Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ten Years at Google

neil.fraser.name

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: Ten Years at Google

#61

Post by kriro »

sn9 wrote: post #46

I recognized his site for being the source of one of the most inspiring posts on the potential for what CS education could be: https://neil.fraser.name/news/2013/03/16/

From that article:

"""The CS teacher was excited and promised to teach Blockly the next day. But there was another issue compromising the class. Due to a lack of funds, the school could not afford two CS teachers, so half the school was unable to take CS. I asked what a teacher's salary was. $100 per month. So I went to an ATM and bought them a second teacher for the next year."""

Sad and awesome at the same time.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#62

Post by Tempest1981 »

jldugger wrote: post #56
ivansavz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another graphical programming environment for kids is Snap! http://snap.berkeley.edu/ From the about page: One of the limitations of Scratch as a language for computer science education is that its lists are not first class, so you can’t have a list of lists. Making lists first class is enough of an extension to Scratch to allow the creation of any other data structures (trees, heaps, hash tables, dictionaries, and s…

Blockly is basically a web version of snap.

Snap! is web-based -- can you clarify?

Re: Ten Years at Google

#63

Post by dtamhk »

sb8244 wrote: post #29
sabujp wrote: post #17

Someone had built an open source graphical Perl code generator that used blocks very similar to this. Looking back in your blog you used to be a heavy Perl programmer. Was it you that did that? Where's that original project, iirc it used to be on sf or something.

I can not think of the name of this! My first real paying gig was for a local Pennsylvania company who distributed pBasic boards and merkur sets. They used an open source Perl IDE that allowed 3-5 graders to program the bot visually. I didn't know Perl and was still in high school, but was able to make some great contributions (to the company version). Taught me how to manage very small amounts of memory. I owe the o…

This?

https://www.parallax.com/downloads/s2-gui-software

Re: Ten Years at Google

#64

Post by david-given »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #3
rinchik1 wrote: post #2

OMG clicked on https://neil.fraser.name/news/2016/11/21/ (G-train link) and i just can't get past those nails..

Heh. As a programmer that types a lot, obviously, I find it really annoying when my nails get any length on them at all - especially the index and middle fingers, it feels horrible whenever your nails hit the keys before your actual fingertips. I tend to keep a second pair of nail scissors at the office, as I can't even bear it until the end of the day (this often happens on a Monday). Accordingly, I always find it k…

I used to work with someone who not only typed with incredibly long fingernails, but he used to bore holes in them and connect them together with little chains.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#65

Post by user5994461 »

DannyBee wrote: post #58
peteretep wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also a little disappointed, although I don't think I'd have written your comment... I wonder if anyone has a favourite article that reflects on how they and Google changed over the ten years that they were there?

If i ever leave (10.75 years so far), i'll write you one :)

What's your motivation for staying? Or what's your motivation for not leaving?

(whichever question makes more sense)

Re: Ten Years at Google

#66

Post by ensiferum »

coldcode wrote: post #38

Amazing to work for 10 years at one place. The only place that comes close is working for my own company back in the later 80s, early 90's. Who stays with one employer anymore these days?

Lots of folks making half a million a year...

Re: Ten Years at Google

#68

Post by dyarosla »

bootload wrote: post #35
dyarosla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been very many attempts. Scratch is a pre-cursor to Blockly[0] Code.org has an in-house build on top of Blockly[1] and then there are mobile apps like Hopscotch & Tynker based on Scratch[2][3]. There's also full-fledged game engines like Stencyl[4] based on Scratch as well. To be totally honest, the whole paradigm looks cluttered and illegible to me, and I've been researching learn-to-code environments for…

"That's not to say I think it's a lost cause: I think it works great for short, 5-10 line programs. Once programs grow larger it becomes very hard to reason with, like with most VPLs." Interesting comments. I'm not sure about the failure on larger programs. The idea of these visual languages is to allow different learning styles and a quicker way to absorb the program details into your head. The best understood progr…

I've done a lot of research into other VPLs as well, and in theory, all of these ideas are sound.

Unfortunately, it seems like VPLs only work well for well-defined domains (say, a VPL for shaders, a VPL for compositing, a VPL for EE, a VPL for business logic)

Once you try to go general, and add "zooming in" and "zooming out" mappings, the number of ways that people would prefer to visualize each becomes exponentially more complex to display/interact with; so much so that then simply using text seems like a general-enough solution.

I'm still hopeful that a general purpose VPL could exist and work for 'real' programs, but so far my search has come up empty.

A good reference list to look at for existing VPLs:

http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarm...

Re: Ten Years at Google

#70

Post by bootload »

dyarosla wrote: post #68
bootload wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's not to say I think it's a lost cause: I think it works great for short, 5-10 line programs. Once programs grow larger it becomes very hard to reason with, like with most VPLs." Interesting comments. I'm not sure about the failure on larger programs. The idea of these visual languages is to allow different learning styles and a quicker way to absorb the program details into your head. The best understood progr…

I've done a lot of research into other VPLs as well, and in theory, all of these ideas are sound. Unfortunately, it seems like VPLs only work well for well-defined domains (say, a VPL for shaders, a VPL for compositing, a VPL for EE, a VPL for business logic) Once you try to go general, and add "zooming in" and "zooming out" mappings, the number of ways that people would prefer to visualize each becomes exponentially…

"Once you try to go general, and add "zooming in" and "zooming out" mappings, the number of ways that people would prefer to visualise each becomes exponentially more complex to display/interact with; so much so that then simply using text seems like a general-enough solution."

Thanks for this insight. Agree with "text is good-enough". The link is like a list of approaches not to take. IFTTT, minecraft and openmusic appear to do the job.

The problem I'm thinking of is creating geometry using a combination of GUI manipulation -> geometry ->code to allow tweaking for n00bs, straight code -> geometry with GUI manipulation. These examples really help.

Post reply on HN