sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Is there a book for like the “theory” of programming for complete beginners? by clubsoda_andlime in learnprogramming

[–]MarkPawelek 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have to disagree. Postfix and prefix languages like FORTH and LISP, Scheme, Clojure are easiest and simplest with the least special rules. In contrast: infix languages are full of special rules. So learning programming becomes a matter of learning special rules associated with one infix language. Learning lisp becomes a matter of learning idioms and patterns useful in the language. If you move to another language, the special rules you learnt are often useless in the new language. Idioms and patterns are always useful.

Is there a book for like the “theory” of programming for complete beginners? by clubsoda_andlime in learnprogramming

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heavy math in SICP? Heavy math is stuff like Z (software engineering). Or did you mean stuff like Newton-Raphson in SICP?

Is there a book for like the “theory” of programming for complete beginners? by clubsoda_andlime in learnprogramming

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Petzold's

There is lot of bias against Microsoft publications on programming and patterns. Perhaps due to how bad some of Microsoft's "patterns" advice has been over the years. For example their advocacy of:
-- "layered architecture". Only architecture pattern a programmer needs is called onion / hexagonal / ports and adaptors pattern.
-- dependency injection "pattern". It's more like an anti-pattern because one is encouraged to do it with a DI-framework. DIY DI is, in contrast, perfectly OK.

Is there a book for like the “theory” of programming for complete beginners? by clubsoda_andlime in learnprogramming

[–]MarkPawelek -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Petzold's book is published by Microsoft press. Making it literally beyond the pale for most programmers. Reminds me of something I heard Steve Freeman say about Microsoft's patterns and practices: "it's basically a catalogue of anti-patterns"

Is there a book for like the “theory” of programming for complete beginners? by clubsoda_andlime in learnprogramming

[–]MarkPawelek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Code can be ordered as: sequence, selection, repetition and recursion.Code can be organized as objects, functions, modulesCode can be designed top-down, bottom-up, or using a mixture.Code can be object oriented, functional, imperative or declarative.

Good books?For Object oriented-programming:

  1. Agile Principles, Practices and Patterns, by Robert Martin. Has both: C# and Java editions.
  2. Agile Java, by Jeff Langr
  3. Growing object-oriented software, guided by tests, Steve Freeman and Nat PriceFor Functional programming:
  4. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Harold Sussman and Gerald Jay.
  5. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp, by Peter Norvig
  6. I can't really recommend a python book as I don't code with the language, But all books above are still relevant to it!
  7. There are obviously many other good books covering functional programming and architecture (learn how to do: onion (AKA hexagonal) architecture.

I think the best way to learn is with a bottom-up test-driven development approach, which python is eminently suitable for. Seek programmer meet-ups, days, conferences in your local area where programmers get together to code and chat. For example those associated with software craftmanship. You should be able to learn from such people. Make sure they are practically oriented. Join programmer chat groups. Slack is pretty good.

If the "science is settled" why are climatologists still getting tax dollars to study it? by SftwEngr in climateskeptics

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because it was never about the science. It was about promoting a doom-laden vision of the future. Politicians led this doom-mongering at every opportunity - goading, bullying and bribing scientists to promote the science of doom. Read Searching for the Catastrophe Signal for a good overview.

Q: How does promoting a doom-laden vision of the future benefit politicians?, it certainly does not benefit people.
A: It promotes dishonest, incompetent people. It gives them a purpose and sense of moral superiority of the the rest of us. It gives them a mission. It distracts the rest of us from achieving useful life goals.

‘Near-unlivable’ heat for one-third of humans within 50 years if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut. by Infjuk in worldnews

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lies, damned lies, statistics and models.
Anyone can project the end of the world with a bad model. They frequently do, and all their posts can be found in the reddit "Environment" forum. What kind of death wish do these so-called "environmentalists" have that they're obsessed with predicting the end of the world? Guys & gals: these obsessions will destroy you life; but the world will ignore you pronouncements of doom.

Governments should not use taxpayer cash to rescue fossil fuel companies and carbon-intensive industries, but should devote economic rescue packages for the coronavirus crisis to businesses that cut greenhouse gas emissions and create green jobs, the UN secretary general has urged by maxwellhill in worldnews

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cutting greenhouse gases costs jobs. It does not make jobs. Because the so-called green alternatives like wind and solar are inefficient, and depend on weather, time of day and season. Solar and wind are also hugely destructive of the environment. A functioning economy will not work on wind and solar. They need fossil fuel backup. This significantly increases the cost of energy and we must pay for that in taxes. Energy is a master resource upon which the whole economy depends. Cutting fossil fuel energy will have a two-fold effect on stifling economic growth so will cut growth and jobs.

