The Nineteenth Byte

12:00 AM

When I started my degree here I found that the maths taught here in A-Levels was actually beyond what I had learned during my BSc (which wasn't exactly maths-heavy, but their A-Level standard is definitely well above the Abitur when it comes to maths)

FUZxxl

12:11 AM

@MartinBüttner Indeed. My view may be skewed as I attended a Leistungskurs in both mathematics and computer science, the former on a higher level than an ordinary Leistungskurs (thus, gaining the privilege of not having to attend certain entry-level math classes in university).

@TheBestOne The most important thing is that homeschooling cannot replace the social exposure you get at schools.

For some people, school is the only place they get exposure to “ordinary” society.

This is a huge problem with immigrants.

TheBestOne

@FUZxxl 50% of the kids at the local highschool do drugs.

FUZxxl

@TheBestOne Again; the situation is different in Germany. We don't have that much of a drug problem.

TheBestOne

I also go to church. If I wanted to, I could join in sports and clubs at public school.

FUZxxl

We many school-organized activities. Students usually join clubs elsewhere.

PhiNotPi

My friend is a fellow highschooler (age 17-18). Do you think Python 3 is a decent "real programming language a beginner can handle"?

BTW, I learned Perl as my first programming language. I don't know what "normal" is.

FUZxxl

12:17 AM

The problem is that quite a few parents try to shield their children from the world outside. We have children who don't speak German before they go to school because they never get out of their family. It's important to force these children to interact with other children from outside of their parents sphere of influence.

Mandantory public schooling is a very good way to achieve this.

It probably helps having a funding system for schools that isn't as brain-dead as the US system.

Sp3000

Python 3 sounds good - Python 2 was my first "real" language (because I don't think Actionscript counts :P)

TheBestOne

@PhiNotPi Much more so than Java. I recommend www.codecademy.com for some good beginning courses.

FUZxxl

I think a functional language is good for beginners.

or better, a declarative language.

Like Haskell.

Because people don't have to learn how a computer computes in the beginning.

They have to start with “how do I write down what I want to have?,” which is much more important.

TheBestOne

@FUZxxl If the parents are doing it right, parents should be allowed to teach their children.

FUZxxl

@TheBestOne How do you qualify “are doing it right?” You could mandate that the parents have a degree in pedagogics and in all the subjects the student needs to learn. Oh right, that would take about 20 years to study.

I don't think a parent can reach the same level of knowledge than the ~30 teachers a student encounters during his time in school.

TheBestOne

12:25 AM

@FUZxxl A mandatory yearly assessment of all students' knowledge.

FUZxxl

I think a huge part of the reason for mandantory school attendance in Germany is the different policy pertaining children. In Germany the well-being of the child is the first priority. Everything else, including belief and intent of the parents, is less important.

PhiNotPi

For example, I've had two teachers in the past with PhDs (and not in "education"). They knew a lot about their subject.

FUZxxl

@TheBestOne That could be done, but that doesn't fix the problem that some parents would try to indoctrinate their children. We had that problem before (parents teaching their children religiously-biased things).

TheBestOne

If religion teaches a child to be successful, what is wrong with it?

FUZxxl

@TheBestOne It often doesn't. There's a large problem in Germany with some fringe groups which try to bind their children to them by religion and other means. There's a lot of crime involved in that.

Mandantory public eduction makes this problem less severe, although it's not a silver bullet.

PhiNotPi

12:30 AM

The problems occur when the parents actually disagree with the public school material (rather than simply how it's taught or at what speed).

FUZxxl

E.g. there are entire communities of muslims which exist outside of normal law and society. They have their own judges and language. Much (organized) crime and abuse happens there. If the children are never forced to interact with the world outside of their community, they will have a hard time getting out of that environment.

@PhiNotPi That, too. But as said before, that's only a minor reason. The major reason is that public schooling forces children to interact with children outside of the community of their parents.

PhiNotPi

Is there a Python 3 IDE good for a complete beginner?

FUZxxl

@PhiNotPi I'm not sure.

PhiNotPi

When I first learned Perl, I used the Windows Command Prompt.

FUZxxl

The command line interpreter should be enough.

