NJ Geeks - New Jersey's IT Community

UPDATE: I got tired of looking at my original stupid title, "CompSci - Math = Big Mac - Secret Sauce". Clearly, my original title was mathematically flawed. :)

Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths

I've been reading this headline this past weekend and I'm shocked. Actually, I'm a little indignant and frustrated because I recently came to the exact opposite conclusion not too long ago.

Before I continue, let me add the disclaimers.

DISCLAIMERS: I did not RTFB, and I'm not attacking the author's ideas as I haven't read the book. I'm very hopeful the author's main thesis is not that math is irrelevant, but that we've all missed an fundamental concept that's even more important.

I've been doing a lot of reading and writing about the nature of programming languages and how the relate with our spoken languages and I have identified some strengths and weaknesses between our spoken tongue and machine languages.  While it's easy to enumerate the differences, there are a few differences and similarities that interest me in particular.

1. Both are made up of words consisting of verbs and nouns at the minimum.
2. Machine languages tend to require definitions up front.
3. Vague statements are tolerated in spoken languages as their meaning can be elaborated later.

To further appreciate the similarities between the two languages, I've been doing little exercises where I try to translate both contrived and randomly found sentences into a familiar syntax and made up syntaxes.  Here is an example of my exercises:

In case you haven't heard, JavaScript is actually being recognized as a powerful language these days, as it possesses powerful Lisp-like qualities. Two features, closures and lambda functions (anonymous functions) are a few key elements behind this power.

To demonstrate this power, I'm going to create some JavaScript code that allows a programmer to easily create JavaScript classes at runtime. I mean classes, not objects. For example, wouldn't it be nice to have a function like this...

function person(first, last, age) {
  this.first = first;
  this.last = last;
  this.age = age;
}
var Bob = new person("Bob", "Jones", 23);

...converted into something more concise like the example below?

var person = make_class("first,last,age");
var Bob = new person("Bob", "Jones", 23);

Image: Pumping wind power underground | CNET News.com - [Martin's Links] This technology is used to store energy for use when it is needed. 

BEA is sponsoring Dev2Dev Tech Days in New York (Thurs. May 3 morning). This is a free conference for developers.  I've been to this event last year, and found it to be very worthwhile.  They talk about and show a lot of code, and they have a great bunch of demos to show.This year's theme: "A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience" I am planning to go.   Are there others who might be interested? 

  Some of you are aware that the .NET Meetup is a weekly meetup where we get together to talk and code.  Recently, we decided to open up our meetup to make it more agnostic and invite anybody in who likes to program and wants to hang out with other geeks and work on small projects or puzzles.

  So, we created a Hackfest.  If you live near Northern New Jersey, like to program or work on small projects, then sign up and RSVP.  We meet every Monday in Paramus at the Panera Bread on Rt 4 near David's Bridal (Across from the Bergen Mall).  In the first few months, we've been average 6-7 people which is very good for a meetup this young.

I am proud to say that today I am putting Hearty Handshake live.  This is very exciting for me, and maybe interesting to folks of NJGeeks.Com :)  The website is implemented in Drupal 5.1 as this site is and the design is a custom theme that is a conversion of a design comp from a friend of mine at Krona Design

I am hoping that my blogs will all be migrated to Hearty Handshake soon,  but in the mean time I have about 2-3 other Drupal projects that I need to have done before the end of the month.  I mentioned to Dossy that at the next MySQL meetup maybe I can do a show and tell about Drupal and the new sites I am completing as the examples. 

Thanks for taking the time to read and visit,

Robbie(TheGeek) 

I found this to be a very inspirational article about "amazing girls" at Newton North High School in Newton MA.  Also take a look at the multimedia presentation.

Cell phones can now read square 2D bar codes that carry information about objects in the real world. Being able to read these codes with your cellphone has numerous exciting applications.

See the New York Time ARTICLE from 01-Arp-07.

The barcode is called QR Code and was developed in Japan.
See the Wikipedia ENTRY.

Hi, my name is Julien Yvon Bongars and I now live in Ramsey New Jersey. I am new to USA since I spent most of my time in a place called Singapore located in South East Asia. I am 14 in 2007 and I was born in Paris France. Thise is why I consider myself a cross country kid. I have seen alot of asia and can tell you alot about it. Thats about it.