Advice to a Junior in High School?

[Chad Netzer]

Lots of replies. Rather than create a large list of individual responses, I will
summarize in this one post.

Don't have any responses (well, I do, but this is all far afield...) I
just wanted to point out that this was quite a civil discussion about
what can be a highly charged issue. Just wanted to thank everyone
involved for their cool heads.

 

[Tom Plunket]

The irony though is that [Bowling for Columbine] raised
suspicions on the media, but of course this documentary is really
part of the media. It steered the audience very strongly at
times, and I wish he released the unedited footage of scenes like
the surprise interview at the end.

It seems just mean to me to take a guy with Alzhimer's and rake
him over the coals to me, but maybe it was shot before the
announcement that he had it...

-tom!

 

[Chad Netzer]

It seems just mean to me to take a guy with Alzhimer's and rake
him over the coals to me, but maybe it was shot before the
announcement that he had it...

It was. Well before.

 

[Cameron Laird]

.
.
.
Okay. "..., or some other language that supports functional programming
style)" (which would include those mentioned, and many more besides). For
instance,

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Functional/?tc=1
Aleph (1)
BETA (8)
Caml (2)
Clean (6)
Dylan (19) <
Erlang (313)
Haskell (48) <
Leda (5)
Lisp (378) <
Logo (46)
Lua (18)
Mercury (4)
Miranda (10)
ML (35)
Mozart (2)
Objective Caml (5) <
Pliant (16)
POP-11 (6)
REBOL (95)
Scheme (127)
Sisal (12)

.
.
.
Someone needs to talk with the googlers; REBOL and Dylan
are not functional languages. And Lisp ... well, Lisp is
universal, so let's let that pass.

 

[Jacek Generowicz]

I'm sure there are people who learnt ML during the CS program at
Cambridge more than five years ago...

Indeed, they were definitely teaching ML as the first language 15
years ago, and it wasn't a new policy at the time.

 

[Thant Tessman]

.
.
.

Okay. "..., or some other language that supports functional programming
style)" (which would include those mentioned, and many more besides). For
instance,

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Programming/Languages/Functional/?tc=1
Aleph (1)
BETA (8)
Caml (2)
Clean (6)
Dylan (19) <
Erlang (313)
Haskell (48) <
Leda (5)
Lisp (378) <
Logo (46)
Lua (18)
Mercury (4)
Miranda (10)
ML (35)
Mozart (2)
Objective Caml (5) <
Pliant (16)
POP-11 (6)
REBOL (95)
Scheme (127)
Sisal (12)

.
.
.
Someone needs to talk with the googlers; REBOL and Dylan
are not functional languages. And Lisp ... well, Lisp is
universal, so let's let that pass.[/QUOTE]

Not to re-open that can o' worms, but last time I looked, Dylan
supported functional programming style just fine. If memory serves, its
word for 'lambda' is 'method.' I've never heard of REBOL.

-thant

 

[Neelakantan Krishnaswami]

Not to re-open that can o' worms, but last time I looked, Dylan
supported functional programming style just fine. If memory serves, its
word for 'lambda' is 'method.' I've never heard of REBOL.

Yeah, Dylan is basically Scheme + CLOS, with a Modula-style syntax. So
it's a functional language.

REBOL is more interesting. The original interpreter was written by Joe
Marshall, and he wrote it so that it supported lexically-scoped
closures (and maybe tail-recursion too?). This makes it count as an
fpl, in my book. However, the second version was a rewrite that lost
those features, and as a result it's not an fpl anymore.

 

[Peter Olsen]

"Howard Nease" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...

Stan Graves and Howard Nease shared the following exchange. I'd like
to add my two cents.

You should learn to think and to learn in college. ....
Study literature - I have yet to see a single computer scientist who
can manipulate symbols as well as Shakespeare. .....

I'd suggest English. The ability to communicate effectively is
probably more important than any technical skill.
....
--Stan Graves

<soapbox-mode>
Howard,

Stan has already given you some excellent advice. I'd like to add
some more.

I believe that all of education comes down to learning two languages:
whatever you speak at the dinner table and mathematics.

My dinner-table language is English; perhaps yours is as well. This
is the language we use to talk about what makes us human: our hopes,
our fears, our loves, our hates, and our passions. You will use this
language to court your partner, lead your peers, and console your
family and friends.

Master it. Use it with precision. As Stan wrote, read Shakespeare.
Read Churchill for his prose. Read poetry. (I like Robert Service,
plain though he may be.)

To work in a technical field you must write about technical things.
Read Paul Halmos' and Gil Strang's books on mathematics. Read "The
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Hal Abelson and
Gerald J. Sussman. (This is the best computer science book --- and
perhaps the best technical book --- I have ever read.) Don't worry
about mastering the details, concentrate on the elegance and precision
of their description. Ideas lost your head are useless; ideas on
paper, but not understood, are tragic.

