is your guide.

@EllenSpertus would be my hero if that were true.

Try

I could also go and ask in cs, I suppose :P

Yes.

If you learn anything, point me to it. Never too late to learn.

Bombs away! cs.stackexchange.com/questions/84989/…

Oracle question has a new answer.

HNQ :)

That's why I thought you were pinging me earlier. To get it there.

Haha I should have thought of that, but I was busy trying to figure out something else :P

Ooh, my brother explained it to me! I would go post my own answer on cs, but I need to run and get a haircut. I will talk to you later, professor.