28 Apr 06 Teaching Java
I’m almost done with my first semester teaching a high-school Java programming class.
My perspective on teaching Java is different now than it was after I had just finished going through my classes in college that taught Java. Some of it is that there is a substantial difference between a college class and a high school one; a difference that leads me to the following conclusion: Java is not a good language to teach high-school kids that haven’t been exposed to programming at all.
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28 Apr 06 GOP Vixen: Great American Shopfest!
GOP Vixen: Great American Shopfest!
Oh yes. Finally. Someone has come up with the same idea I had on how to deal with Monday’s boycotts (at least, I hope there are boycotts). Go shopping! The streets will have less traffic because the illegals won’t be out. It will be safer because the illegal alien drug dealers and gang members won’t be out and about. It will be more pleasant in stores in restaurants because you won’t have to deal with illegals who can’t speak English.
Woohoo!!
26 Apr 06 Bush, senators agree on alien citizenship, shut out critics [or immigration committee chairmen]
Arrggh. Bush is really upsetting me these days, on a number of issues. Here, as this article reports, Bush snubs Sens. Cornyn and Kyle from the “closed-door” meeting that he had with other senators regarding the immigration issue. McClellan explained thusly:
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the invitees were senators who are leading the fight for a comprehensive bill.
“These are people who have been very involved in this issue, and people that I think are committed to finding a way forward to get comprehensive reform done and moving beyond the procedural tactics that have held this agreement from going forward,” he said.
Cornyn’s response was exactly on:
Mr. Cornyn, the immigration subcommittee chairman who was not invited to the meeting, said through a spokesman he didn’t see a need to be there.
“Senator Cornyn has been consistent and transparent on where he stands, and on his call for comprehensive reform without amnesty,” said Mr. Cornyn’s spokesman, Don Stewart. “The president didn’t need to convince Senator Cornyn to stop playing politics and blocking votes — he can save that message for the minority leader.”
But still…Harry Reid was invited, but the chairman of the subcommittee on immigration was not? Kyl was also not “invited”.
So rehash this a little: we all talk about this ‘porous 2,000 mile border’ we have with Mexico, right? Guess which states have the most border territory? Texas has the most by far. Arizona comes in second. Between them, if you say the border is 2,000 miles, they represent all but about 300 miles of it. So, Bush snubbed senators representing the states that have, by a very wide margin, the greatest interest in securing the border, as well as the immigration subcommittee chairman.
Oh, I almost forgot. Senator Cornyn is from Bush’s home state.
Cornyn has been thrice snubbed. The message is perfectly obvious: Bush is hellbent on getting this “comprehensive reform” (read: amnesty).
Congressmen, take note: the best way to get conservative voters to stay home this year is to go along with Bush on this.
25 Apr 06 Open Borders
hahahaha
see this:
24 Apr 06 C++ style anarchy
I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before. I just don’t know where.
It drives me nuts. In what other languages, other than C and C++, is it acceptable to totally ignore the style that the standard uses? In Java, the “standard” is the Java API written by Sun. Everyone, and I mean everyone who writes Java uses that style or they are a laughingstock.
The same goes for lisp. The same goes for PHP. The list could go on and on.
But C++? Well, what the hey! Microsoft writes its code a certain way, so that must be an acceptable style, no? Arrrgggghh. The style used by K&R, Stroustrup, and the standards committee is nothing like what Microsoft (and consequently, thousands of programmers) use on a regular basis, and it drives me batty.
In C, names should be brief and descriptive, generally one word or multiple, abbrieviated words. Everything should be lower cased, except for preprocessor macros, which should generally be capitalized.
In C++, names should generally be more descriptive, and words should be separated by an underscore character (i.e., ’special_vector’ or ‘address_table’). This includes classes, which people sometimes use the Microsoft style, which is *wrong*. Of course, style is arbitrary and not actually defined in the standard – but convention in most languages is generally to do things like the standard library does it, and Microsoft does not do it like the standard library does it. The same rules apply to preprocessor macros.
If I never see a class with camel-case styling again it’ll be too soon.
Tags: C++, programming
19 Apr 06 Bush ratings track gasoline prices
Or the reciprocal thereof, rather.
Anyway, have a gander:
18 Apr 06 Fill Up » Cliff Dugosh: A call to action
Fill Up » Cliff Dugosh: A call to action
This is important. Cliff was singled out for his Christianity. He has been, for over a decade, a phenomenal advisor to students. Every time I went to his office, he had time for me, and he always had students entering, in, or leaving his office. He ate lunch with students every day. He helped nurture excellent leaders in my generation through the MSC at Texas A&M.
He has been fired for reasons that are arbitrary, unfair, and in violation of the rights afforded us by the U.S. Constitution. Please go to the fillup.org site and read about his situation and what you can do to help.
10 Apr 06 Organize a rally/march/whatever…we will come
I’d participate in a rally to support H.R. 4437 if someone would organize it. Gladly. I’d even take a day off from work to do it.
10 Apr 06 Things not to do in software, i
Define multiple symbolic constants that replace integer literals. If you have a bunch of functions that return 0 for success and -1 for error, then don’t do this:
#define ERROR -1
#define OK 0
#define ADD_ERR -1
#define ADD_OK 0
#define SEND_OK 0
#define SEND_ERR -1
#define RECV_ERR -1
#define RECV_OK 0
int func()
{
/* stuff */
if(/*something bad*/)
return ERROR;
else
return OK
}
int add()
{
/* add here */
return ADD_OK;
}
int send()
{
if(/*send ok*/)
return SEND_OK;
else
return SEND_ERR;
}
int recv()
{
if(/* receive packet successfully */)
return RECV_OK
else
return RECV_ERR;
}
09 Apr 06 Win32 FLTK Binaries (r4911)
I have scoured the net for FLTK 2.0.x binaries, and there aren’t any.
Until now. I have compiled the static libraries for FLTK and have created a Windows installer (it will get listed in the “add/remove software” dialog).
Come and get it: FltkSetup.msi.
Tags: programming