Buy the "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. Keep it handy. Read
it. (I keep a copy close to the bathroom.)

Write simple sentences. Use short words. These things are harder
than they seem.

Improve your vocabulary. Excise abstruse words. Churchill wrote
"Short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of
all." He was right.

Just as your dinner-table language lets you describe the inside world
that makes you human, mathematics lets you describe the outside world
in which you live.

Mathematics lets us reason with precision. Here I use the word
"mathematics" to include almost any formal system for quantitative
reasoning.

I recommend that you learn all the traditional mathematics you can.
Take what courses you can. Mathematics has helped me learn
engineering, economics, and computer science. (It has also helped me
write good English.)

Still, you can learn your mathematics the other way around. Studying
economics, physics, engineering, and computer science can teach you
what you need. (I've found studying algorithms a particularly good
way to do this.) One of my friends --- and also David Mertz of Python
fame --- appear to have done it by studying philosophy.

Over all, the purpose of education is not to get a job, but to
understand the world and your place in it. A few of the best educated
people I have known were barely High School graduates; a few of the
worst have PhDs.

And when you're done, stop.
</soapbox mode>

Peter Olsen, AeE., P.E.
(e-mail address removed)

"Engineering is the art of using a professional knowledge of
mathematics and the physical sciences to improve the quality of life."

 

[John J. Lee]

(e-mail address removed) (Stan Graves) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>... [...]
Master it. Use it with precision. As Stan wrote, read Shakespeare.
Read Churchill for his prose. Read poetry. (I like Robert Service,
plain though he may be.)

[...]

Poor guy -- all he asked was what programming language to learn next,
and he gets deluged with everybody's Lessons in Life ;-)


John

 

[Jeremy Bowers]

(Unrelated to my reason for posting: You don't *need* to leave Computer
Science, it's not going anywhere. People choose to become professional
musicians, too, even though almost nobody can even make a living at it.
You can be a Computer Scientist, you just may not make a lot of money.
C'est la vie; for me, I still have to be a Computer Scientist, I love it
too much to quit.)

Study literature - I have yet to see a single computer scientist who can
manipulate symbols as well as Shakespeare.

class Rose:
"A Rose is a Rose is a Rose."""
def sweetness(self):
return "very"

rose = Rose()
otherName = rose
assert rose.sweetness() == otherName.sweetness()

Would you *notice* if a computer scientist matched Shakespeare?

How can you compare the two at all?

Statements like that sound all profound but are really the exact opposite;
meaningless.

 

[Stan Graves]

class Rose:
"A Rose is a Rose is a Rose."""
def sweetness(self):
return "very"

rose = Rose()
otherName = rose
assert rose.sweetness() == otherName.sweetness()

Would you *notice* if a computer scientist matched Shakespeare?

Yes. I have had the mis-fortune of being a maintenance programmer for
far too much of my life. I have read reams of documentation, and
hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I have attempted to make
sense of code written to do one thing, but extended and tortured into
doing another.

This may not be the computer scientists fault - but the fact remains
that the resulting system of code has little, if any, coherence across
itself, let alone a deliberate connection from it's elements to
anything that resembles the real world problem that the code was
written to give greater insight.

Then again, if an army of editors attempted to re-write Shakespeare, I
doubt seriously if anythign worth reading would have survived.

How can you compare the two at all?

I can compare the two because they relate to the same larger idea.
Literature, on its surface may simply be pretty prose. But literature
is also meant to provide us with some greater insight into the human
condition. Literature can be a stand-in for actual experience. When
you read the report of Lewis and Clarke to President Jefferson, you
can get a sense of what their journey was like. That is a journey
that can never be redone - the face of the land has changed since that
time...yet the words of the report provide a greater sense of
understanding about the men, the journey, the land, and the times.

In general, code is written to solve a greater problem than the
creation of that code. As such, code, or its results, should provide
a greater understanding into a non-code related problem.

As such, I can say that no computer program has provided me with a
greater sense of understanding into the problem it was meant to solve,
than Shakespeare has provided me with an understand of the human
conditions that he wrote about. Even with the precise language of
mathematics, code is generally a poor stand in for actual
understanding of a problem.

Statements like that sound all profound but are really the exact opposite;
meaningless.

I stand by my original statement. Perhaps with the clarification that
I have provided above, you may find some greater meaning in what I
originally said. If not, I hope we can simply agree to disagree.

--Stan Graves

 

[Jeremy Bowers]

Yes. I have had the mis-fortune of being a maintenance programmer for
far too much of my life. I have read reams of documentation, and
hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I have attempted to make
sense of code written to do one thing, but extended and tortured into
doing another.

