really funny

This

-code.html

Writing apps is one particular way of exploiting your coding skills - if yo u have them.

The Daily Mail's anxieties are a little one-dimensional. Society values all kinds of skills in a variety of different areas, and the education system could serve to detect these different skills and channel the students accor ding to their talents. From each according to their abilities ...

We saw a similar kind of twaddle spouted by US politicians during the immed iate post-Sputnik period, when they were preoccupied with the superiority o f the Russian education system at churning out mathematicians.

It's actually the same problem - politicians don't understand that number-c runching skills are only useful where there are loads of numbers to crunch, and enough theoretical understanding of what the numbers might mean to all ow the number-crunchers to extract meaningful information.

On a sunny day (Sat, 15 Nov 2014 14:15:26 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

I agree it would be good to give little kids access to a computah, and have them learn asm, basic electronics, and C. I sure hope they will not have to learn to scribble in Java or Python, or what else have you.

Transistors, flip flops, memory devices, step by step problem solving, some basic math should be brought into the game.

What good is it to design a car if you have no clue about the combustion engine?

Long time ago some guy told me he knew somebody who designed a flying saucer, and was still looking for a suitable engine, if I knew of one. Now THAT sort of designing has its limits...

Maybe maybe maybe I should write a book... It is all really simple.

Or is it?

We live in a google world. Whenever I get stuck I ask google, type the keywords in google, read lots of papers, see how other people did it. Most difficult part is to find the right keywords if you are clueless. Google (and some other search engines) is now so good that you can even formulate your question like that 'I would like to know what are the keywords to look for this and this is', and sure you get them too!

Learn by exploring (ever new things perhaps), is same as playing, IS playing.

I did over hear one of my son's code learning, college student, 20 year old friends say, "If I can just write one good app, I'll have it made" Mikek

Thanks for the morning laugh Mike. That's a keeper.

Server Error in '/' Application. This document already has a 'DocumentElement' node. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: This document already has a 'DocumentElement' node.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Or "If I can just become a pro basketball player..."

The sad thing is, I've tried to interest him in an Arduino so he could program it to do something. He didn't know what it was, nor was he interested, even if I bought it for him. Mikek

or "if I could just win the lottery"

-Lasse

There's nothing wrong with exposing every kid to a little coding (and cooking, and machining) but entire EE cohorts are learing to code apps. We get kids with EE degrees who simply don't understand electricity. There must be about 1e6 iPhone/iPad apps by now, and most have never sold 20 copies.

The engineering school at my alma mater, Tulane U, is now heavy into apps and enterpreunership and all that VC pitch nonsense. New Orleans is always on the trailing edge of any trend, so The End is Near.

Just by coincidence, I received a copy of Popular Mechanics yesterday. It has an article titled "So you Wanna Make an App". In the article he points out, you used to need to know code to write an app. Now there are dozens of app-creation Platforms and last year there were 6000 app developers in Apple's ecosystem. Obviously his plan is to make money, $1,000,000 is his number, he has spent $877 on app-development software and now his app is on the market. So far he has tallied 1 download, and he thanks his mom, possibly as a joke. His math says he only has $999,999 to go. Using my math, $1,000,000 + $877 - $0.69 = $1,000,876.31 to go. He says Apple takes $0.30 of the $0.99 price. So far he is at a negative because of development costs.

One of the blurbs, " When I was done I hit publish, and my entire App was compressed into a bite sized file, ready to upload to app stores. The whole thing couldn't have been easier, or so it seemed until I was on my 50th or 60th hour of troubleshooting and tinkering.

I have to wonder if the whole story is a fabrication. His app is called, "Bacon Now". The app uses geolocation, to provide directions to restaurants serving critically acclaimed Bacon dishes in the US.

Nah, it's probably real. Mikek

Twenty years ago. It was "If I can just write one good PC game ...".

Twenty years from now. It will be "If I can just write one good ...".

There are no shortage of such entrepreneur. I am involved with some. I stay if they pay. I run if they offer equity.

There are more than 6000 in India alone, the capital of app outsourcing land.

I am writing an app to locate app developer, if only they would send me $1 each.

It is slightly better than churning out clueless innumerate muppets who can barely get to grips with MS Word and Excel which was the default.

That is actually true if the app is really really good, popular and gets

But run away success can bring its own problems as the author of one popular game withdrew it because he got fed up with the pressure.

A friend of mine in the early days of shareware gave up his regular job programming computers for the nuclear industry when his weekly income from shareware exceeded his monthly salary. He hasn't looked back.

He has retired now and taught himself several ancient languages and taken up serious archaeology as a hobby.

Seems like the smart thing would have been to sell it.

Neat retirement.

Mikek

Would you put me in contact with your friend?

I've invented/designed a portable, handheld Archeological Instrument that operates at ground penetrating radar frequencies. It enables 'viewing' into structures WITHOUT the requirement of excavation, it simply 'looks'. The first model envisioned is similar in form factor to a handheld flashlight/torch. Just move around/over the surface and 'look' inside. The design uses the principles from developing NDE Eddy Current Instrumentation that operates at much lower frequencies. The NDE Instrumentation obtains data, processes that data, and then in real-time presents the data in easily interpretable images. We're talking, not the usual weird squiggly lines and obtuse somethings, but true IMAGES taken as slices of an overal 3D image that ANY Operator can understand. I can provide some sample images from the NDE Instrumentation. I'm sure your friend has seen the weird scans normally associated with GPR [difficult to interpret]. This instrumentation's images would look like what is there, without all those distracting 'tails'. Should be able to discern the types of materials there, too, like soil, displaced soil, metal artifacts, even type them as gold, silver, iron etc. with a resolution of better than 1/2 inch.

Since the results are calibrated the Instrument addresses wide Markets for Archeological Exploration WITHOUT disturbing, Treasure Hunters, Infra-structure Inspections.

I would very much like to explore the possiblity of working with him to expedite developing this instrumentation.

We and our customer are having a problem. We understand the problem, and the fix is simple, almost trivial. It has been explained in multiple emails. But they insist that we make a PowerPoint so they can present it to management.

I told them that we don't do PowerPoints. And we don't.

What *DO* you use then OHP and transparencies or hand waving? Is the customer not king in your organisation?

Why not? OpenOffice will also have the same functionality. (but you would be wise to check compatibility)

Powerpoint isn't hard to master and is a very powerful way of allowing a partly trained monkey to present new ideas to management suits.

It is just another tool for explaining things to people.

(or if you choose to very very badly - I have a wonderful how not to do a presentation PP that I did for a local lecture somewhere)

I based it on one I found on the web but added a few refinements. I was particularly proud of the slide with script to change font, size and colour randomly for each character on the page "ransom note style".

In this case, a paragraph of text in an email explains the situation.

We don't do the standard PP presentation, where 45 pages of cartoon are projected slowly, and the presenter reads everything on each screen, in case the audience is illiterate.

Some customers need to be managed, for their own good.

We use Word to make proposals and such, and deliver a PDF to the customer. PowerPoint things always look like cartoons.

That entire process should be avoided.

I'll google "worst powerpoint" and see what's out there.

Now now, we don't want our customers having seizures.