To the members of the Budget Council (2001)

I write to you because of a rumour of efforts to replace in the introductory programming course of our undergraduate curriculum the functional language #Haskell by the imperative language #Java, and because I think that in this case the Budget Council has to take responsibility lest the decision be taken at the wrong level.

You see, it is no minor matter. Colleagues from outside the state (still!) often wonder how I can survive in a place like Austin, #Texas, automatically assuming that Texas’s solid conservatism guarantees equally solid mediocrity. My usual answer is something like “Don’t worry. The CS Department is quite an enlightened place, for instance for introductory programming we introduce our freshmen to #Haskell”; they react first almost with disbelief, and then with envy — usually it turns out that their undergraduate curriculum has not recovered from the transition from #Pascal to something like #C++ or #Java.

[…] Finally, in the specific comparison of #Haskell versus #Java, #Haskell, though not perfect, is of a quality that is several orders of magnitude higher than #Java, which is a mess (and needed an extensive advertizing campaign and aggressive salesmanship for its commercial acceptance). It is bad enough that, on the whole, industry accepts designs of well-identified lousiness as “de facto” standards. Personally I think that the University should keep the healthier alternatives alive.

It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use, and in this respect programming languages have a devious influence: they shape our thinking habits. This circumstance makes the choice of first programming language so important. One would like to use the introductory programming course as a means of creating a culture that can serve as a basis for computing science curriculum, rather than be forced to start that with a lot of unlearning (if that is possible at all: what has become our past, forever remains so).

The Fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker and Alan M. Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether Machines Can Think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.

The threats to computing science (1984)
[…] Does this overestimation of the usefulness of the gadget hurt computing science? I fear it does. At the one end of the spectrum it discourages the computing scientist from conducting all sorts of notational experiments because "his word-processor won't allow them", at the other end of the spectrum the art-and-science of program design has been overshadowed by the problems of mechanizing program verification.

The design of new formalisms, more effective because better geared to our manipulative needs, is neglected because the clumsiness of the current ones is the major motivation for the mechanization of their use. It is not only the performing artist who is, in a very real sense, shaped by the instrument he plays; this holds as well for the Reasoning Man, and I leave it to you to determine how disturbed you are going to be by this observation.

SIAM is hosting a virtual CV resume building workshop (20min). #academia #scientificcomputing #EarlyCareerResearchers #SIAM #mathematics #statistics #computingscience https://www.siam.org/publications/siam-news/articles/announcing-siams-virtual-resume-building-workshop/

Folks, get my longer written pieces on #teamcollaboration in #softwareengineering via my LinkedIn newsletter at https://buff.ly/41zrctR #edchat #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, get my longer written pieces on #teamcollaboration in #softwareengineering via my LinkedIn newsletter at https://buff.ly/41zrctR #edchat #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, get my longer written pieces on #teamcollaboration in #softwareengineering via my LinkedIn newsletter at https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7140639339205533696/ #edchat #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, you can have my longer written pieces sent straight to your inbox by joining my mail list at https://buff.ly/499r3kg or subscribing to my LinkedIn newsletter at https://buff.ly/3TtlbNv #softwareengineering #teamcollaboration #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #csed #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, you can have my longer written pieces on teaching team collaboration sent straight to your inbox by joining my mail list at https://simplybegin.co.uk/ #softwareengineering #teamcollaboration #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #csed #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, you can have my longer written pieces sent straight to your inbox by
joining my mail list at https://buff.ly/499r3kg
#softwareengineering #teamcollaboration #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #csed #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, you can have my longer written pieces sent straight to your inbox by
joining my mail list at https://simplybegin.co.uk/

#softwareengineering #teamcollaboration #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #csed #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation

Folks, you can have my longer written pieces sent straight to your inbox by joining my mail list at https://buff.ly/499r3kg #studentteams #teaching #softwareengineering #teamcollaboration #studentprojects #collaboration #highered #csed #computingscience #teamwork #classroomculture #cseducation #workplaceculture

n.social
@nutritioustim
·
May 8, 2015
A Better Way to Build Brain-Inspired Chips. http://bit.ly/1F2J6WV. #neuroscience #computingscience
@Techreview

Really loved this explanation of the concept of monad pattern. #monad #computingscience https://youtube.com/watch?v=C2w45qRc3aU&si=ZIwoBD9lmQhHdiTQ

I'm a recently retired technical writer, which I was for a long time as a freelance and contractor, working for over 80 clients.

My background is in #chemistry, which I taught and researched at postdoctoral level, with a later postgraduate degree in computing.

Topics I am interested in: #Shropshire #Shrewsbury #technicalwriter #brexit #climate #science #computingscience #IT #geology #philosophyofscience #nudism #naturism #bisexual #humanism

date: 2023-04-23 19:36:53
by: AICareer (🚀Jobs-Internships-Scholarships)

PhD student in Computing Science with focus on serverless edge intelligence
at Umeå University
Check the details here: https://t.co/SF75GKRYNc
#phd #phdposition #phdscholarship #computingscience #university #umeauniversity #machinelearning #ai #artificialintelliegence

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/1650222227659411457
#PhdPosition

Recent methodological advances in the extraction and analysis of historical data are explored in this unusual and exceptionally interesting collection of papers.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/explorations-in-economic-history/vol/87/suppl/C

#bigdata #MachineLearning #data #economics #history #DigitalHumanities #DigitalHistory #ComputingScience #DataScience @machinelearning @econhist @dh

SystemV is a featherweight version of SystemVerilog that captures key structural properties of hardware designs.

Specifically, we are interested in:

- How to represent modular hardware designs;
- How to ‘correctly’ wire hardware components together;
- How to represent and automatically reason about the emergent properties of data structures both nominally and structurally;

The design and formalisation of SystemV is based on a typed lambda calculus.

The formalisation is mechanised in Idris2

https://github.com/border-patrol/system-v

#functionalprogramming
#idris
#verilog
#computingscience