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Computer Science Field Guide

csfieldguide.org.nz

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Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#21

Post by toomanybeersies »

Tim Bell (who helped make this) is a great guy, he spends a lot of time getting kids interested in Computer Science, with CS Unplugged [0], as well as teaching teachers how to teach computer science to high school kids.

I'd say it's in a large part due to him that Python is becoming the de facto standard for high school programming in New Zealand.

He's also a bloody good lecturer, he teaches the intro to algorithms at Canterbury, and does heaps of physical demonstrations of how algorithms work, like using a set of scales for sorting algorithms.

[0] http://csunplugged.org/

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#22

Post by alistproducer2 »

Great info, presented in a nice way. I could not imagine my high school self being the slight bit interested in it. I wish that wasn't the case, because I could've been Mark Zuckerberg had I been interested in CS in high school during the late 1990's/early 2000's.

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#24

Post by icpmacdo »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #12

This is great! I'm one of those self-taught programmers who holds two truths in his head at once: 1) I can learn anything I need to when the need comes up 2) With the exceptions of PLT and complexity, there are a lot of things (network protocols, compression, crypto, formal languages) that have not come up yet! So I'm glad to see a survey of these subjects. Formal languages in particular I've felt the hole.

I think 3 years ago this would have been super helpful to get to a point where I could know what I don't know. Although it will likely still be helpful in that way now.

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#25

Post by Bluestrike2 »

cgh wrote: post #19
huangc10 wrote: post #13

This is awesome! I wish I learned to code during high school. I can't imagine what level the next generation engineers/developers will be like if they start when they're teens. Limitless potential!

Many of us now in our 40s started on Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, Apple IIs and similar when we were actually preteens. I think starting relatively young is pretty normal for every generation of programmers actually.

Bit before my time, but that's probably true enough. The big difference is probably accessibility; there are so many less barriers to entry at this point, it seems like people are starting earlier than ever.

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#26

Post by icpmacdo »

warfangle wrote: post #8
cbd1984 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My HS CS class included learning about coaxial Ethernet cabling and dumb terminals (yes, actual amber screen Wyse terminals). I graduated high school in 2002.

My HS CS class was mainly Turbo Pascal & Borland C++ on token-ring networked DOS computers. Graduated in '02.

Visual Basic for me, as well as Java on my own time.

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#29

Post by barrkel »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #12

This is great! I'm one of those self-taught programmers who holds two truths in his head at once: 1) I can learn anything I need to when the need comes up 2) With the exceptions of PLT and complexity, there are a lot of things (network protocols, compression, crypto, formal languages) that have not come up yet! So I'm glad to see a survey of these subjects. Formal languages in particular I've felt the hole.

The chapter on formal languages is almost entirely about the mapping between regular languages and finite state automata.

While the section on grammars is yet to be written, what's there is still one of the less practically useful parts of language theory. It's nice to know how to direct-encode a regex matcher as an FSA using the program counter as the implicit state register, but it's exceedingly rare that you need that level of performance. And that's pretty much the only time you really need to know the fine details of regular language FSA.

However, quite apart from working as a compiler engineer for 7 years or so, I've found formal languages come up quite a bit. Not necessarily regular languages, but ad-hoc languages and parsing issues are very common if you do much work involving data from third parties. I continually build ASTs and AST-like things to solve everything from client-side routing + module systems to ad-hoc query UIs.

Re: Computer Science Field Guide

#30

Post by roel_v »

cbd1984 wrote: post #18
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you had a programming class. The computers at my high school didn't even have a compiler.

Tell that to kids today, and they won't believe you.

How many kids in high school know what a 'compiler' is?
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