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11-13-2013 , 08:03 AM
Unrelated: I'm a huge fan of laptops/desktops/tablets in schools but the way they are used is fairly horrible in general.

I'm also a very big fan of manual note taking and I think good note taking boosts learning a ton. All mindmapping tools I have found have been way more awkward than taking notes on paper. The lone exception is programming notes, I like cut+pasting code into mindmaps etc.

Same kind of applies for time management. I've tried a ton but am back to good old paper notebooks. I still do the "long term/master" planning in Trello but there's something to be said about the feeling of checking those boxes manually (I also enjoy somewhat expensive pens and pencils :P)
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11-13-2013 , 08:26 AM
I use mainly two fingers to type, with thumb on space bar. Occasionally using middle fingers at random.

typeracer i get about 60wpm but every single apostrophe i mess up about 3/4 times lol something about that key i just cant hit
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11-13-2013 , 09:17 AM
Xhad,

What is the course name?

You're right about testing early on when learning a new platform/language. When I started to learn rails I didn't even write a single test.

Often times it's a waste of time to test your "super beginner" code because the code you write is really bad and makes testing much more difficult than it should be.

Once you learn the language's or platform's patterns for refactoring then most tests become very straight forward and natural to write because your code is much more testable. The only barrier of entry then is learning a test lib's API.
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11-13-2013 , 09:36 AM
I used to type my own weird way. But when I started learning vim I started gaining benefit from keeping on home row, and my typing method basically morphed into the 'right way.'
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11-13-2013 , 09:36 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by derada4
I went to a high school that issued laptops to all students, it was how we took notes in class and handed in assignments and what not.

Freshman year I had to take a typing class and actually payed attention/diligently did the assignments.

It was hands down the most useful and valuable thing I got out of high school. Maybe I'm weird, but being able to type the "right" way makes typing somewhat pleasurable in and of itself, lol.
I don't know if I'd say proper typing was the most valuable thing I got out of high school but its right up there.
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11-13-2013 , 09:53 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tyler_cracker
i've been reading the "all time 2+2 thread" draft, so now i really really want this tangent to turn into a hu4rollz-style mavis beacon contest
FIND AN ONLINE TYPING SPEED SITE OR BUILD ONE INSTANTLY!
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11-13-2013 , 11:07 AM
Shoe: It's the edX/Berkeley SaaS course

clowntable: To be fair it's not the end so much as the middle; it's a two-parter and I believe the two combined form a uni course

g_m: Re: "religion," I'm hopeful because the professors appear to be aware that a problem exists. One of the lectures opened with a professor mentioning offhand that they were surprised that in the first iteration of the course that people were finding BDD easy and TDD hard when they expected the inverse, and were hoping their improvements would take some of the edge off, so it's entirely possible that they were already moving in the right direction and just didn't go far enough. My belief is that they expected Cucumber to be hard and prepared for it (the Cucumber assignment is, "Add some behavioral tests to this project you already wrote. And here's a version of the assignment we wrote in case you got it wrong."), while making no such consideration for Rspec because they're used to rounding the cognitive overhead of tests down to "zero" (a catastrophic mistake in this context).

By contrast, I'm also taking Martin Odersky's Reactive Programming course and there's an assignment in the second one that introduces a new test framework. This one is directed at people who, at minimum, have the equivalent knowledge of his FP in Scala course, so AFAICT it's aiming at a higher skill level than the SaaS. The entire assignment: "Here are 6 implementations of a heap, five of which are bugged and labeled 'Bogus heap X'. Write a test suite that correctly passes the correct heap and only the correct heap." I think that's more in line with the sort of thing I'd expect to introduce unit testing. After introducing unit testing, a good TDD assignment might be to give the student a project with some of the method bodies removed and ask the student to complete it, writing tests first.

I do think the SaaS promotion of Agile in general does border on religious, though. That's most of the material in the quizzes. Also, in one lecture the professor mentions a Steve Yegge piece and even quotes him but goes to ridiculous lengths not to say his name. I wondered if it has something to do with this and this.
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11-13-2013 , 11:43 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil S
I used to type my own weird way. But when I started learning vim I started gaining benefit from keeping on home row, and my typing method basically morphed into the 'right way.'
I need to use vim more again but even when I do I switch to vim mode mentally and it doesn't really carry over to normal typing

Edit: Just did another speedtest and I get slightly above 100 WPM with my "custom system". I seem to remember that 100 was roughly the requirement for entry level secretary jobs so it can't be that horrible

Oh and all hail airbnb...my flight back from a conference got cancelled and I found a pretty cheap place on rather short notice and the folks seem nice (in before killed and robbed :P)
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11-13-2013 , 12:27 PM
you all put me to shame with typing. i get like 65wpm on those tests. i think i practiced on just improving typing speed i could get to 80 probably, but i honestly have no idea how people do stuff like 120 or even 100 for that matter.
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11-13-2013 , 12:44 PM
Some day I'll be good enough at a language to be able to type for a whole minute without having to look something up...

Last edited by kerowo; 11-13-2013 at 12:44 PM. Reason: probably not, but a guy can dream...
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11-13-2013 , 01:23 PM
This is super neat, a working spreadsheet in 30 lines of JavaScript, with no additional libraries:

http://jsfiddle.net/ondras/hYfN3/

(HN comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6725387)
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11-13-2013 , 02:22 PM
So I am currently looking at if it is possible to migrate the social interactions from blog posts to a new url.

