+1, but HD280 Pro

Actually I think my wetshaving equipment, coffee grinder+aeropress and evoluent mouse and the dual 27" setup might rank ahead of it but then it's the headphones.

OK I'll grant there are some things you can't get from Apple in terms of hardware.

wtf is squid girl

You could go old school and get this though.

Let me just say that having done 100+ interviews for Google, I've never heard of anyone using those stupid questions, at least not within engineering. (Which is not to say that some interviewers don't have their own pet stupid questions, but at least they tend to be a little more technical).

That said, I'd have been ecstatic to find any candidate who would make me clarify assumptions or justify the decisions made in any given question. I'd also ding people for douchiness, though. There's a certain amount of value in being able to communicate the idea "this is stupid, and here's why" without being insulting.

#define CONTAINING_RECORD(address, type, field) ((type *)( \
(PCHAR)(address) - \
(ULONG_PTR)(&((type *)0)->field)))

Can't decide if above is cute, inspired, tricky, or crap. Context:


To add a new entry to the list, allocate an XXX_ENTRY structure, and then pass a pointer to the SingleListEntry member to PushEntryList. To convert a pointer to the SINGLE_LIST_ENTRY back to an XXX_ENTRY, use CONTAINING_RECORD. Here is an example of routines that insert and remove driver-defined entries from a singly linked list.

typedef struct {
PVOID DriverData1;
SINGLE_LIST_ENTRY SingleListEntry;
ULONG DriverData2;
} XXX_ENTRY, *PXXX_ENTRY;

void
PushXxxEntry(PSINGLE_LIST_ENTRY ListHead, PXXX_ENTRY Entry)
{
PushEntryList(ListHead, &(Entry->SingleListEntry));
}

PXXX_ENTRY
PopXxxEntry(PSINGLE_LIST_ENTRY ListHead)
{
PSINGLE_LIST_ENTRY SingleListEntry;
SingleListEntry = PopEntryList(ListHead);
return CONTAINING_RECORD(SingleListEntry, XXX_ENTRY, SingleListEntry);
}

Especially if you work at Google...ziiiiing :P

The bolded is offsetof(). The rest of your post makes me glad I migrated to c#.

It's a trick the first time. The second time it's a technique.

My Raspbery PI finally arrived (I ordered it over 2 months ago). Its an awesome piece of kit.

For those who havent heard of it: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
Its a $35 computer aimed at schools to get kids interested in programming. Its a (slightly bigger than) credit card sized chip with 2 usb slots, 1 hdmi, 1 audio, 1 video, 1 LAN, 1 micro-usb (power) and 1 sd card slot.

You load a linux image onto the SD card (actually very easy), pop it in, plug the micro-usb in and load it up.

Took me about 10 minutes to get it all running over remote SSH (dont have a USB keyboard), the setup is very simple for anyone who has used a linux system before. The intention is to use it as a micro-hub at home with an HDD attached to it so I can access files remotely.

Here's a pic of it http://yfrog.com/h736ampj

Has anyone done extensive research on various graph databases? I've been mainly looking into neo4j. Has anyone been using this out in the wild and are happy about using it?

Hook up some display+keyboard etc. for < 65$ and lol 100$ laptop imo

Also reading up on Erlang a bit because it was all the rage ~5 years ago (still is I guess lol fast moving IT industry). Finally my Prolog skillz come in handy

I already have a nice little project in mind

Quick question, been searching around a bit on learning two programming languages at once.

I'm in CC right now, transferring this year. My school offers C++ and Java, but first I have to take an intro class that teaches BASIC/Python. I have the option to take them concurrently however.

It seems like Python is different enough/easy enough that I could take one of the other courses as well. I learned BASIC in elementary school, which was like 20 years ago but I actually remember some things.

If I decided to do this I'd probably start right now on Python since I have about a month before school starts. Just not sure Java vs. C++(leaning towards C++).

basic is useless: not practical, doesn't teach you anything. python is relatively awesome. so that choice is easy.

c++ is a more difficult language which will teach you more. however it's ugly compared to java, and probably less marketable. java sucks, but is still widely used in industry and makes a better platform for learning about object oriented programming than c++.

+1 to all of this, though i'd take the slightly more opinionated stance of "for the love of god don't learn c++"

g_m,

first i wrote this:

but now i'm like:

Yeah the only reason I mention BASIC is because it's part of the curriculum, at least on the syllabus. I'm not even sure why?

I'm gonna go forward. There's plenty of resources here and elsewhere. I'm gonna get a head start on Python now and take up Java when school starts in a month. Thanks for the input!

