bobochan

8 ms·

31.
by bobochan 6y ago
It was not just an influence on BASIC, but the raison d'etre, "It should be a stepping-stone for students who may later wish to learn one of the standard languages, such as FORTRAN or ALGOL." https://www.dartmouth.
32.
by bobochan 6y ago
This is a different take, but I have always been a huge fan of Damian Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata, a thought experiment in writing Perl in Latin. Just a taste from the documentation: "To simplify the mind-numbingly complex
33.
by bobochan 6y ago
Vermont. 58F (≈ 14.4C). The only exception is that heat is never turned on before November 1st, so if it is a cold October then you better find your good flannel shirt.
34.
by bobochan 6y ago
I like web sites that I can easily access from inside the terminal. My goto browser is links and I usually check these URLs a couple of times a day: https://text.npr.org https://lite.cnn.com/en
35.
by bobochan 6y ago
Wow! That was a nostalgia moment. My first professional gig was in 1988 when I took over writing dBase code for an NSF sponsored evaluation project. That taught me enough to work internationally for USAID writing dbBase code for all kinds o
36.
by bobochan 6y ago
The two best decisions I ever made were living and working overseas for several years when I was in my early 20s, and then moving to a small town in Vermont in my early 30s. I had a lot of adventures early, learned new skills, and then sett
37.
by bobochan 6y ago
I definitely remember those days. Both our kids are in university now and the part of the chart that spoke to me was seeing that steep drop off when the kids reach a certain age. It was a big change when the kids started high school and all
38.
by bobochan 6y ago
We have a local rink in our town and I volunteered for years as a "hoser," part of a crew of volunteers that would shovel off the rink late at night and then spray a new layer of ice so that the kids would have a fresh surface in
39.
by bobochan 6y ago
Great response! Pelé coming to the US was a HUGE kick start to soccer in this country and I will never forget him kicking a ball with President Gerald Ford at the White House. You are probably right about the other players that you mentione
40.
by bobochan 6y ago
Pelé is definitely the choice of many pundits, but he played most of his club soccer in the Brazilian leagues. In Brazil's World Cup efforts he had a superb team around him. Maradona is given the nod because he played in Spain and Ital
41.
by bobochan 6y ago
Very cool. I use it to teach SQL. I added a CodeMirror region for editing SQL code and have buttons that load a few example databases. The advantage of this is that students do not have to install anything, they can just visit the web site,
42.
by bobochan 6y ago
I used to produce absolutely enormous bibliographies of scientific publication for NSF reports from databases. We used to try and write complex macros to format the text properly (not sure if we didn't know about RTF, or whether it was
43.
by bobochan 6y ago
Thank you, that was a very inspiring response. I completely agree with you about the unrealized potential, but my greatest regret over the past 50 years is not about the technology, but our ability to harness it. I remember helping to setup
44.
by bobochan 6y ago
This is one of the strangest takes that I have ever read. I can remember my dad's turn on the waiting list finally coming up so that it was his turn to bring the HP calculator home from the government lab where he worked for the weeken
45.
by bobochan 6y ago
Sure. I really thought a lot of the early exercises were things that my students would enjoy doing, especially ISBN, Cash, and Caesar. I sent them to the CS50 web site and even showed them my own C solutions so that they could translate the
46.
by bobochan 6y ago
My son took the AP version of the CS50 course last year in high school and showed me some of the exercises and videos. I immediately updated a lot of my own class materials after watching them and relentlessly hyped the edX class as a great
47.
by bobochan 6y ago
I have! I actually really enjoy taking computer classes to learn computer languages that I already know in languages that I am studying, e.g. I took a Java class "Initiation à la programmation (en Java)" at the École Polytechnique
48.
by bobochan 6y ago
My two plus decades in academia have been amazing. I am surrounded by really cool people with interesting backgrounds doing fascinating work. Our students work incredibly hard and really bring a lot of positive energy to campus. The hours c
49.
by bobochan 6y ago
Yes! QuickBasic 4.5 was my jam! I used to churn out apps with that left and right.
50.
by bobochan 6y ago
Does anyone have a source for a Super Serial Card, or similar that would work with this? I have had my //e since '83 and deeply regret that I never picked one of those up.
51.
by bobochan 6y ago
Yes. I have been in academia for over twenty years and having access to NAG has always been a given.
52.
by bobochan 6y ago
I have used emacs for decades so I do not see the need for a big restart, but your question does remind me of something RMS said years ago. I cannot find the exact quote, but the essence of it was that any editor that offered the programmab
53.
by bobochan 7y ago
I respect this opinion, and some of my neighbors feel the same way. For me it is a matter of assessing the relative risks, and there has not been a violent crime in my town in anyone's living memory. I am certainly not opposed to gun o
54.
by bobochan 7y ago
I am in the same situation. I felt a massive surge of anxiety just reading all of the suggestions here. There are locks on some of the doors from the 1940s, but to the best of my knowledge they have never been used and we do not have any ke
55.
by bobochan 7y ago
Whoa! My uncle was the curator of that exhibition, Software, at the Jewish Museum of NY. Fun fact, that exhibit lost so much money that the museum stopped doing art exhibitions for a long time. I believe they only resumed doing them in the
56.
by bobochan 7y ago
My kids never showed much interest in program despite my encouragement, but this year our high school changed its programming curriculum to follow Harvard's CS50 model: https://cs50.harvard.edu The first half of the course
57.
by bobochan 7y ago
Wow! Congratulations! This is a great story. Best of luck with your new position. São Paulo sounds great.
58.
by bobochan 7y ago
Vertex has been playing hardball. They came to an agreement with Scotland last September and England in October, but other agreements are coming slowly. It is a real hardship for patients following Trikafta on Twitter and reading every day
59.
by bobochan 7y ago
I still write quite a few things in VBA. Most of this is for research or teaching purposes where I want to add a few things to Excel, but there is a surprising amount of demand from management consulting companies that want a front end or s
60.
by bobochan 7y ago
My favorite thing: cooking. I have been the primary cook at home for 30 years but only in the past few years have I had time for anything more than what we can get on the table in 20 minutes after soccer practice. Every once in while I get

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