I think giving a beginner an IDE is a very bad thing.

An IDE hides many things and makes the user believe what he sees is magic.

TheBestOne

12:40 AM

That's how I first learned Java :)

FUZxxl

People who learned to code using an IDE tend to know less about how the building process and project structure works.

A teletypewriter and modem access to a mainframe should be enough to learn C.

TheBestOne

A good text editor with syntax highlighting is alright to start with though (I think)

Sp3000

@PhiNotPi Python comes with IDLE by default, which you can run scripts with F5 (or equivalent)

FUZxxl

@TheBestOne Good idea.

Sp3000

It also has a REPL and syntax highlighting and whatnot

FUZxxl

12:41 AM

Maybe Notepad++ if on Windows, nano or g/kedit on Unix.

TheBestOne

Maybe Geeny?

FUZxxl

or that

PhiNotPi

Notepad++ is probably okay.

(pretty sure this particular person uses Windows)

FUZxxl

Many beginners do.

It's fun to tell people that they should really use a Unix-like when they want to learn C. Learning C on Windows is a real pain in the ass and leads to programmers who know jack shit about portability.

TheBestOne

Please don't swear :)

FUZxxl

12:45 AM

(I moderate /r/C_Programming on reddit)

Sorry. I'm not used to censoring anything. There isn't that much of a stigma against swear words where I'm from.

TheBestOne

I was given a new computer for Christmas. Still haven't switched it to Ubuntu yet :)

FUZxxl

:-)

PhiNotPi

I'm on a Windows 8.1. Seems okay so far, I guess... sometimes.

FUZxxl

Let me suggest you to use Cinnamon Mate instead.

Much more usable and less crap.

PhiNotPi

I used to have a Vista.

Doorknob

12:50 AM

Pshh, what's all this talk about silly IDEs? Everyone knows Vim is the best editor.

FUZxxl

Ubuntu isn't a good system anymore.

@Doorknob indeed. I prefer to use ed for vi does not provide meaningful expansion over that.

PhiNotPi

Why use Vim when you can use Vi? It's one char shorter.

TheBestOne

I used Linux Mint(OS) before I got this computer.

Doorknob

@FUZxxl Why isn't it?

FUZxxl

@Doorknob Because vim is a bloated vi which is a slow ex which is an ed with meaningless expansions.

Doorknob

12:52 AM

@PhiNotPi Muscle memory, mostly. vi is symlinked to vim on my computer anyway. :P

FUZxxl

Being able to type commands that are longer than a character is overrated.

Doorknob

@FUZxxl I was responding to

1 min ago, by FUZxxl

Ubuntu isn't a good system anymore.

(hover over my message)

FUZxxl

After all, ed is the standard Unix text editor.

I see.

Ubuntu used to be good but they good caught in the torrent of NIH. Also, they had this Amazon-lense disaster which was one too many red flag for me.

Doorknob

@FUZxxl Editors are overrated. Real programmers use butterflies.

FUZxxl

@Doorknob Indeed. For your age you know a lot of memes. Let's hope nobody switches back to magic…

PhiNotPi

12:54 AM

I carve the program's binary into my hard drive.

TheBestOne

Ugh, don't get into circuitry.

FUZxxl

@PhiNotPi Philistine! Everybody knows that you aren't a real programmer until you pass the rite of wiring your own core-memory and pre-loading a kernel on it.

TheBestOne

You might as well build a computer from spare car parts.

PhiNotPi

This reminds me of a video I saw where somebody tried to build a toaster from scratch.

FUZxxl

hehe

that guy had zero skill.

negative skill, possibly.

TheBestOne

12:58 AM

@PhiNotPi I had a cat named Scratch. I am now imagining a toaster being made out of him.

PhiNotPi

It was a pretty bad toaster.

FUZxxl

o.O

TheBestOne

Its actually pretty simple to make one :)

PhiNotPi

¯\(°_o)/¯

TheBestOne

Take stick. Poke bread. Hold over fire.

FUZxxl

12:59 AM

This is my dog. instagram.com/oskusius

Much dog. Such flauschig.

PhiNotPi

I have a cat. He is a cat. He does cat things.