As much as I want to troll that post, I decided to delete that response and do this instead:

Here's some reading for people who may be interested. Create or Perish: Case for Inventions and Patents. Pretty short read, but I haven't read it, so use it at your own risk: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrica..._or_perish.pdf

And also, a less scholastic approach to the whole debate, but if what it says is true, then it's scary:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radi...atents-attack/

I think it's kind of surprising that anyone learns Python before C (or something similar--at least something statically typed). Obviously, Python is infinitely more practical than C. But, I feel like there's a ton of subtle background knowledge that you need to know if you're going to program in Python, and I couldn't see myself learning all of that stuff efficiently in any way besides by learning a bit of C. (Obviously learning a ton of C is above and beyond the call, and learning C++ is masochistic.)

I just feel like you could sit down and learn Python and then find yourself really confused down the road when it turns out you don't understand some basic concepts about datatypes or low-level operations, which Python (and almost everything else) inherits from C. Worse still, there's a decent chance you won't even know what it is that you don't know, which is a hellish place to be.

That said, learning to program without ever encountering a seg fault would be pretty fun. Python is an awesome language (my current preferred language by a mile), and I might be totally wrong that it's hard to learn from scratch(ish).

Good post.

You bolded the most relevant part. The macro is pretty much used all the time by Windows kernel mode device drivers as a way to maintain linked lists interfaces that are node type independent. My current assignment has me involved totally in Windows 8 kernel mode drivers. Trying to decide if the Windows Driver Model (WDM) is unduly complicated or not. I get that Plug and play (PnP), controlling power to devices and having an interface that handles a large set of different devices makes calls for abstractions. Not sure about the abstraction I guess.

Learn Python. It's really easy to pick up, too. Didn't know Basic is even offered these days. Yikes.

The second language really doesn't matter because Python covers most things you'd want to do these days that aren't too specialized. Java is good for jobs and if you know Python it's not hard to pick up (but somewhat frustrating).
C++ meh the good news is you'll learn about memory management and some neat stuff but it's harder and also used in more specialized fields (f you want to get into serious game development go with C++)
---

Also I was thinking about creating some sort of programming course from scratch that teaches you valuable skills but is mostly practical, reusing as much material as possible. I think I'd want to cram a bunch of languages into it actually. Basically I kind of want to build some sort of layman to can develop software in BA time. Here's what my rough draft looks like:

0) I would use as much Open Source/Free stuff as possible and also stay away from stuff that is coupled to certain companies. I think it's pretty important that all the tools/skills etc you are exposed to are long time use etc.

A - Programing
A1) First language: Something functional Common Lisp,Scheme,Clojure,ML,Haskell etc. pp. Because it's the first language I'd prefer easy to learn/good learning materials. I think it comes down to Scheme and Clojure, I'm leaning Scheme
A2) Python/Ruby - A mainstreamy, easy to learn, high efficiency language. I think Ruby would be better because the OOP stuff is fairly well done and it could double as an intro to OOP language. Python's main advantage imo is that it's used quite a bit in sciencey fields. Anyways, either pick should be fine.
A3) "Web stuff". Just a mixture of JS,HTML,CSS and so forth. Use CoffeeScript, Sass and so forth can also add App stuff here, probably with some multi platform stuff like Ruby??? (forget the name). Dunno if this should use Rails/Django or maybe NodeJS so we can do the JS in more detail.
A4) Concurrency=Erlang. Going to become more and more important, hype language as well so it can't hurt to have it in your arsenal.
A-Extra) ASM,C or C++: Mostly for low level stuff. I think I like a combination of ASM/C here. Including experimentation of writing C code, compiling it and looking at the generated ASM and getting the link. Could very well be linked to embedded development and so forth, maybe using Arduino boards or something.

B- Fundamenetals
B1) Design patterns in all shapes and forms
B2) Light CS theory. Algorithms, search/sort and so forth
B3) Databases. Generaly theory RDBMS vs documents stores, No-SQL and so forth and in depth introduction to one RDBMS (Postgres)
B4) Networking
B5) Security

C- Practical concerns
C1) Version control and why it matters (SVN and Git imo)
C2) TDD, Agile, development best practices and all that mumbo jumbo (basically Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer and so on knowledge)
C3) Reading/writing documentation, Open Source how does it work

The key is having a bunch of good programming projects, basically people should be coding something fun at all times. Actually they shouldn't just be coding but go through the entire planning,design and so forth cycle of projects.

Thank you, great post.

Oh forgot to mention...I'd start with a functional language because I think (and it seems to be a common perception) that it's easier to learn functional first, imperative later than the other way around.

I think I'd actually like to create a seperate thread for this a la "Design the perfect 3 year layman software development course" and see how others would go about it.

I heard on npr yesterday that microsoft posted a quarterly loss for the first time in 24 years or something like this.

Was on Slashdot yesterday, first quarterly loss ever for MS. Kind of surprised it took this long actually, what with Vista an all.

why does java suck? is C# superior?