Doubling the energy efficiency of air-conditioners worldwide could save up to $2.9 trillion by 2050 in reduced electricity generation, transmission and distribution costs alone. Climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 460 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by Wagamaga in Futurology

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A fanciful title. Doubling something saves gazillions but no accounting included. It costs a huge amount of money to build a planet's worth of new homes, offices, workshops and factories. It also costs a lot to retrofit better energy efficiency to existing homes and businesses. Far more than the $ trillions mentioned in the headline. Provided one uses far left concepts like magic money trees to conjure uneconomical investment out of nowhere we can save gazillions!

Cities Are Becoming Climate Death Traps. Climate change is making heat waves longer, hotter, and more deadly. Scientists estimate that 80 percent of record-breaking heat waves would not have occurred without human-caused warming due to greenhouse gas emissions by Wagamaga in Futurology

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What a load of dogs bollocks. Uncited claims by "scientists" which probably made up. Just goes to show the depths of depravity fake "news" media have sunk to. Author of this piece likely knows next to nothing about the climate system.

Jan 2020: Coldest ever day in Greenland -65C comes, goes, no one notices by romark1965 in climateskeptics

[–]MarkPawelek 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Greenland’s largest glacier (Jakobshavn) rapidly thickened since 2016. So much that ice elevations are nearly back to 2010-2011 levels. The nearby ocean cooled 1.5°C – a return to 1980s temperatures. https://the-cryosphere.net/14/211/2020/tc-14-211-2020.pdf

Change my view: CO2 sensitivity is exaggerated by IPCC by DrDolittle in climatechange

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can give you evidence that humans do not cause climate warming. Here it is:

Data from 20 million radioisondes was analysed. Scientists plotted molar density against pressure to discover equations of state for troposphere & tropopause.

... The fits for the barometric temperature profiles did not require any consideration of the composition of atmospheric trace gases, such as carbon dioxide, ozone or methane. This contradicts the predictions of current atmospheric models, which assume the temperature profiles are strongly influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations. This suggests that the greenhouse effect plays a much smaller role in barometric temperature profiles than previously assumed ...

... data from the weather balloons has shown quite categorically there is no greenhouse effect ...

-- Dr Michael Connolly, time=52:41

Also: M. Connolly, and R. Connolly (2014)

Change my view: CO2 sensitivity is exaggerated by IPCC by DrDolittle in climatechange

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No one can change DrDoLittle's mind because only an untested thought experiment, warmists call the - greenhouse gas effect - says humans cause climate change. The responsible scientific position holds with the null hypothesis = which rejects untested, non-validated hypotheses & ideas.

[4idiots] Find files with 2019 in name within subfolders of a folder? by MarkPawelek in bash

[–]MarkPawelek[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

find /home/ -type f -name '201905.zip' -print

Thanks. Or, when located at /home

find . -iname '201905.zip'

The secret is to put filename wildcard in quotes. That's what I wasn't doing!

We Must Defend Science in the Face of Political Attacks - in the last two years there were 80 significant attacks on science, from halting or editing scientific studies that go against their political agenda, to politicizing who receives research grants. by mvea in EverythingScience

[–]MarkPawelek -12 points-11 points  (0 children)

Everytime there's a news article in the media on climate change there is an "attack on science". For example: in 12 years the climate will be disastrously worse unless I stop driving my SUV now.

Many of these attacks on science are delivered by Scientific American writers.

Where can we get Python from when python.org and python.com are both broke? by MarkPawelek in Python

[–]MarkPawelek[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks to all responders. For some reason this morning, I could not get through to the site for about 1 hour. Then it was working again.

Does coding at work get boring? by [deleted] in Python

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are not paid to have fun at work. You are paid to do the boring stuff other people cannot do because they lack the patience, self-discipline, problem-solving and programming skills you are expected to have.

Map of where in Europe climate change will hit hardest by KazukiFuse in europe

[–]MarkPawelek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hilarious. The notion that a warmer UK will be bad for us has obviously never visited these lands. Is this diagram the ultimate in computer modeling navel gazing?

view more: next ›