FUZxxl

Indeed.

TheBestOne

As soon as I install Ubuntu(or some other distro) I will get a cat.

FUZxxl

hehe.

cat comes preinstalled with all Unix and Linux systems.

TheBestOne

I know :)

How many? :D

FUZxxl

1:06 AM

uh… I think at least Solaris has two (a POSIX cat and a GNU cat)

because GNU cat sadly violates POSIX.

(not POSIX, but XSI which is a stricter variant of POSIX)

PhiNotPi

1:19 AM

My laptop audio has been acting up recently.

I'm going to try to update the audio driver.

FUZxxl

Thanks Poettering!

PhiNotPi

There's like a staticy crackling sound that keeps happening, which occurs no matter the source of the audio (Youtube video or a program on the computer) or the speakers I use (built in or headphones).

FUZxxl

weird

might be a hardware issue

PhiNotPi

The sound acts normally, crackles for like half a second, and keeps playing.

restarting my computer now. brb

Doorknob

Ha, "restarting." That's funny.

:P

feersum

1:26 AM

you can restart audio drivers without restarting everything

PhiNotPi

Now to see if anything changed.

And I broke all audio. JK LOL Windows, now fix it,

It works!

Life = complete

TheBestOne

class PhiNotPi extends Human{
    boolean lifeComplete;
    Computer computer;
    void fixComputer(){
        computer.restart();
        lifeComplete = true;
    }
}

Geobits

1:56 AM

> NullPointerException on line 5: "computer"

TheBestOne

class PhiNotPi extends Human{
    boolean lifeComplete;
    Computer computer = new Computer("Windows 8").update();
    void fixComputer(){
        computer.restart();
        lifeComplete = true;
    }
}

Nathan Merrill

I need to write an argumentative paper about CS

Geobits

Anything CS related? Rip off one of our meta discussions about what is a function/program/language :P

Nathan Merrill

I can't think of topics that are debated, as much of CS is mathematically defined

oh, that's a good idea

PhiNotPi

There's a new audio problem: I can't get it to separate speakers and headphones.

Both play when headphones are in.

Doorknob

2:02 AM

@MartinBüttner Oh yeah... heh, that. Totally didn't forget about that. :P

I guess I'll start working on that now, seeing as I haven't found any other viable options yet.

Geobits

@PhiNotPi That's just plain wrong. Have you tried restarting it? ;)

PhiNotPi

I'm about to.

brb :)

TheBestOne

39 mins ago, by PhiNotPi

restarting my computer now. brb

Geobits

As long as the symptoms keep changing, keep restarting, right?

Doorknob

The Solution™ to All Computer® Problems™©, for Microsoft Windows:
1. Restart computer.
2. Is it working? no) go to step 1. yes) go to step 3.
3. Congratulations, problem solved.

Geobits

2:06 AM

I like that the only thing not trademarked or copyrighted there is "Microsoft Windows".

PhiNotPi

Restarting again.

3

TheBestOne

The Solution™ to All Computer® Problems™©, for Ubuntu:
1. Search Ubuntu.SE
2. Found solution? yes) got to step 5. no) go to step 3.
3. Ask question on Ubuntu.SE
4. Wait for solution.
5. Open terminal.
6. Follow directions from solution.
7. Is it working? no) go to step 1. yes) go to step 8.
8. Congratulations, problem solved.

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner So I'm trying to write the un-CW script...

> POST http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/admin/posts/24407/remove-wiki 418 (I'm a teapot)

Geobits

@TheBestOne That's pretty much spot on in my experience. Except I usually replace Ubuntu.SE in step one with Google. Sure I might end up there, but there's a surprising number of blogs out there with random fixes I can't find anywhere else.

TheBestOne

@Doorknob IDE complains with infinite recursion.

Doorknob

2:17 AM

@TheBestOne Ahem, that would be a stack overflow actually

@TheBestOne IDE? Eww, get out. :P

TheBestOne

Better than Window's Command Prompt.

PhiNotPi

2:44 AM

Okay....

I've installed a few different versions of the audio driver and restarted my computer like 5 more times.

And it finally works.

This is great.

