When you first linked them my big worry was that Apple would **** them at some point in time. But it sounds like they've got that covered by really strictly obeying the app store guidelines and supporting/using all of the native Apple apis.

I found my next keyboard.

http://matias.ca/ergopro/pc/

I cannot use a standard keyboard anymore Every time I try, I end up in pain, my wrists don't like the contortion. Taking that angle on each side makes me a lot more comfortable, and that really reduces my keyboard options, heh.

Been using the Kinesis keyboards, but I hate that they try to be too cute with some of the default mappings. Plus the C key doesn't quite work right on the one I have now.

Strange dilemma I'm in:

I've been using google surveys, and have run a total of about 5 of them. the way it works is you pay up front, then the survey starts running, you see answers coming in, it ends when it reaches your sample size.

so one of my surveys, which was already paid for, never started collecting answers. it's been like 2 weeks and it's exactly the same type of question as the other surveys, which began within like 12 hours of being posted. obviously some glitch occurred in the software.

the problem is that, even though it's a paid product, there is absolutely no way to contact any form of customer service that i can find: no web form, no email address, no phone. what should i do? initiate a chargeback with my credit card?

Initiating a chargeback may very well get the associated account shut down. How much money are we talking about here?

@gm - I think there are usually Google Groups for the various Google products that are monitored by appropriate Google people. So you could try posting there and see if anybody helps you out.

You're most likely ****ed though. Google support is non-existent.

not much, like $20. it's much more the principle of it.

EDIT: ah, turns out there is a link to an email web form buried in the footer on the main homepage which i somehow missed....

First day of Java class starts today. I'm super excited!

Man I stick out like a sore thumb since I'm coming straight from work in my business casual attire. And everyone is so young

Did they teach you fiizbuzz?

How many jokes a minute can you handle?

Very interesting keyboard, I shall say.

So I'm thankful for starting that udacity java programming class, otherwise I would of been so screwed.

Professor is terrible and I feel bad for the students. But I guess this is community college.

Just pretend the floor is lava...ctr+w...java ldo

I started my Advanced java class today and was introduced to Eclipse. Mind. ****ing. Blown.

It's like that feeling I got in HS when I discovered the graphing calculator vs. the scientific calculator times 10000000. We were using some crappy student IDE last semester. I have no idea why they didn't start us on this **** earlier.

Interesting article linked on HN today for those that wondered why using integers instead of floats was recommended for currency (and most other stuff really):
http://randomascii.wordpress.com/201...test-them-all/

I don't remember all of the arguments but when I was a CS TA I looked into using Eclipse vs. using a simpler IDE (can't remember which one) for new programmers and came down on the side of the simpler IDE. Eclipse could really scare students off from doing assignments and overwhelm course TAs with questions that don't really matter.

I think Eclipse has gotten better since then, but I bet there are still some good arguments for at least offering/supporting a simpler IDE to beginning programmers.

That's awesome. I think we often forget how fast computers are at certain tasks.

Try intelliJ and you might have an orgasm.

Don't think an IDE is necessary for a first/second course. You can do everything with command line. Standard library is well documented. You don't gain the benefit of IDE until reaching a large scale project. Student should learn how the language compiles/links and executes. Definitely doesn't hurt to learn a bit about the JVM in a first Java course.

Yeah the two most interesting things I took away were...
1) holy moly that's a lot of errors
2) pretty cool that you can actually test all for a single 32bit float

I think somewhere in the HN comments someone calculated it would cost about 7.5 million but could be done in reasonable time for some other case (2 floats iirc)

Genetic algorithm test over the bits sounds like a fun exercise

I generally disagree.

There's a lot to learn about CS - and a lot of it is really important to understand to make a career our of it. But that doesn't mean all of it needs to be taught right away.

Compiling/Linking/JVM/package management/etc. are all things that aren't really core concepts of CS. To me CS is much more about how you use simple operations to manipulate to data into some amazing ****. And the skills needed to do that are very generalizable and useful in almost every field. It's also the fun stuff - the pure building of something from nothing.

I like the approach of starting simple and teaching these core components to people early. As they get more interested you can express more complex problems and deeper tools to solve those problems. You can also dig deeper down into the abstraction layers of CS to ultimately show people how all the things they're doing are just high and low levels of voltage - but again not critical to get started.

Edit: A good IDE for beginners gives tools that help beginners understand whats happening (simple debugger to show data at various points in your code, helpful syntax highlighting, code completion, good error messages, etc.).

Yes! For Java this cannot be beat!

Sublime has been pretty cool so far for python

while this advice might be good if he were learning C or some other languages, it's not good advice for Java.

for all its warts and problems, the one thing Java has going for it is great IDEs that make development in it so much easier. And more than that: they allow you to code at the conceptual level, rather than the code artifact level, with full support for many auto-refactoring actions like renaming and moving methods. eschewing these features will force you to concentrate on the wrong things.

I think the biggest thing i love about Eclipse so far is the refactoring tools and code shortcuts that save a ****load of time. Simple programs that would have taken an hour to write last semester are taking 5 mins.

Yeah. This and being able to really quickly navigate through code are the two big features of Java IDEs that make me like writing Java more than Python.

I use Eclipse for php and it is pretty awesome. I'm terrible with php and just google everything and I am still fairly productive when I need to be, imo.

Are there better ones for php? I use php solely for Drupal fwiw