For what it's worth, you're reading the slush pile and judging the whole
discipline with it, if that statement is accurate. To be fair, you need to
be comparing the *best* of computer science against Shakespeare, not
whatever happens to cross your desk. You can't judge English Novels by
Danielle Steele, either. The whole "Turing Machine" bit (including the
Halting Problem, incomputability, the whole "there are problems we can't
solve, provably") has personally moved me a lot more then Shakespeare.
Knuth has a piercing clarity. There are others. (Python itself is
surprisingly larger then the sum of its parts, to stay on topic, and I'm
not just saying that; I mean it.)

(Actually, I'm not a fan of Shakespeare; he's good with words but I think he
is worshipped because he was first; the first guys to be decent at
something are held up as geniuses later, but I think the exact same work,
done thirty years later after somebody *else* had been first, would be
merely a historical footnote. So I'll take the larger point and
extrapolate to "English masterpiece".)

(On the later point, I'm agreeing to disagree.)

 

[Corey Coughlin]

A junior in high school? First off, I wouldn't worry too much about
the job market, computers aren't going to go away, there will be a
need to program them for at least a little longer, and if you really
love it, you'll get good at it, and being better than most is all you
really need to get a job. If you're still really worried, I'd suggest
a double major with electrical/computer engineering. Learning what
goes on inside computers can be useful. Take it from an EE grad who
wishes he'd done CS now.

As far as what languages to study, I wouldn't worry about that at all
at this point, any of the previous suggestions would be fine. In high
school, I learned Pascal, Cobol, Basic (applesoft, if you must know)
and Fortran, and guess how long I kept using those languages? First,
figure out what you need to know for the AP tests, learn that
language, and then figure out what languages are most
popular/applicable for whatever CS specialities you're interested in.
Lisp and C are good suggestions, the highbrow CS types love Lisp, and
C will be useful until somebody finally puts a stake in Unix/Linux/(os
written in C). Python is great if you enjoy it (and you should),
C++/java/perl always make nice resume items, but that's bound to
change by the time you get out of college, so keep an eye on them and
see if they last. Many people have suggested learning a whole bunch
of languages, and that's fine if you want to learn a whole bunch of
languages, but if you enjoy programming more, then just pick the
languages you need to know to program what you want, and you should be
fine (for now, anyway). Keep an eye on new languages, peruse them
occasionally to see if they can help you out, otherwise stick with
your favorites. And in general, try to relax, I know the
hypercompetitive/internet time future is scary, but like most people,
you'll probably figure out some way to get by.

 

[Nick Vargish]

And should you be mugged on the street by a stranger, your chance of
walking away dead (rather than just with less money), are MANY times
higher if you pull a gun on your assailant.

Just to contribute to the topic drift...

I was mugged at gunpoint in the early 90's. I complied with my
nervous-seeming assailant and even helped him get my watchband
unbuckled. The police officer I talked to later said, "Good thing, or
I might be filing my report from the morgue."

Nick

 

[Paul Rubin]

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

Whaaat?? Where did you hear that the UK has anywhere near as much gun
violence as the US?? I've always heard it's much lower. Do you have
a cite?

For that matter why is it in several other European nations
(Netherlands and Switzerland IIRC) where there is a legal
requirement for all males over a certain age to be armed (standing
militia) that there is so little gun related violence?

Just Switzerland, and those guns are rifles and they take special ammo
that is issued to you in sealed cans that you keep in your house in
case you'er called up for service. It's not a handgun that you can
easily go mug someone with. And as someone else put it, it's not your
gun, it's the government's gun and every so often a government
inspector comes to your house to make sure you still have the gun and
ammo and that the ammo cans are still sealed. I don't know what
happens to you if they find the ammo they issued you is partly used up
outside of official exercises, but it can't be anything nice. It's
nothing like the US where you can buy as many handguns as you want and
shoot them whenever you want.

 

[Robin Becker]

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

Whaaat?? Where did you hear that the UK has anywhere near as much gun
violence as the US?? I've always heard it's much lower. Do you have
a cite?
[/QUOTE]
I believe Paul's right here, these pages may be of interest on UK stats
though they're not uniformly positive

http://www.sourceuk.net/indexf.html?02937
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/01/week_2/9_crime.html

 

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
|if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

I guess the answer is that this belief is absurdly far from the truth,
so it probably cannot be "explained" in that sense.

The USA gun fatality rate is about 10.4 per 100k. The UK has a rate
considerably below 1 per 100k. It's true, however, that Guy Ritchie
made some violent films about brits, so maybe that's where the imagined
rates come from.

