gdp

17 ms·

121.
by gdp 17y ago
That's just an example of a bad certification process. Being able to provide an example of bad certification does not invalidate the entire concept.
122.
by gdp 17y ago
Degree programs that contain certain requirements could be accredited as being equivalent to a certain certification. Not all degrees programmes include even the first thing about software engineering - they have plenty of programming, bu
123.
by gdp 17y ago
No, tests ensure certain functional behaviour under one input. Certification would ensure that Joe is capable of writing tests that actually test anything, for example.
124.
by gdp 17y ago
> You're making one huge assumption here: that the certification actually certifies anything at all. As a matter of fact, it does not. Certifications are useless. Having or not having a certification is no indication of presence or lac
125.
by gdp 17y ago
> What about certifying the software that Joe the developer creates, rather than Joe the developer? There's a simple reason why - it costs x to certify 1 developer, and y to certify a piece of software. For most software, "y" is still
126.
by gdp 17y ago
I agree that the existing certification programs may be lacking, but I don't think that negates the need for them. It just means we need to come up with better certifications.
127.
by gdp 17y ago
That's actually true of computer science in general. Ever turned up to a web conference? Or an OO conference? or a Java conference? I guarantee you that I feel as out of place and excluded in any of those forums as I'm sure you do in a
128.
by gdp 17y ago
Joe the Developer is entrusted with writing code that can cost people money and cause damage. In some cases, it can endanger lives and businesses. Joe the Developer doesn't need a certificate, but "we the people" (as in the people who have
129.
by gdp 17y ago
Neat thread, I'm keen to see what comes out of it. I've since moved away, but I was in a band called Dynamo Go back in New Zealand. We released an album for free in April this year: http://www.dynamo-go.com/ Drums were tracked in a pro s
130.
by gdp 17y ago
Using the word 'blueprint' is a bit deceptive. Source code is not a blueprint, because it is the end result. A blueprint provides all the information we need to build the house, but we can't live in a blueprint (i.e. a blueprint does no
131.
Pigeons and Programming: Superstitious behaviour(plsadventures.com)
1 points by gdp 17y ago|0 comments
132.
by gdp 17y ago
This is so silly that it hurts a little bit. As has already been observed in the blog comments, it's an ad, not a business plan. Ouch, my stupid hurts.
133.
by gdp 17y ago
Wow! All the dynamic features of Haskell and the type safety of Ruby? Where do I sign up? (Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's actually a neat accomplishment)
134.
by gdp 17y ago
Yes, except that a language created for a small group of users to fulfil a certain purpose needs only to worry about being "good". Obviously a language for which a design goal is "popularity", the design parameters are quite different, but
135.
by gdp 17y ago
No, please don't. There are already about 10,000 spammy 'social media gurus' to every 1 real twitter user. I'm yet to see any compelling evidence that this has any effect on anything except the signal to noise ratio of what is already a ve
136.
Ur/Web: The Ur Programming Language Family(impredicative.com)
16 points by gdp 17y ago|1 comments
137.
by gdp 17y ago
I'm not sure that's an inherently "design" focused activity. In order to become popular, you have to design something that people want to use, which is captured by several of the points in the article (e.g. "talk to people"). Once "design
138.
by gdp 17y ago
The libraries point is interesting. I avoided it because it doesn't really make a lot of sense in the context of domain-specific languages or anything like that.
139.
by gdp 17y ago
There's an "about me" panel in the side-bar of the blog.
140.
by gdp 17y ago
And wrestling alligators can be learned in five minutes if you already know how to wrestle crocodiles. > if you understand the programming model Right, learning the syntax of a programming is easy and quick, if you already understa
141.
Why programming language design is hard (and a few ways it can be made easier)(plsadventures.com)
31 points by gdp 17y ago|8 comments
142.
by gdp 17y ago
That's actually almost exactly the same thing as claiming that no language should be very different to everything else that has come before it. I'm really not a Perl fan, but I really don't buy readability arguments. I'm a functional progr
143.
by gdp 17y ago
No, in the early stages there is no language attached to my thought processes, though as I mentally interact with the abstract concepts, I generally start to concretise into recursive functions. This conception of 'recursive functions' sti
144.
by gdp 17y ago
You were one of 5 or 10 people who used the phrase "I think in pseudo-code", so it definitely wasn't targeting you specifically!
145.
by gdp 17y ago
In a programming or problem-solving context, this is sounds close to how I work in the very early phases of thinking about a problem.
146.
by gdp 17y ago
I didn't say "formal semantics", I said "fixed semantics", as in "something you understand and can apply consistently within a context". Within the context of a single code-fragment, the semantics are not changing. They might change from
147.
On the semantics of pseudo-code(plsadventures.com)
2 points by gdp 17y ago|2 comments
148.
by gdp 17y ago
I kinda skipped SICP (I had already been programming for a long time before it even occurred to me that there might be texts available that attempted to teach "computational thinking" rather than just individual languages), but having brows
149.
by gdp 17y ago
When you say "I think in pseudo-code", what are the semantics of this pseudo-code? 'cause it's actually a bit of a non-answer, when you think about it. Saying 'pseudo code' means that the language you think in has some informality in its s
150.
by gdp 17y ago
> No where in the post is there an example advocating dynamic invocation based on computed strings. No where. Your example that uses a random number generator to select a string and then use that string as a function name is dynamic i

More ›