Guyag
Joined 11 years ago
Karma
247
Submissions
60
Member since
Aug 18
Recent submissions
Comment · 8 years ago
Comment · 9 years ago
Seconded. What I was looking for in a note-taking system was something wiki based, and this has a really nice take on the concept.
Comment · 9 years ago
Big fan of Tiddlywiki for its nonlinearity. You can see how it works without signing up or downloading anything; the site is itself an instance: http://tiddlywiki.com/
Comment · 9 years ago
Neat - I'm in the process of making a similar system which will spit out Spigot plugins, with the aim of letting kids create some simple ones themselves and hopefully planting the seed for getting them interested in programming. As part of this I included a 'split screen' view showing the generated Java in addition to the normal block work area, though this is read-only.
It's been more of a challenge than I thought it would be to design the blocks such that the end set isn't near enough a 1:1 mapping to Java - showing it to a non-technical friend of mine made it clear that my intuition was way off. Would be interested to hear how you approached this (if you don't mind).
Also interesting that I didn't find your website when I was initially researching, though I did come across https://www.learntomod.com/ (and even that was hard to find). I suspect my base search term of "minecraft blockly" isn't the most common one used by the target market to find something for their kids though.
Comment · 9 years ago
ServerBear did exactly this, though it seems they sadly shut down. ServerScope seems to do something similar - https://serverscope.io/ though without a huge breadth.
Comment · 9 years ago
I can't recommend Scratchapixel enough for diving deep into the concepts behind CG (although it seems to be down for me at the moment ironically). I can't remember how much it goes into libraries or if it sticks to implementing things from scratch, but I find knowing the concepts behind something makes learning the libraries much easier anyway.
Comment · 9 years ago
Syntax-wise, I've found learnxinyminutes.com to be a good introductory resource. I'm also looking for a good quality resource on programmatic conventions for different languages, including details on what unique/'cool' features each has, all in once place. So far I've not had much luck.
Comment · 9 years ago
Did anyone else think that the language used in this article was really hyperbolic and over-dramatic? Loads of unnecessary superlatives I thought.
Comment · 9 years ago
Is it not standard to have your ID checked when taking exams? I had to take my university ID with me to all that I sat at a British uni.
Comment · 9 years ago
I agree with you that people should probably choose a career in something they're good at, but I think that's separate to the issue of making life easier for people entering the subject from nothing. The CS courses I've seen are different from those in other subjects in that they assume a whole lot more background knowledge, which is a pretty exclusionary assumption to make. Stopping this is no bad thing.
Comment · 9 years ago
I think GP hits the nail on the head there with the homework analogy, and you with yours. Just talking to my friends in other careers about the work that I do makes me check time and time again just how many assumptions of knowledge I make when talking about anything vaguely technical (which is possibly a criticism of how I explain things, but also/even if so says lots about this issue).
What surprises me is the lack of consolidated resources addressing these basic pain points. I don't think it would be hard to come up with a list of examples just by looking at a normal work day and taking a step back; really evaluating where you're relying on basic knowledge to do even the most mundane of tasks. Once you've been doing this for a few years those tasks are just that - mundane - but for beginners it's having difficulty with those basic parts that is a real turn off. "How will I ever be any good at this if I can't even download code off this thing called Github". If someone could point me towards some kind of existing resource covering a bunch of different areas in this way I'd be really interested in having a read.
On a related note, I'm reminded of one of Dan Luu's related essays on debugging [1], which I recommend reading if you haven't already.
Comment · 9 years ago
I've seen (but can't find) some discussion on here about the movie industry in relation to this, I think in relation to what Netflix is doing with their originals. Apparently it's really heavily unionised, with people having incredibly specific jobs which only they are allowed to do, which is strongly baked into their general culture. Doubt it's the same case as SNAP, but just an interesting titbit. Can't find a source offhand.
Comment · 9 years ago
If the Official Secrets Act applies to you, it's an offence to break it even if you've not signed it.
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summ...
edit: beat to it by a minute!
Can you clarify what you mean by this please?