Object Oriented Compiler Architecture
Out of some curiosity, I quickly read this paper today: The Object-Oriented Architecture of High-Performance Compilers, Lutz Hamel, Diane Meirowitz and Spiro Michaylov, Technical Report, Thinking Machines Corporation, 1996. Even though they assume that the compilers internal representation is some…
Strong Typing for Security
I got into a mild argument about static vs. dynamic typing. I recognize that static typing can be verbose to the point of being repetitious. Take Java generics for example: List<String> astr = new ArrayList<String>();List<String> astr = new ArrayList<String>(); There…
Teaching-Oriented Faculty at Research Universities
The Communications of the ACM has put out an interesting piece about the treatment and role of faculty who wish to focus on teaching more than research. This viewpoint article, Teaching-Oriented Faculty at Research Universities, includes comments from people I’ve…
College Isn’t For Everyone
I’ve been spending a lot of cog cycles processing ways to make money doing education. It’s apparently quite difficult. With statements like There is No Profit in Education, No Competitive Advantage to Better Learning. and posts about Why Education Startups…
KernCUE
This past weekend, I made the trip up to Bakersfield. It took far longer than necessary to drive there because, even at midnight, the 5 is clogged with traffic. I went to attend the KernCue conference. Although, it focused exclusively…
eXtreme Education: Cognitive programming
I read a few articles that I’d like to pull together and place under the growing umbrella of what might probably become my personal teaching philosophy. First, when you look at eXtreme Programming, it consists of a collection of reinforcing…
Unit Testing in Education
In my readings of Extreme Programming, one thing I’m struggling to pick up on is Unit Testing. Mostly, it’s the pain of writing tests for each thing I can imagine goes wrong. Partly it’s an imaginary horror: I think about…
The Progress Phallus
My friend Ray runs numerical simulations and wanted to have a decent progress bar for his code. A bit of web searching revealed some code, that takes care of this automatically. However, we thought that an ordinary progress bar is…
Documentation for Progress
I’ve noticed in my work recently that documenting my work is one of the most reliable ways of making steady progress. I likely gathered the idea from the internet somewhere, or perhaps from the generous amounts of advice spewed forth…
The Modern Library
I’d like to say some things about what I think a sacred, but overlooked, and dwindling institution can do to revitalize itself in the day of the information superhighway. First, let’s get something straight. People have had the opportunity to…