For US rate, see:

http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10.html

I nice comparison of various countries is at:

http://www.dvc.org.uk/~johnny/dunblane/homemain.pdf

In particular, look at the chart on p.4. Somewhat of an anomoly is that
Switzerland, which has nearly half the gun ownership rate of USA has
less than 1/4 the gun homicide rate (still, the Swiss with their lots
more guns than UK, thereby have lots more murders than UK). New Zealand
and Australia are lower in both rates, but the proportions are even more
skewed.

So while the mere correlation between gun ownership and gun violence is
not perfect, all those countries with vastly lower gun ownership rates
have vastly lower homicide rates.

Yours, Lulu...

 

[Bengt Richter]

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US? For that matter

I am highly skeptical of this, and wonder where you got your "info." ;-)

why is it in several other European nations (Netherlands and Switzerland
IIRC) where there is a legal requirement for all males over a certain
age to be armed (standing militia) that there is so little gun related
violence?

When are people going to learn, it ain't the guns, its the education
and attitude surrounding them. It isn't guns that are the problem, it's
ignorance of guns thats the problem.

Well, when someone "loses it" and ignorantly mistakes you for the devil, what
would you rather see in their hand, a cocked "45" or a banana?

If your best friend "loses it" in a spiral of despondency over a mistaken (or not) diagnosis
of some kind, what would you rather know is in the drawer of their nightstand,
a loaded "45" or a book?

You seem to be hoping that education and attitude (which you don't mention a way of
improving, enforcing, or QA-ing) will prevent all the temporary quasi-insanities that
normally reasonable humans are capable of.

(Sheesh, look at the violence-trolling in the middle east. Not everyone is equally
capable of self-restraint, nor does culture/education/experience equally promote it.
(They seem to be having a "losing it" chain reaction meltdown over there, exacerbated
by antagonist leaders who have apparently "lost it" w.r.t. each other).)

IMO the problem should be approached in terms of risk management, and risks are not either/or.

There are risks in owning and operating cars. The risks vary according to operator and location etc.
We require licensing and insurance -- which does not control all outcomes, but does modify
probabilities of owner ship and behavior, and does mitigate some effects on surviving kin
(and financial institutions holding car loans).

There are risks in owning and operating firearms. The risks vary according to operator and location etc.
We don't require licensing and insurance -- which would not control all outcomes, but which would modify
probabilities of owner ship and behavior, and would mitigate some effects on surviving kin
(and financial institutions holding car loans etc for the deceased).

Wonder why the difference.

It says, "must wear corrective lenses" on many drivers' licenses. Should not something similar
apply to shooting within range of at least any other human (and is knowing that range less important
than knowing how far high beams carry? Why not test knowledge of both for respective licensings?)

OTOH, my grandfather was a deadeye shot, and there's a bunch of silver stuff somewhere
to prove it ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter

 

[Peter van Kampen]

If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US? For that matter

I very much doubt that, can you provide some numbers to backup this
statement?

why is it in several other European nations (Netherlands and Switzerland
IIRC) where there is a legal requirement for all males over a certain
age to be armed (standing militia) that there is so little gun related
violence?

The Netherlands has no standing militia, nor does it require all males
to own a gun. Until the early 90s there was a draft --if that's what
it's called-- (Give all young men a chance to learn how to kill and
then bore themselves to death in the other (11,13 or 17) months of
service), but it was abandoned in 1993. The Netherlands now have a
profesional army (i.e. all military personal voluntarily joined the
army/navy/air force) that is mostly used in peace-keeping missions
(with, regretfully, very mixed results).

When are people going to learn, it ain't the guns, its the education
and attitude surrounding them. It isn't guns that are the problem, it's
ignorance of guns thats the problem.

By that rationale it wouldn't matter who owns 'weapons of mass
destruction' as long as they would know how to (not) use them... If
you would agree that Saddam Hussein shouldn't be allowed to own a
'gun', could you still argue that every Tony, Dick and George should?

Only-mentioning-Godwin's-Law-ly yours,

PterK

 

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

|No, that isn't the question. The question is when someone breaks
|into my home which do I want more in my hand, a .45 (is a caliber, not a
|quote) or a banana.

I'll take the banana. I'd rather be out a stereo and a laptop than be
dead in a gun fight (or even than harm someone else who merely wants my
money).

|Do this simple test [...absurd story of criminal pathos and bathos...]

The VAST majority of gun violence (or any violence) is between people
who know each other well: husbands, wives, children, parents, friends,
etc. Loved ones without guns are many, many times less likely to kill
each other. Well, actually, the majority is suicide--which roughly
falls under the category described also.

Sure it sounds gruesome to get struck by lightning at the moment you are
getting run over by a railroad... but frankly, it ain't gonna happen.
On the other hand, keeping poison out of reach of children, for example,
seems like a sensible action, even if the much more likely resulting
death wouldn't make for quite as colorful a story as the train/lightning
thing.

Yours, Lulu...