Nathan Merrill

is there an esoteric language that contains functions but no data?

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner Finished. All [tips] questions slowly being un-CW-ified. (Slowly because I don't want my IP rate-limited for all the POST requests I'm making.)

Considering which site we're on, I'm obligated to provide golfed code:

$.ajaxSetup({async:!1});var q=$("#question").data("questionid");$.post(location.origin+"/admin/posts/"+q+"/remove-wiki",{"mod-actions":"remove-wiki","master-question-id":"",duration:1,fkey:StackExchange.options.user.fkey});$(".answer").each(function(){var a=this.getAttribute("data-answerid");$.post(location.origin+"/admin/posts/"+a+"/remove-wiki",{"mod-actions":"remove-wiki","master-question-id":q,duration:1,fkey:StackExchange.options.user.fkey})});
$(".page-numbers.next").length?(alert("you need to dun do it again"),location.replace($(".page-numbers.next").parent().attr("href"))):alert("no…

PhiNotPi

I have the tips page up, trying to watch the de-wiki-fication in action.

Doorknob

I'm going from top-voted questions down

codegolf.stackexchange.com/…

^ search query

Dewikifying GolfScript... done.

PhiNotPi

I'm going to upvote one so that it is skipped.

Doorknob

2:51 AM

C#... done

@PhiNotPi I can always come back to the search query later :P

Haskell done

ECMAScript 6 done. You're watching history happen! :P

PhiNotPi

"Choosing Languages for Golfing" was skipped. :)

Doorknob

R, PHP, and Mathematica all done

I know. Only doing the language ones right now.

SirPython

@Doorknob You have a typo on your website

Doorknob

Pyth, CJam, Lua, PostScript, Bash all un-CW-ified

@SirPython I do? Where?

SirPython

About me > What do you dislike the most?

Your answer has a typo

Although, I'm not sure if you were joking around with it

Doorknob

2:57 AM

@SirPython What? No it doesn't. I have no idea what you're talking about.

(refresh, I fixed it :P)

SirPython

I thought you had meant it to be a typo, considering it would make sense it context.

PhiNotPi

Is the script still running?

Doorknob

Well, I have to run it on every [tips] question. All it does is un-CW the question and all answers.

(I'm pausing for a bit because I don't want to be throttled for making so many requests)

Actually, most of these have very few answers now. J to Processing all un-CW-ified

SirPython

@Doorknob Have a good one

PhiNotPi

How are questions made CW in the first place? (I've never tried)

You should bump every tips question to the front page.

Doorknob

3:03 AM

There used to be a few automatic processes. Those got removed a while back though.

(too many answers, too many edits, too many editors, etc.)

Now the only way for a question to be CW is for a mod to manually convert it.)

PhiNotPi

How does one become a mod? If I were to, say, want to "convert" some questions?

Doorknob

@PhiNotPi I became a ♦ here because everyone unanimously declared that we needed a new mod and that the new mod should be me. But that usually doesn't happen.

PhiNotPi

okay

Doorknob

For new sites (i.e. right after public beta), pro-tem mods are hand-picked by the Stack Exchange staff.

(That's how I became a mod on Puzzling)

For graduated sites, elections are held every once in a while, in which the community members actually choose who becomes a mod.

PhiNotPi

I have mod experience on a non-SE site.

Doorknob

3:09 AM

(If PPCG graduates, then we get an election soon after.)

PhiNotPi

But they picked mods by "who's willing to volunteer"

And then I slowly moved up the ladder

now I can ssh into the server and mess with stuff

Doorknob

Heh, which site is this?

PhiNotPi

Which is quite a story....

Doorknob

@MartinBüttner All "Tips for golfing in [langage]" questions are now un-CW-ified!

PhiNotPi

fluther.com/help/moderators

Doorknob

3:15 AM

Ooh, fancy. :)

PhiNotPi

Speaking of which.... they wanted me to change their IP lookup mod tool from MaxMind to SenderBase.

I'm doing that now.

Nathan Merrill

PhiNotPi

3:31 AM

So, I think it is interesting that I went from "average user" to "programming on the site."

Especially since I had to teach myself all of the programming involved in an actual web server.

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