Example: www.example.com/blog/topic/subjectline

Has 20 twitter shares, 15 facebook likes, 10 google+1's, and 25 linkedin shares.

New website url: www.example.com/blog/subjectline

Is it possible at all to bring over that social sharing data? Do all the counters just restart to 0?
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11-13-2013 , 03:12 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by gaming_mouse
you all put me to shame with typing. i get like 65wpm on those tests. i think i practiced on just improving typing speed i could get to 80 probably, but i honestly have no idea how people do stuff like 120 or even 100 for that matter.
Clowntable is even more impressive. He can type 100 German Words Per Minute.

Not sure what entry level secretary job requires 100 wpm.
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11-13-2013 , 03:18 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveT
Clowntable is even more impressive. He can type 100 German Words Per Minute.
yes, and German probably has a word for "the adjustment factor in words per minute to account for the average difference in word size between languages"
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11-13-2013 , 04:05 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by gaming_mouse
yes, and German probably has a word for "the adjustment factor in words per minute to account for the average difference in word size between languages"
LOL. You guys are clearly joking but in case anyone else is unaware/confused, word in wpm = 5 characters.
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11-13-2013 , 05:21 PM
Xhad,

Oh, I took that course a few months ago. Definitely the most test-heavy course I've ever seen. Just wait until they add in cucumber tests too.

The main professor is quite knowledgeable but I think he goes way overboard with test coverage.
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11-14-2013 , 12:44 AM
Thanks for the responses on my pentest questions, all. I have a couple other questions.

What is the best resource for learning python? Also, is this the best resource for learning HTML?
http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/
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11-14-2013 , 10:53 AM
w3schools has a bad reputation.
http://www.w3fools.com/

The best resource for intro python is probably the MIT intro class.
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11-14-2013 , 10:56 AM
There is also Python the Hard Way
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11-14-2013 , 08:15 PM
thx guys
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11-14-2013 , 08:52 PM
can somebody explain why this doesn't pause - load 3 flop images - pause - load turn image - pause - load river image? Instead i think it just pauses for the time of all the System.thread.sleep() added up, and then loads all images real quick. c# and winforms. Its all in the view(form) class

Code:
case 0:
                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
                    this.flop1.Image = model.getCommunityCard(0).getCardImage();
                    this.flop2.Image = model.getCommunityCard(1).getCardImage();
                    this.flop3.Image = model.getCommunityCard(2).getCardImage();
                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
                    this.turn.Image = model.getCommunityCard(3).getCardImage();
                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
                    this.river.Image = model.getCommunityCard(4).getCardImage();
                    break;

Last edited by Burnss; 11-14-2013 at 09:00 PM.
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11-14-2013 , 08:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by daveT
http://play.typeracer.com/

I never really knew. I did a few of these and cracked 80 a few times, but man, my accuracy is in the tubes today. Or maybe I don't have a good feedback loop for this stuff. You know it's bad when I can't type "(words go here)" accurately.

I did notice I did that a few times, so apparently it is natural for me now. I probably picked up this habit from using Excel and Emacs, where hitting the space key is often inconvenient any other way. Usually it is followed after hitting . or , .
101wpm first shot 98% accuracy.

I never really thought about how I type but after watching that video of the 163wpm person, I realized that my fingers hover over the keyboard similarly.

Edit: I typed too quickly the first time and had to re-take the test to prove I'm not a bot. 110wpm 97% accuracy on the re-test. my tiny asianish hands are good for making shoes and typing fast.
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11-14-2013 , 09:25 PM
lol
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11-14-2013 , 09:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by anfernee
101wpm first shot 98% accuracy.

I never really thought about how I type but after watching that video of the 163wpm person, I realized that my fingers hover over the keyboard similarly.

Edit: I typed too quickly the first time and had to re-take the test to prove I'm not a bot. 110wpm 97% accuracy on the re-test. my tiny asianish hands are good for making shoes and typing fast.
Got 115 wpm on my first try, then 118 wpm on the test they made me take to prove I'm not a bot.

I type the way I was taught in middle school, so pretty standard.
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11-15-2013 , 07:02 AM
I'm a Java noob and I need a little help with the following code (this problem doesn't seem thread-worthy):

Code:
import java.util.Scanner; //importing the scanner class

public class GradeClassification

{

 public static void main(String[] args) 
{
    programTitle();
    int mark;
    getMark();
    String grade;
    determineGrade(mark);
    gradeMessage(grade);
    	
}
 
 public static void programTitle()
{
    System.out.println("Grade Classifier");
    System.out.println("****************");
}
 
 public static int getMark()
{
    Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
    System.out.print("Enter exam mark :> ");
    mark = in.nextInt();
    
    return mark; 
}

 public static String determineGrade(mark)
{
    
    
    if (mark > 70) 
        {
            grade = "A";
        }
    else if (mark >= 60)
        {   
            grade = "B";
        }
    else if (mark >= 50)
        {
            grade = "C";
        }
    else if (mark >= 40)
        {
            grade = "D";
        }
    else
        {
            grade = "F (Fail)";
        }

	return grade;
}
 
 public static void gradeMessage(grade)
 {
     if (grade == "F (Fail)")
     {
         System.out.println("Unfortunately you are awarded an F and therefore fail");
     }
     else
     {
         System.out.println("Congratulations, you are awarded a Grade " + grade + " Pass.");
     }
 
}
It's obv a very simple program but I just can't figure out what's wrong with it. I'm thinking maybe I've messed up the parameters somehow or maybe it's because I'm comparing two strings with '==' or something?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks
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